Chocolate Honey Layer Cake – Торт “Спартак”

This is one of my favorite cakes. It’s a chocolate-honey layer cake with pastry cream. The thin layers of cake are so soft and tender and paired with the pastry cream, make this a very delicate and tender cake. The topping has a caramel taste and a mousse like textuer. I got the idea to decorate it to look like a honeycomb from a Russian recipe forum and made the bees from the book The Pie and Pastry Bible.

Turkey Pinwheels With Roasted Vegetable Spread

I always wanted to try making a dip/spread with roasted veggies. Roasting vegetables brings out so much intense flavor, and I often use this technique on tomatoes, green beans, asparagus, peppers, zucchini and cauliflower. This time, my intention was to create a spread that could go inside a tortilla with some deli for some beautiful and yummy appetizers. 

Cheesy Egg Puffs

I read cookbooks like novels. I have quite a collection of them, but the excitement of a new selection of mouthwatering, recipes always makes me giddy with the thrill of rolling up my sleeves to try something different. That is why I love the library.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

My siblings and I probably all made chicken cordon bleu in Home Ec class in high school. It was so fancy and made us feel like accomplished chefs. Ham and cheese is rolled up in a chicken breast, which is butterflied and flattened to an even thickness. It is then breaded and cooked to make an elegant chicken dinner. Cordon Bleu is a french term meaning, blue ribbon. However, the problem with this dish is trying to make the cheese stay inside the chicken. It tends to ooze out as it bakes, leaving chicken with ham and no cheese, unless you scrape it off the baking sheet and serve it on the side. You can make chicken roll resemble a porcupine by attempting to hold it all together with numerous toothpicks, or you can follow the genious technique from America’s Test Kitchen. I am impressed. The cheese stayed inside the chicken, and I loved the breading too, a combination of bread crumbs and Ritz crackers.

Homemade Yogurt

Recently I started making homemade yogurt. It has become one of our favorite snacks. It is surpisingly easy to make, so I wanted to share it with you. I found the recipe on one of my favorite blogs, The Frugal Girl. I make a batch and keep it in the refrigerator for a tasty snack and for all other yogurt recipes – muffins, salads, marinades, frozen yogurt, etc.

My favorite way to eat yogurt is to mix in some strawberry freezer jam.

You can also sweeten it with honey and cut up some fruit, such as mango.

Here’s a link to the recipe so you can make your own Homemade Yogurt.

Scalloped Potatoes

Scalloped potatoes are absolutely divine. This recipe is not for calorie counters, because there are plenty to count in this dish. Which is why I don’t bother counting. Once in a while, it’s permissible to savor every bite of something that tastes this delicious.

Most scalloped potato recipe bake the potatoes in a bechamel sauce, a white sauce made with butter, flour and dairy. However, this usually results in a gloppy, mushy potatoes. This recipe simply cooks the potatoes in cream and milk, which is why the potatoes have a velvety, light texture. Since potatoes are starchy, they provide a perfect thickness to the cream. Another awesome technique for these potatoes is precooking them in the cream before baking in the oven, which drastically reduces the amount of baking time. Topped with a crunchy sprinkling of crushed potato chips and melted cheese, it’s a perfect texture contrast. Not to mention how pretty it is. It couldn’t be easier than this.  

Most of the time when I find a recipe, I usually adjust the recipes to my taste, but when I use America’s Test Kitchen (Cook’s Illustrated), I rarely have to do any adjusting. They are my most trusted source when it comes to the kitchen. This is another example of a great recipe which I very slightly adjusted.

Salmon Cakes

For my 25th birthday, my husband took me out for dinner. It was absolutely wonderful, of course. I like my birthday low key, no fuss, no party, just the two of us enjoying a relaxing evening.

That was the first time I tried crab cakes. It’s a fairly common dish in America, but it’s not something that Slavic people traditionally cook. We both thought it was amazing. That’s  a long introduction that’s off on a tangent, since it’s not my birthday and I’m not even going to show you a crab cake recipe:) The point is that trying the crab cakes made me want to try not only crab cakes, but other patties with seafood.

Since my husband and I both love salmon, I decided to give salmon cakes a try. It turned out even better than I expected. Tender flakes of salmon are seasoned with lemon juice, capers, parsley and onions. All these flavors are mild enough not to overwhelm the salmon but also give it such depth and character.

I didn’t want to use too much mayonnaise and breadcrumbs for a binding, as most recipes that I ran across did, so I used just a little bit. The result was spectacular and fairly simple to prepare. It’s also another dish that can be made ahead of time. Those are my favorite, of course.

Giveaway Winner Announcement

The giveaway for a panini grill was closed last night at midnight and a winner was chosen at RandomPicker.com. Congratulations to Nella, who wrote:

“Congrats Olga!  This is a great place to find yummy recipes. I like making soups because my kids eat them best and olivye salad is a favorite in the family ”

Nella, I will contact you to discuss all the details.

A big thank you to all who participated. I was so touched by all your warm comments! I sincerely enjoy sharing my kitchen with you. My hobby is so much more fun and rewarding when I know others are enjoying it too.

Once again, Thank You from the bottom of my heart.

Creamy Asparagus Soup

There is something so elegant about asparagus. It also makes me think of spring. It has such a cheerful look, making me imagine it eagerly sprouting from the newly warmed soiled to peek at the sunshine. It tastes fresh, green and crunchy, just like spring should. If spring tasted like anything, that is. That’s why it seems so wrong to bury it in a heavy sauce and smother it with cheese. Most recipes for asparagus soup are based on making the soup by starting with flourand butter to thinken it. I decided to thinken the soup with potatoes instead. Just a hint of cream at the end added body to the satiny soup. Garnishing with crispy, vibrant asparagus tips features what this soup is all about – asparagus. You can also add croutons and a sprinkling of parmesan. My husband was just a tad bit skeptical when I was making this soup last year, but when he tried it, he loved it.

Poppy Seed Rugelachs

Rugelach pastries are formed in a crescent shape by rolling a triagular shape of dough around a filling. In Russia, these pastries are also known as гости на пороге, or guests at the doorstep. In other words, if unexpected guests arrive, you can quickly get this dessert in the oven. I use a cream cheese dough and a poppy seed filling for this version of rugelachs. The cream cheese dough makes these pastries unbelievably soft and tender. The dough needs to be refrigerated before you can start shaping them, but you can make it ahead of time and store in the refrigerator or freezer. It’s a great option You can buy poppy seed filling at the store, and I have also included a recipe for homemade poppy seed filling.