Baked cheesecake by Gordon Ramsay

Super easy and delicious cheesecake!!

Serves for 6-8

Ingredients

550g cream cheese (I used 600g, because philadephia cheese are from 300g)
160g sugar
3 eggs
2 tbps flour (0,5 dl flour)
1 lemon
strawberries

Preparation

Can't be easier!! In a bowl, mix the cream cheese and sugar. Then add slowly the eggs (slightly beaten).

Once you get an homogeneous batter add the flour and keep mixing, then add the zest of 1 lemon.

Preheat the oven at 180ºC. Grease the cake tray and place to oven for 35min. I read that you have to place a mug with water in the oven as the cake not to break, I did it and worked.

Let it cool down, and garnish with strawberries.

Here Gordon Ramsay's recipe, I didn't put raspberries. 

Hope you like it!

Mr South

Crepe Suzette by Gordon Ramsay

Recipe from Gordon Ramsay

Serves for 4 people.

Ingredients

• 2dl flour
• 3dl milk
• 2 eggs
• 2 oranges
• 50g sugar
• 4cl cointreau
• 25g hazelnuts 
• butter
• salt

Preparation

In a bowl add the flour, a pinch of salt and the battered eggs, mix all together and add the milk. Melt a knob of butter and add it with the zest of an orange. Let it rest for 30min.

Make the crepes in a pan with a bit of butter.

Peel the two oranges and cut nice parts, squeeze the rest. In a pan add the sugar, caramelise, once ready add the cointreau and flambé it. After fire is gone, add the juice and the chopped hazelnuts and the orange pieces.

Plate the crepes folded in quarters and pour the caramel sauce on top.

Serve with vanilla-blueberry ice cream.

Mr South

Improvised panna cotta with homemade blueberry jam

Here it comes another super fast, easy dessert recipe. It was a bit of experiment, as to try to achieve a easy recipe that can save you from an improvised dinner or unexpected visit!

Ingredients

Serving for 4 

• 3dl double cream
• 2 tbsp quark
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 vanilla pod
• 1tsp gelatine powder 

Preparation

In a small sauce pan add the double cream, the quark, the maple syrup and a vanilla pod (opened in half with the seeds added to the sauce pan).

Start heating gently, mixing once in a while. You don´t want to boil it but to be warm, when is hot at touch, add the gelatine powder and mix thoroughly.

Pour into serving glasses and cool down for 30min or until firm (the smaller the serving the faster it cools)

Serve with a bit of blueberry jam; in our case it is homemade from the long summer days, we will post the recipe soon! 

Mr South

Caramelised pumpkin cake with black cardamom mousse

In the last fall, have been airing masterchef australia season 3 in a Finnish tv channel, we became huge fans of the series and bought the book. Since we got it, we didn´t try any recipe, so yesterday we tried Kate Brack pumpkin cake. We have changed few ingredients, and the mouse flavor, so we can say that we used her recipe to create something, for our taste, better. 

Ingredients

Serving for 6-8.

 Cake

• 300g butternut pumpkin (to caramelize 50g butter and 2tbsp sugar)
• 125g butter
• 1dl sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 dl plain flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 50g toasted hazelnuts
• For the caramelize  (1 tbsp maple syrup, 2dl water, 1dl sugar)

 Mousse

• 0,6dl milk
• 0,6dl double cream
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon 
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 tsp black cardamom 
• 2 1/2 tsp gelatine powder
• 200g cream fraîche 
• 1 dl sugar

Preparation

 Mousse

To make the mousse, we start with adding to a small pot or sauce pan the milk, double cream, cinnamon and the black cardamom, heating gently till it almost boils to infuse the flavours. Let it rest till it cools down.

Place 4 of the egg yolks in a heatproof bowl over a pot with water (water has to boil gently, prevent to touch the bowl) and add 0,5 dl sugar. With a electric beater, whisk it for 5-8 min till thickens.

Add the gelatine powder to the infused milk and mix, move the mixture to the egg yolks and then add the cream fraîche.

With the remaining 4 egg whites, in a separate bowl, whisk them till soft peaks, adding gradually 0,5dl sugar.

Fold the egg whites to the mixture and let it rest in the fridge for at least 1h.

 Cake

Start with peeling and cutting the pumpkin to dices, once done place them in a oven tray with baking paper and paint the pumpkin with a mixture of 50g of melted butter and 2 tbsp of sugar. Place it into a 180°C oven for 30min. After that let it cool down a bit and smash it till smooth.

In a bowl, add 125g of butter and 1dl sugar and mix it if an electric beater. Once homogeneous, add 2 eggs, one at a time without stopping the electric beater. Then add the pumpkin puree and once again without stopping mixing add the flour, the baking powder and the hazelnuts (previously chopped).

In a cake tray, cover with baking paper, and add the dought and flatten. Place into oven for 30 min at 180°C.

When it is almost ready, add 2dl water and 1 dl sugar in a saucepan and bring it to boil as to prepare a syrup. When the liquid thickens, add 1tbps of maple syrup.

Once the cake is ready, paint the top with the syrup and let it cool down.

Next step is to cut, serve and enjoy!

Conclusions we have get from this recipe; it is surprisingly good and not so complicated. The black cardamom mousse is something else! but if you don´t like it just change the cardamom with cinnamon or orange zest.

In the original masterchef, Kate´s cake was too dense, with the recipe we used it is fluffy, so don´t know if for the book they already changed the recipe.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk69oc_masterchef-aus-3-episode-76-part-2_shortfilms&start=984

Hope you like it as much as we did!
Mr South & Ms North

Korvapuusti (cinnamon roll)

Just few days ago it was the Finnish independence day, it was cold and snowing outside so there was nothing better to cook some korvapuusti, a traditional Finnish cinnamon roll.

Ingredients

• 7dl flour
• 2,5 dl milk
• 1/2 egg
• 1 dl sugar
• 1/2 tbsp black cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 bag dried yest (11g)
• 100g butter 
• For filling: sugar, butter and cinnamon

Preparation

The flour used for this recipe is a bit difficult to explain, it has 12g protein per 100g and it says is a all purpose baking. One of the main hints of this recipe is to use as less flour as possible, otherwise it looses the fluffiness.

The black cardamom, you can use powder or you can grind your own to be a bit thicker, as you wish. 

In a big bowl pour half the flour and add the dried yest, heat the milk in the microwave so it is a bit over hand temperature. 

Batter an egg and place half in another big bowl and save the other half for decoration later on. In that bowl add the warm milk the blag cardamom, salt and sugar. Add slowly the flour/yest mixture to the milk/egg stirring all the time.

Once a homogeneous dough is achieved, add the other half of the flour slowly and when you have about 1dl flour/yest left to add, add the butter (room temp so it is easy to mix) and mix thoroughly then add the rest flour if it is necessary.

The dough should like elastic, silky soft and non sticky. Let it rest for 40 min in a warm place as to activate the yest. And easy trick is to place the bowl in the sink and create a warm water bath (warm it is around 40ºC).

Take the dough and work it a bit in a floured surface and split in in 2 so it is easy to handle. Add some flour on working surface and flatten the dough with a roller into rectangular shape, make it as thin as possible, half centimeter is good, but make it as thin before it breaks.

With your own taste, add butter cinnamon and sugar, it is not important the order; you can put all the ingredients in a food processor and then add all together, add sugar cinnamon and then the butter, but maybe the easiest is to add the butter then cinnamon and on top sugar. Keep in mind the amounts given above are for the dough, not the filling!

You can put a lot if you prefer, you can add there raisins, almonds, etc but traditional korvapuusti doesn't have.

Once you are happy with the filling, roll the dough trying not to press too much so it keeps fluffy. Once the roll is formed, with a knife cut the dough in a zig zag pattern (see the picture below). 

With the pieces cut, place them in a oven tray with baking paper and with the short side facing upwards. Then with your two thumbs press a bit the little pieces by the part which doesn't have the filling.

Let it rest for 30 min on warm place.

With the spare half egg from beginning, pain the rolls and add a bit on sugar on top of each one, it can be bits of sugar, ice sugar ow whatever you have.

Place in oven at 225ºC 10-12min. It is better that the rolls are a bit under cook that too much, when they are right in the spot they seem a bit under cook but if you stick a knife through a roll it will come out clean.

Hyvää ruokahalua!

Ms North 

By the way, Mr South says these are the best korvapuusti he has ever tasted! So try the recipe and tell us! 

Italian dinner; roquefort pasta, rocket salad and tiramisu

Today while having lunch with Ms North, and being her birthday, I thought I could cook something nice for her. I don´t know how but I ended up thinking about an Italian dinner, but after few minutes I had figured out an improvised menu; roquefort pasta, with rocket salad and homemade tiramisu.

Ingredients

Pasta

• Mezze Maniche Rigate pasta
• 2dl cooking cream
• 50g roquefort
• 50g parmesan cheese finely grated
• Black pepper
• tbsp mascarpone

Rocket salad

• 300g rocket salad
• 100g grape tomatoes
• 3-4 common mushrooms
• 50g thick grated parmesan cheese
• Balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil

Tiramisu

• 4 eggs
• 1dl sugar
• 400g mascarpone
• Coffee
• Rum
• Orange chocolate
• Black cocoa powder
• "ladyfingers"
• half vanilla bean

 for the "ladyfingers"

• 3 eggs
• 0.5dl sugar
• 0.75dl regular flour
• Ice sugar  
• half vanilla bean

  

Preparation

Hei, don´t freak out! it is really simple, easy cooking, doesn´t take much time (but baking in the oven or cooling down in the fridge). So let´s start with the "ladyfingers"! I truly have no idea how this is called in Italian or English, in my homeland we call it melindros (wikipedia says ladyfingers...) Whatever the name of that is is what makes the base of the tiramisu. So let´s get started!

Ladyfingers

Of the 3 eggs necessary for the recipe, separate the yolk from the white saving both. With the yolks, add the sugar and the seeds of the vanilla beans, and whip it up and then add the flour, if possible put it through a stainer it will make the mixture easy to get homogeneous.

Whip the whites till they are ready.

I tried this time not to put baking soda, a tea spoon would have been necessary (mostly because I forgot to buy it, and didn´t had any at home) and the result was not bad, so I´ll leave it up to you.

Mix together carefully, we want to retain the fluffiness of the whites.

Now in a oven tray you have to make this long, narrow shapes. It should be done with a baking bag, but it happens that I don´t have those, so my improvisation led to use a freezing bag (so it is not toxic at contact with food), pour all the mixture in and, in one of the corners of the base, cutting it, creating a small hole, and there you have! a baking bag for 2 cents! 

Add a bit of sugar powder on top and bake it 10-15 min at 200°C

Tiramisu

Starts pretty similar as above, separate the yolk from the white, but now we went just 2 of the whites and 4 yolks.

Whip the yolks with the sugar and the vanilla seeds, and the whites separately. Add the mascarpone slowly. When you achieve and homogeneous batter, mix with the whites carefully.

Now maybe the ladyfingers are ready, with a knife open them up and place them in the tray you will use for serving, or if you prefer in individual portions.

Prepare really strong coffee, with an Italian coffee machine or espresso machine. When I mean strong is that you put as much coffee as possible as to be a really concentrated juice. If you ask me a good coffee, LAVAZZA, you can´t go wrong with it; I use this:

Once you have the ladyfingers in the serving tray, add the coffee, cold if possible, adding a bit of strong alcohol (I had a bit of dark rum) don´t add sugar to coffee. I personally don´t like the ladyfingers to swim in coffee, but to be moisture with coffee, so with a cooking brush, I "paint" them till they are a bit soaked.

I added a bit of the batter, and before adding another layer of ladyfingers with coffee on top, I grated a bit of orange chocolate.

Add the rest of the batter and you can decorate with a nice layer of dark cocoa.

Put to fridge couple of hours and it is ready to eat!

Rocket salad

Easy preparation; fine slice the mushrooms, chop in half the grape tomatoes. Place the rocket salad into a bowl and add salt, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, whirl it together and add the mushrooms, tomatoes and thick grated parmesan. Easy, fast and delicious!

Roquefort pasta

Really easy, put 3liters of water to boil with salt, the water has to be as salty as sea water. Cook the pasta (around 125g per person) as long as the brand recommends and meanwhile in a warm pan pour the cream. Add the grated cheeses and stir continuously, it takes a bit to melt so be patient.

Add a little bit of grated nutmeg and taste if a bit of salt and black pepper is need it.

Once the pasta is cooked, add it to the pan with the sauce. If the sauce is too thick add a bit of the water from the pasta.

If you have few ladyfingers left, you can melt a bit of chocolate and decorate them as to serve with the tiramisu.

Hope it hasn´t been too long post today!
Enjoy it!!
Mr. South

Super fast rasbperry chessecake!

We have updated the blog layout and updated the camera, we did use our mobile phones, a lumia 900 and a samsung galaxy S3 mini, which cameras are ok. But from now on we will use a Canon 1100D.

As to give it a try, we did a super easy 5 min dessert, here are the ingredients:

- liquid cream 2dl

- spoon of mascarpone or philadelphia cream cheese

- 1tbsp of maple syrup

- berries (we used raspberries)

- digestive cookies

Whip the cream as it is ready, add the mascarpone and the maple syrup and whip it again.

Put the cookies in a tray, or as we did into a nice wooden table, and add the mixture and top with the berries. For decoration you can use honey or sugar powder. That's it!!

By the way, sharing a thought...why everything taste better with raspberries?!

Banana-quark crepes

Here's another Finnish recipe, banana quark pancakes! Actually they are more like crepes not traditional pancakes. If you feel for something sweet but also healthy, this is for you! Quark has lots of protein and this recipe includes only a bit of flour.

Ingredients we used today:

2 eggs

250 grams fat free quark

2 dl organic flour

0,5 dl sugar

a tea spoon vanilla sugar

a tea spoon salt

half tea spoon cardamom powder

1 banana

~3 dl fat free milk

 

On top:

Canadian maple syrup

home made blueberry jam

First mix eggs, spices and quark together, then add flour and milk until the dough is liquid enough. Then smash a banana with a fork and mix all together.

We added even more milk after the dough looking like this

Fry small crepes on a pan, don't make them too big since it's hard to turn them around. Quark and banana makes them broken quite easily so be gentle! These crepes have very different texture than normal pancakes/flour crepes because of the unusual ingredients.

Enjoy banana quark crepes with whipped cream, jam, sugar etc you prefer! We had tonight blueberry jam and maple syrup. Some weeks ago we picked the blueberries near home in a national park and made jam, maybe we make another post about that later!