Tag Archives: butter

Chocolate brick

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Mattonella al cioccolato

I know this blog is beginning to look like a chocolate blog, but with 2 little kids around me all the time, chocolate it’s just what you need (and crave) after a long exhausting day!

Ingredients

150 g chocolate

250 ml double cream

50 g butter

100 g petit beurre (or other kind of thin, dry, plain cookies)

60 g sliced almonds

100 g sugar

50 g cocoa

Serves 6 to 8 people

  • Melt the chocolate with the cream and the butter. Let it cool.
  • Crush the cookies in a plastic bag. Add them to a bowl with almonds, sugar and cocoa.
  • Add the melted chocolate and mix well.
  • Cover a plumcake mold with plastic wrap. Fill it with the chocolate mixture.
  • Freeze it overnight.
  • Serve straight from the freezer with a nice glass of whisky, possible Scottish.

Greek cake with spinach and feta

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Torta salata con feta e spinaci

I love Greece and every year, when summer comes, I think about it and how much I would love to go back!

So I try to sunken myself in Greek recipes! This combination, feta cheese and spinach, just scream Greece, and the fillo pastry, with its crunchiness is perfect!

Ingredients

1 pack frozen fillo pastry, thawed following the manufactures instructions

1 shallots or 1 little onion

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 kg fresh spinach

1 handful raisins

1 handful pine nuts

200 g of feta cheese

2 eggs

50 ml milk

50 g butter

For 6 people as starter, 2 as main dish

  1. Pre-heat the oven at 180° C.
  2. Finely chop shallot or onion.
  3. In a big pan fry the chopped shallot or onion, then add all the spinach: it will look like too much, but believe me, they will fit once cooked. Cover with a lid.
  4. After a few minutes, when spinach are reduce, add raisins and cook for few more minutes. Remove from the eat and add pine nuts.
  5. In a bowl mix spinach, crumbled feta and 2 eggs.
  6. In a sauce pan, melt the butter with the milk. Let it cool.
  7. Brush the bottom and the sides of a cake tin with some butter and milk.
  8. Open the fillo pastry, take 4 sheets and let the rest under a damp tea towel.
  9. With your 4 sheets, cover the bottom and the sides of the cake tin.
  10. Add half of your spinach, cover with more sheets of fillo pastry, add the rest of the spinach.
  11. Fold all the over layer of fillo pastry inside your cake tin, add two more sheets and fold them to fit the size of the cake tin.
  12. Brush with loads of milk and butter.
  13. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
  14. Serve still warm.

Moelleux au chocolat et beurre salé

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Moelleux au chocolat

A French classic.

And as Julia Child used to say, French cuisine has 3 basic ingredients: butter, butter, and butter.

So do not be afraid  by the amount of fat there is in this recipe: it’s French!

The recipe comes from n. 138 of Cuisine et Vins de France, which called for unsalted butter, but it suggested to add a pince of fleur de sel.

As I had my hands on a very special salted butter, and specifically the Burro salato da panne riposate 1889 by Fattorie Fiandino, I preferred to use directly salted butter.

And the result taste was subtle and very interesting :)

As this butter is available only in Italy and produced in small quantities, I suggest you go for the original version: unsalted butter and a pince of fleur de sel.

Ingredients

200 g chocolate, 60% minimum of cocoa

200 g butter

5 eggs

150 g icing sugar

1 tablespoon flour

1 pince fleur del sel

Butter and flour for the cake tin

It serves form 6 to 8 people

  1. Pre-heat the oven at 180° C.
  2. Melt the butter and the chocolate together in the microwave or at bain marie. Let it slightly cool.
  3. Add the eggs, one by one, to the melted chocolate, incorporating them with a whisk.
  4. Add flour and icing sugar.
  5. Butter and flour a cake tin.
  6. Transfer everything in the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.
  7. Take the cake out of the oven, let it cool and transfer it on a serving plate.
  8. Let it rest in the fridge for the night (or at least 8 hours) before serving.
  9. You can serve it with custard or vanilla ice-cream.

Finnish buns

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Buns with jam

This buns are just perfect! There is nothing more to say about this velvety dough and sensational French brioche texture!

The original recipe is from Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes, by Tessa Kiros: I recommend this book to anyone interested in real, down to hearth, simple and satisfying recipes! I’ve tried many and none was a disappointment, from a potato salad to the ultimate roasted chicken.

And those buns! Even the making of them is so satisfying I could make them everyday!

Ingredients

250 ml tiepid milk

100 g sugar

25 g fresh yeast (I made them even with 7 g of dry yeast: perfect!)

1 egg, slightly beaten

125 softened butter

2 teaspoons of ground cardamom

1 teaspoon of salt

650 g flour 0 (you can make them even with normal 00 flour, but flour 0 helps to develop a better texture)

For the filling

Jam (I’ve used my father in law figs and honey jam: whole figs cooked in sugar and honey. The original recipe calls for cinnamon butter, but I do pefer them with jam). I think next time I try to add fresh fruits, like berries or sliced apples, to the filling.

I normally make the dough in my Kenwood Chef: easier, faster, no fuss. But you can make it by hand (brave!).

Makes about 20 big buns

  1. Crumble the yeast in the milk with the sugar and let it bubble.
  2. Add the egg, butter, cardamom and salt. Mix.
  3. Add the flour, mixing with a fork, then by hand.
  4. Knead by hand until the dough is silky and smooth.
  5. Cover with a clean dump cloth and let it rise in a warm place for at least 2 hours on until it doubled the size.
  6. On a floured surface, roll out the dough 2-3 millimetres thick.
  7. Spread the jam and beginning for the larger side, roll it up to make a big sausage.
  8. Cut the sausage in 3 centimetres thick slices. Lay them, cut side up, on a tray covered with oven-proof paper, 2-3 centimetres far from one another. Let it rise.
  9. Preheat the oven at 180° C.
  10. When the oven is hot, bake the buns for 15 minutes or until golden.
  11. Let them cool, if you can resist!

Mince pies

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Minced Pies

Well, a kind of Mince Pies.
First of all because this are not pies, but tarts, mini tarts.
And second of all because I’ve never tried the real English mince pie, so I cannot know if they taste alike.

The original recipe, from which those little pies are inspired, is from Modern Classics, Book 2, by Donna Hay.

Minced Pies

Shortcut pastry (Donna Hay’s recipe)

270 g flour
3 tablespoon granulated sugar
150 g cold butter, diced
2-3 tablespoon ice cold water

In a robot, work flour, sugar and butter until crumbled. Add enough water to make a silky dough.
Let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Filling

1 apple
100 g cranberries
80 g walnuts, chopped
50 g sliced almonds, crushed
An handful of hazelnut
50 g sugar (cassonade in this case)
1 tablespoon grapefruit juice
1 tablespoon Banyuls
Cinnamon, powder
Nutmeg, grated
Ginger, freshly grated

Turn on the oven at 180° C.
Peel the apple, discard all the seed, then roughly grated.
Add the rest of the ingredients and let it rest in the fridge overnight.

Roll put the pastry. Your choose to do one big (diameter of 18 cm) or many little pies (25 more or less). Cut paste accordingly. Fill it with 2-3 teaspoon of the filling, then decorate it with shaped scraped pieces of pastry, like hearts or stars.

Bake it for 15 minutes, or until golden.

Minced Pies

Sablée Breton

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Sablé Breton de Pierre Hermé

My dear friend Sara organized a wonderful cookies swap to celebrate Christmas!
She invited over some other girls, Italians, Americans, a French girl and we swapped all different kind of cookies.

I brought 3 different kind of cookies: simple Italian cookies in the shape of hearts, cranberries rockies and this sablée Breton.
Sablée Breton are basically made of butter, flour and sugar. But the butter is a special kind of butter: demi-sel, that means salted butter.
Bretagne is very famous for its salted butter, and for its sablée too.
the recipe I used is by the best, the unique, the one and only patissier in the entire world: Pierre Hermé!

For 30 4×4 centimeter square sablée Breton

133 g demi-sel butter, room temperature
60 g sugar
50 g butter, room temperature
1 g fleur de sel (or crashed Maldon salt)
7 g hard boiled egg yolk, room temperature
167 g flour
34 g potato starch

In a mixer bowl, with a paddle attachment, make a paste with demi-sel butter and sugar.
Add the rest of the ingredients in the order stated above and form a smooth bowl.
Let it rest for at least 1 hour in the fridge.

In the mean while, preheat the oven at 170° C.
Lay out the dough, 5 millimeters thin.
Bake for 15 minutes, then cut out 4×4 centimeters squares and bake again for 5 minutes, until golden.

To give a bit of color I added some pistachio nuts before the second bake.

Let them cool completely before serving.

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