HANAMI HOT DOG

WELCOME TO OUR GARDEN

I love this our tradition. Hanami Hot Dogs. We started 2014 so it's not so old tradition at all but I can already see how we will make these hot dogs year after year every spring when cherry and plum trees are blooming. My husband made them today - that makes it perfect :) Maybe it's my turn next year. We had gluten free bread, tasty wiener, chili mayonnaise, fresh cucumber salad and coriander, red onion, salad from our own garden, mustard and coleslaw to go with hot dogs. 

It's now. Important thing to remember. All the beutiful spring flowers are around us and I already miss them. I know, I should not think so but still can't avoid it. But year after year I enjoy them even more. I'm happy with the day we are living - not the day we are waiting to come.

I will save some flowers for later use. I will freeze some of these beauties in ice cubes. They will be waiting for a hot sunny summer day and then we will use them in cooling drinks. 

Have a lovely week, I hope the sun and warmth will stay with us! 

xo

Kreetta 

ps. Here you can find our Hanami Hot Dog from the year 2014.

GLUTEN FREE AND DAIRY FREE PEAR CAKE

PEAR + ALMOND + WALNUT

How I adore these small pears! I've been telling everybody that now you can get Finnish pears - go and get them before they ran out or the season is over. 

  

I decided to bake a pear cake with same recipe I made a plum cake. I got the recipe from Nigel Slater's beautiful cooking book The Kitchen Diaries. It is my absolutely fave book as I told you in previous blog post where I told you about pork ribs we made with my husband from this very same book.

Gluten free and dairy free baking has been very challenging for me. It is always hard to get very good and moist result...until I found oat flour from grocery shop. It's only what it is called - oat. Nothing else added.

PEAR CAKE RECIPE BY KREETTA (changing/using recipe from Nigel Slater's plum cake/The Kitchen Diaries book)

6-7 small pears

butter 150g

indian sugar 150g

eggs 3

oat flour 75g (gluten free)

baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons

ground almond 100g

shelled walnuts 50g

You need a 20cm cake tin, about 6cm deep. Bake in 180 'C degrees about 35-45min.

Chop the walnuts and almonds. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Cut the pears at least in three but if you make them smaller they get more soft and that I recommend. Mine were too big so they could have been more softer...but in photograph they look very nice ;) Whip eggs lightly and add to the mixture. Mix flour+baking powder and add them gently into the mixture. Fold almonds and walnuts into the mixture. 

Scrape the mixture into the cake tin. Place the pear pieces on the cake mixture. They will sink so it might not be so precise how you do it. Bake the cake. It's quite big so it's for 10-12 people.

When you are photographing food, it is good to know when it should be done. This time it was the right moment to photograph the cake before it went to oven. After that it changed color to brown - even though it's it ok and pretty - I think I like the green pears more.

This cake is tasty and moist. You can serve it with vanilla ice cream or without. I think you can also serve it people without saying it's gluten and dairy free. One cake for all. Of course if there are people with peanut allergy or they are vegan - then you have to change the plan. My piece of cake is on my favorite plate by Arabia. Of course it's vintage and the design is called Maisema (Landscape).

Have a great and creative weekend!

xoxo
Kreetta

SWEET PERFECT BLUEBERRY

GLUTEN AND DAIRY FREE BLUEBERRY CAKE

In my dreams we live in such climate that there are fresh berries and fruits all year round. Well we don't. But at least we have few weeks berry season and for example we can go to forest and pick some blueberries. This year there are a lot of them. They are very healthy and the taste is perfect. We want to save a lot of blueberries in freezer to enjoy their taste during  dark winter mornings.

This cake is totally gluten and dairy free. The izing on the cake is made of coconut cream and icing sugar. I wrote recipes for you but if you have read any of my recipes, you know I make things a bit more about than exact. Of course baking is much more precise combared to cooking.


SPONGE CAKE BASE

3 eggs
1 dl sugar (plentiful) 
1 dl potato starch
almost 1 tsp baking powder

Whip the eggs and sugar until the dough is fluffy and light. Add carefully dry ingredients. Bake in oven in 225 C degreees about 12-18 min. You can use baking sheet paper that it is very easy to remove the ready cake base from the baking dish.

MERINGUE

2 egg white
1 dl sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp plain vinegar
1 tsp potato starch

Whip egg whites and sugar until they are stiff and glossy. Mix other ingredients carefully. Spread meringue dough on the baking sheet paper in shape you want. Bake in 120-100 C degrees about 1 hour. Baking time depends on how thick the meringue is. I had very thin so the time was about 1 hour. If you want to leave your meringue soft inside it means less baking time. Why I use potato starch and vinegar is because the meringue will not be too hard and it will split nicely with spoon.

SUGAR IZING

Ingredients are coconut cream and izing sugar. It depends on how much you need it but I begun with 1/2 dl coconut cream and started adding the izing sugar until the mix was nicely firm.

SOYA CREAM

I used almost ready soya cream from the shop. It takes only few minutes to whip the cream. I added some sugar and vanilla extract to achieve nicer taste.

BUILDING A CAKE

I moist the cake base with water. Cake will be too sweet if you use juice etc. But maybe a drop or two of rosewater won't do any harm. 

I used soya cream and fresh blueberries inside the cake. I decorated the cake with coconut izing sugar mix. If you want to have really sweet cake you can use the mix more inside the cake. I put the meringue top on the cake. Finally I decorated the cake with fresh blueberries and lemon balm leaves. I put the cake to fridge expecially because of the sugar izing. Give a bit time to the cake that it will have more balanced taste. 

I already miss the summer and all the fresh fruits, vegetables, berries you can have then. That's why I've been planning to make some preservation in old-fashioned way. I'll get back to it later this autumn.

xoxo

Kreetta

DESSERT HEAVEN

GLUTEN AND DAIRY FREE CRÈME BRÛLÉE AND MERINGUE  

Desserts are always the issue when you have certain food diet. Expecially gluten and dairy free makes it a bit more difficult and if you don't eat chocolate. Like me. I tell you about two desserts I truly can eat. A lot. These two are good choises if you want to have some delicious sweet after a good dinner if you need to have gluten and dairy free desserts. Actually you can resolve two days dessert with these recipes. The best thing is that you can use the whole egg - egg yolk to crème brûlée and egg white to meringue. Because we all know how easily one of those stays in fridge and only way they can go after some time is compost. 

I found great recipe for coconut crème brûlée from Fvonf blog and the recipe is by Sabine Hueck. I changed the recipe a bit with changing the normal cream to oat cream and voila, there you go - dairy free dessert. You can find the Sabine's recipe here. I made my version just changing the cream to oat cream. It's not so difficult as I remebered. Not at all. You can also make them day before and then just make the final preparation before serving. A good party tip.

What about meringue? I love Pavlova cake. I guess it is quite popular during the summer because then we have so many great fresh berries and fruits and Pavlova is just the right place for those beauties. Some lemon balm is always a good idea too or mint. In my dairy free version I don't have cream. But if I would - I would have coconut cream.

For this size cake you see in pic you need

1,5-2dl sugar

3 egg whites

1 tsp potato flour

1 tsp vinegar 

a bit rose water

some bourbon vanilla powder 

fresh berries like cherry and strawberry

How-to-bake

Beat room temp egg whites and sugar until they are firm foam. If you turn your bowl upside down it should stay there - not on the floor. Add other ingredients. Spread to baking paper in shapes you like. Bake in oven in temperature 100-120 C 1,5-2 hours. The time depends on how soft you want the inside to be.

In between two meringue you can put fresh berries like on top of it. My absolute favorite is cherry and then starwberries, blueberries, rasberries...the list is endless ;)

Delicious.

xoxo

Kreetta

PANCAKES PANCAKES

ONE BANANA, EGG AND BAKING POWDER

What do you think? Easy is hard to resist. Only three ingredients and you have a tasty dessert there. Or even lunch like I had. I think the most important is what you eat with them. I candied almond and walnut in indian sugar and canola oil. But surely it is worth to test coconut oil - it might be even better. Then I had fresh mango. Yummy. Almost healthy?

I do have made these before but this time I saw some nice pics in IG and decided to have a very easy lunch. It's a bit challenging to fry them because banana pancakes burn quite easily. So remember not to hurry too much :)

Banana pancakes for one - gluten and dairy free

1 banana 

1 egg (maybe 1,5 - frying is easier when there is more egg)

less than 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

oil (what ever you choose) for frying

with almond+walnut+fresh mango

You can fry nuts in sugar+oil mix and add a bit water after few minutes so you get a bit nice sauce too.

I say delicious!

If you want to work a bit more with your pancakes you can find a nice recipe here at our food stories blog.

xo

Kreetta

How to make Granola + X-mas present DIY Jar

X-mas in my mind. I have planned so many times to make granola...almost a year...that means also I'm not the first one who blogs about it. Actually I'm quite late, haha but still I decided to make a suggestion for you. Make a lovely DIY X-mas present for your beloved ones. There aren't anything that one can throw to the trash bin. You can eat the granola, use the glass jar in your kitchen as a storage item and making granola is easy.

There are plenty of choises you can make your granola. I made it of those I've written on the picture. But I added only dried figs after I had baked granola in oven. You are free to choose your favorite berries, and fruits. But be careful that you don't burn your granola :) I did it once because I had too high temperature in oven. You don't want to do it because all those precious almond and other peanuts and seeds aren't cheap and of course I use organic products.

You can decorate your glass jar with handwritten text. I used Illumigraph pen. You can always wipe it off. It's waterbased pigment ink. You can decorate your jars, windows etc. with it. 

Illumigraph pen is great tool to make DIY X-mas decoration like Anu Harkki in new Huili magazine did. I actually went to photograph her lovely X-mas present DIY's and you can see all those ideas in the newest Huili magazine. Huili is THE Finnish ecological lifestyle magazine. Only in Finnish but you can always see the pics :) 

This week I also took part in Sugar Helsinki blogger X-mas evening. And look what I got! So adorable small X-mas tree. It's a perfect decoration for my workspace. Thinking of decorating it but somehow I like it as it is...small and pure. Will see what I do. It can be planted too but to do that I have to keep it alive through winter. It is sponsored by PEFC Finland.

I will get back to Huili magazine in my next post.

But now I wish you a beautiful weekend my friend!

xo

Kreetta

Gluten Free Strawberry Cake

Who wouldn't love strawberries? 

I totally do and I'm so happy I had time to make this cake today full of strawberries. Once again I find myself baking on the day when I should be packing for summer trip and planning my business...

Well, we already got some strawberries in freezer - hooray for that! Blueberries are next on the list...

One thing more, this cake is gluten free and dairy free. I used potato starch in baking and used soya cream in filling and of course made some meringue with almond and pecan topping. Voilà...now we can eat it, yay! 

Tomorrow we are going to celebrate our dear lovely friend by going to Pori Jazz together to see Pet Shop Boys and it's not a sin to eat a half of the cake tonight, nope sure not...Have a lovely summer weekend!

xo

Kreetta