My version of Floating Island Cake

Hungary's cake of the year 2007 was Madártej Torta (Floating Island Cake) ; which became a favourite of ours. However, if we crave it we would have to pre-order a whole cake as our neighbourhood bakery does not include it in their daily offerings .. not a problem, but with just the two of us, it is too big of a cake :(

So, I thought I would try baking it myself. After looking at the long list of ingredients and processes, I backed out :p Then I searched for other similarly named recipes with fewer ingredients before finally decided upon combining two recipes from my recipes folder to see if I can recreate the taste that I craved.

My version of Floating Island Cake (or Egg Custard Cake)

For the base (recipe from here )

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100 g butter, softened
85 g caster sugar (100 ml) - reduced and mixed with vanilla sugar
1 large egg
175 g plain flour (300 ml)
0.5 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

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First, prepare the pastry. Cream butter and sugar. Mix the dry ingredients, then mix into the butter mixture together with egg. Press the pastry onto the base and sides of a buttered 26 cm springform tin. Put into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

For the custard filling

2 eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 cups whole milk

100gm sugar

Pre-heat oven at 180°c.

Lightly beat the eggs, taking care not to produce any air bubbles. Stir in the milk and the sugar.

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Take out the base from the fridge, pour the custard filling onto chilled pastry base (over a sieve) . Bake until the custard is cooked and a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean (about 35 minutes). Set aside to cool

To serve

Whipped cream and pipe or spread on top of custard and sprinkle with toasted almond flakes before serving

Verdict

This simple recipe obviously it is not going to taste like the original cake but I'm absolutely happy with my hybrid version :)

Caramelised fruit and yoghurt cake

No Salty is a new recipes site that I like to browse when I want to be inspired by Hungarian foodies. Since discovering this site, I have been bookmarking lots of recipes as the food photos are so enticing!

Here's a recipe that I've tried recently

Caramelised pears and yoghurt cake
Ingredients
For Caramelising
5 pears
150gm sugar

For the cake
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
150ml sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
200ml yoghurt
150ml oil
300ml flour
1 sachet baking powder

Method
1) Pre-heat oven at 170°c

2) Make a light caramel from 150gm sugar. Pour the caramel onto a lightly greased baking dish (I used 18cm round cake tin). Then place cut pears onto caramel.

3) Whisk together eggs and the sugars with a pinch of salt until smooth. Next add in yoghurt and oil. Finally add-in flour (mixed earlier with the baking powder) gradually until everything is incorporated.

4) Pour cake batter onto caramel and fruit. Bake for 35-40 mins. until skewers came out clean.



Notes
I've used peaches instead of pears. As you can see I wasn't patient enough to caramelise the sugar into a deeper shade. The result was more like syrup.

The baked cake was moist and sweet. Too sweet despite that I have reduced the amount of sugar. Next time I will use a bigger cake tin as I think the batter was a little thick and in result the cake was too moist.



Since I have another tub of yoghurt and opened jar of sour cherries in the fridge, I decided to bake the cake again the next day! This time I've halved the recipe. I skipped the caramelisation process but instead sprinkled some light brown sugar on my greased cake tin. The rest just followed the recipe above.

I like the sour cherry version more plus as this version is halved the orig. recipe, the cake portion is more balance in my opinion. The tartness of the cherries is a good contrast to the sweetness.

Hungary's national ( birthday ) cake 2010 - Plum Dumplings Cake

photo and more background of this event: here

Reading the source mentioned above, I realised that the annual national cake invention started only four years ago, in 2007. That said, the first year winning recipe, the Madártej (Floating Island) Cake remained our favourite since. In fact, it was the flavour of our wedding cake!
While Sour Cherry Cake of Pánd (winner of 2009) also featured frequently on our dessert plates :)

We got around to trying the new winning recipe today (available sinced Aug 20th). I have to admit when both of us learnt that the winning cake (announced on the 4th Aug) was Plum Dumplings Cake, we doubt that we would like the cake as neither of us liked the traditional plum dumplings. Well, we're happy to say that we would definitely eat it again!

The cake consisted of chocolate sponge filled with plum flavoured mousse. In the filling itself, you will find a plum or prune dumpling (that look quite complicated to make!) . Topping was vanilla cream and finished off with (what I think is) tempered chocolate, decorated with prune wrapped in chocolate covered marcipan.

cake we bought at local bakery.

own reference - National cakes recipes
http://www.kedvencetel.hu/orszag_tortaja.html

Spicy pickled vegetables { acar }

Whenever I have excess cauliflower I like to make this pickled salad to accompany meat dishes.
To learn about its origin, please read here .
As I intend to eat the salad on the same day that it's prepared, I didn't follow the usual process of pickling. What I did was ...

Spicy "pickled" vegetables
Ingredients :-
Cauliflower
Cucumber
Carrots
ginger
garlic
vinegar
sugar
turmeric
fish sauce
spicy Hungarian chili paste (erős pista)
sesame seeds, toasted , for sprinkling


Method
1) Blanch the cut vegetable in boiling water. Start off with carrot (longer to tender) followed by cauliflower and finally cucumber. Do not over cooked as you want a little bite to the vegetables.
Set aside to drain off excess liquid on a kitchen towel. Put aside some of the boiling water to wet the salad later.
2) Grate ginger and garlic. Heat a little oil in a pan and saute the grated ginger and garlic. Once fragrant, sprinkle a pinch of turmeric and stir a bit. Next add in the spicy Hungarian chili paste, sugar to your taste and few dashes of fish sauce (not too much , as the sauce is very salty). Set aside until assembling salad.
3) Place drained vegetable into salad bowl, splash a few dashes of vinegar, and add in the cooked spiced mixture . Coat salad evenly. Taste to check the balance of sweet and sour. If needed add the water earlier.
4) Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds before serving

Chunky chips

From the masterchef australia masterclass

1) Blocking potatoes, producing rectangle of the same size to cook evenly
2) Cook potatoes in cold salted water on high heat. Bring to boil and lower to simmer til cooked
3) Place potatoes in the fridge for more than 1/2 day
4) Deep fry in peanut oil at 130°c
5) Once golden brown, remove and place on kitchen towel.

Basic crepes

wow, these were really light (much lighter than the Hungarian type) and crispy on the edges. Like it a lot... definitely a keeper !

Stumbled upon recipe here

Basic Crepe

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup plain flour
• 2 free range eggs
• ¾ cup whole milk
• pinch salt
• 1 tbs vegetable oil or melted butter (but in cold weather, these little globules will set hard and not do their job well)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• soft butter to grease pan

Method

1. Pop non-stick crepe/frypan on low heat to begin warming.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, eggs, a quarter of cup of milk, salt, melted butter or oil and whisk till silky smooth. Add another half a cup of milk and whisk till nicely incorporated. The mixture should be quite watery. If you have the correct consistency, the batter will split into droplets when poured from the ladle in a slow stream. If it forms a smooth band of liquid as it is poured from the ladle, your crepes will end up too thick.
3. Heat a 20 to 23 centimeters non-stick frypan to medium. To test, ladle a droplet of batter into the pan. If it sizzles and instantly bubbly, it’s probably a bit too hot. Just grab the pan and making sure no one is around you, madly wave it around to cool it down a tad. Return to stove, and with some paper towel smear some butter onto the entire surface of pan. Start by ladling just enough (quarter cup should be perfect) of the batter into the pan to roll and cover the surface. You have to work quickly as it should begin to cook instantly. When the crepe is perfect, it will start to crisp up on the edges. At this point lift up an edge with a butter knife and with both hands, carefully pick up the crepe to swiftly flip it over. This only has to cook for literally a second on the other side and then you can flip it onto a plate. Repeat till all mixture is cooked. You should end up with crepes that are just under two millimetres thick; any thicker and you will lose that magic silkiness, which is what a good crepe is all about. This will mean that you are either pouring too much mixture into the pan and letting the excess settle instead of pouring it out, or that your batter needs thinning with more milk.

Cottage Cheese & Sour Cherry strudel

Receipe originated from Not quite Nigella

Alterations made :-

1) switched ricotta with local cottage cheese
2) switched jarred cherries with fresh ones, sprinkled with sugar

verdict :-
- my filling was a bit liquidy ; hence , it leaked out when baking
- it was delicious nonetheless ! definitely a keeper.