Baked Redcurrant Cheesecake

My favourite jam is redcurrant jam, but so far I have never really made anything with fresh redcurrant. Until I come to live in Germany. Red currant or Johanisbeeren as they are called here is to be found easily during spring and summer. Our neighbour has quite an amazing organic vegetable and fruit garden and we have had some of these berries from him. What to do with a bowl full of redcurrant? I find them too sour to eat as is. So after I made some fresh red currant lemonade and a jar of red currant sauce to go with vanilla ice cream, I decided to bake a cheesecake with a touch of redcurrant. So here it is my first ever, redcurrant cheesecake. I was first doubtful that it would turn into anything good, as I had simply used my normal baked cheesecake recipe and added the red currant puree as is, it turned out pretty good. The resulting cake is pretty soft and not so heavy and the red currant puree provides fresh contrast to the cream cheese. Although I should probably have used a bit more flour as the puree add more liquid to the mixture.

Ingredients

Crust Pastry

150 gr of plain flour

125 gr of butter at room temperature

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 egg

50 gr of caster sugar

½ teaspoon of baking power

½ teaspoon of salt

The zest of one lemon

Cheese Filling

3 x 250 gr cream cheese (I use Philadelphia Full Cream Cream Cheese)

1 x 150 gr quark (or fine cottage cheese)

1 x 150 gr crème fraiche

150 gr caster sugar

4 eggs

4 tablespoons of plain flour

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

½ glass of pureed redcurrant

Steps:

1. Wash the redcurrant carefully and get rid of the stems. Using a power mixer or blender, pureed the berries until fine and then sieve through to get rid of the seeds and skins. Add a couple of tablespoons of caster sugar to sweeten it if desired.
2. Set the oven to 200^o degree Celsius and line a round 30cm baking dish with baking paper or rubbed with a bit of butter. Note: a smaller diameter baking dish would also be okay, maybe better as with the 30cm, the cake is too thin.
3. Combine together all the ingredients for the crust pastry and mix until it forms a rough pasty dough and then knead for one minute, roll it out and transfer to cake tin. Pinch pastry on the edges along the side of the cake tin. Bake for 5-10 minutes until slightly golden. Set aside to rest. If the dough is too sticky to roll, place the dough in a plastic wrap and cool for 30 minutes or so in the fridge before rolling it thin (5mm) to fit the baking dish.
4. Prepare the cheese filling by combining sugar, cream cheese, quark and vanilla sugar together using a mixer. Then add the crème fraiche and then followed by one egg at a time. Mix until smooth.
5. Pour half of the cream cheese filling into the prepared crust.
6. Spoon the redcurrant puree in the middle of the filling and spread evenly.
7. Pour the rest of the cream cheese filling to cover the redcurrant puree. Another way could also be by swirling spoonful of redcurrant puree and create marbling effect on the cream cheese filling.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.
9. Cool and let the cheesecake to set properly overnight.
10. Serve with extra fresh redcurrant or redcurrant sauce if desired

Hazelnut and Chocolate Cake

Our neighbours invited us for a farewell BBQ last weekend. On asking what we could bring, the request was ‘cake would be good’! I don’t get the chance to bake a cake very often so this was rather a blessing. Finally a chance to get my baking skills up to date! The BBQ has something to be desired but my cake was at least delicious. In fact, it was probably a bit overdone for this. Anyway the main thing is I got to ply with chocolate and more chocolate.

Ingredients

Cake

250 gr dark chocolate

200 gr roasted hazelnuts (ground)

7 eggs (separated)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

120ml espresso coffee

125 gr butter

120 gr caster sugar

Chocolate Icing

200 gr dark chocolate

100 gr fresh cream

Decoration

50 gr chocolate coated roasted hazelnuts

Hazelnut brittles

Steps: Cake

1. In a heavy based pot add the butter, chopped chocolate, vanilla essence and espresso coffee and stir until it forms a good consistency. Leave to cool
2. Heat the oven to 180 degree Celcius
3. Prepare the baking tray – use baking paper to line the bottom and side or simply use some butter
4. Beat the egg whites until soft peaks are formed. Set aside in the fridge
5. Beat the egg yolks and the caster sugar until creamy.
6. Add the chocolate mixture little by little and mix well.
7. Add the ground hazelnut into the dough and make sure that it is thoroughly incorporated
8. Add the beaten egg whites into the dough, little by little and combine it together gently
9. Pour the dough into the prepared baking tray
10. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes. To keep the cake moist, I put a tray of water at the bottom of the oven to create a bit of steam
11. To test if the cake is ready, insert a bamboo stick into the middle of the cake and check if it is clean. When clean, the cake is ready, when it is still sticky bake it for a bit longer
12. Cool the cake on a wire rack      

Steps: Chocolate Icing

1. Bring the cream into a boil on a medium heat.
2. Take the cream away from the stove and add the chopped dark chocolate and mix until all the chocolate pieces are melted and it becomes a smooth consistency
3. Spread the icing over the cooled cake (you might want to wait for a few minutes until the icing cool down a bit before spreading it on the cake)

Steps: Decoration

1. Add the extra roasted hazelnut into the left over chocolate icing to coat and place them on top of the cake as desired
2. Decorate the side of the cake with the hazelnut brittles (optional)

Leave the cake to cool in the fridge overnight (or least for several hours) until the chocolate has set.

Spicy Sesame and Honey Chicken

This perfect combination of spicy, sweet, sour and crunchyness of lightly floured strips of chicken dish was our dinner the other week. I wanted to put it up on this Blog on the same day, but haven’t had my act together until today. But as it is one of my favourite recipes, I thought it is not too late to put it up now. This is nothing at all compared to the one you find in the Chinese Restaurant where often you will find honey sesame chicken with thick batter, which is way to sweet for my liking. Here I find the combination in the sauce is just fine, the chicken is tender with nice crunchy coating. I served it with jasmine rice and extra freshly cut red chillies to add more heat.

Ingredients

2 – 3 chicken fillet

2 tablespoons plain flour

2 tablespoons potato starch or cornstarch

¼ teaspoon baking power

Oil for prying

Paste

2 cloves garlic

2 red chillies

1 lemongrass (white part)

1 small piece of ginger (or a couple of slices or about the same size as one clove of garlic)

Rind from one lime

Marinade

Half of the paste

Juice of one lime

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt

pepper

Sauce

1 1/2 cups of chicken stock

Half of the paste

2 teaspoons lime juice

2 tablespoons honey (or more depending on taste)

2 tablespoons soy sauce (light)

2 tablespoons sesame oil

2 teaspoons chilli paste (or more depending on taste)

1-2 tablespoon cornstarch (or more depending on thickness desired)

1 teaspoon of oil

salt

pepper

spring onions for serving

2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds

Steps:

1. Cut chicken fillet into equal strips  (~1-1/2 cm wide).
2. Mix together the plain flour, cornstarch and baking power.
3. Marinade the chicken strips with half the paste and the other marinade ingredients thoroughly. Then add the mixed flour to coat the chicken strips. Leave the marinaded chicken in the fridge for at least 30minutes.
4. Make the sauce. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Fry the paste until fragrance and then add the chicken stock and the rest of the ingredients except for the cornstarch. Seasons with salt and pepper and adjust sweetness as desired. Put on low heat while you prepare the other parts.
5. Roast sesame seeds and set aside.
6. Heat a generous amount of oil in a fry pan or deep fry pan. Fry chicken strips until golden brown and keep warm. You should do this in batches until all chicken strips are done.
7. Dissolve the cornstarch with some cold water. Add the cornstarch mixture into the sauce little by little and mix well (as you add the cornstarch, observe the thickness of the sauce, add more cornstarch if the sauce is too thin or add a bit of water if it becomes too thick).
8. Pour sauce into chicken strips and mix well. Add roasted sesame seeds and thinly sliced spring onions.
9. Note: the lime juice and lime rind can be replaced with lemon orange, choose what is easily available or is handy.

Kartoffelpuffer: German Potato Pancakes

Germans do love their potatoes. Potatoes are served with many dishes, whether it is the simple salt potatoes, bratkartoffel, pommes fries, potato salad or soup and around here knödel or klöße, it is the staple of German dishes. Although I have grown up eating rice at least twice a day, I have also learnt to love potatoes – hmm a bowl of hot crispy potato chips can never go wrong (other than to your waistline).  Carb, fat and salt: a perfect combination for comfort food! We all have craving for those food we grew up with, and when that craving comes we would go to great length to enjoy it again. Now I have found the comfort food of my husband. It is something his mum used to make and is eaten with a bowl of hearty bean soup, but this potato pancake is more commonly eaten with apple muss. In the local dialect here, it is called “Krumben Pfannekuchen” or in high German "Kartoffelpuffer". How happy and surprised he was when he found out that I too could make this local dish. It is really easy.

You might be wondering that it is eaten with apple muss but it is traditionally so, but if you prefer leave the apple muss and simply munch on the pancake or serve as side dish. So however you would like to eat it, it is simply yummy!

Ingredients:
Source: I learnt this recipe from my aunt

800 gr potatoes

2 medium onions 

2 eggs

A handful of flat leaves parsley

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

2 tablespoons potato flour

1-tablespoon plain flour

Salt (~1 teaspoon)

Pepper

Oil for frying

Steps:

1. Wash and peel the potatoes and then grate it finely. The potatoes might turn brown; you can add a couple drops of vinegar to stop the browning process.  Drain and press as much of the liquid out as possible. Use a tea towel to make it easier, twist and squish until the grated potatoes are pretty dry.
2. Chop onions and parsley finely. I used a small food processor to do this (to prevent me crying from the onion juice).
3. Mix the grated potatoes, chopped onions, parsley and eggs together in a bowl.  Add flour and mix thoroughly. The flour provides consistency but you don’t want to use a lot of it otherwise it becomes clumpy, so add a little at a time.
4. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
5. Heat oil in the pan, use enough oil to allow the batter to slightly swim in the oil. It should be hot, but not smoking hot. Put one tablespoon of the potato batter into the hot oil and flatten it a little (half cm thick) and fry for around 3 minutes on each side or until golden brown. Fry the batter in batches (don’t crowed the pan with too many, otherwise it won’t fry very well). I normally do a trial to test for taste and consistency. It should have a crunchy outer and soft inside. You can add a little bit more potato or plain flour if the batter gets too watery.
6. Once ready take it out and drain on kitchen towel. Serve hot with apple muss. A trick to keep it warm whilst you are finishing with frying is to keep the already cooked pancakes in a preheated oven at 80^o C.

Note: This recipe is enough for 4 persons and it also tastes good eaten cold

Asian Style Home Made Chicken Soup

There is nothing more comforting and healing than a bowl of hot and yummy noodle chicken soup to sooth an unwanted cold and warm your body from the cold weather outside. Since two days now both my husband and I are having a bit of a cold, he worst than I do. Yesterday we decided maybe a hot chicken soup would do us good. My husband loves to cook soup – right from scratch; even his cold didn’t stop him from doing it. At the beginning, I thought the work and all the ingredients (and the mess) were too much to produce a little bit of soup. But the resulting home made soup is better than any instant soup from the shop. And so we (he) regularly get creative in the kitchen and make some delicious soups that lifted our moods. Well for this we are actually a team, he prepares the basic soup and then the rest is my part. For this recipe, it will need a little bit of time, but at the end it is worth all the efforts. I recommend doing this recipe on two separate days.

Day 1. The Basic Chicken Soup

Source: Own creation (ala Thorsten)

Soup Ingredients

500 gr – 1 kg chicken bones (e.g. necks, breast bones)

2 large onions

3 large carrots

2 medium parsley roots

¼ celeries roots

1 large leek

5 cm ginger

1-tablespoon vegetable oil

1-teaspoon whole peppercorns

2 cloves of garlic

2 – 3 litres of water

Steps

1. Clean and chop all the vegetables into chunky pieces.

2. Cut onion into half (including the hard skins). The brown skins help to give the soup its colour.

3. Heat a large heavy stockpot and put the onion half on cut sides down and let them brown (almost burnt). This will give the soup a lovely brown colour.

4. Add the oil and the rest of the vegetables. Stir until they start to sweat. Add the chicken bones to the mix. Stir together and add the water. Cook for 2 – 3 hours or use a pressure cooker to save time. Cooking it slowly is probably the better way to produce a more tasty soup.

5. Note: cooking it slowly will require that once in a while we need to spoon out the bubbles from the top to keep the soup clear. The bubbles will come to the surface once the water start to boil.

6. After letting the soup cooked for 2-3 hours, pour the soup through a sieve into another top to take all the bones, vegetables and herbs out of the soup. Let the soup stand to cool and then overnight in the fridge (or in winter time put it outside in the veranda). The fat will stay on top, which has to be spooned out. But if you are not fussy, the fat can also stay. To leave the soup clearer, sieve it through a fine tea towel or cheesecloth. The amount of soup is enough for 4 – 6 large bowls of soup. Use as much as needed and keep the rest in the freezer or fridge for another time.

Day 2.  Being Creative and Arranging Favourite Ingredients for the soup

Seasonings for an Asian Style Chicken Soup

1 lemon grass

2 slices of galangal

4 kaffir lime leaves

chillies (optional, according to taste)

3 coriander roots

salt and pepper

Accompanying Ingredients

Noodles (egg or rice noodle according to preference)

2 chicken breast fillets

Blanched Vegetables

1 carrot

2-3 bunch of bak choi or pak choi

1 small tin of bamboo shoot

A handful of baby sweet corns

Other vegetables (e.g. capsicum, snow peas) can also be used

Herbs and Row Ingredients

A handful of mug bean sprouts (optional)

Spring onions

Coriander leaves

Celeries leaves

Fresh red chillies (optional)

Steps

7. Season chicken fillets with salt and pepper, then shear them slightly on both sides on a hot pan until slightly brown with a couple of garlic. Transfer chicken fillets into alu foil, with the garlic, add lemon grass and some lemon juice. Seal the chicken inside the foil (like an envelop) and bake in the oven at 100^o C for 30 minutes. Take chicken out of the oven and let it rest for 5 minutes. Before serving, cut chicken fillets into bite sizes.

8. We are making an Asian style soup, so to tune the basic chicken soup; I added the lemon grass, slices of galangal, kaffir lime leaves, coriander roots, salt, pepper and chillies. Bring the soup to a boil, ready for serving.

9. Noodles (e.g. ramen, udon, egg noodles or rice noodle).  Our favourite is udon noodle and secondly ramen. Prepare according the factory instructions

10. Cut the vegetables to bite sizes and blanche them in salted boiling water. To stop the cooking process and keep the colour of the vegetables – once ready take them out from the boiling water and run them under icy water. The vegetables are optional: reduce, add or omit as desired.

11. Clean and prepare the row ingredients ready for serving. They are served on top layer like decorations.

12. Arrange noodles, vegetable and chicken pieces into a soup bowl. Add the boiling soup over it. Top it up with been sprouts, and other herbs and chillies according to liking. Serve and enjoy!

Note: When using an instant soup bouillon, follow the steps from 7 to 12. The resulting soup will still be very good but not as good as with home made chicken bouillon (in my opinion J). 

Chocolate Mousse Indulgence

A while back, I was watching an evening ‘current affair’ program. My German is not that perfect at the moment, but when it comes to cooking, I can follow it without any problem. My attention was fully engaged with eyes locked onto the TV screen and ears and brain set into listening, translating and understanding when a challenge on who can create the better chocolate mousse came on. The challenge was between a young woman who has probably not much experience in cooking and a professional chef. Of course I already knew the answer, but it was interesting to watch. I love chocolate mousse and have eaten it often, but I never come to the idea of making one myself. I was amused to see how the young woman made one mistake after the other in her attempt to create this dessert. She made scramble eggs instead of whipped egg yolks and her chocolate was clumpy and she added coconut liqueur instead of cognac, which come together into an off putting chocolate mud thingy. At the same time the professional chef showed how it should be done properly to create the smooth and indulgence mousse. My husband, who was also watching, commented that he loves chocolate mousse. He is usually not a dessert kind of guy and dislikes anything too sweet.

As it was approaching Christmas (2010) and since I was hooked on baking and has still plenty of baking ingredients (although I had baked tons of Christmas biscuits), I decided to give the chocolate mousse a go. The recipe that I remembered from the TV show was rather a lot (6 eggs). I know that when I make too much there will be complaint coming from hubby. So I reduced the ingredients to a third and I didn’t use an expensive Lindt dark chocolate, simply the left over chocolate couverture I had in the pantry. I thought that when it turns into a big messy ugly mud, I haven’t wasted much. Turns out, it was so delicious that we couldn’t stop with only one serving.

Here I made it again for a second time and it came out perfect. I have reduced the sugar to only 2 teaspoons as husband like it a bit bitter, without extra sugar it should be sweet enough as there is sugar already in the chocolate. The amount of chocolate mousse resulting from this recipe is still enough for a generous portion for 4 people.

Chocolate Mousse

Recipe: adapted from a TV cooking show

Ingredients:

200gr dark chocolate

200gr whipped cream

2 eggs separated

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup espresso

4cl cognac

a couple drops of vanilla essence

Steps:

1. Cut or break the chocolate into small pieces. Melt chocolate in a stainless steel bowl over hot water. The bowl must not touch the water surface. Once the chocolate is completely melted, stir to smooth it out and set aside.
2. Separate the egg whites from the egg yolks. Beat egg whites until foamy and stiff. Set aside and keep cool in the fridge.
3. Whipped the cream until set and keep cool in the fridge.
4. Whipped egg yolks with sugar and vanilla essence.
5. Pour the egg yolks mixture into the chocolate mix. Once you start mixing other ingredients into the slightly warm chocolate mix, the chocolate might start to get clumpy but don’t worry too much simply keep mixing to smooth it out again. I use wooden spoon to mix the ingredients through.
6. Add the espresso and cognac and mix until the ingredients come together smoothly.
7. Add the whipped cream, mixing thoroughly and slowly into the chocolate mixture.
8. Lastly fold the whipped egg whites into the chocolate mixture, a little at a time, mix it thoroughly until all egg whites are used.
9. Set aside the chocolate mixture to set in the fridge. It takes 4 or more hours. It is better to make the mousse and serve it the next day.

To serve it in a traditional way, use a spoon that has been wetted with hot water. This helps the mousse to slide off easily into the serving plate. It can also be served in individual glasses. To do this, pour the not yet set chocolate mixture into the glasses and then keep them in the fridge to set.