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Pound cake basic recipe

This recipe is a very versatile, reliable base for a number of things. You can bake it with fruits in itself, or use it for a cake; you can have it plain vanilla or flavor it whatever you want.

I’m giving here the base recipe that is good for a roughly 26X36 cm/10X14 inch pan to have one medium sized layer. This size is designed to sprinkle it with fruit (originally cherries).

Ingredients:

25 dkg sugar

25 dkg flour

25 dkg butter

5 eggs, separated

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 teaspoon of baking powder

salt

Start by mixing the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and the yolks together until light in color and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites with the salt until hard.

In another bowl, mix the flour with the baking soda.

Gently fold the egg whites into the butter-sugar mix, then finally mix in the flour.

Bake for 40 minutes on 180 °C/ 356 °F in a regular oven, or 160 °C/ 320 °F in a convection oven.

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Strawberry shortcake - 2017

The second try! If you can’t tell, I got myself a piping bag for the cream here. Looks a lot better than the first try, I have to say, although that’s not a high standard.

I followed a tutorial that wasn’t really the best way to layer the strawberries and the cream... But it tasted good!

What I found is that shortcake recipes always tell you to bake the batter in one batch and cut it in two... As it’s visible, the batter bakes kind of uneven and you don’t get two nice slices, so ever since then, I bake it in two batches, and also cover it with a sheet of baking paper, so it stays more even.

Please ignore the funky little tower in the middle. I think I just didn’t want to leave one squirt of cream in the piping bag.

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Strawberry shortcake - 2017

Please behold my first ever strawberry shortcake! I made it back in 2017 using whatever recipe I found when googling ‘Strawberry shortcake’.

It was ugly but delicious, so a perfect first try!

In the family, we also have an annual problem of how to use all the strawberries that grow in the garden, and we are tired of the pound cake with strawberry/strawberry muffins/strawberry jam/just eat it with sugar options. Hence me baking my first ever strawberry shortcake.

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Strawberry shortcake

With the strawberry season, I had a lot of strawberries at hand to use. We made lots of jam of them, but I love a good strawberry shortcake, so here it is!

I used this Keto Strawberry shortcake recipe, so this cake is completely carbohydrate and sugar free. I baked two batches of batter in my heart shaped baking forms. Do butter it generously to get it out in one! But it will come out in one. I found that the strawberries in the batter didn’t soak it much, it baked everywhere evenly. But I had to lower my temperature, so I baked it in a convection oven on 150 ° C for about 30-40 minutes.

I also did the strawberry filling a bit differently. After slicing my strawberries, I covered them with erythrite, like I would cover with sugar in a regular strawberry shortcake. It had the same effect - it drew the extra liquid from the strawberries, so the cake and the cream didn’t become a soaky mess.

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Bacon-wrapped chicken breast filled with cheese:

...or with anything you’d like to add! I usually add ham, liver, onion, or mushrooms, depending on my mood.

This is a recipe that needs more patience than knowledge, but I wouldn’t say it’s practically challenging. The hardest part is tying the meat up before baking to get the bacon to stay in place, but with the tactical placement of toothpicks, it can be done alone.

I also served it with home-made fries and a basic cheese sauce.

Ingredients:

1 large chicken breast

~12 strips of bacon

1 large white onion, chopped

4-5 gloves of garlic, quartered/3 teaspoons of garlic powder

300 g grated cheese (I’d recommend grating yourself, as pre-grated cheese is often coated with starch)

salt, pepper

optional: chili, cayenne, jalapeño (depending on what you used for filling!)

Preheat oven to  180 °C/356 °F.

Cut off the flaps from the chicken breast if your breast came with them. Then butterfly the breasts. Lay them out and tenderize them thoroughly! If you have the small flaps and want to use them, tenderize them, too. You can make 3 rolls, 2 out of the two halves of the breast and one from the two flaps, or just 2 of the two halves of the breast if you don’t have the flaps. Store-bought might not include them.

Place the butterflied breasts on the counter while open. Season them with salt and pepper, and garlic powder if using. If you have the flaps, place them first on each other, pierce them together with 3-4 toothpicks, then open similarly to the butterflied breasts. Put the cheese and whatever filling you want on the middle of the breasts, leaving some place, roughly an half an inch on both sides so you can close the breasts. Don’t overfill it, or you won’t be able to close them! 2a. If you use liver or mushrooms, you should prepare it before putting it in the meat. It won’t cook properly if you put them in raw. Also chop them finely, so the cheese will hold it together better, and you have an easier time closing the breast.

Fold the two halves of the breasts over the filling and each other, as tightly as you can. Take two toothpicks and pierce the meat together. Now take a slice of bacon, and wrap it around one end, using the toothpick to hold the bacon to the meat. Then take the next bacon and wrap it around the meat, too, fixing the ends with toothpicks. Continue until you wrapped them completely. Do this for the other(s).

Once you are done with wrapping them in bacon, take a thread or string, and tie a tight loop around one end. Then wrap it thoroughly around the meat to hold the bacon and its shape. Finish with another loop at the other end and remove the toothpicks. They should look like this:

6. Once they are done, place them in an oiled pan and scatter the chopped up onion in the pan. If using garlic cloves, place the quarters on top of the three rolls. Add one cup of water to the pan, then cover with tinfoil and bake for about 40 minutes. Remove the tinfoil for the last 10 minutes to give the bacon a nice color.

Once it’s done and you removed the thread, this is how it looks like:

The cheese sauce I used is your average three-ingredient cheese sauce using cornstarch.

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Blueberry cupcakes:

Last week I tried something new and baked some blueberry cupcakes. The base I used is my usual vanilla cupcake recipe with added 400 g of blueberries, drained of juices as well as possible.

This was my first time baking blueberry cupcakes, so I’m glad they turned out well. This is how they looked fresh out of the oven. Due to the blueberries’ volume, this yielded 18 cupcakes.

All in all, they looked pretty nice! 

They were done in 30 minutes as usual, and there wasn’t any unwanted blueberry juice inside, either.

For the swiss meringue color, I didn’t use food coloring but added the drained juice of the blueberries, so even the cream had a nice blueberry flavor!

For the leaves - and for the flowers in the previous cupcakes - I used Sugarflair gel food coloring. I really recommend investing in good gel food coloring if you want strong colors. Especially in red, you’ll end up with pink if you buy liquid food coloring, or too loose/too sugary buttercream.

Except for yellow - for that, the coloring I used is your cheap, average liquid food coloring. Yellow colors well enough, you don’t need much of it.

The liquid food colorings can also be good for mixing color if you don’t plan on adding to much to the buttercream. You don’t want your buttercream to be too loose.

This is the shade of green I used here, very lightly to get the lighter end: 

You can find the base recipe here.

You can find the swiss meringue buttercream recipe I used here.

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Bacon-wrapped chicken liver with mushrooms:

This is a pretty easy and low effort dish that’s also delicious!

Recipe under the cut.

Ingredients:

500 g chicken liver, cut into roughly same sized pieces

400 g button mushroom, sliced

2 big white onions, sliced

bacon, roughly 400 g (at least 15 slices)

2-3 teaspoons garlic powder/4-5 cloves of garlic, chopped finely

salt, pepper

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 °C/356 °F.

Cut everything as listed above. Salt and pepper the livers to taste. Add garlic powder now if using that.

Lightly oil a pan, then take a piece of liver, wrap tightly it in bacon, and put it in the pan. Do it for all pieces of liver.

Once done, take the sliced mushroom, salt it to taste, and throw it in the pan beside the bacon-wrapped livers. Then do the same with the white onion, and the chopped garlic cloves if using that.

Pour enough water to cover everything, then cover the pan with tinfoil. Bake on 180 °C/356 °F for 30-40 pieces, until bacon looks cooked. Then remove tinfoil, and bake until bacon is golden.

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Christmas muffins from 2016!

The browns are chocolate.

The chocolate sprinkles are filled with nutella. - To fill with nutella, put one tablespoon of batter into the muffin paper, then put 2-3 teaspoons of nutella on that, then put another tablespoons of batter on top.

The pink and green ones are filled with jam. - To fill with jam, use the same method as for nutella. Try using a firmer jam to ensure it won’t melt out of the batter.

You can find the base recipe here.

You can find the recipe for the chocolate muffin below.

Chocolate muffin:

Ingredients:

240 g flour (or 220 g if you want it more chocolate-y)

25 g cocoa powder (or 45 g if you want it more chocolate-y)

1 package (12 g) baking powder

1 flat teaspoon of baking soda

120 g butter

150 g granulated sugar

1 egg

240 ml milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

salt

Preheat oven to 160 °C/320 °F if using convection oven, or to 180 °C/356 °F if regular.

Beat the egg and the sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. With an electric mixer, this should take 2-3 minutes on high. Once it’s fluffy, add the butter.

Mix the flour, cocoa, the baking powder, baking soda and the salt in a separate bowl. Slowly (2-3 tablespoons at a time) start adding it to the wet mix while continuously stirring it on low. Once it’s mixed completely, add the milk slowly.

Pour the mix into forms. It should make 14 large or 16 medium muffins - this batter nets more than the vanilla muffins. Put 2-3 tablespoons of batter into the forms. Bake for approximately 30-40 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. 

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So this is my first cake with fondant!

I baked this for my dad’s 50th birthday, and aside from printed edible picture, I made everything.

The cake itself is a simple chocolate pound cake with cottage cheese filling.

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Baked mac n cheese:

I love mac n cheese!

I love an easy, oven-baked mac n cheese even more! This is a foolproof, easy and quick mac n cheese recipe. Nothing unique, I suppose, but I combined several techniques I’ve seen into this, sorting out elements I didn’t like and adding ones I did.

Ingredients:

300 g elbow macaroni, cooked

250 g cheddar, chopped (some can be reserved as grated for top)

250 g red leicester, chopped (some can be reserved as grated for top)

100 g feta cheese, chopped

200 g cream cheese of choice  (I use Lidl’s full fat plain Goldessa from Milbona)

250 ml heavy cream

fresh, chopped jalapeño to taste/ jalapeño powder to taste

salt, pepper

bacon, chopped and lightly fried 

optional: any other spice you like your mac n cheese with

Preheat oven to 180 °C/ 356 °F. Cook macaroni.

Chop up the bacon and lightl fry it in a pan. You don’t want it perfectly cooked, or it will burn in the oven.

Pour the heavy cream and cream cheese into a pot and starting heating it. Stir constantly over medium-high heat until it starts bubbling and thickening. Add feta cheese, salt, pepper and jalapeño while stirring constantly. Once the feta is more or less dissolved, turn to low heat, and add the chopped cheeses while constantly stirring. If it’s still bubbling, turn the heat off completely. Stir until the cheese mostly melt.

Pour the elbow macaroni in a large oven-safe dish. Pour the cheese sauce over it and stir until cheese covers all the macaroni. Top with bacon (and grated cheese if reserved). Cook in oven about 15 minutes, or until the liquid disappears.

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Stefánia vagdalt:

Translated literally, Stephanie’s minced meat, this is a type of Hungarian meatloaf. The color very much depends on how your meat darkens and how red your Hungarian red paprika is. The first two pictures were made with homegrown paprika, the second with store bought... The taste is the same though, and that’s what counts!

This recipe has a lot of variation, as traditional recipes do, so I’ll share the way my family makes it.

How to make:

1 kg minced pork

5 medium eggs/6 small eggs, hard-boiled

1-2 tablespoons of Hungarian red paprika (NOT smoked red paprika powder - that is made from bell pepper and will have a different taste)

1 raw egg

2-3 slices of bread, soaked in water and squeezed before usage

half white onion, finely chopped/onion paste/onion powder

8 gloves of garlic, finely chopped/4 teaspoons of garlic powder

salt, pepper

optional: 2 teaspoons Erős Pista (traditional Hungarian hot pepper paste)/ 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 180 °C/ 356 °F.

Mix the raw minced meat with the onion and garlic. Squeeze the soaked bread slices out of water as much as you can, then tear into tiny pieces and mix it with the meat, along with the one raw egg, red paprika powder, salt and pepper. (You need to make sure you completely mix the raw egg, so you can beat it separately beforehand to make sure.) Taste the mix to know whether you’ve used enough spices. If you’re icky about eating raw pork, taste the bread.

Once the mix is ready, take a baking sheet and line it with paper. Form an elongated oval of about 1 cm/roughly half inch thick meat, long enough to fit the five/six eggs. Place the hard-boiled, shell-less eggs tightly one after another on the meat. Then start covering it with the rest of the meat. Make sure you’re not leaving any eggs uncovered. Form a nice dome of the meat.

Once done, brush the outside lightly with olive oil. Some brush it with egg yolk, some leave it as is, but if you want to make sure it won’t crack, brush it with olive oil. Then cover with tinfoil as best as you can and put it in the oven. Bake for one hour, then remove tinfoil, and bake for 10 more minutes, or until the outer layer acquires a nice crust.

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Chicken roses

This is chicken breast slices and bacon, rolled up to form a rose. They are seasoned with salt and pepper here to let the bacon flavor dominate, but you can go wild with whatever you prefer! Chili, cajun seasoning, chinese five spice all works!

I also paired it with homemade fries, but depending on the seasoning, it goes well with rice or pasta!

Looking at this picture, I should have added some cheese sauce...

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These pictures were made four years ago when I first started baking cakes. This is a very simple three-layer, quick cake. The base is a Sacher torte cake recipe, the middle is vanilla pudding, and the top is whipped cream. The whole thing was then sprinkled with triple chocolate shavings.

A how-to for those who want something quick and effortless:

Sacher torte:

Ingredients:

125 g butter

2-3 teaspoons of cocoa powder

3-4 tablespoons of sugar

3 eggs

12 g baking powder

4-5 tablespoons flour

10 g vanilla sugar (or 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract)

1 teaspoons of rum exract

Melt the butter in the microwave. Add the egg, sugar and vanilla sugar, then beat thoroughly.

Mix flour with baking powder. Slowly start adding it to the mixture. Once it’s also mixed, add the rum extract.

Preheat oven to 160 °C/ 320 °F, no convection. Butter and flour a 26 cm/10 inch round cake form, and pour the batter inside it. Bake for 6-10 minutes. Check with toothpick. (This batter will look wet even when it’s fully baked because it’s shiny. But the toothpick test will work as ever.)

Once the base is done, prepare vanilla pudding as you would, and pour it over the base.

Let it rest and cool. Once the cake form is not warm to the touch, whip whipping cream with stabilizer, and spread it gently on top. Pour shavings (or whatever decor you want) on the top, then put it in the fridge for at least 1 hour to cool.

If you want to bake the Sacher torte as an actual Sacher torte, use a smaller base, about 15 cm/ 6 inch and bake it like that. Once it’s done and cooled, cut in half and spread apricot jam between the layers. Then prepare a dark chocolate glaze and pour on top.

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These cupcakes were made a week ago when the first really good weather of this spring arrived. It was very fun to make these beauties! The dotted paper ones are simple vanilla base, the hearty paper ones are white chocolate.

I used American buttercream for the frosting and my favorite cupcake base recipe.

Recipe below the cut!

Base recipe (for 1 batch):

Ingredients:

1 egg

150 g butter, room temperature

150 g granulated sugar

1,5 dl milk

280 g all purpose flour

12 g baking powder (1 packet)

a pinch of salt

(for white chocolate cupcakes) 50 g white chocolate, grated

Preheat oven to 160 °C/320 °F if using convection oven, or to 180 °C/356 °F if regular.

Beat the egg and the sugar together until it’s light and fluffy. With an electric mixer, this should take 2-3 minutes on high. Once it’s fluffy, add the butter and mix well, then add the milk slowly. (It’s okay if it looks a bit soupy, or if the milk doesn’t mix well perfectly!)

Mix the flour, the baking soda and the salt in a separate bowl. Slowly (2-3 tablespoons at a time) start adding it to the wet mix while continuously stirring it on low. 3a. If making white chocolate cupcakes, add the grated white chocolate into the batter and mix well with the electric mixer. (You can also add white chocolate chips if you’d like, but I didn’t use them. The batter should have a strong white chocolate flavor from the grated chocolate.)

Pour the mix into forms. It should make 12 large or 14 medium cupcakes. Put 2-3 tablespoons of batter into the forms. For these cupcakes, I baked 14 pieces per batch. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. This is a really reliable recipe - if the top is golden and the toothpick is clean, it’s done. The bottom will feel soft until it cools, that should be normal and no reason for worry!

Frosting:

This is the general American Buttercream recipe but here’s a quick rundown on how I make it.

Ingredients:

500 g butter, room temperature

500 g confectioner’s sugar (might not need all), sifted

2-3 tablespoon heavy cream

a pinch of salt

vanilla extract

Beat the butter on high until light and fluffy. Make sure you beat it thoroughly and you don’t have chunks stuck to the bottom. It should take about 3-5 minutes. Once beaten, add the salt and give it one more whip.

Add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream. (If too hard, more can be added after the sugar was mixed in to achieve the desired consistency.)

Start adding the sifted sugar, half a cup at a time, and mix on high until it’s completely incorporated. Do this until the buttercream holds its shape if you take a pinch of it but it’s creamy and not too hard. (If you add too much sugar, it will be very hard to pipe with.) Once you have the desired consistency, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.

If you want to color it, separate the buttercream into as many batches as you’d like colors. I used three colors for the flowers, so I divided it into roughly three batches, and put a smaller batch aside for the green. That was about 3 heaped tablespoons worth, since I didn’t plan on too much leaves or greenery.

Piping tips I used:

Purple flower and grass:

Pink and yellow:

Leaves: