The italian Easter Colomba cake

When you think about Easter time in Italy, the first things that comes up to your mind are sweet desserts, there are just too many Easter-themed sweet dish that you wouldn't believe! North to south, there are chocolate eggs, casatielli, pastiera, cassata...you name it! But there is a dessert that makes everyone happy: the Colomba pasquale, a cake very similar to the fluffy Christmas panettone shaped like a dove. "Colomba" in italian means actually "dove".

While the symbolical meaning of a dove-shaped cake to celebrate Easter is clear to everybody (dove is the symbol of Peace), the historical origin of the Colomba pasquale is somehow unclear.

Pavia still has lots of heritage from the Longobards era.

Of course, like everything else in Italy, there are lots of legends around it. One of them settles the birth of the Colomba in the era of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Italy's falling under the hammer of the barbarian invasion, we're in year 572, and Alboin, the king of the Longobards, is taking in siege the roman city of Ticinum (nowadays Pavia). After the conquer of Ticinum, the king is decided to execute a large amount of the population. To avoid the unpleasant decision, the ticinenses decided to create a delicious culinary gift as an hommage to the king Alboin: a sweet bread shaped like a dove, in sign of pacification. The cake is so tasty that the king decide not to execute the population: a good dessert can actually save thousands of lives! And there's more to it! Ticinum later became the capital city of the Longobard reign, under the name of "Papia", that is the city of the "pope" (or to better say, the main religious authority of the Longobard reign, the Arian Archbishop).

Loved the legend? Want one more? Ok here it goes: we're again in Lombardy, some decade later that the history of Alboin we saw before: the Longobard reign is now completely settled, and the legend we`ll see takes place when the king is Agilulf and the queen is the catholic Teodolinda.

Queen Teodolinda portrayed in a fresco in the Teodolinda Chapel, in the cathedral of Monza. A masterpiece of gothic art from the Zavattari brothers, a must see!

The carismatic queen Teodolinda wanted to convert many of her subjects from Arian heresy to catholic orthodoxy, and to do so she invited lots of great preachers of the time in Lombardy. One of these great preacher, that was reaching Rome through the Via Francigena (a great pilgrimage route like the Camino de Santiago), was Saint Columbanus, an irish monk.

The Via Francigena pilgrimage route passing through Pavia

When invited to a lunch with the queen Teodolinda, just few day prior to Easter, he found himself very uncomfotable: too many dishes, too many meals and kinds of meats and he was in the amidst of Lent Fasting. To find a solution, he offered himself to bless the food. But no sooner had he blessed the lunch than the meat was transformed into a delicious sweet bread shaped -guess how?- like a dove! Wow! A miracle! Saint Columbanus, which is a latin translitteration of the irish words Colum Bann, "white dove", actually transformed the meals according to his name. He was a boss!

The original Colomba pasquale by Motta

That's enogh with the legends, but what about the real history of the Colomba? Well, the history is actually more prosaic, and it startes in the Thirties of the Nineteenth century. The creator of the modern days Colomba is the ad man Dino Villani, that wirked for the Motta, an historical firm that produces (back then as it does now) the milanese Christmas cake par excellence: the Panettone. Dino Villani had the brilliant idea to keep working the industries after the Christmas season producing the traditional dove-shaped cake using a modified version of the dough of the Panettone. Of course, the idea was a big time success! Dino Villani was a genious and one of the very first modern-days advertising man: he also designed the Motta "M" logo that you can easily identificate all over the world with high-quality milanese sweet threats.

The iconic "M" sign for Motta, idea of the advertising genius Dino Villani

Now that you have the complete story, you can choose which one you prefer to believe in! The Colomba is a delicious dessert, you can find it at any good Italian shop or also at Eataly (and there you can find the Motta's Colomba too!).
Today, the Colomba is an excellence traditional italian product enlisted as a P.A.T. (Prodotto Agroalimentare Tradizionale) by the italian Ministry of Agriculture.
Don't miss it if you can!

Buona Pasqua!

La torta di noci dell'Engadina

La torta di cui vi parleremo oggi è un dolce che giunge direttamente dal cuore dell'Europa, da una regione svizzera che si chiama Valle Engadina, nel Canton Grigioni. Engadina letteralmente vuol dire "Giardino dell'Inn" in Romancio, la lingua locale, per via del fiume Inn che scorre proprio in queste lande. Probabilmente conoscerete la città più famosa dell'Engadina, St. Moritz, una delle capitali dello sci continentale. 

Si tratta di luoghi molto suggestivi, possiamo citare ad esempio il massiccio del Bernina e il suo famoso Trenino Rosso, oggi divenuto patrimonio mondiale dell'Unesco. Amiamo molto il trenino rosso del Bernina e quando possiamo andiamo a farci un giretto per quelle deliziose valli a metà strada tra la Svizzera e l'Italia. 

Il Trenino Rosso del Bernina, immagine trovata su Pinterest

La bellezza del posto ha affascinato innumerevoli poeti ed artisti. Tra tutti, uno ci è particolarmente caro: si tratta del grande pittore trentino Giovanni Segantini. Abbiamo avuto modo di vederne recentemente la più grande retrospettiva in una mostra a Palazzo Reale, a Milano, città da lui frequentata in gioventù, e la sua superba arte ci ha conquistato: è davvero uno dei più grandi pittori del XIX secolo europeo, per qualche motivo meno conosciuto di pittori suoi pari per arte come Van Gogh o Cezanne. 

Probabilmente prima o poi a Hollywood faranno un film sulla sua romanzesca vita di fuggiasco e ribelle, e allora diventerà famoso come merita. Ma noi lo apprezziamo già da adesso, meglio così no? Giovanni Segantini dopo una serie di peregrinazioni per il nord Italia finì nella Svizzera meridionale, le Alpi erano la sua ossessione, la sua passione, la sua idea fissa, e non poteva viverne lontano. Morì tragicamente a soli 41 anni mentre stava cercando di dipingere sul monte Schafberg, sopra a Pontresina, stroncato da una peritonite. La sua opera più importante e sconvolgente, il Trittico delle Alpi, si trova esposta nel Segantini Museum di St. Moritz, la più vasta raccolta di opere del pittore italiano. 

Ma mettiamo da parte i pennelli e torniamo a parlare di torte. La torta Engadina, o "tuorta de nush engiadinaisa", come viene chiamata in Romancio, è una deliziosa torta a base di noci. Si tratta di una ricetta antica, la cui prima versione era probabilmente un dolce ricco di burro noto come "fuatscha grassa". Tra il XV e il XIX secolo ci fu una vera e propria diaspora dei rinomati pasticceri Engadinesi in tutta Europa. Alcuni emigrarono a Venezia, ottenendo grande successo, altri a Tolosa, in Francia, altri in nord Italia. E`stato sicuramente in uno di queste migrazioni che la "fuatscha grassa" ha incontrato le noci, poco presenti nel clima rigido dell'Engadina. E' dunque un dolce svizzero tipico ma, per così dire, di ritorno, riportato in patria dai cuochi che sono tornati in Engadina. 

Si tratta di un dolce perfetto per essere conservato a lungo, anche per mesi o addirittura per anni. Anticamente si può supporre che veniva realizzato in grandi quantità per poi essere conservato a lungo. In tempi moderni, la prima torta Engadina propriamente detta fu realizzata da Fausto Pult nel 1926 a Samedan, proprio sotto al Pizzo Bernina tanto caro a Segantini. Nel 1934 Fausto Pult presentò per la prima volta la torta alle noci engadinese alla Fiera Campionaria di Basilea, e da allora divenne sempre più popolare, fino a diventare oggi un immancabile souvenir per i turisti. Possiamo trovare una vastissima varietà di torte dell'Engadina ad esempio nella pasticceria "Hanselmann e Hauser" di St. Moriz. Ma passiamo alla ricetta!

Ingredienti: (Per una torta di 22-24 cm di diametro)

Per la pasta frolla:

- 275 g. di farina
- 175 g. di burro (freddo)
- 75 g. di zucchero
- 1 uovo
- un pizzico di sale (1/4 tsp)

Per il ripieno: 

-150 g. di zucchero
- 4 cucchiai di acqua
- 130 g. di noci
- 25 g. di mandorle laminate
- 200 ml. di panna
- 1 cucchiaio di miele

Preparazione:

1- Iniziamo preparando la pastafrolla, non può essere più facile! Devi solamente mettere tutti gli ingredienti assieme in una ciotola e mescolare bene il tutto. Assicurati che il burro sia freddo e tagliala a cubetti, in modo che sia più facile integrarla nella nostra massa. Se vedi che la massa è troppo farinosa e non riesci a renderla omogenea, puoi aggiungere un paio di cucchiai d'acqua, e vedrai che la massa sarà molto omogenea. Fai una palla, coprila con un po' di pellicola alimentare e lasciala nel frigo mentre penserai al ripieno.

2- Adesso andiamo avanti con il ripieno: in una pentola mettiamo l'acqua e lo zucchero, a fioco lento e senza rigirare finchè non bollirà, allora abbassiamo il fuoco e lo lasciamo andare finchè non assumerà un colore dorato o marrone chiaro, e giunti a questo fuoco toglieremo il pentolino dal fuoco.

3- Mettiamo le noci spezzettate, le mandorle, e aggiungiamo anche un po' di panna al pentolino e torniamo a mettere il pentolino al fuoco. In pochi minuti avremo un composto liquido. Aggiungiamo dunque il miele, rigiriamo per bene il tutto e lo togliamo dal fuoco. Adesso dovremo far raffreddare per bene il nostro ripieno.

4- Prepariamo la forma della nostra torta. Per fare ciò dovremo spalmare la forma con burro, meglio se è una forma metallica. Stenderemo la pasta frolla con l'aiuto di un mattarello (avremo bisogno di circa un po' più della metà della nostra pasta frolla, dato che avremo bisogno dopo di un po' di frolla per coprire la nostra torta). La frolla stesa sulla forma dovrà avere uno spessore di circa 2 cm. Devono essere coperti anche i bordi della forma. Ora mettiamo il ripieno nella nostra forma, ma attenzione! Il ripieno dev'essere freddo! Livelleremo il tutto con attenzione e copriremo tutto con la pasta frolla avanzata. Per chiudere i bordi poi ci aiuteremo con una forchetta, per creare il bordo tipico di questa torta. Alla fine punzecchieremo la superficie della torta con la forchetta affinchè durante la cottura la frolla superiore non si rompa.

5- Mettiamo la nostra torta in un forno preriscaldato a 180ºC  durante 55 minuti circa. Lasceremo che si raffreddi in una gratella per dolci e...tutti a tavola! E' pronto!

Questa torta si conserva per un sacco di tempo, può restare perfettamente due settimane in frigo coperta con pellicola per alimenti.

Buon appetito!

The Engadin nut tart

Today we'll talk about a dessert that will bring you suddenly in the heart of Europe, surrounded by Swiss Alps. We're talking about the Engadin nut tart, called also Graubunden nusstarte in German language or torta engadina in Italian.

The Engadin nut tart is a typical swiss pie from the Engadin region, in the canton of Grisons. Engadin in the romansh language (the original language of the canton) means literally "Garden of the Inn", because of the river Inn, that cross the valley. 

Maybe you have heard of St. Moritz, one of Europe's most famous ski destination, that is the capital of the Engadin valley. This most beautiful alpine region has also the "Trenino Rosso", or the Bernina Express, a pretty little panoramical train that offers breathtaking view of the Alps...literally from above the mountains. This train has also gained the Unesco World Heritage site title, one of the very few railway track to obtain this result! We must confess to you that we discovered the Engadin nut tart during a trip on the Bernina Express! Since then, every time we go to Switzerland or hop onto the Bernina Express, we return back home with a lot of Engadin nut tarts in our backpack!

The Bernina Express, image found on Pinterest

The awe-inspiring beauty of the Engadin atracted lots of artist, for instance one of the biggest name is Giovanni Segantini, one of the most important painter of the XIX centuty (yet largely unknown to the large public). In his lifetime, he never had passport, he did never undestand what borders were, he just followed the beauty of nature. That lead him to Engadin, in Switzerland, where he find a second home in Maloggia. He was one of the bigger divisionist and symbolist european painter, he always looked for God in the beauty of nature, he was a sort of a druid trying to grab a pantheistic deity with his art. He died of pneumonia trying to paint an alpine scene en plen air above the Schafberg mountain. If you're interested in his work, one of the painter most know works is the "Trittico delle Alpi", the tryptic of the Alps, that you can see in the Segantini Museum of St. Moritz, with the largest collection of this painter.

Leaving the brushes on a side, the Engadin nut tart, or the "tuorta de noush engiadinaisa", as it is called in romansh language, is a delicios pie made of walnuts, almonds and caramel. It is an ancient recipe, based upon a tart made with a lot of butter called "fuatscha grassa".

Between the XV and the XIX century many pastry chef from Engadin migrated in other europeans country, spreading their culinary art throughout the Old Continent. Many Engadinese pastry chef emigrated from instance to Venice in Italy or Toulouse in France. In one of these migrations, the "fuatscha grassa" meet the walnuts, and it was love at first sight! The cold weather of Engadin, infact, is not fit for walnuts to grow, so the typical Engadinese nut tart is actually made with...foreigner walnuts! This sort of mix of different product coming from different alpine sides and alpine nations is a very frequent exchange that enrich the variety of the Alpine Euroregion.

It is a dessert perfect for any occasion, since it last long after its preparation. The very first Engadin nut tart as we intend today was commercialized in 1926 by Fausto Pult in Samedan, very close to the Bernina range that named the little red train of the Bernina Express railway. In 1934, Fausto Pult presented his Engadin nut tart at the Basel fair. It immediately became a success, and nowadays it is very beloved by the ski tourists visiting St. Moritz.

Ingredients: (For a 22-24 cm wide tart)

For the pie crust:

- 275 g. of flour
- 175 g. of butter (cold)
- 75 g. of sugar
- 1 egg
- a pinch of salt (1/4 tsp)

For the filling: 

-150 g. of sugar
- 4 spoonful of water
- 130 g. of walnuts
- 25 g. of sliced almonds
- 200 ml. of heavy cream
- 1 spoonful of honey

Preparation: 

1- Let's start preparing the pie crust. It can't be easier! You just have got to pull all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them all together. Please use cold butter in this phase, cut it into dices so it will melt well into the dough. If you see that the dough is somewhat sandy and not so homogeneous, just add a couple of spoonful of water to the dough, and you'll see it turn into a perfect pie crust! Knead it into a ball, cover it with plastic wrap and pop it into the fridge while you'll prepare the filling.

2- Let's deal with the filling: pour the water and the sugar into a pot on low heat until it starts boiling. Then lower the heat and we wait until it becomes golden brown, then the remove the pot from the heat. 

3- We put our minced walnuts into the pot, the sliced almonds and some heavy cream, then we put the pot back on heat. In just a matter of minutes we'll have a liquid cream. At this point we'll add the honey, we'll stir for a while and then we remove the pot from heat and we let the mix to cool completely.

4- Let's prepare the mould of our pie. Grease the mould, preferably a metallic one. Lay the pie crust above the mould with the help of a rolling pin, use half of the dough, the rest will be used to cover the filling of our pie. The pie crust will be some 2 cms thick, and the edges must be covered too. After that our filling has completely cooled down, we'll pour it into our pie crust, the surface of the batter must be nice and even and then we cover it with the remaining pie crust. To close the edges, we'll use a fork and we seal the filling, creating the trademark edge of the Engadin nut tart. At last, we'll pinch the surface of our pie so that it won't blow up during the baking.

5- We pop the mould into a preheated oven at 180ºC for some 55 minutes approximately. Let it cool onto a rack and...time to eat, my friend! 

This pie last long, you can keep it into the fridge covered with plastic wrap for up to two weeks.

Buon appetito!

L'affogato al caffè

Il gelato è un dessert che ha riscosso da sempre un grande successo, ed è ormai consumato durante tutto l'anno. Sono passati i tempi in cui si doveva aspettare la calda estate per assaggiare il rinfrescante dolce! Per questo motivo, oggi vogliamo parlarvi di una ricetta facilissima da preparare, in tre comodi passi. Si tratta in sostanza della scusa che gli italiani hanno architettato per continuare a mangiarsi un buon gelato anche a Natale: si chiama "Affogato", e già dal nome si capisce di che cosa stiamo parlando, di mescolare due delle più deliziose invenzioni culinarie della storia: il gelato ed il caffè. Attraverso questo mix di sapori, il vostro gelato si scioglierà leggermente, diventerà cremoso, in parte freddo e in parti caldo, un fantastico contrasto che vi farà tornare bambini.

E' questa una invenzione semplice, elementare, quasi ovvia. Ma come tutte le cose semplici, incredibilmente geniale. Il sapore è raffinatissimo, elegante, aromatico, se possibile il caffè liquido aumenta ancora di più il delizioso gusto del gelato. Sapete come funziona il contrasto dolce-amaro? Ebbene, il caffè amaro potenzia ancora di più la dolcezza del gelato! Chi lo ha inventato non ci è dato saperlo, però sappiamo che questo tipo di ibrido gelato-caffè riscuote sempre più consensi, e probabilmente tra qualche anno la moda si sarà espansa in tutto il mondo occidentale, come succede per le nuove leccornie che da regionali diventano in breve tempo globali.

In particolare colpisce il fatto che nell'iniziativa dedicata al gelato, il Gelato World Tour, organizzato in occasione della fiera Sigep (Salone Internazionale di Gelateria, Pasticceria e Panificazione) svoltasi a Rimini tra il 5 e il 7 settembre 2014, in associazione con l'Università del Gelato Carpigiani, sia stato eletto come miglior gelato del mondo proprio un affogato! Il gusto in questione si chiama "Mandorla Affogato", ed è stato elaborato dai fratelli John e Sam Crowl, australiani. Maggiori dettagli sugli ingredienti? Tenetevi forte! Vaniglia del Madagascar variegato con mandorle tostate e caramellate al caffè del Kenya con salsa di caramello salato...

L'affogato al caffè è fresco fresco di trionfo al mondiale del gelato!

Noi qui vi offriamo una versione un po' più facile ed accessibile, ma siamo sicuri che vi piacerà lo stesso, per lo meno noi andiamo pazzi per questa bevanda...per questo gelato...ehm...per questa meraviglia! :)
In tre semplici passi:

Ingredienti:

- Gelato dal sapore morbido, come vaniglia, stracciatella, fiordilatte o mandorla.
- Caffè espresso o caffè moka
- crema al whiskey Bayleis o equivalente
- Al posto del caffè, si può usare anche cioccolata calda o anche del masala chai thè.

Preparazione: 

- Preparate un buon caffè, una discreta quantità. Potrete usare la vostra Moka, il gusto del caffè è essenziale, deve essere buono buono, sennò l'affogato vi uscirà annacquato. Qui parliamo ad esempio di come fare un buon caffè con la Moka! Importante è non zuccherare il vostro caffè!

- Prendete un gelato, possibilmente alla vaniglia, alla mandorla, al fiordilatte o alla stracciatella. Evitare i sapori forti come la frutta o il cioccolato: è un piatto italiano, e i piatti italiani ammettono solo una primadonna, e la primadonna nell'affogato è il caffè. In alternativa, si può usare anche cioccolato liquido o persino del thè.

- Prendete una coppetta o anche solo un bicchiere, mettete prima il gelato (essenziale che vada per primo il gelato, se volete che sia davvero cremoso! Se mettete per ultimo il gelato, questo galleggerà...), poi aggungete un po' di crema al whiskey irlandese Bayleis (o qualunque altro liquore o meglio crema di liquore) ed infine il caffè appena tolto dal fuoco, versatelo nel bicchierino ed...ecco a voi! La magia! Vedrete come il caffè e il gelato si uniranno in un matrimonio di sapori creato nel paradiso del cibo! Una crema calda, un caffè bollente e un gelato freddo tutto in uno! Che potreste chiedere di più?

Speriamo che la ricetta vi sia piaciuta, buona settimana!

ToM

The Gelato Affogato al Caffè

The Gelato is an all time favourite dessert, and it's now enjoyed all year round. The old days are gone, when you had to wait until summer to have an ice cream! For this reason, we want to tell you about a super simple and easy recipe, ready in three fast steps!

It is the kind of self-indulgent excuse that  italians have developed to keep eating gelato even in the cold winter, even at Christmas! It is called "Affogato", and even if the word in italian may sounds nice and sweet, it actually means "drowned". The recipe explains it all: it is made actually drowning the gelato into a lot of coffee. Coffe and Gelato. Come on, isn't it great? Throungh this match of flavours, your ice cream will gradually melts, becoming partly cold and partly frozen, making your mouth go flippin' crazy! 

This is a very simple, almost basical, obvious invention, we know. But, as all the simplest thing in the world, it's simply genial. The taste is very refined, elegant and aromatic, if possible the coffee enrich the taste of the gelato even more! Do you remember how the contrast bitter-sweet works? Well, the bitterness of the coffee boasts the sweetness of the ice cream! We do not have any information about who may have invented it and when/where, what we know is that this kind of delicious hybrid is gaining momentum every single day. Probably, as the best culinary invention, it will become a classic throughout Western World in a matter of a few years.

The Affogato has even triumphed at the Gelato World Cup!

For instance, it's striking that in the event that took place in Rimini, Nothern Italy, from 5th to 7th of September 2014, the "World Gelato Tour" at the Sigep fair (international fair of gelateria, pastry and baking) and organized with the Università del Gelato Carpigiani, the world's best gelato prize was given to...an affogato! The full name is "Mandorla Affogato", or almond affogato, created by the Aussie bros John and Sam Crowl. More details on the ingredients? Sirs and madames, hold on to your hats! Vanilla from Madagascar, Variegato with caramelized and toasted almonds, Kenya coffee, with salted caramel sauce.
We'll breing you here a stripped down and more simple and accessible version of this delicious dessert, but we're sure you'll enjoy it almost as we do, and we do enjoy it a lot!
In three simple steps:

Ingredients:

- Ice cream (smooth tastes, like vanilla, stracciatella or so)
- coffee (good coffee, not too watery. The ideal would be an espresso or moka coffee)
- Bayleis cream whiskey or similar
- In alternative, you can use hot chocolate or masala chai tea instead of coffee.

Preparation:

- Prepare a good coffee, a discrete amount of it. You can use your Moka coffee pot, the taste of the coffee is quintessential, it must be not just good, but "buono buono!", otherwise the Affogato will result too watery. Here for instance we tell you about doing a great coffee at home with the Moka! Most important is never put sugar in your coffee, you want it to be bitter as hell!

- Take a gelato, possibly a vanilla, almond, fiordilatte or stracciatella one. Remember to avoid strong ice cream tastes: it is an italian recipe, and we know how italian dishes permit just one "primadonna", that is only one main taste. And in the Affogato, the main taste is the coffee. If you don't dig the coffee, you can surely use hot chocolate instead, or even tea, we like it with chai tea.

- Take a cup of a glass, and put the ice cream in it (remeber that the gelato goes first, otherwise the ice cream will sadly float above the coffee), then add some whiskey cream like Bayleis and then add the coffee still hot and...the magic! Yuo'll see how the ice cream and the coffee will melts in a match made in food heaven! A warm cream, a cold gelato and a hot coffee...what more can you ask for?

We hope you liked the recipe, have a nice week!

ToM

Yogurt and soft fruits sorbet recipe

Today I'm gonna bring you an idea to enjoy a refreshing and healthy dessert. A yogurt ice cream, or, to say it better, a sorbet, ideal after the meal, for a snack or you name it without losing the irresistible charm that ice creams have! And furthermore, you can prepare it in a few minutes!

Soft fruits are generally composed by blueberry, raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, redcurrants etc...
Each one of them has their own composition, but generally speaking each one of them has a huge amount of water in it (for strawberry, it's 90% of its weight!), they have no fats and we can say that not even proteins, while they have a huge amount of fibers, vitamines (mainly vitamin C), folic acid and minerals so important to our bodies as potassium, calcium, magnesium and they have few calories too!


One of their most important characteristics is that they're excellent antioxidants, and this means that they're essential to prevent cellular ageing, fighting against free radicals, helping us against illnesses like the cardio-vascular ones, cancers or digestive problems. They're excellent for hypocalorical diets, great to help us for urinary tract infections and they can regolarize our bowel movements and they prevents anemia too! What else can we ask to these little fruits that are as beautiful as tasty, with that sweet/acid taste that I adore! They're just a perfect companion for both sweet and salted!

Today we bring you a sort of "gelato" that is lighter because it has not all these calories typical of the gelato. To the soft fruits, I've added natural yogurt, to make it creamier and make it even healthier, but of course if you can't eat lactose, you can substitute it for soya yogurt for instance.

Ingredients:

2 cups of frozen soft fruits
1 natural yogurt
1 drizzle of honey (optional)

Preparation:

We put the frozen soft fruits together with the yogurt and, if you want it to be sweetier, with the honey too in the food processor, of kitchen machine like Thermomix. We mix it all at maximum speed for some seconds, and I just say "some seconds" because if you mix it too much you'll have a smoothie, that's not bad for sure too! You decide! ;)
And...there you have it! Decorate it with some little fruits and enjoy it, it's tasty and healthy too!

Nom nom!

Note: This dessert is to be prepare and eaten fastly, otherwise it'll melts. Otherwise, you can use the mix obtained to freeze it in popsicle or ice cream moulds, and they'll be super tasty and at our disposal everytime we want them!

Es un postre para hacer y servir, pero si se desea podemos utilizar la mezcla para rellenar moldes de polos o helados y congelar, quedarán riquísimos y los tendremos siempre disponibles!

 Greetings! ;)

AnGie

Spanish Easter torrijas

Today we'll bring you another recipe for Easter: the typical spanish Torrijas.
There are many different versions of the torrijas in other european countries and it's a recipe of humble descent, and we do not know exactly what its origin is. It is usually believed that it has been created in the XV century, when monks invented this recipe to sweeten their lent period using the bread. There are also documents telling us that the torrijas may have an andalusi origin, since that the moorish have a sweet dish they called zalabiyya, that was a fried bread or a bun with honey. This version of it is to be found in countries like Egypt, Syria and Algeria.

The torrijas are a recipe that is as ancient as easy. You'll agree that is really simple and super effective, please try it at home! ;)

Sugar with cinnamon

Ingredients:

- Sliced bread (preferably of the previous day)
- milk (enough milk to wet completely the bread)
- lemon zest of lemon skin (and/or orange)
-egg
- a stick of cinnamon (optional)
- sugar
- cinnamon in powder
- honey (optional)
- olive oil (to fry the bread)

Preparation:

1º- Slice your bread, you can eventually do it with sandwich bread, but it will definately taste better with european bread.

2º- in a pot we put the milk on heat, together with the lemon and the orange zest or skin, the cinnamon and let it cook developing an excellent aroma.

3º- Beat an egg and put it aside. Prepare the sugar with the cinnamon in powder and put it aside too.

4º- Put some oil on a pan on heat to fry our torrijas.

5º- Put the bread slices deep into the milk, being careful not breaking them.
Remove the liquid in excess, pass them to the beated egg and put them in the pan to fry them. Once they are fried, we take them on a paper towel and pour the sugar with the cinnamon over them. And ready!

This is the classical version of them: the fried torrijas. Beside of the sugar and the cinnamon, you can add honey, liqueur, ice cream and so on over them...you choose!

A trick I would like to share with you is to pour the milk over the sliced bread, rather than submerge it into the milk. In this way it just wets the bread better. Then put it into the fridge, just to make them a little bit stronger and be sure they won't break. If you do like this, you'll have a very moist torrijas, since the bread will defrost the milk will go out...highly recomendable!

previously frosted torrijas

into the oven

Today wil talk you about other way you can have your torrija, since sometimes we just don't want to eat too much fried food, even if they are traditional. In the same way we fry our torrijas, we can also bake them on a pan or put them in an oven, reducing in this way their calories. Hey! You have no excuses left not to try our torrijas, huh? ;)
Of course they will not be as moist as they would be fried, but in this case a drizzle of honey or a sweet liqueur like the Ronmiel Arehucas.

torrijas in the pan

               

                                    

baked torrijas

                                   

 torrijas cooked in the oven

But there are not just the milk torrijas, there are also wine torrijas, done in the same exact way but with wine instead of the milk.
The torrijas or similar sweet dishes are just so popular in the Latin America, because of the spanish immigration. In these beautiful countries they are known as "torrejas" or even "tostadas francesas". In the english speaking World, they are known ad "french toast", but they usually are baked in a pan.

Happy easter everybody!

 AnGie

Coconut and Cinnamon Bundt Cake

Today we bring you our own C&C bundt cake (with coconut and cinnamon), a sweet and different cake , ideal for breakfast and teas.

Bundt cake comes from north America, and they seems to be related with Kugelhopf of Germany. Their typical golden brown colour define them, which is made possible by a mold called, appropriately enough, bundt pan. The peculiarity of those molds is that they presents a sort of "chimney", or a central hole, that allows the heat to distribute uniformly all around the surface of the cake. Those molds generally shows exhuberant shapes.

The word "bundt" began to appear related with this kind of cakes in year 1901 in a book called "The Settlement Cookbook" by Lizzie Cander. Then the firm Nordic Ware started to produce the molds that still nowadays are just so fashon. The very thick alluminium molds are based upon those, made of iron or ceramic, used in parts of Europe (overall in Hungary, Germany and Scandinavia) to bake similar cakes.
During the Fifties and the Sixties, these molds gained a lot of popularity, and we can find Nordic Ware molds even in design museums. The molds by Nordic Ware have even a National day in the US! It's the 15th of November...there you have, that day I want everyone baking his own bundt cake!

And now let us go with our recipe for this delicious bundt cake with coconut and cinnamon...call it how you like it best, bund, cake, bizcocho, ciambella, torta...the most important thing is that you try it!

Ingredients: 

• 200 g. of sugar
• 175 grams of butter at room temperature
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 spoonful of cinnamon powder ( 1/2 tsp)
• 350 g. wheat flour
• 1 pinch of salt
• 50 g. of dried coconut
• 250 ml. coconut milk
• 2 y 1/2 spoonful of yeast ( Royal)
• 1 y 1/2baking soda

To obtain the syrup:
-We will use the remaing parts of coconut milk, that is some 150 ml.
- 35 g. approximately of sugar.

Preparation:

1º- Start shaking the sugar with the butter for some minute, until the mix is well integrated and start looking somewhat white.

2º- Add eggs one by one, taking care that the previous egg is well incorporated before adding another one.

3º- In another bowl, add all the dry ingredients, that is the cinnamon, the flour, the salt, the baking soda and the yeast. Sift everything together and add to this ingredients dry coconut.

4º- Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, that is the eggs, the sugar and the butter. We will do it thrice, so that we can incorporate a third part of the dry ingredients and a third part of coconut milk, alternating and beating until we finish all the ingredients.
 
5º- Put some butter around the interior surface of our molding pan and add the mix. Bundt cake are typically rather dense, so do not worry, it will not result dry at all! Once we introduce the mix into the molding pan, flat the surface with a spatula and give the pan little hits against the table in order not to create air bubbles.

Before entering the oven

6º- We put our bundt cake in the oven that's been previously preheated at 180°C with no fan. Put the mold in the lower part of our oven, always above a grill and never above a tray, to let the air circulate in the central hole.

7º- Let it bake for about 40 minutes. When this time is over, insert a cooking needle into the cake to be sure that your sweet threat is ready. If we see that it is baking too much, we can add above an alluminium foil so that the cake will not burn.

8º- Whilst the bundt is in the oven, we can prepare our syrup to wet the cake. Put the coconut milk in a pot heating up along with the sugar, and when the latter melts, turn off the fire and put it aside. In this way we can use the rest of the coconut milk. This is an optional step.

8º-Take the mold out of the oven and let it cool above a rack for some 10 minutes.

cooling on a rack

9º- Use your cooking needle, a fork or a knife to open little holes the upper part of our bundt. Then pour delicately the syrup above our cake.

pouring the syrup above the cake

10º- In general terms, bundt cake are to remove from their mould some 10 minutes after they went out of the oven, but in this case, I would advice you to let the cake cooling for a little bit more, or until it is almost completely cold. This is because, being the cake wet, it can be particularly delicate to remove from the mold.

11º- Decorate it with dry coconut and...bite it right now! Yummy!

This bundt can still be super moist even after days. To preserve it better you can enroll it with a plastic wrap or put it into an airtight box, or you can even frost it...but you will see that you'll have no time to put it into the fridge!

Our Bowl felt in love at first sight with the curves of Bundt Cake of Nordic Ware!

Serve it with a jolly good tea and...have a nice time with your C&C bundt cake!

AnGie