Fluffy

In my last posting I shared the vanilla icecream recipe. As you might have noticed, it requires many egg yolks. But what about the leftover egg whites? I thought I'd make some fluffy meringues to accompany my vanilla icecram and make some yummy sweet sandwiches!

Meringues are really easy to make, however a bit time consuming as they need to stay in the oven for 1-2 hours until dry in the middle. 
In this recipe you will need a magical Greek ingredient: Chios mastiha .It's a resin coming out of a tree that grows only in one place in the whole world: the island of Chios!And what's more, only in a specific area on the island!It has a unique taste, that suits the meringeues perfectly! In the case that you can't find mastiha resin in the super market, you can make them using a drop of mastiha ectract, any other exctract you want, or, simply nothing, as this recipe suggests.

 Chios Mastiha Meringues

 Ingredients:

100g caster sugar
100g icing sugar
100g egg whites
optional: 1 piece of mastiha resin (I put it in my multi bender with a bit of the caster sugar until it turned into dust)

 First, I preheated my oven in 100C and lined a baking tin with baking paper.

PROCESS: 
I beat 100 g caster sugar with 100 g of egg whites and the mastiha on the low speed of my electric mixer  (this is really important! Don't get impatient!) for 20' until there were stiff peaks.

Then, I stopped the mixer, and folded 100 g of icing sugar with a spoon really carefully to prevent the meringue from getting unfluffy.

BAKING: 
I spooned the mixture in my piping bag and formed little meringues on my  baking paper. I put them close to one another as they don't change in shape during baking.

I baked them for 1 1/2 hours, until they were dry in the middle. 

I let them dry and saved them in a tin box.

TIPS

tip1: you can add a drop of your favourite extract: vanilla or mastic.
tip2: you can reduce the icing sugar and add some cocoa instead
tip3: if you don't have a piping bag, just spoon them on the baking paper!
tip4: To make sure they're baked I always taste one before I take them out of the oven. If they're not dry, I leave them a while longer and check again. Never fails!
tip5: In the case that you resist eating them at once, you can keep them in a tin box for months! Tried and tested!

Now, how about some ideas on how to eat them?

Eat them alone!

Ctush them and springle them over your icecream.

Make pavlova for one or more in a bowl with some cream and strawberries.

Sandwich whipped cream or icecream between two meringues.

Enjoy!

As far as me, now that I've mastered the art of baking meringues, my next project will be baking macarons!

I scream 'ICECREAM'

I'm sure that everyone likes icecream.How about you? I love it! It's the perfect dessert on a hot day, and we have many of those in Greece! However, due to the fact that it's usually made of artificial ingredients instead of natural ones, I don't usually buy it , hence I don't enjoy it as much as I would like to.
I've been meaning to make some since last summer, but the recipe required an icecream maker, which I didn't have. So, this summer I decided to give it a go the traditional way, using a mixer.I made my fav flavour, vanilla. Not only was the easiest thing to make, but it was the most delicious ice cream I had ever tasted! My parents told me that it's exactly the same icecream that people used to eat before the massive production.My father even recognized the taste!

In this photo you can see an icecream vendor in the 50's . See the quantity of the icecream offered? The quantity of eggs and cream explains it! I found the photo in the Greek magazine 'Γλυκιές Ιστορίες' from which I sourced the recipe as well.

 

I only had a small spoonful each time and the strange thing was, that because it was made of natural ingredients just a tablespoon was enough to make me feel content and not ask for more!
The ingredients are the simplest you could think of, suffice that you have a kitchen thermometer and a mixer:


Whisk 100 gr of caster sugar with 5 eggs yolks .
In a pot put 250 gr of cream, 250 gr of milk and the seeds of 1 vanilla pod. 
Add the egg mixture and heat. 
Stir carefully until the mixture reaches 84 C., then take away from the heat. 
Pour the mixture over a strainer into a bowl.
Let it cool and then freeze.
Mix it with the mixer every 40', 3-4 times just to avoid having crystals in the icecream.

Enjoy!

What's your fav flavour?

Do you make it or buy it?

Sweet Temptation

It's official then. 

I'm not the person to stick to a diet of any kind. 

I yield into temptation in no time.

 Here's my last one. Brownies. 

End of story. End of no-sweets-for-a-month diet.

I'm not proud about it, but at least they taste and smell divine!

(recipe similar to this one)

Pumpkin Cake with olive oil

Last weekend I made a pumpkin cake and small ones for my friend's girls. It's a moist, rich in flavour cake, quite versitile with  the option to add dried fruit, such as raisins, or any nuts you like, such as walnuts. I love the fact that instead of butter, it's made entirely of olive oil! 

I drizzled a simple lemon frosting and lemon zest on top, which truly make a difference....and here it is!

Simone has asked for the recipe, so, here it is :

250g pumpkin, grated
1 1/2 cups of sugar
3 cups of self raising flour
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of soda
1tsp lemon zest
1tbsp cinammon

1 cup of olive oil
2 eggs

Mix all the dry ingredients.
Beat the eggs in another bowl, then add the olive oil.
Pour the liquid mixture into the dry one, mixing with a spoon. The end product should be dry, something like a soft dough.
Pour in a tin (no need to butter it) and bake at 180 C, for an hour, until baked inside.

Pour over the icing, made with icing sugar and lemon juice.

GOOD LUCK!

Galatopita (milk pie)

To continue my olive oil themed cooking/baking, I have another classic recipe for you: galatopita (translation: gala=milk, pita=pie : pie with milk).

 Great for a snack or  breakfast. It's the same case as tyropitakia: mums make it all the time to have something to give to the kids. It's very common all over Greece and goes way back in time, when households were poor and had only basic ingredients at their disposal, milk being the basic as every household in the country used to have goats or sheep. 

I didn't use to eat it, not until  my good friend Sophia gave me a piece to try, as well as her recipe eventually! Ever since, I make it often enough and this one, I'm taking it to school tomorrow as a treat for my colleagues.

As usual, just a few ingredients and a simple method that goes like this:

GALATOPITA 

1 lit milk
1 cup of caster sugar
1 cup of semolina flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
olive oil
cinammon

Preheat the oven at 180-200 C.
Put the milk, sugar and salt in a pan. Stir with a wooden spatula scraping the bottom of the pan to avoid the milk from sticking.
When steams start to come out (way before it starts boiling) add the semolina flour and keep on stirring with a whisk to avoid any lumps.

 When it comes to a boil and has a thick consistency, take out of the heat and leave  to cool. Then, stir in the eggs.

Brush a tin with olive oil (mine is appr. 22x35 cm ). 
Pour the mixture in, drizzle some olive oil and springle some cinammon all over.
Bake for 50-60', until it has a golden brown crust and bottom like this:

Serve cold.

tip 1: You can serve it with honey for a most healthy breakfast!
tip 2 :You can add a bit of orange zest or vanilla extract for flavour 
tip 3: Youc can dust some icing sugar for more sweetness and some extra cinammon.

Old meets new

For Christmas I always make  a special corner in my living room. A sweet spot, that is, where I display all the Christmas sweets I make orI'm given as presents during the holidays.

 It's an utter indulgment not to say a disaster for my diet, as I eat the leftovers the next days! Fortunately for my sweettooth self this year there were many leftovers!

 The sweets list consisted of many traditional and more modern sweets. Let's begin with the Greek traditional Christmas sweets, most made by my mum:

baklavas rolls

melomakarona

kourambiedes

baklavas rolls

melomakarona

Moving on with the new- not traditional sweets in the sense that my grandma didn't use to make them, in fact they were totally unknown to her-

chocolates

a variety of cookies and biscuits

I'm afraid until my stock ends, I'll be 100 kilos!

How about you? What's your favourite Christmas sweet that you crave for every year?

As I've already seen in the  blogs I follow, there is no end to creativity and style in baking !

Wishing everyone 

a WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!

KAΛΗ ΧΡΟΝΙΑ!