Quark dessert

In Estonian

From this amount you will get 8 ramekins of quark desserts.

Quark dessert
3 pcs M size eggs
50 g sugar
100 g melted Alma Eesti butter
0,5 tsp salt
100 g frozen blueberries
100 g semolina
2 packs Alma bilberry quark cream 300 g

Whip eggs with sugar, add quark cream and melted butter.
Add salt, semolina and mix into even batter.
Prepare ramekins. For this spread vegetable oil to ramekin edges and bottom. Cover edges and bottom with semolina. This is needed for getting quark dessert out of ramekins after baking.
Put dough into tins, put blueberry in the top of tins and bake in 200 C degrees about 30-35 minutes.

Prepare the kisell (jelly) if the desserts are in oven.
For jelly you need:
350 g blueberries
150 g sugar
700 g water
3 tsp potato starch + 50 g water for starch dissolving

Put sugar, bilberries and water into pot. Let the mix boil for 5 minutes and add potato starch dissolved in water. You need to mix the kisell  all the time to avoid the clamps. 
Heat until boiling, but do not let the kisell boil.
Let the desserts and kisell completely cool down before serving.

Recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Christmas dessert

In Estonian

From this amount you will get 5 portions of dessert.

Ingredients:
20 g ground roasted hazelnuts
90 g wheat flour
25 g powdered sugar
1 tsp gingerbread spices
a little salt
half egg white
50 g Alma Eesti butter
1 can mandarin sectors in light syrup (drained weight ca 175 g)
600 g Alma Muah! cream yoghurt mandarine with cinnamon biscuits 380 g
seeds of half pomegranate

Mix dry ingredients and spices together. Add cold butter in cubes and make it into even crumb with dry ingredients. At the end add egg white and knead into dough. If dough is ready then put it to the food film and keep it in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

Take dough out of the refrigerator and roll it into  sheet with thickness 0,5 cm and into small squares. Put biscuits to the baking plate covered with the baking paper. Bake at 180 C about 15 minutes until biscuits are nice and light brown. Let the biscuits cool down and crush these into biscuit crumb.

Divide half of biscuit crumb between  five dessert bowls. Add half of yogurt, half of mandarins and half of pomegranate seeds. Cover with leftover yogurt, biscuit crumbs, mandarins and pomegranate seeds. 

Keep the desserts in refrigerator for 30 minutes before serving.

Recipe has made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Mandarin yogurt cake with Christmas spice mix

In Estonian

Cake with Christmas spice mix  and mandarin yogurt

The cake has extra thin layers and a lot of cream between these layers.

This cake tastes like Christmas dream 😊

Dough for cake layers:

50 g of dark syrup

25 g of sugar

1 egg

70 g Alma Eesti võid

0.25 tsp of baking soda

200 g wheat flour

2 tbsp Christmas spice mix (containing ginger, clove, cinnamon, cardamom)

a little salt

Cream between cake layers:

50 g of sugar

2  pcs Alma Muah! cream yoghurt mandarin with cinnamon bisquits 380 g

1 pcs Valio Viola fresh cheese vanilla 200g

For decoration:

4 mandarins

thyme sprigs

1 tbsp honey

Stir the syrup, sugar and egg. Heat the mixture on the water bath and stir until the sugar has melted.

Add butter and let it melt. 

Add baking soda, stir and leave the mixture to cool.

Add salt, flour and spice mix and knead into the batter. 

Divide batter into seven equal parts. Draw a 20 cm diameter ring to the baking sheet (use the bottom of the 20 cm diameter cake tin). Roll the dough in the baking sheet evenly (watch the circle drawn on paper). Cut the dough that goes over the edges of the drawn circle, and  bake these separately. Crush the baked leftovers and you will get the crumb with what you can decorate the cake.

Bake the cake layers at 200°C for about 4 minutes until the layers are light brown.

Cover a 20 cm diameter cake tin bottom and sides with baking sheet.

Whip the fresh cheese with sugar using hand mixer and add yogurt. Whip more until you get a even cream.

Place one baked cake layer on the bottom of the cake tin (if it does not fit well, then you can cut the edges a little). Spread the cream evenly on the cake layer and place over cream next cake layer. Continue until all layers are in the cake tin. Spread to the top of cake cream and cooked-crushed cake leftovers.

Leave the cake to the refrigerator overnight so that all layers are well absorbed.

Remove the cake tin. To decorate the cake, heat honey a little until the honey is liquid, add mandarins (cleaned and divided to sectors) and watch that  mandarins will be beautifully covered with honey. Place mandarins to cake and add fresh thyme sprigs.

Recipe has made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Azzor al horno (Oven baked rice)

In Estonian 

This usual homemade dish in Spain, Alicante province. In translation it means oven baked rice. There is a lot of different recipes for this dish and you could use almost all ingredients, what you have in your refrigerator. 

For making this dish it is most suitable to use short grain Spain rice: Bomba. But unfortunately it was not possible to find it in our shops, so I used Arborio rice (rice for risotto).

Arroz al horno is flavorful  dish, what super easy to prepare and also the preparing time 
is reasonable. You can make it in one hour and the result is really tasty and suits well to cold winter evening.

Ingredients:

800 g pork belly piece (sliced about 1 cm thick slices)
olive oil for frying
100 g smoked ham (sliced about 1x1 cm size pieces)
150 g black pudding (sliced about 1x1 cm size pieces)
1 onion (cleaned and finely chopped)
2 red bell pepper (deseeded and roughly chopped)
1 big tomato (deseeded and roughly chopped)
10 garlic gloves (cleaned and roughly chopped)
2 tsp smoked paprika powder
small piece of dried cayenne´i pepper (add so much how spicy food you like)
400 g can white beans in salt water (drained)
8 thyme sprigs
1 l chicken stock
300 g Arborio rice

Use this pan, what you can also put to oven. Heat oven to 200 C.
Heat the olive oil in pan and fry the pork belly slices on each side until you get nice brown color. Transfer the slices to bowl and set a side.

Fry the smoked ham and black pudding until these are crispy. Add onion and paprika to pan and fry these until soft. This will take some minutes. Add tomato and cook until soft.
Add garlic gloves, smoked paprika powder, cayenne´i pepper, white beans and thyme sprigs. Mix and heat mix a little.

Add stock and fried pork belly slices. Heat the mix until boiling and boil for few minutes.  
Sprinkle the rice over the pork belly slices and push all ingredients down so they will be covered with chicken stock. Again heat the mix until boiling and boil for few minutes.

Put the pan to oven and keep in oven for 20 minutes Take the pan out and check if the rice is enough soft. If it seems that it is not, then keep the dish in the oven for 5 minutes more. 
The dish is ready when all stock has been evaporated and rice and/or other ingredients is not sticky. 

Serve immediately!

Cookies with white chocolate, cranberries and apricots

In Estonian

Cookies  already with Christmas mood. These cookies are so rich in taste and crispy from outside and soft from inside 😉 

170 g butter (in room temperature)
120 g dark Muscovado sugar
80 g sugar
1 egg
250 g wheat flour
2 tsp corn starch
0,5 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
135 g white chocolate (chopped to pieces)
60 g dried cranberries
45 g dried apricots (chopped to pieces)

Foam the butter with hand mixer and add sugars. Foam more until you get the pale foam and add egg. Foam more until you get strong foam.

Mix flour, salt, baking powder and corn starch in another bowl. Add the flour mix to the butter-egg foam and mix again. Add chocolate, cranberries and apricots to the cookie dough and mix  with hand.
Form dough into a ball, cover it with food film and put it to the refrigerator for 2 hours.
After 2 hours take dough out from the refrigerator and let it warm in room temperature until it soft enough, so that it is possible to form it with hands.

Weight dough pieces with weight 25 grams and form these into a balls.
Put balls to baking plate covered with baking paper and press balls flat using hands.
Bake the cookies at 175 C for 8-10 minutes until the cookies edges will become slightly brown.
Cool cookies completely before serving. The cookies are most delicious with ice cold milk.

Coctail from kefir with roasted rye flakes

In Estonian

Nice cocktail from kefir, which is suitable for breakfast and also for dessert.

150 g  frozen blueberries
35 g roasted rye flakes
2 bottle Valio Gefilus bilberry kefir 300 g
3-4 pcs crushed ice cubes
2 tsp honey

Roast rye flakes in dry and hot pan, until these are a little brown. Let the roasted rye flakes to cool down completely before using.
Put all ingredients into blender and blend into even mix.
Pour into glasses and enjoy

Recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Arancini - risotto balls

In Estonian

Italian cuisine is my favorite. In this time I tried to make Arancini balls/risotto balls. Amazing crispy crunch and a little spicy tomato sauce gives to risotto totally new dimension.

First you have to make risotto and let it cool down completely, so it would be possible to form balls from risotto. Balls are covered with flour, egg, breadcrumbs and fried in hot vegetable oil so the balls will get nice and gold brown crunch. For making sauce you need approximately 1 hour, then all the flavors will be strongly expressed and excessive liquid is evaporated

For making risotto you need:
60 g butter
1 onion (chopped into small pieces)
2 garlic cloves (chopped into small pieces)
220 g Arborio rice
125 ml white wine
500 ml hot chicken stock
50 g grated Valio Forte Speciale cheese
30 g parsley (chopped into small pieces)
100 g brown champignons (chopped into small pieces)
100 g cold smoked ham (chopped into small pieces)

Fry onion and garlic in butter, add rice and fry until the rice will become glassy. Add white wine and let it totally evaporate. Add 1/4 part of hot stock and braise risotto in low heat. Add stock in parts, after the previous stock part has almost evaporated. Stir occasionally and also after every time you add stock. Risotto is cooked, when it is almost soft (al dente). Finally add grated cheese to risotto. At the time of preparing the risotto fry ham and mushrooms. Add to risotto fried ham, fried mushrooms and chopped parsley. Let the risotto cool down completely.

For Arancini balls you need:
80 g Alma cheese from whole milk
100 g wheat flour
2 eggs slightly beaten
150 g breadcrumbs
vegetable oil

Cut from cheese 1x1 cm size cubes and roll cooled risotto into golf sized balls around a cube of cheese. Dip risotto balls in flour, egg and breadcrumb. Fry in vegetable oil at 180 C until golden brown.

For sauce you need:
olive oil
6 garlic gloves (chopped into small pieces)
ca 0,5 chili pod (add according your taste- how spicy food you like)
2 cans ( a 400 g) crushed tomatoes
4 tbsp sugar
0,5 tsp salt

Fry garlic and chili slightly in oil and add canned tomatoes. Braise at low heat approximately 1 hour and season with sugar and salt.
Serve hot Arancini balls with sauce. For decoration add grated cheese and chopped parsley.

Pot Stickers in chinese style

In Estonian

This is recipe for nice Pot Stickers. It will take more time for make these, but result is definitely worth it.
For filling I used pork minced meat, iceberg lettuce, ginger, soy sauce, garlic, rice vinegar and roasted sesame seed oil. This combination gives a nice and a little spicy taste. Altogether with thin and crispy pastry and dip sauce it makes a good and tasty bite.

Dough ingredients:
285 g wheat flour
150 ml hot boiling water
1 tsp salt

Mix flour with salt and add boiling water. Knead it into even dough. It takes about 5 minutes. Wrap ready dough into food film and let it stay (rest) for 20 minutes.
Filling ingredients:
250 g pork minced meat
150 g iceberg lettuce (cut into thin strips)
1 tbsp of sesame seed oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 cm piece of ginger (shredded)
4 garlic gloves (crushed)

Mix all filling ingredients.

Making of Pot Stickers
Roll dough thin as possible. I used pasta machine for this and made the dough as thin as possible. Cut from the rolled dough rings with diameter 6-7 cm. I used glass with sharp edges  for cutting.
Put in the middle of the ring ca 0,5 tsp of filling. Make the edges of rings wet with finger and fold the ring into half moon shape. Fold the edges of Pot Sticker so that you will get nice and small folds in the edges (like making skirt folds). Put Pot Sticker to the plate so that the  folded edges will be in the upper side, if needed arrange the Pot Sticker shape more even..

For frying Pot Stickers you need to heat vegetable oil in the pan and fry Pot stickers on high heat from one side for about 2 minutes or until these are nice and golden brown. Add a little hot boiling water to the pan and cover pan with lid. Lower the heat and let the Pot Stickers boil under the lid for about 3-4 minutes. Remove the lid and let the water evaporate completely.

Serve right away with dip sauce.

Dip sauce ingredients:
4 tbsp of soy sauce 
2 tbsp rice vinegar
0,5 chili pod
1 garlic glove
1 tsp vegetable oil
Mix all dips sauce ingredients.

Marshmallow cake with Alma quark cream

In Estonian 

Cake:
3 M size egg yolks
70 g sugar
120 g  Alma Eesti butter
90 g wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little salt

Mix flour, salt and baking powder. Whisk egg yolks with sugar until you get a strong foam and mix foam with melted butter. Mix together egg-butter mix with dry ingredients. Cover cake tin (diameter 20 cm) bottom with baking paper. Add dough to the cake tin.
Bake at 200 C about 20 minutes. Take cake out from oven and let it cool completely.

For immersing and covering the cake bottom:
50 ml Alma milk
100 g passion fruit preparation (you could use also raspberry preparation)

Cream
600 g  Alma raspberry-passion fruit quark cream
1 tsp gelatin
2 tbsp water

Dissolve gelatin in water and heat until the gelatin has completely melted. Let the gelatin mix cool a little. Add mix to the quark cream (quark cream should be in room temperature).

Cover cake tin (diameter 20 cm and with removable sides) bottom and sides with baking paper. 
Take cake bottom and put it to the cake tin. Immerse cake bottom with milk and spread passion fruit preparation over the cake bottom. Spread cream over the cake and put cake to refrigerator.
Keep the cake in refrigerator overnight.

Next day make the marshmallow.
For that you need:
3 pcs M size egg whites
225 g sugar
ca 1 tsp of citric acid
0,75 dl water

Heat the water and sugar mix until 118 C. At the same time whip the egg whites until you get strong foam. Add boiling syrup to egg whites and same time whipping the marshmallow mix. Add citric acid in parts and make so sour marshmallow as you like.
Whip marshmallow mix until it has almost cooled down.
Add marshmallow to the piping bag and decorate the cake. If you have small gas burner for food  then you can burn the marshmallow and give it a little brown  color.

Recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS

Minced meat roll in crunchy puff pastry

This tasty minced meat dish, which is looking more festive than usual minced meat roll.
Well seasoned filling and crunchy puff pastry over the filling.
It is easy to prepare and worth for trying.

Minced meat sausage roll ingredients:
1 kg fatty pork minced meat
100 g bread crumbs (dry)
ca 1 tsp salt
100 g smoked ham with strong taste (cut into small pieces and fried)
1 tsp crushed black pepper
1 bunch chopped leaf parsley
3 tsp dried garlic granules

For puff pastry crunch:
3 egg yolks
300 g ready puff pastry
black and white sesame seeds

Mix all the minced meat roll ingredients and let it season for about 3 hours.
Form it into the sausage roll. Roll out the puff pastry and spread egg yolks over it. Place sausage roll into puff pastry and cover it with puff pastry, so the joints of the pastry will be under the sausage roll.

Cut the nice grid  to the top of the puff pastry and grease it with egg wash. Sprinkle with sesame seeds to make it looks nice.
Bake it 20 minutes at 210 C. Lower the oven temperature to 180 C and bake the roll more for 
minutes.

As a side dish you can make oven baked potatoes with garlic, hot red cabbage-chili salad and sour cream-horseradish-peppermint cold sauce.


Bon appetite!

Apple and marzipan flower bead

In Estonian

This bread is very easy.
Light yeast dough, apples, farine sugar and marzipan. The bread is not sweet and marzipan-apple filling has strong flavorful taste. 
It is easy to prepare this bread, it is tasty and looks very festive.

Ingredients:
25 g yeast
250 ml milk
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cardamom
ca 500 g wheat flour
100 ml vegetable oil
1 bigger apple
1 tbsp farine sugar
120 g marzipan
100 g butter

Mix yeast with sugar and add milk (in room temperature), salt and cardamom.
Add flour, oil and knead into dough. Dough should be soft. Let it raise for 1- 1,5 hour or until the dough is double size. 

Clean and chop the apple to 1x1 cm pieces. Mix apple pieces with farine sugar and let it stay until the dough is raising.

Roll the raised dough until the thickness about 1 cm and cut from dough rings with diameter 6-7 cm (you can use glass for cutting). Put into middle of each ring 1 apple piece and piece of marzipan. Lift the one edge from the ring to another edge and press the edges tightly for closing. Connect the corners. The ready piece should look like Chinese fortune cookie.
Put ready pieces (even edges next to the cake tin edge) to the cake tin (diameter ca 20 cm) starting from exterior edge. 
Fill the ring and start with new one until you fill all the tin. Add small butter pieces between the bread pieces. Let the ready bread raise for 30 minutes and bake in oven for 30 minutes at 200 C
Between baking take the bread out of oven and spread melted butter over the bread, this way you will get nice gold brown  crust to the bread. Make same when bread is baked and you take it out from the oven.
Let the bread cool down after baking and cover with powdered sugar.

Mousse cakes with pumpkin and white chocolate

In Estonian


Nice and spicy pumpkin cakes suits well  to pumpkin season. 😊
From this amounts you will get 4 small cakes ( for preparation I used silicon tins, what is same size like ramekins tins) .

Ingredients:
300 g cleaned and copped pumpkin
1/3 tsp ground ginger
1/3 tsp ground cardamom
1/3 tsp ground cinnamon
vegetable oilMix all spices together. Put pumpkin, vegetable oil and spices to the baking tin and mix together. Roast in oven at 200 C about 30 minutes. Cool down and crush with hand blender into puree.

100 g white chocolate
150 g+50 g of whipping cream
1 tsp gelatin + 2 tbsp water for dissolving
a little salt
8 thin gingerbread biscuits

Put 100 g of white chocolate to 50 g  whipping cream and heat in low heat until chocolate is completely melted. Add to chocolate-cream gelatin mixed with water and heat until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Add pumpkin puree and a little salt. Let the mix cool until room temperature.
At the same time whip the leftover cream (150 g) and add it to the pumpkin-white chocolate mix. 
Fill the silicon tins with cream and press 2 thin gingerbread biscuits into cream. I used Marmiton gingerbread biscuits with orange pieces.

Let the cakes set in refrigerator. If you wish to cover the cakes with velvet cover (I used velvet cocoa butter spray), then you need freeze cakes before covering with velvet cover.

But the cakes tastes deliciously also without velvet cover. Take cakes out of refrigerator after setting and remove the tins (gingerbread biscuits will be in the bottom) and decorate according to your wishes.

Blue mussels in creamy white wine sauce

In Estonian

Very tasty dish, that suits very well to rainy evening. Seafood is always delicious.

Ingredients:
1 kg blue mussels
2 shallots
25 g celeriac
3 big garlic gloves
1 tsp chili flakes
15 g butter
vegetable oil
100 ml of white wine
200 ml of whipping cream
200 g processed cheese
salt, pepper, sugar
fresh dill

Clean and chop shallots, garlic and celeriac into small even pieces. Cook shallots, celeriac, garlic and chili flakes with butter and vegetable oil until shallots has become a little bit softer. Add white wine and let it boil until the alcohol has evaporated. Add whipping cream and let it boil some minutes.

Add processed cheese and boil in low heat until the cheese has melted. Spice with salt, pepper and sugar if needed. Add fresh chopped dill.

Finally add washed blue mussels and cook these in sauce ca 7 minutes. Cover pot with lid. All the mussels, what has not opened throw away and do not eat these.
Serve mussels with sauce and chopped dill.
Eat mussels with fresh sour dough bread, what has crispy crust and soft inside.

Eclairs with Alma Greek quark cream

In Estonian

From this amount you will get ca 16 eclairs

Eclairs:

85 g Alma Eesti butter

180 g water

0,5 tsp salt

110 g wheat flour

3 pcs. M size eggs

Put water, butter and salt to the pan and heat until boiling.

Take the pan from the heat and add flour. Mix dough until you get an even dough ball.

Put pan back to the heat for 3 minutes and mix the dough all time.

Let the dough cool a little and mix eggs one by one to the dough by hand blender.

Put ready dough to the piping bag and pipe to the baking tray (covered with the baking paper) about 7 cm long sticks.

Bake eclairs at 200 C for 20 minutes. Open the oven door for a second and let the moisture come out from the oven. Then reduce the oven temperature to 180 C and bake more ca 20 minutes. Eclairs should be light brown.

Let the eclairs cool down completely before filling with cream.

Cream

100 ml Alma whipping cream

350 g  Alma Greek quark cream lemon-biscuit

100 g  Valio Viola lactose free fresh cheese

35 g sugar

Whip cream with sugar and then add quark cream and cream cheese. Put cream to piping bag.

Cut eclairs in half and fill with cream.

Lemon glaze

200 g powdered sugar

4 tbsp lemon juice (more if needed, because glaze should be so liquid that it is possible to cover with it the eclairs)

yellow food colour

Sieve the powdered sugar into bowl and add lemon juice and colour. Mix glaze and put glaze to the piping bag. Decorate eclairs with glaze.

Keep eclairs in refrigerator overnight before serving.

Recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS.

Pea soup with Moroccan spices

In Estonian

Pea soup, what is 😊almost usual. I added Moroccan spice mix to soup, what gives a little spicy and sweet taste nuance to Estonian pea soup.
There is coriander, fennel seeds, cumin, ginger, cinnamon, saffron and black pepper in Moroccan spice mix. 

Moroccan spice mix:
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin
0,5 tsp fennel seeds
0,5 tsp ground ginger
0,5 tsp ground cinnamon
0,5 tsp black pepper
a little saffron

Crush all ingredients in mortar. Put the mix into jar. For soup you need  3 tsp. The rest you can use in next cooking session.

Pea soup:
100 g barley corn
225 g whole, yellow, dried peas
ca 1 kg smoked pork ribs
ca 1,3 l water
2 big carrots
1 big onion
fresh chopped dill

Wash peas and barley corns. Soak these ca 1 hour in cold water.
I prepared the soup in Crock-pot (slow cooker), but it could be made easily also in oven pot.

Add to the pot pork ribs, peas, barley corns, water and boil these in low in low temperature ca 5 hours. In oven at 120 C and in Crock-pot in "low heat".

Grate the carrots, chop the onions and fry these until these are softer. Add 3 tsp Moroccan spice mix and heat with carrot-onion mix until the flavors will start to release from the spices.
When peas and barley corns are soft and meat will come easily away from the bones, then add carrot-onion mix. Spice soup with salt and sugar if needed. Add chopped dill and the soup is ready for serving.
It is highly recommended to serve soup with home baked barley flour bread 😊

Small cakes from Skyr

From this amount you will get 7 small cakes.

Ingredients for cake base:

85 g oat meal bisquits

30 g Alma Eesti butter

Filling ingredients:

1 egg

50 g sugar

300 g Alma  Alma skyr mango-passion fruit

30 g  Alma Eesti butter

a little salt

For decoration:

half of peach

3 spl passionfruit preparation with seeds

1 fig

2 tsp sugar

For making cake bottom  crush the biscuits and mix with melted butter.
Put mix to the paper muffin tins, what are placed to the muffin tin made from metal.
Press the biscuit base tightly to the bottom of muffin tins.
For preparation of filling mix egg, sugar, skyr, melted butter and salt. Divide mix between muffin tins. 
Bake cakes at 160 C about 20 minutes. Let the cakes cool down in oven until these are completely cooled. Put cooled cakes to the  freezer and keep these in freezer overnight.
In the next day remove the  muffin tins from paper and decorate the cakes with glazed fruits.
For making glazed fruits for decoration you need to heat the passion fruit preparation and add sugar to it. Add also chopped peaches and fig. Heat a little, but be careful, the fruits should not to be too soft. The fruits should be covered completely with the passion fruit sauce.

The recipe is made in cooperation with Valio Eesti AS