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.