Quince jam!

You can make fruit jam basically from any fruit-with exception of those that have too much water (like melons, for example). All the others are excellent material for jam, either solo or in combination with other fruits.
Just yesterday, my mother in law brought me about 1 kilogram of fresh golden-jellow quinces.
For two jars of delicious fresh quince jam, besides already mentioned 1 kg of quinces, you will need:
1 kg sugar
1/2 liter water
brandy-if you wish
Put water and sugar on stove to boil. Sugar must melt completely.
Meanwhile, peel quinces and clean of seeds. Cut in smaller pieces and put in boiling water. Cook for about 10-15 minutes-that should be enough for quinces to soften. Mix quinces with hand blender to, add brandy and food conservative (it is not necessary for such a small amount) and cook for another minute or two.
Put jam in clean and dry jars. And that's it!

CHOCOLATE CAKE-ONE OF MANY VERSIONS OUT THERE!

We all love them. As soon as you hear there is chocolate in cake, you know that it just can't be bad! Every cake with chocolate is bound to be tasty and delicious.
this one is not only sweet, but also easy and fast to prepare-improtatnt positive traits in my kitchen :)
So, here it is. For the biscuit you are going to need next ingredients:
3 cups yogurt
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups flour
10 dkg cocoa
1 baking powder
-little bit of oil for greasing the baking pan
Mix all the ingredients together and bake on 180 degrees Celsius for about half an hour.Your biscuit is baked when it starts to separate from edges of the pan. Cover hot biscuit with chocolate glaze:

125 g butter
1 dcl milk
10 dkg sugar
20 dkg dark chocolate
Melt all the ingredients on the low heat.When they combine well together, just evenly spread over the biscuit.Leave in the fridge to cool. Enjoy!

Fast, easy and delicious fruit+yogurt cake!

My kids don't love fresh fruit very much, so I have to trick them in various creative ways to get them to eat recommended fresh fruit daily intake :) Creative ideas include fruit smoothies-that I call fruit yogurt, making home ice-cream with fresh fruit, etc. This cake is one of their favourite treats that gets me to goal the easiest and fastest way.
Ingrediets:
800 grams petit beure biscuits
1 l yogurt
300 grams sugar
500 grams fresh fruit-best combo with yogurt are bananas, fresh raspberries, blackberries, strawberries...
1/2 l sweet cream
Mix yogurt and sugar. Take biscuit, dip it in yogurt and place on the bottom of large square pan (50x30 cm, approximately). Cover bottom of pan with dipped biscuits and then put a layer of fruits (cut bananas in smaller slices, and berries don't need to be cut). Repeat the procedure, finishing with biscuits. Put in the fridge to allow biscuits to soak in yogurt well. After that, cover cake with whipped sweet cream.

Sandocan Baklava-Baklava with poppy seed

This Baklava is somewhat different than the usual one, made with grounded walnuts. This one is made with grounded poppy seed,  and several other ingredients that might seem off and as an unlikely mixture. However, once you try it, you will love it!
Ingredients:
1 package of phyllo dough
5 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup yogurt
250 grams grounded poppy seed
1 baking powder
And additionally: 1/2 cup milk and 3 spuns vegetable oil-mix together
For syrup: 1/2 l water and 1/2 kg sugar
Mix eggs and sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved and eggs doubled in volume, add oil, yogurt, grounded poppy seed and baking powder.

Lightly grease large cake pan (I use 60 x 43 cm), put 1 layer of phyllo, lightly grease with mixture of milk+oil, put second layer of dough and then drizzle with poppy mixture. Then put another layer of phyllo, lightly oil with milk+oil, then second phyllo and poppy seed mixture on it. Repeat this until you use poppy seed mixture. You should finish with 2 sole layers of phyllo, just oiled with mixture of milk+oil.
You shold then cut cake into triangles before you put it in the oven heated on 180 degrees Celsius.
Bake it to get golden crust, and then soak with hot syrup.

Pancakes!

Pancakes are one of my favourite sweet treats. Big part why is it so lays definitely in the fact that you can prepare them in no time.
Pancakes I prepapre are, obviously, European, so not quite like American pancakes :) But I really love them this way. You can eat them with ice-cream, marmelade, nutella cream, honey, etc. Also, if you prefer salty variations, it is not a problem: just put mayonnaise and some ham, and voila!
Here is my basic recipe for pancakes:
1 egg
1 cup of milk
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups flour
Butter or oil for frying
Mix the above named ingredients until smooth, and then add as much water as you need to get liquid mixture. This way pancakes will be thin and delicate, as they will be easily poured over the buttered skillet and cover its entire surface. Before you begin frying pancakes, make sure to heat the skillet well-it should be hot. Add just a few drops of butter on the surface of skillet, to enable easy turning of pancake, and then pour one measure of pancake mixture to skillet, fry until you notice that edges are lifting. Then turn the panacake over, and fry from the other side. Then put pancake on the plate, butter the skiller and repeat the procedure until you use entire mixture.

What is amount of mixture for one pancake? It really depends on the size of skillet you are using, and how thin you want them to be. This recipe, as I have said, is for European pancakes, i.e. crepes, and they are supposed to be quite thin. You will get the idea from this picture. Enjoy! 

Fast and easy-semolina+pudding cake

This will be excellent recipe for anyone who likes sweet treat but doesn't like too much work in the kitchen :)
You will need:
1 package of petit beure biscuits (500 grams at least)
2 l milk
200 g semolina
4 eggs
180 g sugar
2 bags vanilla pudding powder
500 ml sweet cream
1 cup of milk for soaking the biscuits
Take a large baking pan and put first layer of biscuits. Every individual biscuit first soak in milk-it is done to assure softness of the cake.
I CREAM:
Cook 0,9 l milk until boiling. Meanwhile mix approximately 8-9 spoons of semolina with 1 dcl milk and 90 g sugar (you can add more sugar if you like sweeter cream).Remove from the heat and right away add 4 stiff egg whites, thoroughly mix together with cream, and put over the biscuits.
Then add another layer of soaked biscuits, and cover with II cream.
II CREAM:
Put 0,8 l milk to boil. Meanwhile mix 4 egg yolks with 90 g sugar and 2 bags of pudding powder, and add to boling milk. Mix until it gets thick. Then remove from heat and instantly put over biscuits. Let it cool completely, and then cover with whipped cream. Enjoy!

Ice cubes-simple and delicious cake

Now, here is the one that melts in your mouth-and is is incredibly easy to make, that you might decide to make it every day once you try it out! It doesn't require much time, and there is basically NO WAY to mess it up.
You will need next ingredients:
For the biscuit:
5 eggs-separate yolks from egg-whites
7 table spoons of sugar
5 table spoons of oil
5 table spoons of water
10 table spoons of flour
5 table spoons of cocoa powder
1 baking powder
Mix separately egg whites and yolks. Add sugar to yolks, and then one by one sugar, then oil, then water. Mix well-with mixer, and then add flour+baking powder and mix slowly by hand. After that, add egg whites and also mix well with hand. Then put mixture in the baking pan and bake it approximately 25-30 minutes on 180 degrees Celsius. Take out of the oven and put the syrup over it.

For the syrup:
0,3 l water
30 dkg sugar
Cook until sugar is completely dissolved. Pour over biscuit after it has cooled down.

For the cream:
1 l milk
10 table spoons flour
10-15 table spoons sugar (taste and determine yourself how sweet you want the cream to be)
1 vanilla sugar
25 dkg margarine
Mix flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and part of the milk (approximately 3 dcl) to get smooth mixture. The rest of the milk bring to boil, and add previous mixture of flour and sugar. Mix on the fire until it gets thick. Then remove from the fire and cool down. Mix margarine and add it to the cream. After mixin in margarine, the cream is finished and you can put it over the cake.
After creaming the biscuit, cover it with chocolate glaze:
10 dkg dark chocolate
1 table spoon oil
1 table spoon sugar
Melt over low temperature and then cover the cream. Bon appetit!

Schneenockerln

This is German dessert, which is very easy and fast to make.
If you want to make fast and easy dessert, and don't have idea what to do, this is great choice!
To make this sweet treat, you will need:
1 l milk
15 dkg sugar
6 eggs-separate yolks from egg-whites
2 vanilla sugar
Mix egg whites to get firm stiff peaks. Meanwhile, heat milk with 2 vanilla sugars. When the milk boils, lower the temperature, and take with the spoon pieces of stiff egg white peaks, and gently put it in the boling milk.
Let the mixture boil for few minutes, and then remove it from the heat. Carefully take out of the milk all the pieces of the egg-white and put it aside in large bowl. They should be cooked, forming firm ball-like shapes, that will not mix together even while laying in that bowl.

While the egg-white peaks will cool in the bowl, you will mix yolks with sugar until the sugar completely dissolves. At the same time, you will put the cooked milk back on the heat, leting it boil slowly. When the milk stars boiling, and the yolks are mixed well, you will add the yolk mixture in the milk and slowly stir until it starts to get thicker. When this happen-it will probably take no more the 5-10 minutes on the middle temperature-you will slowly put back egg-white pieces of peak into the milk.
Let it cool for few hours before serving. Bon appetite!

Pirate's cake

If I would have to choose what I like to prepare most, it would definitely be desserts. I am big fan of sweet, my family is too (especially my boys), and since I enjoy in preparing the cakes, biscuits, crepes, there is always something sweet in my kitchen.
For this post, I have decided to add a new recipe, something I have ran onto (thx to coolinarika.com) while deciding what am I going to prepare for these holidays. I wanted to try something new, nice, and yet something that is not too complicated to prepare, i.e. doesn't require too much time in kitchen. Of course, this blog is supposed to show how much I love to cook-and I do-but with two small kids, there are lot of limitations in spreading your wings too much, if you know what I mean :)
Anyway, here is the recipe :)
For the biscuit (bottom layer of cake), you will need:
4 eggs
6 spoons sugar
6 spoons flour
1 vanilla sugar
2 spoons cocoa
1 spoon oil
1/2 package of backing powder
Mix ingredients together, adding one at a time, making sure that you add flour and baking powder last-previously mixing those two together. Put mixture in baking pan and bake at 180 Celsuius for about 20 minutes. You will now that it is properly baked when you stick it with tooth pick and it comes out dry. Warm biscuit pour over with orange juice.
Meanwhile, prepare the cream:
Bring to boiling 0,7 litre milk, and add mixture of 6-8 spoons of flour+ 6-8 spoons sugar. When the cream is of good thickness, remove from heat and let it cool. When it is just warm, add previously mixed butter (250 grams). Mix well 0,2 litre of whipped cream, and add it to warm cream.
Prepare mixture for soaking of ladyfingers: cook coffee, add small cup of cherry liquer, amd few spoons of milk.

Now, layering :) On a biscuit you will put 1/2 of the prepared cream. Over it, you put one layer of soaked ladyfingers, then cream again. You will finish with rich layer of scrubed chocolate. Bon appetit!

Bread in the oven

Right now, I am baking bread. It is primarily for the 3 members of my family, excluding my older son.
Although I have been buying bread up until recently, I have managed to find some time to make this one work-baking my own bread regularly.
And be sure to give yourself time, if you want to get into this adventure :) It is worth every minute and hour-and it will take you up to 2-3 hours in total!-although not all these hours will not be actively connected with making it.
So, for bread large enough for 3 persons that will last for 2-3 days (and I must underline here that it will be great all these days as long as you take care to keep it wraped carefully all this time, to prevent air from drying it!), you will need:
700 grams of flour
40 grams of fresh yeast (fresh one is the best, although you can use dry one as well. Here where I live, dry one is packed in individual packages weighing 7 grams, and for this bread you will need 1 package of dry yeast)
1 cup of warm milk
1 tea spoon of sugar
1 table spoon of salt
Warm water
Crumble yeast in the milk and add sugar. Let it work up-you will know that yeast has "come to life" when you notice foam on the top of the milk. Add it to flour, add salt, and slowly add warm water in order to get tender dough-you don't want it to be too thick, nor too soft. The best way to recognize when is "just the right" is to test it with fingers-when it doesn't immediately sticks to fingers, it is of the proper density.
Then leave it in warm place to rise. Once it has doubled its size, knead it well and let it rise once agan. When it has doubled size again, you will knead it and put it in the baking pan, and let it rise in the warm place again before puting it in the oven previously heated to 180 degrees Celsius. It will need aproximately 1 hour before it is baked. If you feel that crust is over-baked for you, lower the temperature, but in general, if you want it baked properly, it is better if it's in the oven for entire hour, even if you decide to put down the temperature.
Once the hour has passed, get the bread out of the pan, and wrap it up in tea cloth. Let it rest for at least one hour, before serving it.
I must add that at this point I am experimenting with flours. Of course, you can use white flour 100%, but I am mixing it 50-50 with rye flour-currently. I am considering making the mixture of 30-30-40 of white flour, rye and buckwheat. Buckwheat is the one I solely use when I am preparing bread for my older son-and in that situation I also don't use yeast or milk, because those two don't agree with his diet. Instead of yeast I use baking soda powder, which helps this bread to rise-to some extent  :)

Bread fresh out of the oven :)

 Addition: I am and will use metric measures in my recipes because I am most comfortable with them.
But here is the link for converting them to other measures :)
http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/grams-to-pounds.htm

About me and cooking

I love experiments in all areas of life.
I guess that is one of primary reasons why I just love to cook.
I will not just cook good old plain stuff, I have cooked thousand of times-I like to try new recipes, no matter how will they turn out in the end. And quite a few times new recipe didn't deserve second try :P
While surfing online I have noticed that although there are lot of recipes online, there is still a lot of space for some more :) being it traditional recipes, from one side, or adding some new element to good old tradition and making it into something brand new!
I also must mention that my cooking has another dimension-cooking while trying to follow "gluten free-casein free diet". It is not easy, but it is important for my older child, so I do try to find a way to satisfy his needs as well.
Hope that this blog will give me opportunity to share something interesting with people reading and blogging themselves, and also to learn someting new myself from comments to my posts :)