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 :)