Babushka's cake

Cut two apples in slices.

Ingredients:

1 cup of flour
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
lemon juice

lay out the apples in a cake form.
combine ingredients and poor in form.
Bake 30-40 minutes at 360F.

Streuselkuchen

One of my absolute childhood favorites: the home-baked Streuselkuchen. It consists essentially of three layers: A bread-like "carrier" layer, whose sole purpose is to carry as much of the Streusel "substrate" as possible. The Streusel is held to the carrier layer by a layer of abricot jam.

Base:
450g flour
2dl milk
yeast
1 soup spoon sugar
salt
100g butter (soft)
Abricot jam

Streusel:
200g ground hazelnuts
150g butter
250g flour
2 soup spoon sugar

combine milk (warm), yeast and sugar, add flour, salt, butter, combine into dough, let rise 1-2 hours, flatten onto baking sheet. Cover with abricot jam.

Combine the Streusel ingredients and produce the Streusel by pressing together little chunks.

Chocolate cake

Again a recipe from my sister (well, actually one of her cookbooks).

125g butter
6 egg yolks
150g sugar
125g dark chocolate
6 egg whites
250g ground almonds
50g flour
1 teaspoon baking soda

beat egg whites until a foamy mass forms. Mix everything in the indicated order and put in form. Bake 45-55 min at 180ºC (400F).

Chocolate icing

120g dark chocolate
3 teaspoons water
30g butter
2-3 teaspoons sugar

combine chocolate and water and let melt in a waterbath. Add butter and let melt. Add sugar and immediately cover the cake using the back of a spoon.

Kotletki

For this dish, we use the Russian name, although in reality these are just (European-style) hamburgers. The difference to American hamburgers is that in addition to meat, there are eggs, bread crumbs, and, if desired (and the children definitely don't desire) finely chopped onions.

1 package of ground chicken (preferably, for me; of course any other meat can be used)

a little salt

2 eggs

bread crumbs

1 finely (hey, or not so finely, as I prefer; or omit, if cooking for children) chopped onion

mix everything together, and add as much bread crumbs to give it a dough like texture. Make little patties using a soup spoon. The patties should be pretty thick (about 2.5cm (1") and about twice that in diameter).

Pour bread crumbs on a pile in the center of a plate and roll the patties in it. This will make a nice crust.

Fry in hot olive oil for about 6 minutes on each side, turning often.

Not unexpectedly, children like it with a lot of ketchup... great sides are rice and broccoli.

Butterzopf

Another recipe provided by my sister... the famous Butterzopf. A cornerstone of the Sunday morning breakfast, this specialty bread is as tasty as it looks. Recently I had the opportunity to go through the recipe. So here it is.

Butterzopf dough:

4 cups (1kg) flour

3 dl milk

60g butter

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

fresh yeast 20g (actually I used 1/2 teaspoon of dry yeast)

1 egg

combine into dough

let rise

make two dough 'sausages' to create the zopf. The actual "zopfing" process is quite difficult to explain. A video of the process is available here .

Paint the Zopf with egg yolk. OK, that was a bit too much. (A confectionary brush would help!)

Put in the cold oven 220C (425F) 30-40 min

The result: quite appealing. Very rustic looking, certainly not the most beautiful Zopf ever, but extremely tasty!

Children's favorites

What are favorite children's foods?

I have found that the following are favorites:

1) Pasta

2) Corn on the cob

3) Melted cheese sandwich

4) (surprise!) Artichokes (fun to eat!)

More puff pastry recipes

Speaking of puff pastry sheets - this has inspired my sister to send a couple of recipes, one of which I have been cooking for a long time, but the other was new to me. The message is that with puff pastry, you can also make magnificent piroshki-like items, filled with things such as broccoli or feta cheese. Personally, I have cooked the variety with mushrooms since the dawn of time.

Broccoli-piroshki

cook broccolis, crush with a fork, mix with ricotta cheese, and eggs.

take the puff pastry sheets and make holes with a fork. Then pile the mixture on one half of the sheet and cover with the other half. Bake for 20-30 minutes at 200C (400F).

The filling can also be made with mushrooms (grill onions, then add mushrooms, add ricotta), or with feta cheese (ca 200g feta cheese, 2 eggs, mix well).

Unfortunately, these items have so far proven unpopular with the children!