So, this is the last day of the challenge.. I’ve been baking and blogging continuously (except for one rest day) for 11 days and even if I’m terribly exhausted, I’m so glad I made this challenge. After cutting cookies for hours yesterday, I decided to make something easy but delicious today: Apple Strudel. First, I was going to use the book my aunt brought me from Austria, but then I decided to use a recipe from mom’s recipe notebook she prepared years ago. I didn’t make my own Strudel dough, and bought some fresh phyllo dough from a phyllo shop (yes, there is such thing in Turkey).

Since it’s freezing outside, I opted for custard instead of ice cream with my Strudel. Now, if you allow me, I will eat some Strudel while catching up with my TV shows.. And after that, I don’t want to see any sort of sweet food around me for a while, which I think is a good New Year’s resolution for my belly. And that ends the 11-day New Year Dessert Challenge..

Happy New Year!

Apple Strudel

serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 large sheets (about 25 cm- 10 in. long) phyllo dough
• 1 apple, grated (Don’t use a very sweet and soft apple. I used Granny Smith)
• 50 gr (1.75 oz.) butter, melted
• 1-2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, grated
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• a pinch of salt

for serving:

• confectioners’ sugar (for dusting)
• custard (creme anglaise), recipe from here

Directions:

Mix the apples, lemon juice, sugar and spices in a bowl.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).

Lay the first sheet of dough on a flat surface and brush with butter. Put the second sheet on the first sheet and brush with butter again. Repeat this process until all the sheets are layered and brushed with butter. Sprinkle the dough with the apple mix and roll the dough into a log.

Bake the dough for 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Dust the Strudel with confectioners’ sugar and depending on the season, serve with either ice cream or custard sauce.

What happened to NYDC Day#9? To be honest, I wrapped presents all night, and since one day is only 24 hours, I couldn’t make anything else. I know, I broke the laws of the challenge. But since it is my challenge, I can make my own laws and I decided to rest one day, just as in running.

But today was the big day, gingerbread cookie day. As you may remember, I bake Gingerbread Cookies for New Year’s Eve every year. This time, I used the previous recipe, because it was so good. I was also planning to finally make a gingerbread house. But I failed epically. Reasons:

• I used a sugar and milk based icing instead of royal icing, which requires egg whites. I normally avoid using that royal icing because of uncooked egg whites. But the icing I use takes a long time to harden. So I couldn’t assemble the house. It collapsed!
• The butter I used in the icing was not in room temperature, so I couldn’t cream it properly (and I was also too lazy to think about that). So, the icing was so bad and had butter lumps inside it!! It didn’t really matter for the gingerbread men, since I didn’t use much icing on them, but for the house, it didn’t work..

I’m so tired right now, baking everyday is definitely not for me. I come home from work not early, so I have little time for workout and playing piano. On top of that, baking was really exhausting. I lack sleep, I have back aches. So tomorrow is the last day of the challenge. Good or bad? I won’t comment on that!

Also, I realized that this is my third gingerbread cookie post. A quick flashback:

2009:

2010:

Remember the pate a choux I’ve frozen last Saturday? Well, I used it today! My first intention was to make Napoleons using this quick puff pastry recipe that I have been wanting to try for a while. But, since there is not a habit of labeling the flours in our house, I accidentally used a low gluten, whole-wheat flour, and the puff pastry didn’t puff. And I had already prepared pastry cream to make Napoleons. So, I used my frozen pate a choux and made cream puffs!

And to make things more interesting, I topped the puffs with orange chocolate and sprinkled peppermint candy! The recipe was a success, seriously everybody loved these puffs! And because of that, I suggest you to always freeze half of every dough you prepare, just in case..

Chocolate Peppermint Cream Puffs

makes 40 cream puffs

For pate a choux:

- Use the recipe here. Omit sugar pearls.

Ingredients:

For pastry cream:

• 500 ml milk
• 2 eggs
• 150 gr sugar (5.3 oz.)
• 75 gr (2.65 oz.) cornstarch

For topping:

• 80 gr dark chocolate with orange, melted
• 3-4 peppermint candies, crushed
• 1-2 tablespoons milk, hot

Directions:

Heat the milk. In a separate bowl, mix all the other ingredients. When the milk is boiled, pour 3 tablespoons of it to the egg mixture and whisk quickly, so you don’t get cooked egg clumps in your cream! Then, pour this egg mixture to boiled milk and stir for one minute and take the cream off heat.

When the pastry cream and choux puffs are completely cooled, cut the puffs into half and fill them with pastry cream.

Mix the melted chocolate and milk. Pour this over the choux puffs. Sprinkle with crushed peppermint candies.

Oh, and don’t forget the Insatgram photos:

A couple of years ago, I had a chance to taste the best butter cookies in a hotel lobby. They were thin like leaves, and so crispy, buttery and spicy. After that, I tried to replicate those cookies, but I never really managed. This is by far the closest taste I could get.

I used mulberry molasses for extra spiciness, and that’s why my cookies were a bit chewy (but crispy too), but I’m sure if you omit molasses, your cookies will be very crispy. If you cannot find mulberry molasses, you can just use regular molasses.

Spice Butter Cookies with Mulberry Molasses

adapted from Martha

makes 60 thin cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cubed
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup mulberry molasses (see the note above)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• a pinch of salt

Directions:

Mix together butter, flour, sugar, and spices until fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks and mix in the molasses. Add this mixture to the dough and knead until it gets even.

Form a ball (or 3-4 balls, in order to take them out one by one, and not to let them warm up), and let it cool in the refrigerator for two hours. At this point, you can freeze the dough and use it later.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

When the dough balls are cooled, take them out one by one and roll out to 0.25 cm (1/8 inch). If you trust yourself, go thinner! Cut the dough with desired cutters. Bake them in the oven for 13 minutes, or until the edges start to brown. Cool them on a rack and let them completely cool before eating.

And some Instagram photos to end this post:

Today, I decided to relax and make something easy, after waiting in front of the oven anxiously for pate a choux to rise all day on Saturday. So, I made cinnamon roll pancakes that I saw on Pinterest, although I made up my own cinnamon filling recipe. Tomorrow, there will a more exciting post, I promise!

Cinnamon Roll Banana Pancakes

Banana Pancakes:

- Use this recipe, or any other pancake recipe you want

Cinnamon Filling:

- Use the technique in this recipe. You can use that filling too, or do what I did: mix 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 2 teaspoons honey and 1 teaspoon olive oil

Yesterday, I didn’t create any recipe, but combined two recipes and came up with something I wanted to make for ages: Lemon Choux Puffs!! Do you know my favorite dessert as a child? Chocolate profiteroles of course! That’s why I always love food made with pate a choux. And I decided so many recipes. This is yet another recipe from one of the blogs I like to follow. But instead of filling the puffs with pastry cream, I tried something different and made lemon curd instead. I came by this recipe in Claire Robinson’s show (I love that she uses only five ingredients in her recipes!). But the pate a choux recipe yields 40 puffs, and my lemon curd wasn’t enough for all of them. So, I refrigerated half of my pate a choux to use later. However, I now think that I may have increased the lemon curd amount by adding some whipped cream. You can try it that way. Next time, I’ll try it that way.

Ginger Choux Puffs with Lemon Curd

yields 20-40 puffs

For pate a choux:

- Use the recipe here. Omit sugar pearls. Add two teaspoons grated fresh ginger to the dough.

For lemon curd:

- Use the lemon curd recipe here. If you want to increase the amount and lighten up the curd, just mix the curd with 2-3 cups whipped cream.

For dusting:

-confectioners’s sugar

Directions:

When the puffs and the lemon curd is cooled, cut the puffs into half and fill them with lemon curd. Sprinkle the tops with confectioners’ sugar.

Challenge time!! Starting from today, I will be baking everyday until December 30th. Throughout this challenge, I’ll use my old recipes as well as some new ones. So, let’s get started. First day: the best chocolate-chip cookies!! (Standard recipe: here, healthier version: here)

As for chocolate-chips, I crushed a variety of chocolate bars, including this, this and a gianduja bar from Venchi. I wish I put some white chocolate too, but the taste was nevertheless amazing. The cookies were soft, moist and full of chocolate!

I served these in a round tin covered with parchment paper. So easy, let looks so elegant!

By the way, who needs a DSLR when there is Instagram, the lazy person’s best friend!

I’ve been meaning to write  this post for a while, but as always, I was busy with other things going on in my life. I made this recipe back in summer for guests, and they were very pleased. Little they knew is that crumble is so easy to make, and also healthier than any other possible dessert choice (Remember, I live in Turkey, country of baklava, so we could have served them those too!). I took this recipe from one of my favorite books, Cooking Light Way to Cook. What I love about this book is that recipes are easy and quick to make. I love reading complicated recipes, but when it comes to cooking, I can sometimes become the world’s laziest person. So this book is great for me. I changed the recipe and replaced sugar with honey, as usual. Honey brings more flavor to this recipe, therefore it is really not necessary to use sugar, when there is a healthier alternative to it. So, go ahead and make crumble today! Possibilities are really endless with this recipe. For this season, apple & cinnamon, pumpkin & raisins, or quince & walnut can be just a few flavor combinations to use in your crumble! Enjoy!

Peach & Berry Crumble

adapted from Cooking Light Way to Cook

Ingredients:

For filling:

• 7 cups chopped fruit (I used half peach and half berries) (Remember that if you use berries, they will release some liquid)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoons honey (depending on the sweetness of your fruits)

For topping:

• 1/2 cup oats
• 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/4 cup nuts, chopped (I used almonds)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil or coconut oil
• 1 egg yolk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F).

Mix the filling ingredients in a bowl. Lay them into a shallow baking pan.

Pulse the oats in a food processor. Add the other topping ingredients and process them until everything is well blended. Squeeze the topping in your hands and spread this evenly over the fruit mix.

Bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve with vanilla icecream.

About a month ago, Kitchen Impromptu turned 2! Over the course of these years, I managed to publish 61 posts (62, with this post) even though nobody read my blog. At first, it didn’t really matter to me, because I was just writing for pleasure. But during my busy times, I was not really motivated to write. I know I decided to focus on my blog so many times before, but this time, it will be different. Promise.

To celebrate KI’s second birthday, I made chocolate covered leblebi and raisins. Chocolate covered leblebi (or literally, chocolate-covered chickpeas) may seem an awkward idea, but it is indeed not! All I did was to dip some raisins and leblebi in melted chocolate and let them rest and harden in the refrigerator. Then we ate..

And, as you may have noticed, I am too lazy to take DSLR photos, and use my beloved Hipstamatic instead.

Sorry for the late post. So, what is “Buddink”? It is my favorite indulgence for the past couple of months, and it is basically pudding, but not just your average one.Yes, the “Buddink”. That’s what my grandma pronounces “pudding”. The story is as follows:

So, two months ago, I made her this pudding. Then, she wanted to inform my grandpa about it:

Grandma: Hey, Ulya has just made us some “buddink”!

Grandpa: What?

Gm: Buddink, buddink!

Gp: What?

Me: It’s pudding, grandpa

Gp: Hahahahahaha!

But, I have to inform you beforehand that this is not your average chocolate pudding. This pudding has no sugar, it has mulberry molasses instead, which gives the pudding a unique flavor. And mulberry molasses is good for you. Better than white sugar, at least.

Mulberry molasses, along with grape molasses and carob molasses, is a traditional sweetener widely used in Turkey. The term molasses is actually not true for this sweetener. It’s not the molasses used in the US, Europe, or many other countries. Turkish molasses (or “pekmez”) is made by boiling the fruit. So in this post, whenever I say molasses, it means “our” kind of molasses.

Inspite of being a tahini-molasses lover (I especially like the tahini-molasses combination, and I used to consume enormous amounts of this combination on a slice of bread), I don’t like to use molasses in baked goods. In order to “healthify” my cakes, I attempted many times to use molasses instead of sugar, but it left my cakes with an unpleasant bitter taste.

So when my mum and her friend came up with the idea of “mollasses pudding” to make my sister gain weight (she was trying to gain weight by then), I immediately thought of this bitter taste and regarded it as a bas idea. How wrong I was!!!!

So ladies and gentlemen, this is the original recipe for the “Buddink”, as mum’s friend came up with. It may have too many calories inside, but it’s free of processed sugar and very nutritious, and also one of my favorite quick breakfast foods.

Actually, it was yesterday’s breakfast.

Because of my sister, we always have some “Buddink” in the refrigerator. So, it’s really easy to grab a bowl of buddink before leaving the house.

The “Buddink”

Ingredients:

• 1 lt milk
• 1 cup mulberry molasses
• 40 gr (1.4 oz) whole-wheat flour
• 30 gr (1 oz) rice flour
• 30 gr (1 oz) cocoa powder
• 1 egg yolk
• optional: 1-2 tablespoons butter

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients except butter. Stir until no lumps of flour and egg can be seen.

Cook in medium heat while stirring.

After the pudding is boiled, cook for 3 more minutes and remove from heat.

Add butter, and stir.

Pour the pudding into bowls and keep them in the refrigerator.

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/phbc-day4-the-buddink-with-mulberry-molasses-pekmez/feed/ 0 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/phbc-day-3-oatmea/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/phbc-day-3-oatmea/#comments Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:21:58 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=1032

Although I’m not an oatmeal-for-breakfast person, I try to eat oatmeal regularly, because it’s healthy for you. It’s high in fiber and complex carbohydrates. Besides, it’s low in fat, so you can add in as much healthy fats as you want (in my case, mostly peanut butter). But, as I said, I’m not a fan. I find it somehow disturbing to eat because of its slimy texture when cooked. So to make the oatmeal more interesting and healthier, I do the following..

First of all, I don’t cook my oatmeal. Instead, I use a popular technique: overnight oats. I mix 1/4 cup oats with 1/4 cup milk. then I add 1/2 teaspoon spice of my choice, 1 tablespoon flax seed and some stevia or honey for sweetening. I put this mixture in the freezer and let the oats soften in milk over the night. When I wake up, I add a blob of nut butter, a blob of jam and 2 tablespoons of granola.

Last week, I made myself an oatmeal bowl with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and peanut butter.

And today, I had my oatmeal with 1 teaspoon cocoa powder, 1/2 teaspoon instant coffee, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, a blob of coconut butter and a blob of my beloved rose jam:

PHBC Day 2! Today was the granola day. I simply mixed 3 tablespoons of granola with some milk and called it breakfast.

Oh, and don’t forget the half peach I found in the refrigerator. It was super sweet!

Granola is sooooo easy to make, and has many uses. You can use it to enhance your oatmeal, eat it during the day as a snack, o simply consume with milk like I did this morning. And like veggie burger, it has a base recipe and you can make your own versions. So don’t be lazy about granola, just make it!

Granola

Ingredients:

• 3 cups oatmeal
• 3/4 cup desired nuts (hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios, etc.), chopped roughly
• 1/3 cup liquid sweetener (I prefer honey)
• 1/4 cup oil (preferably extra-virgin olive oil or coconut oil)
• optional: 1 tablespoon flax seed
• optional: 2 tablespoons coconut flakes
• optional: 1 tablespoon cocoa nibs
• optional: 1/4 cup dried fruit (raisins, dates, etc.), chopped

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees C (300 degrees F).

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the sweetener and oil, and mix well.

Put the mixture onto a pan with parchment paper.

Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

You can store granola in a jar for up to 1 month (or maybe more).

EDIT: Check this out! It looks amazing, I’m definitely going to try this!

Did you know that when I was a child, I didn’t like to have breakfast? I used to only drink a glass of milk in mornings, and then crave for the entire day. Then when I was a freshman in university, I used to eat fatty pastries every morning with a big cup of sugared tea. Yuck!

But now, I’m older and I know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and not only it keeps you full for hours, it is also helps you maintain your healthy weight. I can easily say that when I don’t have breakfast, I tend to binge on any food I can find that day.

So, breakfast is good for us and we have to have it everyday. But it’s not easy huh? For some people, having a breakfast early is not tempting. My sister, for example, cannot have breakfast very early. That is of course not true for me. But I have another problem. Since I like to sleep, and am therefore usually rushing for work in the mornings, I definitely don’t have time to have a decent breakfast. Fortunately, these two breakfast preventive situations have one single solution: “pre-made breakfast”.If you don’t like to have breakfast early, just prepare it in the morning. Or, if you are like me and don’t have time to eat, just prepare it and eat on the way or when you arrive at work. But preparing takes a lot of time too, what if we don’t have time for that? Well, you can make some of the work the night before, and just assemble or cook in the morning. That easy!

Today, I’m starting a weekly challenge: “Pre-made Healthy Breakfast Challenge”, or simply PHBC. For one week, I’m going to have a different healthy breakfast every day, and post it here with recipes. And believe me, they are all too quick to prepare since I’m a lazy person.

And I’ll probably take the photos using Instagram or Hipstamatic. I just don’t have time for taking DSLR photos in the morning!

So, we start with pancakes…

Did you see Katie’s vegan red velvet pancakes? Oh, they are so good! So yesterday, I decided to have them for my next breakfast, and prepared the batter before I sleep. I changed the recipe a little bit, made the batter, put it in a container, put that in the freezer and slept.

When I woke up, I took out the batter, and saw that it was thickened too much. So I added a little bit of milk and cooked the pancakes. Then I spread some rose jam (killer!!!) and my homemade peanut butter on top. I put my pancakes in a container and eat them on my way to work.

Also, I managed to grab the leftovers of my sister’s lactose-free milk:

Day one completed!

Overnight Chocolate Pancakes with Peanut Butter & Rose Jam

adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie

makes 2 pancakes

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon oatmeal
• 1 tablespoon flax seed
• 1/2 tablespoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 teaspoon stevia (or 1 tablespoons honey or any other liquid sweetener)
• optional: 2 teaspoons chocolate nibs

For topping:

• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon jam (I used rose jam but blackberry jam works the best)

Directions

Mix all the ingredients, and store them in the refrigerator overnight.

On the morning, if the batter is too dry, add 1-2 tablespoons milk. Then, cook both sides in a lightly oiled pan for 2-3 minutes.

Spread peanut butter and jam on top.

Put them in a container and take to work!

I haven’t been around here for quite a long time.. I wasn’t that busy to write anything, though. I just couldn’t decide about the blog’s future. As I wrote before, I was thinking about opening a Turkish food blog with an emphasis on healthy eating, but couldn’t find a proper name for the blog (or couldn’t find any empty domains for candidate names). Then, after waiting endlessly for an idea to pop into my mind in bathroom or before I sleep (where creative ideas usually come to me) I decided to stop trying to be always creative and perfect, and just open the Turkish blog under kitchenimpromptu domain. So, for Turkish readers, my new blog is tr.kitchenimpromptu.com, until I find a better name.

Other than my new blog, a lot of things and a lot of cooking happened in the last couple of weeks. My cousin got engaged, and most of the food served was homemade by us! My contributions were: hummus, spinach strawberry salad, sweet and salty avocado dressing from Choosing Raw (killer!), strawberry lemonade soda adapted from here (also killer!), chocolate barks, homemade bounties, chocolate covered peanut butter and chocolate covered fudge babies. And a cute cheese plate!

Closeup on table:

Hummus (recipe will come- I promise!):

Spinach strawberry salad was so easy to make; I blended some chopped spinach with chopped strawberries and walnuts, and sprinkled with grated parmesan cheese. For balsamic vinaigrette, I blended 3 parts of olive oil with one 1 part balsamic vinegar, and drizzled over the salad. DELICIOUS:

Sweet and salty avocado dressing:

Strawberry lemonade soda raised some different comments. Some said it was good, and some said I should have used less mineral water. But I do agree that it cannot be called “lemonade”, as in Martha’s recipe, because it was more like a soda with an emphasis on strawberries. I liked the taste, though I’m planning to make a honey sweetened version. And I think the others liked it as well, because there wasn’t any left at the end of the day!:

Wait, there’s more!

Like my cute little cheese plate:

And the dessert table (Notice the baklavas?):

Chocolate barks were a big hit! And they were so easy to make. First, I melted some milk chocolate. Then I spread it onto a tray with parchment paper. After that, I topped the chocolate with chopped hazelnuts, raisins and orange zest. Orange zest is the key to great smelling chocolate barks! Then I chilled the chocolate for 5 minutes in the freezer. Finally, I put a second layer of melted chocolate and chilled for 10 minutes. When the chocolate is completely solidified, I broke them into pieces, and voila! I also made another variation with dark chocolate, pistachios and raisins.

Homemade bounties (recipe coming soon!), chocolate covered peanut butter and chocolate covered fudge babies:

Oh, we ate so much that day. So much that I wasn’t that hungry even the day after!

I also experimented with a lot of recipes. For example, I made Smitten Kitchen’s Light Brioche Burger Buns with some changes. I used honey instead of sugar, reduced the amount of butter and used whole-wheat flour; and I was very pleased! I even made kidney bean burgers with them, but the burgers looked more like bean paste (I should have used an egg and more flour to bind the burgers). And when I decided to make some burger buns for my cousin’s engagement and doubled the recipe, it didn’t work! I must have missed something, but I’ll definitely try again.

I also made Gena’s macaroons, and they were fantastic, but somehow since I used my oven instead of a dehydrator like Gena does, their shapes were not good enough to put in an engagement menu. But I’ll work on that too, because they were so easy to make, so delicious and healthy! And do you know that I made my own shredded coconuts for that recipe? Yay! I don’t know what took me so long to make them, I guess I was skeptical about breaking and shredding coconuts. But if you have a hammer, it’s easy to break the coconut, and I used food processor instead of shredding the coconuts, which made no difference. Then, all you have to do is roasting them in the oven. I strongly recommend making your own shredded coconut, it’s much much better than the things we buy from store.

I hope to write more often. We’ll see..

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/engagement-food-new-blo/feed/ 3 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/quince-dessert-and-some-blabbering/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/quince-dessert-and-some-blabbering/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:51:42 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=979

It’s been a long time.. Sometimes I really don’t feel like posting anything to the blog, although I have a ton of recipes and photos that I took. Actually, I have  never been a good writer, and that makes it sometimes hard to write. But I can proudly say I’m a total blabbermouth, and I always have something to say. In fact, that was one of the reasons I started blogging. I didn’t want to irritate people with my unnecessary talking, and I also wanted to improve my writing. But I have never blabbered in this blog (at least, not too much). I just couldn’t decide if it’s the right place to talk, talk, and talk (or in this case write, write and write). But, hey, blogs are meant to be the places you express yourself, so from now on, I’m going to write about anything that comes to my mind. The problem is, should I open a new blog for that, or should I pollute my food blog with unnecessary talking? I’ve been thinking about that for sometime.Another thing that confuses my mind is, a lot of my friends who read the blog (they are my only readers I guess) suggested me to open the blog in Turkish, and that’s another problem. Writing a post in two languages would take a lot of time, and I really don’t want to repeat everything once more in Turkish. My idea is that I can open a Turkish blog in a different concept. It can be more focused on healthy eating and “maintaining weight”, which may help other people.

Thinking while writing, I am now coming to a conclusion. I think I will extend this blog a bit, and write about food, and any other thing that comes to my mind. And I’ll be soon opening a turkish blog about healthy living. Next comes the name of the new blog, and new designs for my blogs. Any ideas for a Turkish name?

But, today my purpose was to post a quince dessert recipe that I adored! Quince dessert is a traditional Turkish dessert, and it’s very much like poached apples, and very simple to make. You poach (simmer in low heat) the quinces in water with sugar, some spice and the quince seeds. After a couple of hours (in my case, two hours), the quinces become viscous (is that the right word?), like they are dipped in honey. The gelling agent in quince seed makes the dessert sticky and it also gives the dessert a reddish color. Finally, you eat your dessert with a spoonful of clotted cream (widely used in Turkey). The tartness of quince goes away when cooked, and you get an amazing taste. Sounds good, right? When I came by some delicious photos of quince dessert while googleing, I was thinking the same. But there was a problem.

A few weeks ago, I bought some m&m’s and put in a jar to decorate my office, which I thought was a good idea. WHAT A HUGE MISTAKE! After unwillingly eating 200 grams of them in a day, I decided to stop eating processed sugar for one week, because I literally felt disgusted of sugar. So, I was in my “no processed sugar challenge” when I saw the quince dessert photos.

But you know, I had to do something, because I really wanted to eat and I couldn’t break my rules. I was thinking about making the dessert with honey instead of sugar, but I wasn’t sure if it would to be as sticky and syrupy like the original one. But I gave it a try.

I admit that I cheated a bit. I used honey and some organic palm sugar, because I think that palm sugar was only semi-processed. It wasn’t bleached, and it has its molasses inside. And I also love palm sugar. If it was something easy to be found in Turkey, I wouldn’t use anything else for sugar. It has the most amazing smell, it smells like caramel but better! I may try to make its homemade version someday, seriously!

So, here’s the recipe. If you want to use the original recipe, go ahead, I think it results in a more stickier dessert, but I really loved the honey version. I think

there’s an unnoticeable difference between them.

Quince Dessert

makes 12

Ingredients:

• 6 quinces, peeled, cut into half and seeded
• seeds of 6 quinces
• 18 tablespoons of honey (1 .5 tablespoons for each quince half)
• 6 tablespoons of palm sugar (or cane sugar, or honey)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves or 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• dash of salt
• water
• clotted cream (you can use whipped cream if you can’t find clotted cream, but I don’t recommend that)

Directions:

In a large pan, place the quinces and pour water just to cover the quinces.

Put the spices and the seeds to a strainer bag (I used a tea strainer, and I ran out of cinnamon sticks, so I used ground cinnamon instead).

In low heat, simmer the quinces for half an hour, or when they start to change the colors and soften a bit. Add honey and palm sugar, and simmer for one and a half hours more, or until the quinces become very soft and sticky.

Serve the quinces with clotted cream. If you like warm, eat immediately, or eat after storing them in the refrigerator.

I made Katie’s Fudge Babies a couple of times, and they make an excellent snack. But those babies are packed with a lot of nuts and dates, which is healthy and at the same time, calorie-dense. Since I don’t have the luxury to eat as many babies as I wish (acne + belly), I decided to “lighten” up the recipe a little bit, and used leftover chocolate cake instead of half the amount of walnuts. What I came up has about 25% less calories than original fudge babies, but is as yummy as they are. To make them even more tastier (and to add more calories, unfortunately) I decorated my fudge hearts with some white chocolate, and it was literally heavenly! So, go ahead and use your leftover cake! And be sure to use white chocolate, if you don’t mind extra 10 calories per serving; because it really fires up the taste.

Fudge Hearts with Leftover Cake

20-25 servings

adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie

Ingredients:

• 1 cup walnuts
• 1 cup mashed leftover chocolate cake (you don’t need to add any liquid)
• 2 cups pitted dates
• 4 tablespoons cocoa powder (6, if you use non-chocolate cake)
• zest of 1 orange
• melted white chocolate, for decorating

Directions:

Blend everything (except white chocolate) in a food processor.

Shape small balls. If you have chocolate molds, press the fudge into molds and leave them in the freezer for a couple of minutes. This will make the fudge easier to separate from the mold.

Decorate the hearts with some white chocolate.

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/leftover-cake-fudge-heart/feed/ 2 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/healthiest-chocolate-chip-cookie/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/healthiest-chocolate-chip-cookie/#comments Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:45:11 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=963

This is it! This is the BEST chocolate-chip cookie recipe ever! And what’s better is that it’s way much healthier than your average chocolate-chip cookie. Impossible? Well, I don’t think so.

There’s usually a problem with “healthy” alternatives: they usually cannot replicate the “original” one. I’ve tried so many healthy chocolate-chip cookie alternatives, but the result was usually so bad that I didn’t even want to eat them. Now, I have to want you beforehand, if you are looking for low-fat or low-calorie chocolate-chip cookies, then this is not the place to look for. Besides, I don’t think there exists a chewy, delicious and full chocolate-chip cookie recipe that is also low in fat and calories. Well, you can use low-fat-vegan-margarine type artificial “things” (I don’t even call them food), but I don’t think they are healthy, and taste good. In fact, you immediately notice that something is wrong with those cookies. But my recipe is different! Despite being high in fats (healthy fats) and carbs (healthy carbs), if you eat in considerable amounts, I think these cookies make a great afternoon snack with a cup of tea. Mmmm!

Now you may be expecting a complex, fifteen ingredient, protein-powder boosted recipe, but no. This recipe originally uses Sinem’s chocolate-chip cookie recipe, which is already lower in sugar and fat, but not less delicious than regular chewy c-chip cookie recipes. But it has two ingrediential (is that a word?) problems that makes it a little unhealthy: butter and processed sugar. Now, I have to say that I’m not cursing butter. I think you should consume it now and then, but I would like to use my “butter quota” by spreading on a slice of bread, not in cookies. So, I don’t usually use butter in my recipes.

So first of all, I looked for something that can replace butter. I actually knew the answer for a while. It’s obviously coconut oil, which is solid in room temperature. That’s why you get real cookies when you make it with coconut oil (believe me, I tried some cookies with olive oil, and I don’t want to talk about the results). Coconut oil is also a healthier alternative to butter, since it has no cholesterol. Because of its high saturated fatty acid content, I wouldn’t want to use it everyday, but I have been wanting to try coconut oil in a recipe for a while. I like to use different things in my recipes. Remember my dark hummus? Or maybe purple carrot muffins?

But coconut oil is not something you can find everywhere, unless you live in the United States and have Whole Foods or a similar store nearby. So, I have been searching the web for quite a while to find coconut oil, among with some other things like Artisana Coconut Butter that everyone’s obsessed with, or raw cocoa nibs. But, unless you want to pay huge amount of money for shipping and customs, there’s no way you can supply these stuff in Turkey, even though there are lots of places that sell coconut oil as massage oil, which cannot be used as cooking oil.

Wait, there’s another way! Place an order to your friend who will visit the States! So, I ordered some coconut oil, coconut butter, raw cocoa nibs and some palm sugar from my friend. This may seem to be a temporary solution, but I won’t be using the coconut oil everyday, and I think I found a store in Turkish Ebay that sells edible coconut oil.

The second “ingrediential” problem was the processed sugar, and it was solved by Navitas Naturals’ palm sugar. Palm sugar is considered to be a healthier alternative to cane sugar (or, beet sugar for Turkey) since it’s lower in glycemic index and more nutritious. And it has a caramel-like taste, which I immediately liked. So, I decided to incorporate this to my recipe.

If you have access to coconut oil and palm sugar, I urge you to try this recipe. I stored a batch of cookies in the freezer. So, I just take them out in the morning and by the time I get to work, they are ready! And they usually become my afternoon snack with a cup of tea. So good!

Coconut Oil and Palm Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Sinem’s recipe

makes 16 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 75 gr (2.6 oz.) coconut oil, in room temperature
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup palm sugar, or any other semi-processed alternative
• ¾ cup dark chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• cocoa nibs to sprinkle

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together palm sugar and coconut butter until the mixture becomes creamy, then beat in the egg.

Add the other ingredients.

Drop 1 tablespoon of dough on a parchment paper. Be sure to have space between the cookies. Sprinkle with some cocoa nibs.

Bake the cookies for 13 minutes, or until the edges turn golden.

And what about the “famous” Artisana Coconut Butter I got? I made a batch of Katie’s chocolate fudge, and they were amazing!

If you follow this blog, then you probably know about my “famous” carrot cake, my all-time favorite cake! But, the fact is that this cake is not so healthy to eat every time. So, I tried to came up with a healthier one, using honey instead of processed sugar. But the result was not as I wanted to get. The unique taste of my “famous” carrot cake was gone.

So, for the last time, I gave it a one more try and I got really nice little carrot cakes. To make them interesting, I used both orange and purple carrots. This recipe uses milk and yogurt instead of olive oil to make the cake more protein-rich. And everybody seemed to like it. They didn’t understand it was  made with honey. But nevertheless, I still have to say that nothing can beat my original love. It still tastes so unique!

Carrot Cake: Third Version

yields 20 servings / 100 calories per serving

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup dry oats
• 1/6 cup low-fat (high-protein) milk
• 1/6 cup yogurt
• 3 cups COARSELY grated carrots (I used 1 1/2 cups orange and 1 1/2 cups purple carrots)
• 3/4 cup honey
• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

In a bowl, beat together eggs, milk, yogurt and honey.

Stir in vanilla, flour, oats and spices, and mix well. Finally, add the baking soda into the mixture and stir.

Add the carrots and form an even mixture. Don’t worry that the carrots are too much. They will dissolve after cooked.

Pour the mixture into a greased pan (you can also pour the mixture into muffin cups) and bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked.

Finally, I found my lost brownie recipe! I actually found it by chance in my wallet and I don’t know how it got in there.

Anyway, this recipe is originally from my recent favorite book, and after some modifications, I came up with my own.

WARNING: Don’t be fooled by the photo. These brownies my not look appealing to you, but they are extremely chewy! To make them even more chewy, I used some whole-wheat cereals instead of walnuts. So, if you don’t want to be on the high-chewiness side, just use some walnuts, hazelnuts, or simply nothing.

Extremely Chewy Olive Oil Brownies with Whole-Wheat Cereal

adapted from The Pocket Cookbook

yields 16 servings / 180 calories per serving

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter (I used my homemade butter)
• 80 gr (2.8 oz.) dark chocolate, melted
• 1 cup whole wheat cereal (optional)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• zest of 1 orange
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix the eggs, sugar, olive oil, vanilla extract and melted chocolate. Set aside.

Mix the dry ingredients and add them to wet ingredients.

Spread the batter into a baking tray, and bake for 25 minutes, or until cooked.

So, the New Year has come, which means it’s Gingerbread Cookie Time! There’s a strange tradition in Turkey. As we’re not Christian, we don’t celebrate Christmas or Thanksgiving, but instead we celebrate the New Year’s Eve like it’s Christmas or Thanksgiving. We decorate our houses with Christmas trees, we bake Turkey, and as for me, I bake gingerbread cookies. I try different recipes each year, but until this yesterday, I couldn’t find the perfect one.

I mentioned about the old book I bought from Cuba. Well, it turned out that this book has the most amazing gingerbread cookie recipe ever. It’s originally a chocolate gingerbread men recipe, but you can’t tell it has chocolate in it. Chocolate just gives a concentrated flavor to the cookies and makes them tastier. I really can’t tell how good the cookies were. I don’t think I’ll ever change my recipe again. This is it.

I also wanted to do something little more this year, and made a gingerbread Christmas tree from star-shaped cookies. It’s really easy to make (not like making a gingerbread house) and it definitely impresses your friends!

And finally, I decorated the gingerbread tree with some truffles. I mentioned that before, but making truffles is really easy (but also messy), and you can be creative by adding different liquids. I used some homemade rose water in my truffles, and decorated them with some dried roses and homemade rose sugar. Everybody in the office liked them. Besides, you cannot hate something with rose. It just smells like heaven!

Also, you can use the homemade rosewater in any recipe you want. Just add a few tablespoons of rose water instead of milk or water. Its smell is barely noticeable, but that’s enough to increase the joy you get from your food. Happy New Year!

Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies & Tree

adapted from The Pocket Cookbook

makes one tree and a lot of cookies

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter, in room temperature
• 1/2 cup molasses (I used mulberry molasses)
• 60 gr (2.1 oz.) dark chocolate, melted
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp ground ginger (or grated fresh ginger)
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt
• confectioners’ sugar for dusting

for the confectioners’ sugar frosting:

• 1/2 cup butter, in room temperature
• 2 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons rose water (or any other liquid)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Cream butter and sugar. Add molasses and chocolate, mix well. Add all the dry ingredients and form four patties. Chill them for at least 3 hours. (To increase this chilling process, you can put the dough in freezer. But be careful, don’t let them freeze!)

Take the patties out one by one (because, if you take them all out once, they wait too long and become sticky with room temperature) and roll. You can use confectioners’ sugar if the dough is too sticky. Wİth the first patty, you can make the gingerbread tree. You have to have 5 types of star shaped cutters, which are in different sizes. Cut 3 stars with each cutter, and place them on the baking tray.

Roll the other three patties and cut in the desired shapes. Put them in a baking tray (I used 3 baking trays to make my cookies).

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F) and bake the cookies for 6 minutes.

For the frosting, cream butter and gradually add sugar and vanilla extract. Finally, add the rose water, and you should get a creamy mixture. Put this into a piping bag, and when the cookies are cooled, decorate the cookies with this frosting. Put the decorated cookies in the refrigerator overnight to harden the frosting.

To make the gingerbread tree, put the biggest stars on the bottom. Align them properly so that the stars don’t overlap each other. Stick the stars using the frosting you made. Then, put the next biggest stars using the same technique, and finish your tree with your smallest stars. Decorate your tree with frosting, some sugar pearls and confectioners’ sugar for a snow effect.

Rose Truffles

adapted from Making Artisan Chocolates

makes 16 truffles

Ingredients:

• 140 gr (5 oz.) 70% dark chocolate
• 112 gr (4 oz. or about 1/2 cups) cream
• 2 tablespoons rose water
• 1 tablespoon butter

for dipping:

• 70% dark chocolate, melted
• cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
• dried roses or rose petals

for rose water:

• 1 cup fresh rose petals or dried roses
• 2 cups boiled water

Directions:

First, make the rose water at least three hours before making the truffles. Prepare it by pouring the boiled water over roses. Put the mixture into a jar and close the lid. After it’s cooled, store it in the refrigerator.

To make the truffles, heat the cream in a pan, and when it reaches its boiling point, add the chocolate and take the pan away from heat. Stir the mixture until all the chocolate is melted. Then, add the butter and two tablespoons of rose water and stir until the butter is melted. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator for three hours, or until it’s hard enough to work with.

When the mixture (or ganache) is cooled, take a spoonful, form a ball and dip it into melted chocolate and finally to cocoa powder. Make all the truffles this way. After that, chill them in the freezer for 5 minutes, and take them out. Dip into cocoa powder again to get smoother truffles.

To make rose sugar, blend confectioners’ sugar and dried rose petals using mortar and pestle. Continue until rose petals are all grounded. Sprinkle the rose sugar to truffles and decorate the truffles with some dried roses.

Few weeks ago, when I was on my regular grocery shopping ritual, I bought some rice flour. I have never experimented with this flour, and thought it would be nice to use it somewhere, and if I am gluten-intolerant, it would be nice to experiment it before. Here are the two recipes that use rice flour. The first one is “banana cocoa rice flour pudding”, and the other one is an unbelievably tasty impromptu dessert that I want to talk about. I call it simply rice pudding cake, but there’s more than that.

Yesterday, my mum and my sister wanted some pudding. I, as usual thought that  is a boring idea and told them that we should make some more interesting dessert. Then mum said “I bought peaches, and you can make some peach pudding”. Then the idea developed, and by the end of the next ten minutes, we agreed on making some sponge cake, on top of that some pudding, and on top of that, peaches and leftover bananas.

In short, I made a cake (not gluten-free!!) Then, I made rice flour pudding and poured it over the cake. After that, I cooked some peaches and bananas with little butter and sugar, and put it over the top of my dessert. Result? I wasn’t expecting such a good taste (because it somewhat looked boring and tasteless to me), and when we tasted it we were literally shocked. It was unbelievably good!. I mean, really good! And the good thing is, it can be modified easily. Actually the next thing I’m planning to do is making some carrot cake and pudding and using apples on top. Well, I don’t know, there are hundreds of options. Enjoy!

Rice Flour Pudding

Ingredients:

• 500 ml low-fat milk
• 35 gr rice flour
• 40-50 gr sugar
• 1 small banana
• 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• some diet cookies (or gluten-free, if you wish) for serving
• coconut flakes for serving

Directions:

Mix milk, rice flour, sugar and cocoa powder in a bowl and heat them while stirring.

When the heated mixture thickens, add mashed bananas and stir for a minute or two.

Pour the pudding in cups filled with some diet cookies. Sprinkle coconut flakes on tops.

Impromptu Rice Pudding Cake

Ingredients:

Cake

• 2 large eggs
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ cup low-fat milk
• 1 ½ – 2 cups flour (depends on the thickness of the batter)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt

Rice Pudding

• 750 ml milk
• 80-100 gr sugar
• 35 gr rice flour
• 10 gr starch

Fruits

• 2 peaches
• 1 large banana
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2-3 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C.

First, prepare the cake batter. Mix the eggs, milk and olive oil. Add the dry ingredients and pour them in a small/medium pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes.

For rice pudding, mix all the ingredients and cook until the mixture thickens.

And for cooked fruits, simply sautee the sliced fruits with butter and sugar.

Now, assemble the dessert. Pour the pudding over the cake. Then, spread the fruits on top. Finished!

My homemade nutella was so successful that I ate some with a slice of whole wheat bread every morning. Yeah, every single morning! And now that I hit the bottom of the jar, I made some more. But this time, not just hazelnut butter. I’ve made 4 different nut butters, following the same process.

The darker one in the photos is walnut cocoa butter. It’s quite dark because I’ve put a lot of cocoa powder. The second dark one is the hazelnut cocoa spread.

The lighter ones don’t have cocoa butter in them. The darker one is the almond butter. It looks a bit dark though, because I didn’t peel off the skins. And the lighter one is peanut butter.

These things are so easy to make and have only three ingredients: nut + honey + cocoa (optional). Just process the nut until it becomes creamy and add honey and cocoa if you want.

I love my breakfasts!

I’m still trying to adapt my new life. In case you don’t know, I have recently graduated and started to work, which primarily means waking up early to me. What I do in the mornings is basically waking up at the latest time possible, and trying not to be late. It means also that I generally sacrifice my breakfasts in order to sleep five more minutes. In such cases, when I was late for school, I used to eat whole grain cereals with oatmeal and low-fat milk. But it’s always nice to invent new things, since I don’t like to eat the same thing every morning. One solution I found was the oatmeal energy bars. And this is the second solution. Homemade Nutella! Well, I have to warn you, it of course does not taste like original creamy yummy Nutella, but if you’re like me and do not want to always eat full-of-additive food, then this is the simplest and the most delicious solution. Yes, I told that it does not taste like Nutella, but it has a very rich and distinct taste (and of course a very rich hazelnut smell!!).

The process is very simple. You basically put some roasted hazelnuts into food processor and process, process and process (you have to be patient and watch the hazelnuts turn into dust and then cream) until you get your homemade hazelnut spread. Well, mine does not very creamy, that’s because I wasn’t patient enough to process my hazelnuts more than three minutes. The best thing is, like almond milk, you can make this spread with any nuts you can imagine: walnuts, pistachios, sunflower seeds or almonds.

After you get your spread, add some sweetener. I added some honey, and of course cocoa powder. And here’s my first homemade Nutella! Remember, for darker and creamier look, just process more and add more cocoa powder. Enjoy!

(And I said I will try to post twice a week… Well, I’ll try next time…)

The second best thing about summer for me is definitely ice cream (The first one is summer vacations, of course). And when we have a lot of fresh sour cherries the garden, it would be shame not to use them in a recipe. So, I decided to make some ice cream with them. But sour cherries, as you know, are a bit “sour”, and I didn’t want to use a lot of sugar to make them eatable, so instead, adding some peaches not only made me put less sugar in it, but also gave a distinct taste to the ice cream. I also drizzled some homemade sour cherry jam before serving.

This is a very easy recipe, and I don’t remember the exact measurements. But it was roughly as follows: I pitted a cup of cherries and mashed them along with two peaches. Then I pureed them using a strainer and chilled the puree in the freezer for two hours. At the same time, I heated 1 ½ cups of half-and-half with half cup of sugar and let it cool in the refrigerator. Then what I did was to put the puree and milky mixture in an ice-cream maker! Actually, what I should do was to mix the puree with ¼ cup of icing sugar at the beginning and after that mix it with half-and-half, but we have no icing sugar left in the country house, so instead I used half cup of regular sugar and since it hs big grains that cannot dissolve in fruit puree, I heated it with half-and-half.

OK, though I love only “real” ice cream (I don’t like frozen yogurt, milkshake, etc.), but there’s something that changed my mind. Now, I have a new favorite ice cream, which is not really ice cream at all. It is the recipe I found in Choosing Raw. It is “Banana Soft Serve”, but I call it “Fake Super Ice Cream”. It is simply made by putting frozen banana slices in a food processor (not in a blender, it won’t give the same results, as Gena says) and wait until you get a smooth cream, and that’s it. What you get is like banana ice cream, and I added a bit more taste by mixing it with some chocolate chips and honey. Try this, I swear it will be the healthiest and yummiest solution to your ice cream cravings!!

]]> http://kitchenimpromptu.com/sour-cherry-peach-ice-cream-and-my-new-favorite/feed/ 0 http://kitchenimpromptu.com/almond-milk-mini-fat-free-donuts/ http://kitchenimpromptu.com/almond-milk-mini-fat-free-donuts/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:55:08 +0000 ulya http://kitchenimpromptu.com/?p=545

Wow, is that my blog? When’s the last time I posted here??

After my epic macaron fail, I’d been denying to post any recipes and that wasn’t the only reason. I was so busy with my finals (I graduated by the way!) and then my getaway to Bodrum -such a nice vacation!. Then I started to work and I’ve been trying to adapt this crazy lifestyle since then. I wake up at 7 am. YEAH 7!! Now you may say “What’s wrong about 7? We all wake up at 7.” But remember, for the past 4 years, I was a college student, and I was trying to schedule my classes no earlier than 10 am . If I had to take a class at 9:30 am, I was usually skipping it. Well, things have changed. Now I don’t have the excuse to “skip” the work, obviously. So, I wake up at 7, go to work and come back home at 7 pm, which means I have little time to eat my dinner, do some other things and finally cook for the blog. Actually, I don’t have time to cook. Then I decided to plan my days and I think I’ll cook for the blog 2 days a week, because I really want to improve this blog. The thing is, I don’t really plan the recipes (that’s why it is kitchen “impromptu”) and I don’t bother much about the photos. I just take them, without using any setting, which makes the photos, I think, poor. See, I’m quite lazy..

I’m planning to go on like this for now, but I definitely have some future plans about this blog. In the future (who knows when), the blog will surely remain “impromptu”, but not that much. At least, I will try to pay more attention to the photos.

Anyways, there are two recipes I made during the past couple of months, but I’ll post them soon because I can’t find their photos. But today I’ll give something different.

I’m lately obsessed with those “raw food” and “vegan” food blogs. Not that I’m a vegan (I love meat!!) or a raw food eater, but I like to (and try to) eat healthier. I try to use less sugar and fat in my recipes, avoid white flour, etc. Then I saw these beautiful fat-free vegan mini-donuts!!! Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? But it requires soy milk as the dairy substitute, and I have to say that I HATE soy milk, tofu or other soy-related products. Also in Turkey, you cannot really find non-GMO soy products, and even they’re non-GMO, there’s a lot of controversy about soy out there. So, I decided to make the cutest little donuts with almond milk.

Nut milks are very good alternatives to soy milk, they are proven to be healthy (no controversial issues) and they also taste good. I decided to start with almond milk, and save some of them for the donuts.

You can find the recipe here, and the blog has really cool recipes. I added some of the raw food blogs in my “Links” bar, so you can check them out. I added almond milk instead of soy milk. Since these donuts are fat-free, they taste different than classic donuts, but in the photos they look like cupcakes, which is also not true, because they definitely don’t taste like cupcakes. Actually, they do have a really unique taste closer to donuts. Also, don’t mind my hole-less donuts, I just don’t have donut molds. Well, to be honest, nobody can say these are actually donuts by looking at the photos. Sorry :/

And the almond milk? It’s the easiest thing to make. Soak 1 cup of fresh almonds for a few hours or safely, overnight. Then, blend it in the food processor along with 3 cups of water  (2 for a thicker, creamy milk). By the way, you don’t need to peel off the skins. Finally, get rid of the almond particles using a fine mesh strainer and ta-ta! You have 3 cups of fresh almond milk! If you think it’s tasteless, you can add a tablespoon of honey. You can make this milk with any nuts, or make some mixed nut milks which is what I plan to do next.

This time, I was sure to succeed. I bought Ogita’s book “I Love Macarons”, which is said to be the one of the best guides to make macarons and I really loved it, because it gives you a lot of different macaron options based on a “basic” recipe. It also has some very detailed instructions and I read all of them carefully to finally make some “real” macarons. OK, this is my third trial by now, and I have the worst looking macarons ever! They’re even uglier than the macarons I made by whisking the egg whites using my hand. Yeah, the macarons didn’t crack as the previous ones, but I couldn’t make the foot, or “pied” as the French call it. Ogita says if the batter is too dry, you cannot make the foot; but I don’t even know how I got the batter that dry. I didn’t even whisk the egg whites too much (that can make it dry). And what is worse, according to Ogita, my “things” are not even called macarons because she says: “Without it [pied], the pastry cannot be called a macaron.” So, I just call them macaron-ish-s or (non)macarons! Though these things taste good, in terms of looks the result is a big epic FAIL..

Whisking egg whites with granulated sugar. Everything seems to be normal:

Almond, powdered sugar and black tea:

Blending the two mixtures:

I’ve waited for 45 minutes and couldn’t see the macaron shells:

Crossing my fingers to see the “pied”:

I put them in a box anyway, because they were still delicious:

I said I won’t be posting dessert recipes for a while, but these cookies changed my mind. Sinem made those for our project visit to Istanbul, and we all enjoyed them during the flight and at the hotel. Normally, I’m not into those buttery chocolate chip cookies, but these were quite yummy that we all got the recipe from her.

Sinem’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Women’s Weekly

makes about 20 cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 75 gr (2.6 oz.) butter
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¾ cup chocolate chips
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F).

Mix together sugar and butter until the mixture becomes creamy, then beat in the egg.

Add the other ingredients.

Drop 2 tablespoons (or ½ cup, if you want bigger cookies) of dough on a parchment paper. Be sure to have space between the cookies.

Bake the cookies for 13-15 minutes. Time depends on your preference. If you want crispier cookies, bake for 15+ minutes. If you want smoother cookies on the inside, bake less.

I was also hoping that it will help me save a lot of time making cakes and other pastry. But, I was such a fool to assume that KitchenAid will solve all my problems. Well, here’s the result:

What is that? I mean, they are as bad as my first macarons. I couldn’t create the “perfect foot”, although the consistency is okay. I managed not to crack them by resting the meringues for 1.5 hours to harden its shells, but what about the foot? It is not evenly distributed. The macarons were also stuck on the baking tray, and I couldn’t pick the macarons off. I thought I didn’t bake them enough, but when I rebaked them, they started to crack, so I stopped. And the baking temperature was OK too,  it was 160 degrees C (325 degrees C).

Anyways, I’m done with all this drama.. Let’s move on to the good news. 10 out of 25 macarons came out clean this time. What a success! Well, it’s at least better than the last time. And what’s more, these macarons taste SUPERB!!

Well, I know the eclairs in the photo do not look nice and cool, but their taste is inversely proportional to how they look.. Really.. The reason for their bad appearance is due to a little accident. After I finished making my tiny eclairs, the plate they’re on fell off to the kitchen table and their chocolate glaze was all over the place.. I think I’m never going to make some good looking food..

In fact, nothing can make me sad about these eclairs, because it’s my third trial so far, and the first two were a complete disaster. I tried to play with the “choux” pastry recipe, put whole-wheat flour instead of all-purpose flour, tried to change the amount of butter, and the dough didn’t rise. So, this time I didn’t take any risk and made my “pâte à choux” directly from here. The directions there were also very useful.

Anyway, after making my little choux pastries, I filled them with pastry cream. Well, I cannot give you the recipe, because I took it from a pastry chef, but you can use this recipe, which I used before. The tricky part is, when I was making the cream, I added 2 tablespoons of honey by decreasing the amount of sugar, and after the cream is chilled, I added 2 mashed bananas into it.

Finally, I poured chocolate glaze on them. The glaze is very simple to make, melt the chocolate and add some melted butter (If you melt 2 units of chocolate, add 1 unit of melted butter).

No, I don’t like jellies. And no, I didn’t like this one too. But the difference of this jelly is; it has agar agar in it rather than gelatine. Agar agar is a gelatinous “thing” made from seaweed, and commonly used in Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. I first saw them in Luxirare as jello shots. So just for curiosity, I ordered some agar agar from the internet and tried to make something with it. Well, I’m not going to give the recipe, because I don’t like jellies! Simply, it has some water, brown sugar, cinnamon, star anise, cloves and some black pepper seeds in it. And I also put some diced oranges and clementines, as seen in the photos (The orange things at the bottom!).

At least they look good.. OK, they don’t even look good… But I’m still working on making better tasting jellies!