Valentine's Bundt Cake with Red Wine

Ingredients

1/2 cup red wine
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup dark chocolate coating
4 eggs
3/4 cup confectioner's sugar
1 pinch salt
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup ground almonds


After weeks of rain and grey, ice and snow, one cold stormy day after the next, is there anything as comforting in the midst of winter's tristesse as the scents of vanilla and melting chocolate filling the kitchen and wafting through the apartment, and the first bite of a fluffy cake that is still a little warm?

Generally not much of a baker, here I was, mixing and melting, covering the whole kitchen with flour and sugar, juggling eggs and spices, to produce the perfect Valentine's cake. To begin with, I put the red wine (I used a nice fruity Italian one) in a pot and heated it with the cloves and cinnamon stick, then removed the stick and let it cool down on the side. For anyone who's ever made mulled wine, this was easy enough.

The first challenge came with melting the chocolate and butter in a double boiler, actually not so much the melting itself but later on the accident-free removal of said boiler from the, hm, boiling water. So for the time being, I let it sit there and melt, while embarking on the least fun part of the process, the separating off the egg whites from the yolks. Struggling with blasphemous thoughts (why do we have to do this? can't we just mix it all together? how important is this fluffiness thing really... oh well, I separated them, slippery little &@***%^##, the egg whites in one bowl, the yolks in another.

To the now oh so peaceful looking yolks, I added half of the sugar, a pinch of salt, the vanilla sugar and also gradually the wine and butter-chocolate mix (yes, I did get some small burns, and yes, there were drops of chocolate-butter in several unusual spots of the kitchen afterwards) as well as the flour, baking powder and almonds, beating the dough until creamy.

The rest of the sugar was mixed with the egg whites and beaten for a time so long that even with an electrical mixer, my arm was sore in the end. But the silvery-foamy cream I was able to fold into the rest of the dough was worth every effort, hello fluffiness!

Now again back to the easy part - I filled the whole thing into a buttered form, put it in the oven at 320 for approximately and hour and waited for the aroma to flood my apartment and put me out of my "gosh it's only mid-february and i'm already so sick and tired of winter" misery. Happy belated Valentine's Day everyone!

Life is good!

Healthy dessert - warning, do not attempt to make this at home!

Ingredients
1 cup quinoa
1 cup blueberries
1 ½ cups milk
¼ cup raw cane sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cinnamon stick
juice from ½ lemon

Had she posted it but two days earlier, this delicious raspberry chocolate cake from lovely blog Green Thyme is what the Santoku master would have gotten as his birthday dessert. Instead, with tears of regret and shame in my eyes, I am admitting what he actually got.

Somehow, I have been entertaining the idea that food can be healthy and delicious at the same time. Years of enjoying salads and veggie dishes, cooking with fresh herbs and whole grain pasta while reading about the health benefits of red wine confirmed this idea. Now, to my utter astonishment, have I had to find out that this does not hold true for desserts. If you believe me already at this point, read no further and go put all the cream, butter and sugar in your enjoyable delights. If not, read on to face the sad, the brutal reality.

So in my naivete, I thought I could come up with a healthy dessert for my Santoku master. The inspiration I had was to make some kind of a pudding with blueberries (alright, blueberries ARE delicious and healthy!), quinoa (the epitome o healthy) and just a tiny little bit of sugar (unfortunately not healthy).

The recipe is hellishly easy - I just simmered all the ingredients in a pot for around 45 minutes (that’s how long it took for the quinoa to develop its tender nuttiness - and believe me, that is a flavor not appreciated in a sweet treat!). The darkish mass that resulted from said procedure was poured into glasses and refrigerated for a couple of hours in the innocent hope that it would magically transforms its consistency into pudding. It did not, and has not gotten any better until the day we finally threw it in the trash.



And to make this life lesson even more bitter, I had to observe the transformation in my Santoku master from giddy excitement, eyes glittering with anticipation for his birthday treat, to surprise and hesitation, a glance of trust that I would never give him something detestable, to the devastating realization that in fact, I just had. The look of betrayal broke my heart, and at the next chance, I will try to rehabilitate my reputation by making the raspberry chocolate cake. And never, ever again a 'healthy' dessert.

Life is good!

Blueberry jam or how to make the best out of a 2 for 1 situation

Ingredients
3 cups blueberries
⅓ cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
juice from 1 lime

Like most people, I find it hard to pass up a good deal, and right now whenever and wherever I go, signs advertising two pints of blueberries for the prize of one are screaming at me. In the endorphin-loaded situation of grocery shopping, the little that is left of the rational side of my brain reminds me that between my fiance and myself, we are never going to finish two pints of blueberries before they go bad and how much I hate wasting food. But my little inner temptress tells me that if I don’t take that second pint, it’s like throwing away free food, rejecting a gift from the universe - and just think of all the beautiful things that one could make out of them!

Maybe this weekend, I was in a particularly vulnerable place, having been lured in by pictures of stunning blueberry galettes, the berries were right there in front of me to grab, and somehow they did end up in my shopping cart.

At home, reality struck me - and luckily, so did inspiration. Why not do what generations of women in my family had done with the plentiful bounties of fertile summers - turn them into something less perishable and more preservable?

Making jam is a beautiful process, as you watch the fruits transform from their ripe, fresh form into a lush, molassy sauce. I used a little bit more than half of the berries and simmered them in a saucepan over medium heat with raw cane sugar (I don’t like marmalade that is extremely sweet, so for some people a little bit more sugar might be preferable), the juice of a lime to add some freshness and a cinnamon stick for an extra dimension of flavor, from time to time mashing the berries with a wooden spoon. It took around 25 minutes for most of the juice to have evaporated, and later having cooled down in the glass I had prepared beforehand, the jam thickened to mashed pieces of berries held together by a dark, rich sauce of viscous consistency.

Making the best out of a 2 for 1 blueberry situation? Check. Only did I wished we hadn’t forgotten to buy some bread to go with it. But that is a challenge for another day!

Life is good!