Milk loaf with dried cranberries

When I first saw the Hungarian edition of BBC Good Food magazine, I immediately subscribed for a year. I am over the moon about the recipes, all of them are great and they even work, as you can see on the pictures. The only thing that is different about the cake that I made is that it doesn't have any pistachio on top of it because I didn't have any at home. But it has tons of dried and candied fruits in it, and despite the fact that it was the first ever milk loaf that I made, it turned out really good. I won't write down the recipe here because it's in this month's Good Food magazine but if someone wants it, just write me in the comments and then I will type it down for you! :)

Salmon patties with spicy mashed potatoes and spinach

I have wanted to try out fish patties for a long time, and I still had two pieces of salmon left in the freezer from Christmas so I thought why not cook an Easter Monday celebratory lunch? I think it was a wise decision, surely I will make fish patties in the future too because it was absolutely delicious. To be honest the potatoes started out as the recipe from this month's Good Food magazine's recipe, where you have to make a spicy mixture and then fry the pieces of potato in this mixture but I overcooked them and in the end it became a mashed potato dish, but at least now I can call this recipe my own :)) I won't write down a recipe for the spinach, it's very easy, you just need some fresh of frozen spinach leaves, cook them in a pan until the water disappears and then season it with salt, some ground nutmeg and garlic.

 Ingredients for the fish patties:

• approx. 20-30 dkgs of fresh salmon
• a handful of chives
• juice of half a lemon
• 1 smaller cooked potato
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon of fish seasoning
• a little bit of grates parmesan cheese 
• salt, pepper
• 3 tablespoons of flour

In a saucer pan start steaming the fish in a bit of water and oil, don't forget to cover the pan. You only have to cook it until it cooks on the inside too, don't dry it out. Then get a fork and cut the fish in a couple of bigger parts, so that it can cool down and take the bones out, if there are any. Then let it cool down completely. Meanwhile chop the chives fine and put it into a bowl together with the fish, which you have to mince with a fork until it completely falls apart. Add the potatoes too, smash the pieces with a fork, then add the lemon juice, the cheese,  the seasoning, some salt and pepper and mix it until it becomes a completely solid mixture. Taste it, add more salt or anything that it needs and then add the egg too and give it a good stir again. Then form little patties from the mixture, roll them into the flour and on a bit of oil fry them (not deep frying, just on a bit of oil), until both sides are golden. 

Ingredients for the mashed potatoes:

• 4-5 bigger potatoes
• 1 bigger onion
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of caraway seeds
• half a tablespoon of chilli powder
• half a tablespoon of smoked paprika
• salt and pepper

Cut the potatoes in pieces and cook them in salted water. Meanwhile chop the onions and the garlic fine and start frying them in a pan. When the potato is cooked, pour off the water and add the potatoes to the onion mixture. Start giving it a stir, the potatoes will fall apart but that's good. Let it fry on the bottom for a while, then give it a good stir and again let it fry for a little while, so that there will be soft and crunchy parts in the end. At some point add the chili and the paprika powder too, and salt, if neccessary. 

Black-forest cake in a bowl

I was in the mood for something with whipped cream today, originally I wanted to make a cake that can be cut into pieces but in the end we decided to just throw every ingredient into a big bowl and see how it turns out. It's completely sugar free, the sponge cake was made with xylitol and the custard has sweetener in it. This huge bowl was almost half empty when I started to give "samples" to everyone so I guess it was a successful try...:) This dessert can be improved yet, maybe next time I should put the layers into a flat dish, what do you guys think? 

Ingredients:

• 10 dkgs of plain flour
• 6 eggs
• 10 dkgs of xylitol
• 10 dkg of grated almonds 
• 1 teaspoon of rum flavour
• 2 tbl spoons of cocoa powder
• 10 dkgs of butter
• 1 packet of vanilla custard powder
• 1 packet of chocolate custard powder
• 1 l of milk
• a big can of sour cherries or 30 dkgs of fresh or frozen sour cherries (without the seeds)
• 4 dls of sour cherry juice
• 2.5 tablespoons of gelatine
• half a litre of whipped cream

Separate the eggs and beat the whites up with the xylitol until it becomes white and hard. Whisk the soft butter and the egg yolks together and add the mixture to the whites. Carefully mix them together. Then mix the flour with the cocoa powder and sift it into the bowl, add the grated almonds, give it a good stir until it becomes a solid dough. Lay some baking paper into a roasting pan and pour the mixture in it. Bake it at 180 deg Celsius until nothing sticks to the needle that you stick into it, then take it out and cut it into pieces so that it cools down quickly. 

Meanwhile in half a litre of milk cook the vanilla custard and int he other half the chocolate custard. Add the gelatine to the cherry juice and bring it to a boil, then take it off the heat and let it cool down a bit. Lay some sponge cake on the bottom of the bowl and then add the other layers of custard, sour cherries, the cherry jelly and other layers of sponge cake. When it's done, top it up with the whipped cream and put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Penne with salmon, cream and lemon

I am using piece by piece the salmon that I got for my birthday and today I felt like eating pasta for dinner so I made this very quick and easy penne with salmon and cream. A smaller piece of salmon is more than enough for 3 or 4 people, because it makes a very hearty meal. I don't even have to say that I love salmon, maybe one day I'll dedicate an entire blog to this amazing fish so that I can talk about it all day long :)

Ingredients

• about 20 dkgs of fresh salmon
• 3 spring onions
• the juice of half a lemon
• 2 dls of cream
• a little piece of butter
• salt, freshly ground pepper
• 25 dks of penne

Put the water on the heat and when it's boiling, pour the penne into the water and cook it until ready. Meanwhile slice the onions and in a soucer pan start cooking it with the piece of butter and some oil. Cut the salmon into smaller pieces and when the onion is soft, add the pieces of salmon too, and the lemon juice. Carefully give it a stir from time to time and cook it for about 10 minutes until the fish is done. Then pour the cream onto it, add some salt and pepper and stir it again gently. If it's too thick, you can add some of the water in which the pasta was cooked. Pour the penne into the pan and give it a final stir, then it's ready to eat. 

Mrs. Lipton's most excellent cherry cake

I read the original recipe on this great blog called mandulasarok,  and I was over the moon back then to have this recipe and I decided that I MUST make it once. As a true You rang, mylord? fan it was one of the most important moments of my life when I could finally experience what Mrs. Lipton's most excellent cherry cake could have tasted like. The answer is easy: delicious. It's crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside, but I could have used more cherries because as Ivy once said, those are the best parts. 

 Ingredients:

• 20 dkgs of butter
• 20 dkgs of sugar
• 4 eggs 
• 20 dkgs of flour
• half a teaspoon of baking soda
• 10 dkgs of grated almonds
• 250 dkgs of sour cherries
• 2 tbslpoons of brown sugar

Stir the soft butter with the sugar until it's fluffy and add the eggs too, one after the other, and keep stiring it meanwhile. Then add the flour and the almonds too, give it a good stir, then add the cherries without the seeds. Put it in the preheated oven at 180 deg Celsius for an hour.

Whole grain tea-biscuits filled with fig jam

I remade the classic tea-biscuit recipe because I was curious if it could me made with whole grain flour and xylitol. Not very surprisingly, it can :) It's true tough that it's not that easy to handle it, I had to make the pieces by hand, that's why they don't look as pretty as they should. But despite all that, it's still very delicious :) You have to let them rest at least one night because that's when they gather the humidity from the jam and they become super soft. 

Ingredients:

• 16 dkgs of butter
• 15 dkgs of xylitol (powdered) 
• 6 egg yolks
• 25 dkgs of whole grain flour
• zest of one lemon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract or flavour
• half a jar of fig jam
•  5 dkg of dark chocolate

Mix the soft butter with the sugar until it becomes fluffy. The easiest way is to use a mixer. When that's done, add the yolks one after the other. After that add the flour too and give it a good stir so that there aren't any lumps of flour in it. Add the lemon zest and the vanilla flavour too, and give it a last stir. You have two options from here: form little balls of it by hand or use a plastic bag, cut off the edge and push the dough out. Press them onto the baking tin. Bake them in the oven at 180 deg Celsius for 10 minutes tops until the edge becomes golden. Then wait until they cool down and stick the tops and halfs together with the jam. You can cover the top with melted dark chocolate.

Chicken stripes coated in cornflakes with coleslaw

I've been meaning to try chicken coated in cornflakes, and I have had the intention of making coleslaw for days now, so today I united these two in a very american lunch :) The good thing about this chicken is that you don't have to deep fry it, it only needs a bit of oil because the chicken breast gets done very quickly. It's not a very quick dish, I suggest making it on weekends when you have time to deal with the coating. 

Ingredients for the chicken: 

• about 3/4 kgs of chicken breast, cut in stripes
• 4-5 tablespoons of flour
• 3 eggs
• a packet of non flavoured cornflakes
• 1 teaspoon of grated chili
• one and a half tablespoons of roast chicken seasoning
• 1 teaspoon of dried garlic  

 Ingredients for the coleslaw: 

• 1 small head of cabbage cut in thin stripes
• 2 carrots
• 1 stick of celery
• half a leek
•  juice of half a lemon
• 4 tblspoons of mayo
• 4 tblspoons of sour cream
•  salt, pepper 

Sprinkle the dried garlic, the chili powder and the roast chicken seasoning onto the chicken stripes and give it a good stir. Then roll the stripes first into the flour, then the beaten eggs, then the smashed cornflakes. The easiest way to crush them is to put the flakes into a plastic bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Then fry them in a bit of oil until both sides are golden brown. 

For the salad, sprinkle some salt onto the cabbage and let it rest for a while. Meanwhile slice the other vegetables up very thin, and then add them to the cabbage. Mix the dressing and pour it onto the salad mix. Let it rest for a while because it might need some extra salt or lemon juice, or a bit of ground caraway seeds.