Sponge cake with yoghurt and bananas

This isn't one of the sweetest desserts ever but you can make it sweeter by using really ripe bananas, which I couldn't buy in the store. But according to my lunch guests it was actually why they liked it :) 

Ingredients for 6 servings:

• ladyfingers or homemade sponge cak
• 3 bananas
• 450 grs of greek yoghurt
• liquid sweetener
• lemon juice
• vanilla flavour 
• 10 dkgs of dark chocolate
• 2 dls of milk
• ground cinnamon 

Put the dark chocolate into the milk and keep stiring it until the chocolate melts. Keep stirring until you have a chocolate sauce, and put it aside for a while. Add some flavour to the yoghurt by adding some sweetener, lemon juice and vanilla flavour. Lay some sponge cake on the bottom of a dessert glass and pour some chocolate sauce on it. Slice the bananas on top of the sponge cake and add a layer of yoghurt. Repeat these steps once again, then you can decorate the top with cinnamon and as you can see on the photo, star shaped pieces of sponge cake.

Chicken with garlic and sage butter and roasted potatoes

Ingredients for the chicken:

• 3 whole chicken breasts in 6 halves
• 5dkgs of butter
• 2 cloves of garlic
• a big handful of thyme stems
• 3 sage leaves
• 5 dkgs of grated parmesan cheese
• salt, freshly ground pepper
• 2 eggs
• breadcrumbs
• flour 

Sprinkle salt or roast chicken seasoning on the chicken breasts before coating it. Then roll the chicken breast halves first in flour, then in the whipped eggs and finally in the breadcrumbs previously mixed with the grated cheese. Place some baking paper on the bottom of a baking tin and gently put the chicken on top of the paper. Cut every chicken carefully sideways but don't cut it all the way through. Spread some butter inside every piece of chicken and spread the remaining butter on top of them. Bake it in the oven at 200 deg Celsius until the breadcrumbs get a lovely golden colour and the chicken is fully cooked.

Ingredients for the potatoes:

• 1 kg of potatoes
• salt, freshyl ground pepper
• 3 rosemary stems
• 4 cloves of garlic
• olive oil

Wash the potatoes and if they have nice, not very thick skin, you can just leave it on. Cut them in approximately 5 mm thick slices. Spread the sliced on a frypan and sprinkle the salt and the pepper on the slices. Chop the rosemary and the garlic fine, and with some olive oil, mix the potatoes with the seasoning. Spread them again and roast them in the oven at 200 deg Celsius until they get golden and crispy.

Homemade chicken burger

Making homemade hamburgers is ridiculously easy, you just have to make a bigger effort once and then you'll have something to grab from the freezer when you feel like eating something good. This time I didn't make homemade hamburger buns but I'm sure I will try them sooner or later because they must be better than the ones you can buy in the store.

Ingredients: 

• 1 kg of chicken breast
• 1.5 kgs of upper chicken thigh fillets
• 15-20 dkgs of smoked bacon
• garlic granules according to taste
• salt or roast chicken seasoning according to taste
• onions (not neccessary) 

Mince the chicken along with the bacon and the seasoning twice, and mix it very thoroughly, let it rest for a while before making the first one. You have to cook it until both sides get a nice golden colour, but don't let it dry out. I think it's best if you taste it when it's almost cold, and if something is missing you can make corrections in the raw mixture. You can put the steak shaped burgers on a tray into the freezer and later when frozen, just put them into a plastic bag or a box. They will maintain taste and quality for a couple of months.

The world's most delicious spaghetti

There are a couple of dishes that I could eat as long as I have any in of it in front of me, this pasta dish is one of these dishes. It's not complicated, you don't need anything special to make it and you don't even have to follow the recipe that much. You can leave out any of the ingredients and still have a great meal but of course it's the best if you use a lot of everything...:) This is why I won't write down precise amounts because you can decide for yourself how much you want from each ingredient. 

Ingredients: 

• smoked sliced bacon
• fresh thyme (as much as you want)
• rosemary (the same rule applies)
• garlic
• sundried tomatoes
• salt, pepper
• mushroom
• whole wheat spaghetti

Bring a pot of water with some salt and oil to a boil and cook the pasta in it. Meanwhile you have to slice the bacon and start frying it in a pan on a tiny bit of oil. Do it until the bacon is crispy. Then you can add the sliced mushrooms and cook it until it becomes soft, right after that you can add the garlic, the herbs and the tomaotes. Give it a good stir and let the flavours come out. Then you can add the cooked pasta and give it another good stir. Sprinkle some parmesan on top and that's it... :)

Apple pie cake

Ingredients:

 The crust:

•  40 dkgs of flour (plain and whole wheat)
• 10 dkgs of caster sugar
• 10 dkg cold butter
• 1 packet of instant yeast
• half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1-1,5 dls of milk approx. 

 The filling:

• 6 big Granny Smith apples and the same amount of smaller red apples
• liquid sweetener
• zest and juice of one lemon
• a handful of raisins
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• quarter of a teaspoon of ground clove

Measure the flour for the dough and mix it with the sugar, the yeast and the cinnamon. Get the butter and crumble it with the flour mixture. Then put the whole mixture into a bread machine and start kneading it, gradually adding the milk. You have to get a flexible and non-sticky dough as a result. You don't have to wait until it rises, the yeast will do its thing in the oven when you bake it. Let it rest while you prepare the filling.

Peel the apples and grate them. Then you have to squeeze the juice out of the grated apple. Providing that you use a clean bowl and your hands are also clean, don't even think about throwing the juice out, you can filter it and then you have a pure, truly 100% fruit content apple juice :) Then put the apple in a saucer pan and add the lemon juice, the zest, the raisins and the spices. Add the sweetener as well. You only have to cook it until it becomes soft which takes about 10-15 minutes. Let it cool down and then taste it, add some more lemon or sweetener if needed.

Then you can just put the cake together. If you want to put the emphasis on the cake part, you can bake a layer of crust beforehand and place it between two layers of apple filling. If you have some leftover dough you can decorate the top of the cake with it, just don't forget to eggwash the joining surfaces. Also when you are done with the decorating, give an eggwash to the whole top of the cake. Bake it in the oven at 190 deg Celsius until golden on the top.

Spicy fried noodles

Apparently having a cold has its advantages. First of all, you go out and buy a nice piece of ginger so that you can make some tea for your cough. Secondly you have some free time to cook in a slow, moderate way. This whole recipe started out from the fact that I had some ginger at home, so I said let's cook something with it. This something turned out to be these fried noodles, one of my few recipes that I was satisfied with a 100% right for the first time. 

Ingredients for 4:

• 40 dkgs of pork leg, cut in thin slices
• 4-5 spring onions
• 6 cloves of garlic
• 5 dkgs of fresh ginger 
• 1 big carrot
• 3 tablespoons of sesame seeds
• 1 fresh chilli
• 1 pack of your preferred type of noodle
• 1 dl of soy sauce
• 1 dl of oil
• 1 tablespoon of caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon of hazelnut oil
• additional soy sauce
• salt, pepper

The first step is to sprinkle the caster sugar on the sliced meat. Then you can add the soy sauce and the oil. You need to chop the garlic and the ginger fine, slice the spring onions and the chili up (after taking out the seeds) and add everything to the meat. Give it a good stir and let it rest until you slice the carrot too. You can grate it too if that's easier. 

In a hot pan start frying the meat and when the juice starts to come out, cover it with a lid and let it cook for about 25 minutes until it gets soft. You might need to pour a little bit of water into the pan from time to time, but only a little. When it's almost done, add the carrot and keep cooking them together. When it's done, remove the lid and let all of the water disappear. You can add some more salt and pepper, if needed.

Meanwhile cook the noodles in boiling water. Then put the noodles in a pan with the hazelnut oil and some soy sauce and fry them for about 10 minutes, giving it a good stir from time to time. In the end mix the noodles with the meat and sprinkle the top with sesame seeds that you previously roasted in a pan until they got a golden colour. You can put some chili sauce on top as well. 

Swiss roll in half an hour

On my granny's request I made a swiss roll today instead of a punch cake, now that I have some free time I can spend in the kitchen. (This doesn't mean of course, that I will give up on my plans of making a traditional sticky punch cake with pink icing on the top:) The good thing about a swiss roll is that it can really be done in half an hour and you don't need a whole lot of ingredients either.The even better thing about this swiss roll is that I used my home made spicy plum jam with cinnamon and red wine.

Ingredients:

• 4 cold eggs
• 3 tablespoons of caster sugar
• 1 coffee spoon of vanilia extract or flavour
• 10 dkgs of plain flour
• jam

Separate the 4 eggs. Put the whites into a bigger bowl and start whipping them while you add the sugar, one tablespoon at a time. You have to whip it until it gets solid and very white. Then you can add the yolks and the sifted flour. You have to carefully mix it together strictly with a spoon until it becomes homogenous. Line some baking paper onto a bigger baking pan and spread the mixture evenly on the baking paper. Put it in the oven at 160 deg Celsius for about 15 minutes. It doesn't take long to get ready so be careful. You can take it out once the top gets a light golden colour. While it's still warm, put the sponge cake on a wet dish towel and roll it up and leave it like that until it cools down. Then you can roll it out and remove the baking paper. Spread the jam on the inside and roll it up again.