Pesto chicken with parmesan dumplings

It's not my own recipe although I had to adjust it a little, I read the original in the hungarian edition of Good Food. Kind of a complicated recipe so only make it when you have the time. I used my own home made basil pesto of which we have a lot in the freezer :) 

Ingredients, serves 4: 

•  8 upper chicken thighs, skin and boneless
• 5 dkgs of smoked bacon
• 3 sticks of celery
• half an onion
• half a leek
• 5-6 pieces of sun dried tomatoes
• 3 handfuls of peas
• 2 dls of white wine
• half a litre of chicken stock
• 2 bay leaves
• 10 dkgs of basil pesto
• 10 dkgs of flour
• 5 dkgs of butter
• 1 teaspoons of baking powder
• 5 dkgs of grated parmesan cheese
• a handful of toasted almonds

Get a dish that you can put in the oven later, so basically one that doesn't have any plastic handles. You have to brown the chicken thighs first, on a bit of olive oil, just until both sides get a slight golden colour. Take them out and in goes the bacon, which you have to fry until crispy. Then you can add the finely chopped onion, leek and celery. Cover it and steam until they become soft. Then you have to add some flour, give it a good stir and pour the wine into the pan. Bring it to the boil, then add the chicken broth and the bay leaves. Cover the pan again and cook the chicken for at least half an hour. If there is too much liquid, don't cover it and just let it boil away. After 30 minutes you can add the peas, the dried tomatoes and the pesto. Give it another good stir. 

You have to make a crumble with the flour and the butter, then add the baking powder and the cheese. Add cold water to the mixture so that you can make a sticky dough out of it. Form little dumplings of the dough and put them nex to the chicken bits. Sprinkle the almond on top and put it in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 200 degrees.

Raspberry and strawberry cream Charlotte cake

Ingedients for the swiss roll:

• 4 eggs
• 4 tablespoons of sugar
• 5 tablespoons of flour
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavour
•  4 tablespoons of raspbery jam

 Separate the eggs and beat the whites with the sugar. Mix the yolks with the vanilla flavour and stir the mixture into the whites carefully. Sift the flour into the egg mixture and give it another good stir, until you can't see any flour lumps any more. Lay some parchment paper on a baking tin and spread the sponge cake dough on the paper. Bake it for 15 minutes at 160 deg Celsius. Take it out and while it's still hot, roll the sponge cake into a dish towel (clean of course:)) and let it cool down. When it's cold, roll it out, peel the paper off, spread the jam on the inside of the sponge cake, and roll it back up. Let it rest for a while.

Ingreidents for the raspberry cream:

• 8 dls of cream
• 4 tablespoons o sugar
• 60 grs of instant gelatine
• 50 dkgs of fresh or frozen raspberries
• 15 dkgs of fresh strawberries 
• juice of half a lemon

Whip the cream with the sugar and the lemon juice, plus the instant gelatine. 3/4 of the whipped cream goes with the raspberries, you have to mix the fruit with the cream carefully. The rest is for the strawberries which need to be cut in small pieces. If you want to make it sweeter, you can add more sugar.

How to put the cake together:

Slice the swiss role as thin as you can. Get a round bowl and line it with plastic wrap. You will have to line the inside of the bowl with the swiss role pieces. Then fill it first with the raspberry cream, then the strawberry. Cover it with plastic wrap again, and leave it in the fridge for a night. The next day get the plate that you want the cake on, and put it on the bowl, turn it upside down and if you did everything right, the cake will stand on the plate in one piece :)

Hungarian style onion quiche

This is one of my favourite reicpes with onions. This is the kind of food that I could eat as long as I have any of it in front of me. Not the quickest recipe in the world but the good thing is that it can be completely different when it's still hot and when it gets cold. You make one quiche and you can eat it for days. Don't let the amount of ingredients frighten you, it's absolutely worth it in the end. 

Ingredients: 

For the filling:

• 2 kgs of onions
• 6-8 big cloves of garlic
• 10 dkgs of sliced bacon
• 5 dls of sour cream
• 1 tablespoon of caraway seeds
• 2 eggs
• 15 dkgs of cheese 
• salt, pepper 

For the crust:

• 37 dkgs of plain flour
• 3 dkgs of bran meal 
• 5 dkgs of yeast
• 1.5 dls of milk
• half a dl of vegetable oil
• salt, pepper

Cut the bacon in little pieces and fry them in a bit of oil. The onions need to be cut in thin slices. When the bacon is done, add the onions and the chopped garlic. Sprinkle the salt on top and give it a good stir. Cover the pan and let it steam for half an hour, give it a stir from time to time. Then remove the lid and let the onions brown a little bit. Add some salt and pepper to the sour cream and mix it thoroughly with the two eggs.

Meanwhile measure the flour and the  bran meal and mix them together. Add the yeast to the warm milk, maybe add a tiny bit of sugar too to help the yeast to rise. Then mix the flour with the yeast and the milk, the oil and all the other ingredients. Kneed it until you get a flexible dough. Let it rise until it's double the original size. Then you can get a deeper baking tin, lay some parchment paper on it and roll out the dough so that it fits into the pan plus it has a 1 cm high crust on each side. Spread the onion mixture on top of the crust and carefully pour the sour cream on top. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top of the whole thing and bake it in the oven at 200 deg Celsius until it becomes golden brown.

Sugarfree banana cheesecake

This was the first time I tried to make a cheesecake, in this case it was a birthday cake for my sister. It is an awesome cake, you can make it with basically any fruit and any flavour. I'm sure I will make other ones in the future, my favourite part is the cream, which even though you have to bake it, remains frothy and bubbly when done. It's not the quickest or easiest recipe but don't let that keep you from trying it :) 

Ingreidents for a 20 cm cake tin:

• 15 dkgs of full grain butter biscuits
• 5 dkgs of butter
• 25 dkgs of mascarpone
• 330 grs of greek yoghurt
• 15 dkgs of xylitol
• 3 tablespoons of flour
• liquid sweetener according to taste
• zest of one lemon
• juice of one lemon
• 3 whole eggs 
• 1 vanilla pod, craping the beans out
• 2 bananas
• sliced fresh fruits for the topping
• 1 packet of colourless cake jelly powder 

Line the base of the cake tin with parchment paper. Grate the biscuits and melt the butter, then mix the two together thoroughly. When it's done, pour the mixture into the pan and press it down with your hands, making it even everywhere. Preheat the oven to 160 deg Celsius and bake the crust for 10 minutes, then take it out and turn the oven up to 200 degreees. With an electric mixer, whisk the mascarpone so that it becomes smooth, add the yoghurt, the lemon zest, the lemon juice and the vanilla beans. With a fork, smash the bananas in another dish and when it is totally pureed, add it to the cream base. Whisk it again with the bananas and taste it, if it's not sweet enough, add some liquid sweetener. If you are happy with how it tastes, you can add the flour (sifted) and the eggs, but you have to stir it with a spatula or a wooden spoon from this moment on. Stir it until you get a smooth mixture. Grease the sides of the cake tin with butter and sprinkle it with some flour so that it covers the buttered cake ring. Pour the mixture on top of the crust. For the first 10 minutes bake it at 200 degrees and then lower it to 140, leaving the oven door open for the first 3 minutes. Bake it for another 25 minutes and then turn the oven off,  again leaving the door open. If you let it cool down in the oven, the top won't crack. Once it's cold, you can cover it with chocolate cream, put the sliced fruit on top and cover the fruit with the cake jelly. 

Traditional vs sugarfree chocolate chip cookies

Let's start with the pictures this time. These two recipes are the result of my most recent chocolate chip cookie baking craze. One of them is made traditionally with brown sugar and plain flour, the other one is part bran and made with xilytol. I wonder if you can tell the difference by only looking at the pictures :) The thing is that they are both delicious, for me the sugar free version seemed a bit dry right after taking it out of the oven but that's because it doesn't have any regular sugar in it and it didn't have this sticky inside that the other one had. The funny thing is that the sugar free one was even sweeter than the regular one. Making cookies is very easy and quick especially if you have a mixer and you just have to throw in the ingredients. The baking is a bit tricky, I will give you all the details a bit further below.

Ingredients for the traditional cookies:

• 20 dkgs of plain flour
• 1 packet of vanilla custard-powder
• 15 dkgs of brown cane-sugar
• 10 dkgs of butter
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
• 10 dkgs of dark chocolate
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavour or extract
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of rum flavour

Ingredients for the sugar free cookies:

• 15 dkgs of plain flour mixed with 5 dkgs of bran meal
• 1 packet of vanilla custard-powder
• 15 dkgs of xylitol
• 10 dkgs of butter
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
• 5 dkgs of dark chocolate
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla flavour or extract
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of rum flavour

The preparation of both types of cookies is the same, the difference is in the baking part. Measure the sugar or the xylitol and mix it with the soft butter, it has to be very frothy. Then add the one egg and keep stiring. Mix the sugar with the custard powder, the baking soda, the cocoa powder and the chocolate, previously chopped into very tiny pieces. Add the vanilla and rum flavours along with the cinnamon to the butter and egg mix, then stir in the flour mix gradually. When you have a solid dough, let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Lay some baking paper in a baking tin and make walnut sized balls of the dough. Press your palm on top of the balls. The sugary one needs exaclty 7 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius, strictly without the fan on. The diabetic one needs approximately 2 minutes more. They have to be very soft and flexible when you take them out of the oven, let them cool down on the tray, and then you can remove them from the baking paper.

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.