Thursday 20 March 2014

My very first Sponge Cake

Hola!

I was asked a couple of weeks ago to make a birthday cake for my workmate's 2yo daughter.
He wants a simple sponge with strawberries and whipped cream. Well... sounds soooo easy, doesn't it?
The thing is.... I've never baked a sponge cake before. Riddiculous, right? I know.

So I decided to wake up a bit earlier today and go shopping for ingredients. As I'm Polish, I prefer to use stuff I know.

So if you like to make the cake according to my recipe, go Polish shop ;-}

quick text to my mum saying 'HEEEEELP!!! I need a sponge recipe'

this is what I got:
5 egg
1 glass sugar
1 glass flour
0.5 glass potato flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 sachet of vanilla sugar or vanilla extract

- - heat the oven up to 190degrees / 200 degrees
- separate the egg yolks and egg whites
-put a sprinkle of salt to egg whites and beat thoroughly until soft picks.
- add sugar, beat until you can feel sugar dissolved
- add egg yolks, mix
- add flours and baking powder, mix
- pour into a baking tray
- put in the oven, bake for 35 min until golden brown.

Check with a toothpick. stick the toothpick in the cake. If it comes out clean and dry, the cake is ready.

Take the cake out of the tray. let it cool, then cut in half, put any cream you want inside and put the top of the cake.
voila :)

that's my cake: sponge sandwich with pineapple -n-coconut cream filling. 




And there we go (updaaate!) That's the birthday cake I made for the baby girl:-)

Wednesday 19 March 2014

Thyme, lemon, appleeeeeeey ever after

I love cooking. I love taking pictures of the things I made. So..  why not start sharing them with the rest?

So here I am. And here is my food.

Very first thing in here.

Thyme Chicken with apples and lemon zest.

The taste of thyme cooperates nicely with the lemon zest and apples. Very light.

Ingredients:
Serves 5
2 packs of boneless chicken thighs fillets
1 lemon
Fresh thyme / dry one is good too
Sweet paprika powder
2 ripe apples
1. Prepare chicken: in a big bowl, put some olive oil, put the chicken in, sprinkle with paprika and thyme (the more the better, really up to you) salt and pepper. Mix so the meat is covered with spices. 
2. Heat the oven to 200degrees. 
3. Take the apples, slice them finely to get slices 10mm thin.
4. Put some oil into the large pan, heat, put the chicken and pan fry so it gets colour. 
5. Put some alluminium foil onto a baking tray. (U need to cover the chicken completely so leave some foil hanging on the sides of the tray)
6. Put the first line of chicken and line of apple slices on it. Put another line of chicken and another line of apples so you have the whole tray covered. 
7. Sprinkle with some spices, thyme and paprika.
8. Cut the lemon in half. Use juice of one half to sprinkle over the meat, slice the other half and put on top of the meat. 
Close the foil on top of the chicken (wrap it closely, it needs to cook inside) and put in the oven for at least half an hour to cook thoroughly. 
9. Take the tray out of the oven, Open the foil and put it back so the lemons and meat get nice colour.
10. Enjoy:)

Ps. You can eat it with everything. I served it with couscous and apple-carrot-n-celery slaw.