November

November is a special month to me. Being the ugliest of all others, I spend it mainly drinking tea, cooking warm dishes, carving pumpkin (did I mention I love pumpkin?), lighting candles, reading and celebrating. Haloween, Wojtek's birthday, my birthday... Lots of occasions to meet and celebrate. To give and receive presents. To cook and eat. To love and to be loved :)

Ps - the pumpking pie you see in the first photo is done from this recipe.

Poppy - oat bran cake

I really like baking stuff, it gives me pleasure. I like eating too of course, but I guess it's more about the act of baking rather than the act of eating. In the end - the two acts combined make for a fun day.
So I made an oat bran cake with addition of poppy seed. It turned out delicious.

Ingredients:

• 190g butter
• 150g sugar
• 1 tsp almond essence
• 4 eggs
• 100g ground almonds
• 1.5 cup of oat bran
• 0.5 cup of flour
• 0.5 cup of dry poppy seed
• 200g of dried fruit, raisins etc
• 1 tsp of baking powder

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Whip egg white, then add sugar, yolks, oat bran and poppy seed - mix altogether. Sieve in the flour and baking powder (earlier mixed together). Add almond essence Pour into a lined cake tin with a removable base. Bake on the centre shelf for 50 minutes until golden brown.

Nutella cupcakes

Can you think of anything better for a cold winter afternoon than a warm, hazelnut cupcake? Well OK, I can, but still, cupcakes are awesome :)
I took the recipe from my favorite site: Moje wypieki.

Ingredients for 12 cupcakes:

Cupcake Ingredients:
• 140g butter, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 flat tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 cup Nutella

To Make The Cupcakes:

In the bowl of an electric stand mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add in vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder until combined. Add dry ingredients to creamed butter mixture and stir.

Line baking pans with about 12 paper baking cups, and fill each two-thirds full with batter. At the top of each cupcake add 2 tsp. of Nutella and make 'doodles' with a toothpick. Bake at 160 - 170ºC for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Bon appetit!

Pumpkin bun cake with plum marmalade

I was defending myself from posting food photos, but in the end it is so much fun to take those pictures that I need to give in. So here it goes... Our first cake on the blog!
This one is called (cuddling) Pumpkin bun cake with plum marmalade and I took the recipe from this page.
The actual cake (and photos) were done by Radek - I cannot take credit for that. I was really surprised by the taste of this yummie masterpiece - never thought it would be soooo good!

Ingredients:

• 2,5 glass of wheat flour
• 10 g of dry yeast or 20 g of fresh yeast
• 0,5 glass of milk
• 3/4 glass of pumpkin puree
• 3 spoons of melted butter
• 1 tea spoon of cinnamon
• peeled rind of 1 orange
• 4 spoons of sugar
• 1/4 tea spoon of salt

All ingredients should be at room temperature.

Wheat flour mix with the yeast, add the rest of the ingredients and make a dough. Leave the dough covered by a cloth to double its size (around 1.5h). Then drop the dough from height and knead again.

Mould (25 cm) cover with baking paper (only bottom). Divide the dough into 10-11 pieces and form balls. Flatten them at hand and put plum marmalade (as much as possible, normally 1 big spoon), then stick together the edges covering marmalade inside. Put those balls on the mould close to each other (but leave space between them - they will grow and "cuddle"). Sprinkle the balls with crumble, put a cloth over the mould and leave for 30 min to double its size.

Bake in temperature of 190ºC for 35 minutes.

Filling:

• 1 glass of plum marmalade

Crumble:

• 60 g of melted butter
• 100 g of wheat flour
• 50 g of vanilla sugar

Mix all ingredients and make up the crumble.

The taste of this cake is really irresistible. Combination of plums, orange, pumpkin, cinammon and vanilla sugar is just perfect for autumn evenings. I served it with cup of orange-cinammon tea and chillout music in the background. Watch out - this cake has a tendency to disappear quickly :)