Category: baked treats
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Kulich: Orthodox Easter Bread
For many Orthodox Christians kulich, the festive and colorful bread, is traditionally a part of their Easter morning table, along with paskha and colored boiled eggs. During Soviet era, when people were deprived of God and faith by the regime, many older people still prepared traditional meals for religious festivities and observed religious holidays at…
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Strawberry Tart with Ginger and Lemon
Strawberries sitting in my fridge were meant to accompany the ice cream, but it seemed too simple for the Mother’s Day weekend. So I changed my mind and made this strawberry tart for all mothers of the world, including yours truly. There was no time to search for a crust recipe, so I took it…
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Judas Buns for Easter
In Czech Republic, Judas Buns are served for Easter and, following the most popular legend, symbolize the rope on which Judas hang himself after he betrayed Christ (the traitor had some remnants of conscience in him after all). I have been thinking about baking these buns for a few years now. I used to make them long time ago when I incidentally acquired…
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Simple Banana Nut Bread
Banana bread is a classic American dish. I’ve been going to make it for a long time, and now that I have I almost regret it, because it is absolutely addictive! Having one slice is just not an option. Given that I usually don’t have this problem with desserts, this is surprising. Are you brave…
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Kolache – Czech Pastries
Funny enough, we couldn’t find kolache, one of traditional Czech pastries, in any Prague bakeries that were on our way. Maybe we just didn’t know the right place… or maybe they became one of those things people make at home. Anyway, I decided to bake them on return from our trip, armed by a recipe…
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Slightly Chocolate Coffee Cake
This coffee cake has a rich and crumbly chocolate crust and a fluffy inside with a hint of chocolate and nuttiness. The basic recipe for the batter comes from Rose’s Heavenly Cakes, a book with amazing photography and recipes that are as good as they look. But the crust invention and the flavorings are all…
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Charlotte – Easy Apple Pie
This is a Russian favorite (pronounced Shar-lot-ka), and also probably the easiest cake you will ever bake. It requires hardly any preparation and only the most basic ingredients. And yet… the distinctive pink crust and lovely tartness of the apples make it a perfect home-made companion to tea and coffee. Ready to try? What you…
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Cinderella Almond Pear Tart
This weekend I got to enjoy a glorious event that only happens once in a blue moon: my parents drove over to New York to visit me. This was a perfect occasion to seek out the imaginary pear tart that has been haunting me. I exploited my imagination and several cook books at once, and…
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Butter Cookies
These cookies definitely belong to sinful food. Not your everyday food, as Julia Child would say. So if you are scared that your arteries will be suddenly clogged with fats, and your waist will expand unexpectedly, please don’t bother to read the recipe. But those of you who sometimes give in and let your desires rule…
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Mazurka – Dried Fruit Cake
No, I am not talking about a Polish folk dance. Mazurka is a sweet quick bread made with a lot of nuts and dried fruit. The nuts and fruit constitute as much as half of the dough. Mazurka is astonishingly easy to make, and is not meant to be a sophisticated cake. The bread consistency…
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Apple Turnovers
Apple season is almost over, but one can still buy fresh apples, just from a tree. Those apples are quite different from what you will buy in a store in winter. Juicy, crunchy, and I would say live. Even preserves and pie fillings are tastier if made from those fresh apples. I had another opportunity…
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The Best Biscotti
Everybody who has been to a cafe in North America knows biscotti. Dating back to the ancient Rome, where they were used as a non-perishable food carried by travelers, these crunchy dry cookies have since become widespread in Italy and throughout the world. In fact, the British biscuits take their name from Italian biscotti. Italians…
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Sugar Cheese Cookies
As the cool fall weather is setting in, I’m beginning to feel like baking. In need of some “warming up” before heavy baking in winter, I decided to make some improvisational cakes. One, the fruit and nut cake, was not so good though men of the household said it was. OK, that’s their opinion, so not…
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Poppy and Pear Lemon Cake
My grandmother, mother’s mother, was famous in the large circle of her friends and relatives for her cakes. Cakes that were sheer perfection, a hard-to-come-by luxury that made one forget, I suppose, about the meagerness of one’s world, about supermarkets, laundry, quarrelsome neighbors, broken water pipes, small children unwilling to do homework, grown-up children with no apartment…
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One Very Nutty Coffee Cake
Finally I have broken my hiatus from cooking, which had begun to extend dangerously. It’s fascinating what a staggering effect failure has on motivation (and I did have a few cooking failures recently, mostly gelatin-related). But when is it ever easy? Nothing will come out right, if you quit after the first few stumbles. It…
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