Tag: cakes

Ten cakes for breakfast – Italian Cuisine

Soft cakes, sweet buns, chocolate bread, donuts and pies, Here are the best cakes for a sweet awakening

Hot, fragrant coffee, a little milk to sweeten it, a seasonal fruit and a small portion of yogurt and cereals. All very good, but it would not be perfect and complete accompany the breakfast menu with a good homemade cake?

To have the perfect cake for breakfast, you must choose recipes to be prepared the day before, avoiding creams and farce that are difficult to preserve and excessively substantial. For this reason, the jam tart is usually prepared for breakfast, but it is also nice to vary, preparing desserts capable of making the most of seasonal ingredients such as grapes, chestnuts and pumpkin.

Go ahead and prepare cakes: leavened tart with blueberries, peach gugelhupf, cake of peaches and seeds, donut fondant with walnuts, pasta paradise in shell of puff pastry with grapes and walnuts, cake of chestnuts, rice cake all'emiliana, chocolate bread and pumpkin jam, sweet focaccia with grapes white e soft coconut cake.

To ensure that the prepared desserts are preserved well and last all week for breakfasts (and snacks) at home, it is a good idea to carefully follow some steps. First of all, once baked, it's good let the cake cool by turning it onto a plate so that it does not retain moisture in the mold, losing consistency. After allowing it to cool completely, it is possible cover it with the special bell, making it adhere well to the dish so that air does not enter.

Our breakfast cakes

5 quick and easy cakes: the recipes – Italian Cuisine

With chocolate, with apples, with ricotta, coconut or corn: sweetness to be made in a short time, without sacrificing taste and authenticity.

Are you super sweet but you don't have time to make a cake? Do you have children and want to prepare a healthy and appetizing snack for them without going crazy all afternoon? Then come to you the recipes of 5 easy cakes that do not require long execution times, to satisfy the taste (of everyone) and the agenda (yours).

Ricotta And Chocolate Cake

Perfect for breakfast, it is prepared by mounting 300 g of brown sugar with 3 whole eggs. Then add to this mixture 300 g of cow's milk ricotta, a pinch of salt, 300 g of flour mixed with a sachet of yeast and sifted e 100 g of butter left to melt in a bain-marie. Mix well, together 100 g of dark chocolate chopped and pour the mixture into a greased and floured baking pan. Level and cook a 180 ° for an hour or so in the lower part of the oven. Before removing the pan from the oven, check with a toothpick that the center of the cake is not damp, and then let it cool before cutting it into slices.

Apple and hazelnut cake

The ideal cake to taste in these first autumn days. There are countless versions of apple pies, which we offer are very simple to make. First peel, cut and slice into slices 500 g of green apples. Sprinkle the slices with the juice of a lemon to prevent them from blackening. In a bowl, stir 250 g of sugar with 3 egg yolks. United 75 g of butter softened to room temperature, 300 g of flour, a sachet of baking powder, the grated rind of a lemon and whipped egg whites snow firmly. Mix from top to bottom to prevent the egg whites from coming apart. At this point add the apples and 100 g of chopped hazelnuts. Stir, pour the mixture into a greased and floured baking pan, and complete with a few curls of butter. Bake in 180 ° for 45 minutes.

Chocolate and nut cake

This dessert is perfect for breakfast in the morning but can become an excellent dessert after a meal. Stir in a bowl 3 egg yolks with 150 g of cane sugar (keep the egg whites in a cup). Add 2 tablespoons of flour and 100 g of butter melted in a bain-marie. Mix the ingredients well with a wooden spoon and then add them 200 g of dark chocolate dissolved in a little milk and 100 g of chopped walnuts. With the electric whips whipped until stiff egg whites and add them to the mixture, taking care not to disassemble them. Pour the mixture into a 20 cm pan previously greased and floured and bake at 200 ° for 15 – 20 minutes. Before removing the cake from the oven, check the central part with a toothpick and check that it is cooked. If served at the end of the meal, you can accompany it with two tablespoons of liquid cream, everyone will like it. For a more dramatic effect, you can divide the dough into small single-serving cocotte.

Cake al coconut

Soft and delicate, this cake is ideal for morning use. In a bowl mount with an electric whisk 3 egg yolks with 150 g of cane sugar, then add 150 g of coconut flour, 50 g of potato starch, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, 75 ml of sunflower oil and 100 ml of milk. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff and then add them to the mixture, mixing from top to bottom. Pour the mixture into a 24 cm buttered and floured baking pan and cook at 180 ° for 30 minutes. Let it cool before consuming it.

Dolce of Varese

This cake is so called because it is typical of the city of Varese: it is a simple dessert made of poor ingredients, such as corn flour, finely ground, which gives the cake a honeyed color. Its flavor has conquered everyone over time and now it is mainly used to accompany afternoon tea. Simple to make, it is a dessert that also meets the taste of children. To prepare it, put it in a bowl 100 g of butter at room temperature and mount it with electric whips together with 120 g of cane sugar. Add one at a time two eggs and whisk until a homogeneous mixture is obtained. Add two teaspoons of baking powder, the berries of a vanilla pod, 100 g of corn flour, 80 g of 00 flour and 70 g of almond flour. Mix well and then pour the mixture into the classic well-buttered grooved mold (if you do not have this particular mold you can use the plum cake mold). bake at 180 ° for 40 minutes and then remove from the oven and let it cool. You can serve the Dolce di Varese sprinkled with icing or natural sugar.

The moon cakes festival – Italian Cuisine

The Mid-Autumn Festival or Moon Festival is one of the main festivals on the Chinese calendar. The moon is full and at the height of its splendor and very special sweets are eaten. What they are and how to cook Mooncakes or Moon Cakes

There Mid-Autumn Festival Zhōngqiūjié 中秋节, is the second most important festival in China, after the Spring Festival, or the Chinese New Year. It is a very ancient custom, which has its origins in the Western Zhou period (1045 – 770 BCE), when the sovereign, Son of Heaven tiānzǐ 天子 began to practice moon worship. This ritual was very popular in peasant civilizations such as China, they came offered gifts to the moon and we met between dances and music to hope for a good harvest.

Legend has it that …

At that time, the sky was covered by 10 suns that risked destroying the earth, its products and humanity, until the archer Hòuyì 后羿, with his magic bow, hurled nine arrows forever destroying nine suns and leaving only one to shine in the sky. To pay homage to the marvelous work, the Queen Mother of the West decided to give him an elixir of long life, but the man with a pure soul was not interested in living an immortal life if he could not stay with his beloved wife Cháng'é 嫦娥.
One day when Houyi was not at home, his perfidious student Péngmēng 蒙, broke in to steal his elixir and found poor Chang'e in front of him, who, startled by the unexpected presence, took the bottle and drank it in one gulp . At that moment the girl flew to the moon and there she was forced to remain for eternity, her husband destroyed by the incident, to keep vivid the memory of his wife began to practice the cult of the moon, in which he seemed to be able to see the woman's face.

How we celebrate today and what we eat

If we went to China at this time we would find no more banquets with offerings to the moon, in fact the Mid-Autumn Festival has become the occasion for to meet in the family and to embrace relatives and friends, who return to their hometown to celebrate with their loved ones this holiday, on feast days hanging colored lanterns is contemplating the moon while eating the typical moon cakes, which in China are called yuèbing 月饼.

Moon cakes are today the symbol par excellence of the party, for the typical round shape that recalls the image of the full moon. If once they were prepared at home, customizing them with the family seal, or with well-wishing characters, today this tradition is slowly disappearing, leaving room for the inspiration of pastry chefs and bakers who delight in creating sweets with refined and extravagant tastes, you can buy for a few yuan. However, we want to convey to you the spirit of the party by offering you one of the most classic recipes for moon cakes.

Moon cakes with salted yolk

Lotus seed paste (the inner part)
1/2 tablespoon of salt – 120 g of sugar – 80 g of vegetable oil – 150 g of dried lotus seeds

First, soak the dried lotus seeds for about 6-8 hours, until they soften and will open easily in half, always check that there is not the bitter part inside and eliminate it if necessary. Then put them in the pot and cover them again with water, bring the water to a boil, lower the heat to a minimum, cover with the lid and cook for 2 hours, until the water becomes milky and the lotus seeds are easily undone.
In case you are not sure taste them, they must be very tender as if they were melting in your mouth. At this point transfer all the contents of the pot into the mixer, both water and seeds and blend well until a smooth and velvety consistency is obtained. Take a non-stick pan and put the mixture in it, heat all over medium heat and add 1/3 of the vegetable oil, stir constantly so that the lotus seed mixture absorbs the oil well, when the mixture has absorbed everything add another 1/3 of the oil and repeat the operation until the end of the oil. At this point you can add salt and sugar, immediately put all the above quantity and mix until it becomes full-bodied and compacted into a single mixture, remove it from the pan and let it cool.

Cake dough
180 g flour – 125 g of honey – 55 g of peanut oil

Take a bowl and pour in the honey and peanut oil, mix well with a whisk until they are blended, add the flour and mix with a spatula until it forms a homogeneous mixture, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for about 1 – 2 hours before starting to make cupcakes.

Salted yolk
20 eggs with Chinese salted yolk

Break the salted egg and separate the yolk from the albumen, place the yolk in a bowl of water to remove all the egg white residues, then place the egg yolks on a kitchen cloth and dry them from excess water. If you find it difficult to find this particular food, typical of Chinese cuisine, you can prepare hard-boiled eggs and use only the yolk, even if it won't be the same thing.

Cupcakes assembly
First of all you need to prepare the right portions for each cake so you need a kitchen scale, weigh the yolk and if it turns out to be 15 g, weigh 20 g of lotus seed paste, the two together must always weigh 35 g. Take a portion of lotus seed paste, form a ball and then mash it on the palm of your hand so that you have a base on which to place the yolk, take the salted egg yolk, place it in the center and wrap it in the lotus seed paste to form a new ball. For each 35 g ball you will need 10 g of external dough, then weigh 20 balls of 10 g. At this point take a ball of dough and crush it on the palm, place the ball in the center with egg yolk and lotus seed paste and make sure to cover it well to form the final ball, do this for all 20 balls and meanwhile heat the oven to 180 ° C.

To finish the dessert you need a special stamp, choose the one with the design you prefer, you can easily find it online or in some Chinese store. Take a ball and roll it up so that it becomes elongated, put it back in the stamp and apply light pressure to keep the pattern imprinted on the cake. Turn the mold upside down and let the cake come out with the help of the plunger, place it on baking paper or on a silicone baking sheet. Bake the cakes for 5 minutes at 180 ° C, meanwhile beat with a fork an egg and after 5 minutes remove the cakes and brush them with the egg, done this step put them back in the oven for 15 minutes always at 180 ° C. Once cooked, transfer them to a grill to cool faster, when they are completely cold put them in a container and wait 1 or 2 days before eating them to make the crust look shiny and the cake will be as soft as the inside.

To see the recipe video follow the link