Pear-walnut-chocolate-cake

This is probably the last autumn recipe I will post, since Winter is approaching and it's only one month till Christmas!!! I think pears, walnuts, and chocolate is one of those divine combinations like seasoned cheese and honey, dried figs and philadelphia, strawberries and balsamic vinegar, etc... And as kid, when we went skiing on weekends, I remember we always used to order a cake like this one. So it's one of those tastes I never forgot since childhood and will always love and associate to cold days.

Ingredients:

100 gr. butter

100 gr. sugar

2 eggs

250 gr. flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 pinch of salt

6 tbsp milk

2 medium pears

100 gr. walnuts

Chocolate for the frosting

Method:

Beat the sugar and butter till fluffy. Add the yolks and beat. Separately beat the egg whites till stiff and keep them aside. Add to your first mixture the salt, baking powder, flour. When it has a sandy consistency add the milk and yolks and beat until smooth. Now add the pears cut in small pieces and the ground walnuts (keep some whole ones for decoration). Spoon the batter in a cake mould and bake at 180•C for 40 minutes.

Melt the chocolate and when the cake has cooled cover it. Before the chocolate dries add your decoration to it. Don't worry if it's not perfectly covered or evenly decorated; the rustic home-made look makes it even more delicious!

Enjoy ♥

Martina

This cake I made was offered to our customers at Doll's Vis a Vis and et the end of the day this is all there was left of it! I'm very glad to know that people appreciate my baking :) thank you.

Capresina

The Capresina or Torta Caprese is a typical neapolitan cake, from the island of Capri. The main ingredients are chocolate and almonds; the absence of flour makes it quite short but crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside.

La Capresina o Torta Caprese è un tipico dolce napoletano, più precisamente dell´isola di Capri. Gli ingredienti principali sono il cioccolato e le mandorle; l´assenza di farina lo rende piuttosto basso, ma croccante fuori e morbido dentro.

Ingredients:

300 gr. ground almonds

200 gr. sugar

250 gr. butter

250 gr. dark chocolate

5 eggs

icing sugar

Procedure:
Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie until smooth and with no lumps. In a mixer beat the butter with the yolks. and half the sugar; add the chocolate and the almonds. Whisk the egg whites until stiff whilst adding the rest of the sugar. Add the whites to the rest of the mixture and stir gently. Put the batter in a cake mould lined with baking paper and bake at 180°C for about an hour. Let it cool and cover with icing sugar.

Ingredienti:

300 gr. di mandorle tritate

200 gr. di zucchero

250 gr. di burro

250 gr. di cioccolato fondente

5 uova

zucchero a velo

Preparazione:

Sciogliere a bagnomaria il cioccolato finché liscio e senza grumi. Con un mixer, sbattere insieme il burro, i tuorli e metà dello zucchero; aggiungere il cioccolato e le mandorle. Montare gli albumi a neve aggiungendo il resto dello zucchero. Unire la neve al resto del composto e mescolare con delicatezza. Versare l´impasto in una tortiera foderata di carta forno e infornate a 180°C per circa un´ora. Lasciar raffreddare e cospargere di zucchero a velo.

Do you like my cake mould? It´s the one from Konstantin Slawinski. So cool!

Vi piace la mia tortiera? È quella di Konstantin Slawinski. Fantastica!

Enjoy

Godetevela

❤

Martina

Nusstorte

I loooove this cake! So simple yet so good that we decided to offer it this Autumn to our customers at Doll's Vis a Vis (the shop I work for oart-time and where I sell my sweets), in Salzburg. Where? Nonntaler Hauptstrasse 108. When? Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm. I baked this cake on Tuesday and today I was told to bake more because it is sold out!!! Yeah! Happy!

Ingredients:

100 gr. sugar

100 gr. butter

100 gr. grinded hazelnuts of which 1 tbs for decoration

250 gr. flour

2 eggs

1 tbs baking powder

6 tbs milk

chocolate for the frosting

Procedure:

In a mixer beat the butter with the sugar and a pinch of salt. When fluffy add the flour, baking powder, hazelnuts, and milk and beat until well incorporated. Then add the yolks and separately beat the whites to snow. Finally add these to your dough and mix. Put the batter in a mould and bake in the oven at 180°C for 45 minutes. In the meantime melt the chocolate and when your cake is ready and cool decorate.  

Enjoy and come visit me in Vis a Vis!

Martina ❤

Oooooh-oreo-oooooh balls

These little things are soooo gooooood! And so easy peasy cheesy to do, you won´t be able to do without!!! It´s one of those things you can do with zero effort reaching a 100% result, which everyone will die for. When you bring them to the table you might want to wear an armour, just in case; people might start fighting over who gets the last one... Now here´s the recipe, it´s no magic!

Ingredients:

1 package of Oreo cookies or similar

1 block of cream cheese, such as Philadelphia

1 pack of cooking chocolate either dark, milk, or white

Procedure:

Place the Oreo cookies in a bag/blender and smash/blend until they reach the consistency of sand (bigger crumbs are fine too). Then add the cream cheese and mix well with the smashed cookies. Roll the mixture into balls. Melt the chocolate and cover your balls with it (this is probably the trickiest part, but hey no panic!). Last but not least, leave them to cool then set in the fridge. Finally as I mentioned take a helmet and go for it! Hahaha!

Enjoy ♥

Martina

cHORSEcolate

I think you guys already know how much I love horses (see this post and this other post), nevertheless I simply can´t stop talking, posting, and baking about them. They are special creatures, able to make you feel special within that unique bond you have with them. I like them so much, that the thought of a horse cake makes me happy. I also really like this IKEA cake mould, so I guess this was just a perfect match! This time I made a really simple and fluffy chocolate sponge cake with confectioner´s sugar and melted chocolate. It´s so simple that I did not even bother to take it out of the mould, but I did take pictures instead, hahaha just because it does look nice! Recipe? No special one! I have no secrets to reveal this time; I am sure all of you have a mother, grandmother, aunt, cousin, neighbour, friend´s mother , and so on who bakes such a cake, so ask them ;) or if you really really really want to know and have this tremendous desire to ask me, then please do so in the comments below and I´ll post the recipe. In the meantime I hope you can enjoy this sight and this week.

"Horses are just like people; there are smart ones, dumb ones, miserable ones, honest ones, simple ones, cheats, freaks, leaders, and laggards. They have good days, bad days, and plenty of average days. They can be brilliant one minute, horrible the next. They can remember something that happened a year ago and forget what they learned yesterday. They´ll walk placidly into a metal starting gate that clangs and rings when the doors open, and then be scared of a bucket that wasn´t there yesterday."

The internet believes this was said by Quality Road´s trainer after he would´t load into the gate for the 2009 Breeder´s Cup Classic; doesn´t matter who he was, what matters is that he was right!

Bye ♥

Martina

By the way here is one more picture of him... ♥ Landi

Straw-blue-rasp-berry explosion!

Hello dear friends! Here I am, back on my blog again. I had some stressful weeks at university, so much to study, exams exams exams, and my brain was about to go on fire... but... I decided to turn the big bang in my head in a berry and chocolate explosion for my stomach☺haha smarty Marty!

This cake is really really really awesome: chocolate and berries are a perfect combination for students in need of loads of energy.

For the chocolate sponge I actually used the recipe of the Sachertorte (this is my secret, sorry), which I cut in half and filled with strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. Then I melt some bitter chocolate and dripped it in and on top of the cake, topping it with some more berries. The final result was delicious!

Enjoy ♥

Martina

P.S. have you ever had a look inside your skull at your brain? I have! It looks so cool.

Banachoc muffins

Hey all! Did you have a nice weekend? A nice, intense, and sunny weekend? I did!

And to fill my belly... banana and chocolate muffins! For the dough simply follow this recipe with half the ingredients. Well of course you can use the same amounts if you plan on making many many many muffins, but remember that bananas have to be eaten within a couple of days. For the icing I smashed one banana and mixed it with icing sugar, a spoon of butter, and cocoa powder. And there you are: a very easy recipe which doesn´t look to pretentious but tastes delightful. By the way the way the cases I used are from the Spanish brand Lekue, they are made of silicon, can go in the oven, can be washed in the dishwasher, plus they are really cute, and useful. 

Enjoy ♥

Martina

Romeo & Juliet´s kisses

Happy Valentine´s Day to all lovers, love pursuers, believers, dreamers, and passionates! Leave the consumerist aspect of this festivity in your wallet and enjoy the day. The inspiration for today´s recipe comes from my visit to Verona last weekend. I love everything about Verona: the atmosphere you breathe, its streets, the Venetian architecture, the Roman arena, and the Shakespearean touch to it. Since it is the setting to one of the most famous love stories - better say tragedies - ever written, what better way to celebrate Valentine´s day then with a recipe named Romeo & Juliet´s kisses?

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,

And the continuance of their parents' rage,

Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. 

from William Shakespeare, Rome and Juliet, Act 1, Prologue

Ingredients for 20 pieces:

350 gr. butter

300 gr. ground almonds

250 gr. sugar

500 gr. flour

50 gr. cocoa powder

50 gr. dark chocolate

50 gr. white chocolate

Procedure:

Beat the butter with the sugar and the almonds, then add the flour. When all ingredients are well incorporated divide the dough in two blocks. To one of them add the cocoa powder. Let the doughs rest for 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Then spread the dough on a flat surface about 1-1,5 cm thick. Cut out many little squares all of the same size and roll each one into a little ball. Put them on an oven dish with some baking paper a bit apart from one another and bake at 180°C for 20 minutes. When the cookies have cooled down, melt the white and dark chocolate separately and use them as a filling to stick two halves together.

Spread the love ♥

Martina

The Kiss - Hayez

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Squisitezze lussignane al cioccolato: read for translation!

As you might already know my hometown is Trieste, in Northeastern Italy. But Trieste wasn´t always part of Italy; it was for a very long time - from 1382 to 1918 - one of the oldest cities of the Habsburg Monarchy. In the 19th century it was the most important port of one of the greatest powers of Europe. As a prosperous seaport in the Mediterranean region, Trieste has been influenced by its location at the crossroads of Germanic, Latin and Slavic cultures and has become the fourth largest city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. Trieste has been a big melting pot of cultures and traditions, which have remained in the centuries and have created the city´s unique spirit.

Part of Trieste´s uniqueness lies in its culinary tradition, which differs from the rest Italy because it reflects the old customs and many features of the peoples of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I have this great cookbook I got from my mother which includes all these traditional recipes: "Ancient and modern recipes from Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia". By the way the "modern" dates back to 1972, hahaha! The book was my mother´s. 

From this book I have already baked various things: from sachertorte, to Dalmatian chocolate and walnuts cake (I will post soon), and pinza. This time I followed an old recipe called chocolate sweets from Losinj - a beautiful Croatian island - which is quick and delicious!

Ingredients:

200gr. butter at room temperature

200gr. confectioner´s sugar

100gr. cocoa powder

100gr. cookie crumbs

100gr. ground almonds

1 egg

Procedure:

Beat the butter with the sugar and the cocoa. Then add the cookie crumbs, the ground almonds, and the egg. Put the dough in a mould and put it in the fridge for 8 hours (or overnight). This dessert is to be eaten cold.

Enjoy ♥

Martina

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