Dancing on the rose pedals

Hi there!

Today it's time to get a little artistic with our bakings. We have some beautiful roses in our garden and therefore I wanted to harvest them before they'll freeze out there! So here's a few easy steps to save the beauty for a bit later. These kind of decorations are just a killer on a simple cake!

First, make sure that no pesticides are used on those flowers. I read that all the roses are eatable so there shouldn't be any other problems with them. Then you're free to pluck the pedals out of the flowers and pick the prettiest ones.

Basically you need just some egg white and fine sugar. I had just 1 flower here so less than 1 egg white was perfect for me. I began to "paint" the pedals one by one with the small brush and egg white. Make sure that there's egg white all over the pedal because the sugar needs it to stick on the surface! The egg white all over it also guarantees that the pedal remains in better shape for a longer time. The "painting" got me frustrated since it was quite slow so I ended up to dip those pedals in the egg white cup and wipe the extra egg white off them afterwards.

As you can see I misse one point when I was using the brush! :) Anyways, after those pedals are soaked sprinkle some fine suger all over them. In some cases the egg white melted a lot of the sugar so you just have to keep adding the sugar until it stays on the surface untouched. After sprinkling, place the pedals on a greaseproof paper whit sugar on it. Loose sugar prevents them to stick to the paper.

There you go! It very easy and beautiful way to decorate your cake. Just remember to keep those in a air-tight box and the point that even these don't last forever. After a couple of weeks they loose the bright color and the possible taste in them. So have a beautiful and chictastic time till next week!

Sour yet satisfying

Hello my loyal readers!

Today (finally!!) is the time for some sour action. I spotted this amazing recipe from a bit older Finnish cooking book and thought I''d give it a try. I remember having this big bush of goose berries in our back yard for many years ago. The berries were tasty but unfortunately I wasn't a fan of any kind of sour berries back then. Therefore when I saw this recipe I was surprised. I have never seen any recipe using these berries. So let's get started!

For the crust you need:

150g (5 oz) Flours

100g (3,5 oz) Butter

50g (1,8 oz) Sugar

1 Egg yolk

1/2 the insides of an vanilla pod (I left it out since I didn't have one)

The filling:

700g (24,7 oz) Goose berries

1,25dl (1/2 cup) Water

200g (7 oz) Sugar

60g (2 oz) Potato Flours

40g (1,4 oz) Peeled and grated almonds (I was confused by this so I just used almond groats)

On top:

3 Egg whites

150g (5 oz) Sugar

+ 26cm (~10 inch) cake tin

First I did some serious cleaning up for those berries before the baking began. I can assure that it took me longer then awhile to do that! :D Then I mixed up the ingredients for the pie, wrapped the dough into foil and put it in the fridge to settle for 30 mins. After cooling down and letting the butter to harden it is noticeably easier to work with. So therefore I rolled the dough into a little bit bigger circle than the cake tin and put it in there. Before the filling, the crust had to be precooked in the oven (200°C, 400F) for 10 mins. Naturally cover the crust with greaseproof paper and put some dried peas on top of it to hold it down.

Next up there was the filling. By following the pictures you can see what I did. So first off, I boiled up the water and the sugar. The added the berries into it and let it boil in the medium heat for 15 mins. After boiling them, get the berry liquid and heat it up again. At this point, dissolve the potato flours into the tiny amount of cold water and then add it to the boiling juice. When the liquid starts to precipitate add the berries and almonds. I have to admit that it was pretty scary. I remember what happened with that corn starch so there was reason to panic! Hahah.

Anyways, everything turned out better and I was ready to spread the filling on the crust.

When the filling has cooled down enough it is time to create the beautiful mask for the lady! Froth the egg whites and add the sugar little by little to it. I followed the books picture, which came out perfectly the same, but you can always be creative when decorating cakes!

Bake the cake in 190°C (375F) for 20 mins until the meringue gets some color.

This is actually as easy as it looks, and I was very happy about the outcome! The meringue was a bit undercooked despite the color but it didn't ruin the taste. Even the almond bits were a nice plus since there was something to actually chew on. For this one I'd give 8/10 since I'm still not a big fan of sour food. :P

Thank you for your time and hopefully we'll see again soon chicsters!