Nutella birthday cake and my 'to bake list'

Are you a nutella addict? do you have a nutella addict friend? if the answer to any of these questions is yes, please keep reading. If the answer is no, well, you wanna keep reading anyway, because nutella cake is not something you want to miss.

I've had two french roommates addicted to nutella. They would eat it every single day for breakfast. No matter if they woke up at 3 pm, completely hangover, or if there were pancakes or muffins in the kitchen. Breakfast was synonym of nutella.  Now I have my friend S, who doesn't eat it compulsively, but drools just by seeing the jars in the supermarket. So her birthday cake was easy to guess. Nutella cake with strawberries and cream.

I could've totally gone with just the nutella. But I've made this cake before and as good as it is, it's very dense. I thought some fresh strawberries and airy cream would make it a little lighter. Plus the cream serves as frosting for the cake. Per-fect.

Now, before we talk cake! I finally got around making my 'To bake list', which is 100 desserts/baked goods I wanted to make at some point. Some of them have been done recently but there's more than 90 to go. And... I have a proposal! what about you use the comments section and or my formspring (which is here in the main page) and tell me which ones you'd like me to bake first? I'm thinking about hosting a giveaway among those of you who respond. 

Ok. Cake time!!! The cake recipe comes from Nigella Lawson. And let me warn you know before you start screaming. It has lots of fat. She adds ganache as topping and hazelnuts in the batter, I omitted both and also used dark chocolate instead of semi-sweet. My adapted recipe is as follows:

Printable recipe

6 large eggs, separated

pinch salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 13-ounce container Nutella

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate (60%) , melted and cooled

For garnish:

strawberries

2 cups whipping cream

Preheat oven to 350 F

In a bowl, beat together the nutella, the butter and the egg yolks until well mixed. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with the pinch of salt until stiff. To the nutella batter, add the melted chocolate and mix it in. Add a quarter of the egg whites to the batter and mix well. Then add the rest of the whites, slowly folding them in with a spatula. Try not to deflate them. Pour the batter in a cake pan and bake for about 40 minutes or until the cake separates from the sides of the pan. Let it cool completely.

Slice the cake in half and place the strawberries in the middle so you cover the surface. I used about half pint of strawberries. In a bowl, beat the cream until whipped and cover the strawberries with part of it. Then cover with the other half of the cake and frost the entire cake with the cream.

Refrigerate to cool the cream. Cut. Devour. Enjoy!

International tarting makes puff pastry crossovers

You know how they say some things are worth the time you put into them? Let me tell you, puff pastry is one of them. 

That smell of butter cooking, those flakes that break when you bite into it, the layers of goodness... 

Seriously guys, worth the hours, the effort and the muscles. You have to make puff pastry at home. You just have to. For real. I insist. It really is not so hard, more a matter of patience than anything else. Of all the International Tarting challenges so far, this is by far and large the yummiest one.

Let's talk puff pastry. First of all, very important to weigh ingredients, no cups here, you want to get exact measures. Even more important, work fast and keep things cold. The last thing you want is to melt your butter while you're working with it. Just work fast and if things seem to get too warm, stick them in the fridge for a while.
Puff pastry is made out of two parts. There's the détrempe and the beurre manié. These quantities are for 900 g or 2 lb of puff pastry, which believe me, you're gonna be happy to have.

For the détrempe you're gonna need

150 mL cold water (2/3 cup)
5g salt (1 teaspoon)
350g flour (12 oz)
110g butter (3.8 oz, 1 stick) , melted and cooled

For the beurre manié

375 g butter (13.2 oz)
150 g flour (5.3 oz)

Start by making the détrempe. With a mixer or a wooden spoon, combine the melted butter with the flour and the salt. Then add the water and mix until the dough comes together. Roll the dough until you get a rectangle of 20 cm length, 15 cm width (8x6 in aproximately). Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Now let's make the beurre manié. Cut the butter in cubes and cream it. I did it with a hand mixer, took a while, but just be patient and keep working it until creamed. Just make sure it doesn't get hot and melts. Now add the flour slowly and mix until combined. Here comes the messy part. Grab the 'dough' and roll it to form a rectangle the same size as the previous one. Rolling the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap really helps. Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for 2 hr.

Here's where the folding process starts. This is a great tutorial to see what things should look like.

Roll your détrempe so it is 40 cm (16 in) long. Place the butter dough at the bottom part of it and fold the détrempe over the butter block as if you were folding a book. Now, place the 'book' so the spine is on your left and roll the dough (if it's sufficiently cold, the butter doesn't spread everywhere) until you get a 40 cm long, 20 cm wide rectangle. Visualize the middle axis of the dough. Grab the lower end and fold it over so it meets the middle axis. Do the same with the top part of the dough. Now completely fold the dough so it looks again like a closed book. You've completed the first double turn. Wrap the dough and refrigerate for 1 hr.

After refrigerating, repeat the process so you do another double turn. When you've done your double turn twice, you're ready to do the final rolling. Roll the dough (spine on your left) into a rectangle a little bigger than a piece of paper. now visualize three pieces of the same size and fold them like you would do with a letter. You're done! you have your puff pastry! Your arms hurt and you're tired but you're ready to do wonders with it. If you don't want to use it all at once, freeze the dough well wrapped in plastic.

Now for the crossovers. Roll the dough in pieces of about 20 cm length, 10 cm width (6x3 in) and place whatever you want the filling to be in the center.

Slice the sides of the dough in strips and fold over. Brush with egg and bake at 350 F for about 30 min or until golden on top.

Have a picnic under the sun at the closest park. Or enjoy them at home. Or wherever you want. Bite into them, into those soft flakes and that gooey juice from the berries.

You are gonna eat the last bit of those crumbs. I'm telling you.

About the leftover puff pastry... we'll talk croissants soon. 

Accidentally healthy strawberry muffins

Life's some sort of huge irony sometimes. For real. Picture me 10 years ago. I was the kind of bookworm 

who'd get perfect grades in class. Except for gymnastics. That one I passed with a C.

I admit I didn't make any kind of effort to make my teacher like me just a hint. The guy was a misogynist, I was a rebellious teenager (sort of). And quite honestly, I didn't get the point of running when nobody's chasing you.

Now look at me... hitting the gym 4 times a week, just starting with my running program. (Nothing fancy, just trying to do some cardio). And more importantly, craving healthy food.

Don't get me wrong! I love chocolate, ice cream and gummy bears, but I must confess I find myself enjoying those 'healthy' things most of my friends run away from. Read 'cardboard' high fiber cereal, celery sticks and giant amounts of fruit. And of course, I'm a big fan of whole wheat.

My friend S is more of the opinion that if you make things healthy, they are for sure not gonna taste as good as if you smothered them in butter. These muffins though, might have made her change her mind.

I had 2 kg of strawberries in the fridge. No kidding, 2 kg bought for ridiculously 4$. And even in my fruit craving peak, there was no way I was gonna eat them all. So I made muffins. Half way through the process I realized I didn't have enough all purpose flour. Then the health accident happened, I added whole wheat flour to them. Oh yeah, and switched milk for buttermilk. And granulated sugar for brown.

And this happened...

I didn't tell S about the 'healthy' component until she'd eaten one of them. Her exact words were:  'wow, they don't taste healthy at all'. That's what I call: Score!

So whether  you are of the healthy kind or not, just make them! Enjoy that tangy taste of buttermilk and the fresh strawberry softness and forget about the fact that the might actually be good for you.

Fresh strawberry muffins

Printable recipe

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups chopped strawberries

Preheat oven to 350 F

Cream butter and sugar. Add egg, buttermilk and vanilla extract and mix well. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Add flour mixture to butter mixture. Gently fold in strawberries. Spoon batter into muffin pans. Bake for about 20 min or until a toothpick inserted in the muffins comes out clean. 

Very berry cream tart

This is not a tart. This is an ode to your taste buds. This is the best of sweet things. This is the beginning of my love story with pastry cream.

It must be a family thing because my mum loves pastry cream. She doesn't like cakes (I know, weird), she's not a fan of frosting or layers of flour and butter. But she loves pastry cream. You ask her what does she want for her birthday and she answers 'anything with pastry cream'.

I myself used to like pastry cream but I was way too terrified to make it. I thought it was the hardest of things and any attempt to make it was gonna end up with a bunch of curdled eggs.

Oh my! how wrong was I! Not only is it delicious but so easy to make, you're gonna want to whip up a batch a day! 

Now, I know you feel like you could eat this with a spoon. But I promise you can even make it better. Just slice some of these...

Now you've reached tart perfection. You and my labmates, because this tart went to a work event and they all loved it!

Oh, I almost forgot... what if I told you you're gonna make a crust that doesn't shrink in the oven? Well, write this recipe down, or even better, go for the printable version

Unshrinkable sweet tart crust (from Dorie Greenspan)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick very cold unsalted butter cubed
1 large egg

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Mix in the cold cubed butter, working it with your hands, until pebbles form. Add the egg and keep working the dough until it comes together in a ball. Chill for 30 min. Roll the dough to a size big enough to cover your tart pan. Place the rolled dough in the pan and press it hard against the edges. With a fork, poke holes all over the crust. Cover the surface with plastic wrap.
Now here's the trick. Freeze the tart for at least 30 min before baking. I made it in advance and froze it overnight. Freezing the dough is gonna prevent it from shrinking in the oven, making it, for real, the perfect tart crust. Bake the tart at 350 F for about 20 min, or until golden brown.


Pastry cream (different sources)

3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups of milk
1/2 cup heavy cream*
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup granulated sugar

*You can change the proportions and add more cream if you'd like.

Bring milk, cream and sugar to a boil in a saucepan. In the meantime, whisk together the egg yolks, the cornstarch until the mixture turns pale and forms ribbons. Once the milk mixture boils, turn off the heat. Take a tablespoon of the milk mix and add it slowly to the egg mixture while whisking it. This will help temper the eggs, that is, bring them to the right temperature so they don't curdle when you add the rest of the milk. Now start whisking the egg mixture and add, all at once, the milk and cream. Keep mixing until you have a homogeneous mixture and then return the liquid to the saucepan. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil. I kept cooking for about 3 minutes after that. Keep in mind, the longer you cook it, the thicker the cream. Just remember to keep whisking the cream during the whole process. You can flavor the cream by adding a couple teaspoons of vanilla extract. If you do so, add it always at the end, with the heat off.
Transfer the cream to a bowl and cover the surface with plastic wrap so it doesn't form a skin. Chill for a couple hours, preferably overnight. I didn't have time to wait for it to cool down too much so I chilled it for about 30 min and then transferred to the tart shell.

Once the cream is chilled you can proceed to assemble the tart. Slice about a half a pint of strawberries and or any other berry you like. Add the pastry cream to the tart and level it up to get a smooth surface. Place the berries on top. Serve cold.

Experimental lemon 'mousse' with blueberry sauce

Let's say you're at your beloved friends house... it's Saturday night and you want to make something yummy for dessert... Like this...

Now let's say you love mousse but you don't really feel like using raw eggs... Well then you experiment... and by that I mean you find a suitable substitute for the egg whites. Its name is... jello + whipped cream...

Alright, at this point you're like... what the heck, is this a mousse? really? Well I don't know what it is... it's a fluffy concoction that contains lemon and has a mousse-like texture.  To make it even better... it has a swirl of blueberry sauce... and some fresh strawberries on top... so who cares about labels!

Now the recipe...

For the 'mousse'

1 pint heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons of lemon jello*
1/2 cup water
Juice of 3 lemons
Zest of 1 lemon
4 tablespoons of sugar

For the blueberry sauce

1 bag of blueberries (about 1 pound)
4 tablespoons of sugar

*The store didn´t have regular jello but you can totally go for that one if you want.


In a bowl, mix the 1/2 water and the 2 tablespoons of jello. Heat it in the microwave for about 1 min and stir to dissolve the jello powder. Add the lemon juice and zest. Let it cool outside or in the fridge. Just make sure it's not warm when you proceed to the following step.

With a hand mixer, whip up the heavy cream half way, then add the sugar. When the peaks are almost stiff add the lemon + jello mixture slowly while mixing. You want the liquid to be cold or at room temperature so it doesn´t deflate the cream. When stiff peaks form, transfer the mix to a pan, bowl or whatever you want and put it in the fridge.

Now if you put it just in the fridge, it'll take about 4 hrs to set (setting time for the jello). If you're in a rush, like I was, stick it in the freezer for about an hour and then transfer to the fridge. It'll be ready in about 2 hrs.

Did you forget about the blueberry sauce? Don't! It's seriously yummy and adds a sweet hint to the tart mousse.

Put the blueberries and the 4 tablespoons of sugar in a pan and cook over low heat until the blueberries burst and look tender. I mashed a few with a masher so they would release the juice, making a syrup. If you'd like a more liquid mixture, reduce the cooking time. For a thicker sauce just let more water evaporate. Put it in a serving jar and cool in the fridge until ready to serve.

And you'll get these beautiful blueberry sauce drops in your mousse...

Experiment #1 = success! Yum!

Flying strawberry chocolate chip coffee cake

Last weekend I had the pleasure to visit my friends Amanda, Ben and Orion in Cape Cod. There's no visiting any friends with empty hands, so I brought chocolate muffins and this coffee cake.

Funny, or not so funny story... we left the house for a bit and Ben's sweet little dog, Lucy, ate two of the muffins. Don't ask me how, but she managed to take them out of the plastic wrap. As freaked out as we were, nothing super bad happened.

Well, now let me get you a bit jealous. As Amanda says, Ben is one of those people that comes with perks. His perk is he flies planes. As of now, little ones, but beware Boeing! here comes Ben...
So guess what, we got to fly over the cape and adore the beauty of the landscape...

The coffee cake was our after flight treat and it was not overly sweet, moist, tender and rich. Semi-melted chocolate chips and delicious baked strawberry... Yum!

To make it...

1/2 stick of butter
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 fat free yogurt (or half a cup of sour cream)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
3 ounces chocolate chips
1 cup of  fresh strawberries

Note! I baked a small coffee cake, the size of a squared 6 x 6 in pan. Feel free to double the recipe if you want to make a bigger or thicker cake.

Preheat your oven to 350 F.

In a bowl cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and mix well. Mix in the yogurt and the vanilla extract. Beat in the flour and baking powder just until incorporated.
Clean the strawberries and slice them (about 4 slices for each strawberry). Pour half of the coffee cake batter in your greased baking pan. Place the strawberry slices on top of the batter. Cover with the rest of the batter. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on top, pressing them down a little bit so they get well attached.

Bake for about 30 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool and cut into squares.