Imbolc: Condensed Milk Cake

Today it is Imbolc and as always I try to share a related recipe for the feast. Milk is the main ingredient that is used for Imbolc cooking. So today I share a very basic cake, but with condensed milk. The cake has no added sugar, but of course the condensed milk is used as a sweetener here. The taste was a bit between a cake and a cheesecake so that is nice. But this cake doesn't keep that well and tastes best on the same day. The recipe is from Dr. Ola's Kitchen.  I am sorry for the weird color that the cake seems to have. The days here has been really gloomy and the daylight lamp I use sometimes does weird things to the pictures.

Condensed Milk Cake:
- 400 ml can condensed, sweetened milk
- 4 eggs
- 150 gr flour
- 0.5 tsp baking powder
- 50 gr melted butter + 1 tbsp for brushing the spring form

Pre heat the oven to 170 degrees. Grease the sides of your spring form and lay some parchment paper on the bottom. Anywhere between 18-22 cm spring form is fine for this cake.
Mix all the ingredients together with an electric mixer until smooth and pour them in to the spring form. Bake in a pre heated oven between 40 and 60 minutes. Use the toothpick test to see if it is done.

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Imbolc: Boterkoek

Yes, I am late to the party, because Imbolc was last week. But we made this on the day itself so we were actually perfectly on time ;) Because one of the typical Imbolc foods is butter, I thought this typical Dutch recipe for boterkoek would be a good idea to make. It would translate to buttercake. This boterkoek is much better than the ones we can buy in the stores here. It is best the same day, or the day after. But after that it gets on the dry side. I used a recipe from Laura's Bakery.

Boterkoek:
- 250 gr flour
- 200 gr sugar
- 200 gr butter
- 8 gr vanilla sugar
- 2 eggs
- pinch of salt

Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Mix the butter and sugar until you have an airy mixture. Add 1 egg and a pinch of salt and mix again. Lastly add the flour and mix once more. Grease a 24 cm springform. Add the dough to the form and make it even with a spoon. Beat the 2nd egg, and use this to coat the dough. You can make a pattern in the dough with a fork.

Place in the oven for 25-30 minutes. Let the boterkoek cool down before you slice it.

If you want to find more Imbolc recipes, just click the tag at the bottom of this post :)

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Imbolc: Colcannon Cakes

We don't celebrate the sabbats as we used to, but often I still like to have a small celebration on or around the time of a sabbat. Usually we do this by cooking a meal that fits the sabbat and sometimes a small extra activity on the day. Yesterday it was Imbolc, but instead of making pancakes like we often do, I choose something different this year. I went for a traditional Irish recipe called colcannon. Basically an Irish mashpot, that has butter and milk, two ingredients associated with Imbolc. In the old days, butter and buttermilk were handed out to the poor on Imbolc in Ireland. These days, this recipe is mainly eaten with St. Patricks day. But I thought it would be fun to make this, to get an old piece of history back. The funny thing is, that this isn't all that different from our Dutch mashpot. All though I never made cakes from that before.

The cakes are crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside, so not really like burgers, but more like latkes. You see there are so many different names and histories for roughly the same dishes. It is fun to do some exploring :)

Because the original recipe is already in English, there is no need to translate it and we stayed very close to the original, so just visit Simply Recipes, to see how to make these cakes :) We made it with spinach this time. It is a great recipe to use your leftover mashpot :)
If you do feel like pancakes around Imbolc, please check out the blinis we made last year :)

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Weekend Cooking: Imbolc Recipe

This weekend it is Imbolc. I have no clue which day it is exactly this year, but mostly somewhere between 1 and 3 february. I am not sure if most readers know but I am trying to live with the seasons and the old pegan celebrations fit this way of life perfectly. Imbolc is the time that we are starting to look ahead from winter to spring. It is not spring yet, but the first signs are there. Houses get cleaned, people seed new veggies for the upcoming year and there are newborn lambs. And I, I cook! To me there is nothing better than to eat something fitting to get in touch with these changes :) Something that is considered typical Imbolc food are pancakes! So yesterday Nick and I made some pancakes together. But not normal pancakes but really fluffy ones that are called blinis. You can serve them with any topping you can think of. Or include whatever you want, but because it was our first try, we kept it simple. This also goes for the cheese, you can interchange that too. I will share this basic recipe with you, which comes from Season to season - a year in recipes by Sophie Dahl.

Blinis - Base recipe (makes 4 large ones)

Blinis:
- 175 gr flour (I used wheat flour)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 300 ml milk
- 150 gr ricotta cheese, crumbled
- a handful chives
- a handful parsley
- 4 egg whites (save the yolks!)
- some butter or oil
- salt

Egg topping:
- 2 eggs
- 4 egg yolks
- pepper and salt
- some butter
- some milk

Sift flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Mix them with the milk until you have a batter. Add ricotta, chives and parsley and mix well. In another clean bowl, mix the eggwhites until they are thick and fluffy. Make sure the bowl is fat free or else it might fail. You can use lemon juice for this. Lightly stir them in the batter, but not too long. Bake these in some oil or butter, a large soup laddle at the time, for 3-4 minutes. You can see little airholes in the batter and then you can flip them. Bake the other side for a minute or so.

For the egg topping, mix the eggs with salt and pepper, and scramble them. If they get dry, add some milk. Of course you don't have to make the egg topping, but keep your egg yolks, you can make eggs the next day or so :) It would be a shame to waste them :)

This post is part of Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check out the other posts as well :)

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#61 - Lamb bento for Imbolc

On the 1st or 2nd of February some pagan beliefs celebrate Imbolc. This is originally an Irish festival but it is also a part of the eight sabbats that form the wheel of the year. Since I celebrate the sabbats myself, I wanted to give it some attention in my bento as well. But since I only go to school every other Wednesday, I am early with this bento. One of the symbols of Imbolc is a lamb, so I tried to make a mozzarella lamb. It took me about 2 hours to make this bento but this includes preparing fresh fake meatballs.

In the bento is some pasta with broccoli, mushrooms & cheese sauce that my boyfriend had in his bento earlier this week. I placed the broccoli around the lamb this time to function as trees. I used a flower shaped cutter to make a body & head for the lamb. And a bit of food coloring on a toothpick to draw a face on the mozzarella. I see a lot of people make pink facial features with ham, however this isn't an option for me and I really don't like the imitation ham slices, so that is why I choose to do it this way instead. The eyes & nose are from black sesame seeds. In the other tier there are walnuts in the cup, cherry tomatoes & Italian seasoned vegetarian "meat" balls (recipe below).I included a cute duck pick :)

Before I stopped eating meat, I loved to make all kind of meatballs with different kind of spices for variation. I do sometimes buy veggie "meat" balls but they mostly taste the same so I really missed being able to decide how I wanted them to taste. The soy based minced "meat" is great for in pasta dishes or oven dishes but you can't make decent balls from them because it simply won't stick. But today I succeeded to make my own fake meatballs with a soy product as a base. I used soy based hamburgers for this experiment because they have a different texture and are a lot more moist. I have chosen for Italian seasoned ones today because they would fit with the pasta.

For 12 mini meatless balls you need:
1 pack of soy based hamburgers (I used these)
1 glove of garlic
1 egg, beaten
fresh basil leaves
1/3 of a courgette
olive oil

First put the courgette in the kitchen machine. Lay the pieces on a kitchen towel and drain all the moist from it. Then put the garlic, basil leaves and hamburgers in the kitchen machine and mix everything till it is a mixture of crumbles. Put everything including the courgette in a bowl and mix. Lastly add the egg as well to mix it through. You now should have the exact texture of real minced meat. (this was the point where I knew I got it right) You can now roll little balls from the mixture. This shouldn't be hard since the mixture should stick to each other and not to your hands. Make sure the balls are nice and firm. Bake the little balls in some olive oil till they are nicely browned.

I will be adding this recipe to the foodie challenge: Whip Up something new! It is a challenge about trying a new recipe each month and blog about it. It seems a fun way to connect with others and to find more delicious recipes to try! So if you have a food blog, make sure to join this great challenge!

 

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