Grandma's Apple Pie {light} / Бабушкин Яблочный Пирог

I loved my great grandmother a lot. She was my inspiration since I was a kid. She lived a difficult, but interesting life. I still remember her exciting life stories that she would tell me...and the older she got the more often she would repeat them over and over again:)

Whenever I would visit her, she would have something tasty to snack on. And this apple pie  I remember very well. It was always juicy, fragrant and so very tasty!
Luckily, I have her recipe saved and today I'm making this pie for my kids.

The dough contains cottage cheese, which makes it very soft with a little crunchy crust.  I reduced amount of butter from 1 cup to 4 tb.s. and I loved the result. Be generous and use a lot of apples (but be sure to use juice and sour sweet type), because this is the most important part!:)

1 1/4 cup low fat cottage cheese
1 egg
1 cup sugar
10g baking powder
pinch of salt
1t.s. lemon juice
4 tb.s. soft butter
2 cups flour

egg wash for the top

Preheat oven to 180C. Beat butter with sugar, add an egg. Sift flour and carefully add to the liquid mixture. Add baking soda and lemon juice. Then carefully combine and divide the dough into 2 parts, one bigger than the other.
Roll bigger part of dough into square and transfer it into 20x20cm greased baking dish, creating walls as well, but they should not be high.
Divide another part of dough into 6 and prepare stripes to make lattice top.

Filling

4 large sour sweet apples, cored, cut into cubes
about 1/2 cup sugar
1t.s. cinnamon

Mix everything together and let it sit for some 20 minutes, so that the apples begin to give their juice. Or you could microwave this mixture on high for 5 minutes or so.

Place apples over the dough and cover them carefully with stripes of dough. Brush with beaten egg.
Bake for 40 minutes. They are easier to cut when cooled...although the cake is very delicious when warm!

Pistachio Nougat Brownie/ Брауни с Фисташковой Нугой

And yet another variation of brownie:) Brownie just happens to be the most desirable dessert in this house. And it is always preferred plain, with no toppings or anything....but I always "spoil" them with added creams, mousses and toppings...strangely enough in the end it is appreciated:)
Sweet and moist brownies with soft nougat layer and crunchy pistachios.

This time I decided to put a layer of soft nougat over them. Some time ago I made nougat cookies and I really liked it's texture. So if you are like me and even your favourite dessert gets makeover every time you bake it...I think you should give these a try. They are really good:)

Brownie:

160g dark chocolate
100g butter
2 eggs
150g sugar
200ml flour
2tb.s. cocoa powder

Melt chocolate with butter. Add all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Preheat oven to 160C. Bake brownies in 20x20 baking form for about 20-25 minutes.

Soft Pistachio Nougat:


4tb.s. butter
1 cup (200ml) sugar
50ml evaporated milk*( scroll for the recipe)
1,5 cups marshmallow cream* ( scroll for the recipe)
vanilla
200ml cup whole pistachio nuts

Melt butter in a pan and add evaporated milk (or other way around) into butter. Add 1 cup sugar. Heat this mixture on medium heat and stir all the time. After it began to boil cook for 3 minutes. Now add marshmallow cream and vanilla. Stir thoroughly and add pistachios. Pour this mixture onto brownie base. Set it into freezer for 15 minutes or just into the fridge for about 2 hours.

Anybody else is watching Eurovision? Norway is our favourite this year...Man, I'm a eurovision follower!:) Am I?? Make a batch of brownies and happy watching!:)

* Evaporated Milk:

If you can not find it in the store...like me... just boil 250ml of whole milk down to have only 50ml left.

* Marshmallow Cream:

150ml sugar
100ml light corn syrup (or runny honey without strong flavour)
50ml water
0,5 t.s. salt
1-2 drops lemon juice
2 egg whites
vanilla

Boil water, sugar, salt and honey during 10 minutes on medium-low heat.
Start beating egg whites with lemon juice until soft peaks. When syrup is ready add litle by little into egg whites and beat during 8 minutes until very stiff and fluffy. It is ready to be used. This recipe makes about 450-500ml.

Chocolate Pistachio Rolled Baklava/ Шоколадно-Фисташковая Баклава в Рулете

Chocolate baklava with nuts? Yes! And a very easy recipe too! Based on collection of different baklava recipes taken from Turkish sources.
I'm using ready made filo dough this time (you could check my made from scratch recipe here), which saves enormous amount of time.
Also, in this recipe the dough is just rolled into "tubes" and placed tightly together. You don't even need to take time to cut it nicely, just in half.
It's tasty, chocolatey, sweet and no fuss at all. Enjoy!

around 300g filo dough
200g crushed pistachio nuts
180g milk chocolate, chopped
250g butter, melted
30g cocoa powder
2.5tb.s. corn starch

Syrup:

3 cups vanilla powdered sugar
juice of half a lemon
2 cup water

Onto lightly floured surface place one by one thin layers of filo dough (brush with some melted butter if the dough get's too dry and I found it's easier to use two sheets of dough instead of only single sheet), sprinkle each evenly, but not too much with crushed nuts and chocolate, roll each piece beginning from one side and place onto baking (I use pyrex glass dish) dish tightly to each other.

Melt butter in microwave, add cocoa powder, starch and mix well. Evenly distribute the butter over all rolls and place the dish onto preheated to 180C oven. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, until golden.

In the meantime cook on low powdered sugar with water and lemon juice during 15 minutes or so.

When baklava is baked, take it out of the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes. Now brush baklava with syrup, using all of it and let it cool until it can be placed into the fridge. Wait for 2-3 hours before serving.

Napoleon Cake with Ganache / Торт Наполеон с Ганашем

This cake - minus ganache- was the most wanted dessert from my childhood. New Year's, Birthday parties, any holiday....The thing is my grandma loves pastry cream...she would even make some for herself and eat it with a spoon:) This cake is surely one of the best things she cooks.

Of course, the cake is d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s and so...nutritious:) Flaky layers of thin dough, fragrant and buttery vanilla cream....I also added chocolate ganache for the chocolate loving part of the family:)

Being a child I thought making this cake requires some sort of magic...but it is not so difficult at all. You can bake layers of dough the day before, finish the cake the next day and leave it for a night to stand in the fridge, so that it becomes soft and soggy-er so to say. This recipe makes a not very large and not overly sweet moist and homely cake (serves 9).

125g cup cold butter
2 cups flour
1/2 t.s. baking soda
1 1/2 tb.s. vinegar
app.1/2 cup water

Mix (grated) butter and flour with your hands or a fork. Make a well in the middle of it and add soda and vinegar. Pour some half a cup of water, maybe a bit less.
Divide the dough into 9 parts. Roll them out very thin.
Preheat oven to 200 C (fan). Bake these one by one on a baking tray covered with baking paper during 5 minutes.

Cream

1/2 liter milk
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup soft butter
2-3 tb.s. flour (if you like your cake to be more on a soggy side, use 2 spoons, I like mine to be more dry, so I take 3. It gives you somewhat thicker cream which does not soak the dough that much)
11 tb.s. sugar or powdered sugar
couple of drops of vanilla essence - optional
couple of drops of rum essence - optional
pinch of salt

Start heating the milk. Beat together 2 eggs, 9 tb.s. sugar and 2 tb.s. flour. Pour some of the warm milk into this mixture to thin it out. When the milk begins to boil add this egg mixture into the milk stirring constantly. Set aside and cool completely.
Beat butter and 2 tb.s. sugar until fluffy and carefully, spoon by spoon mix in to the cream.
Use about 2 tb.s. of cream for each layer of cake and press gently after you add a new layer (it can cause cracking, but it's not a big problem).
Set frosted cake into the fridge for a couple of hours. After the cake became softer you can cut off some uneven edges.

Optional frosting: 

Melt 150 g dark chocolate with 2 tb.s. olive oil, let it cool a bit and pour the chocolate over the top of the cake. Prepare simple sugar glaze (a couple of drops of water and powdered sugar) and draw lines over chocolate. Then stir with a tooth prick back and forth to create a pattern.

Enjoy!