ZZAFF!: Cavollatt montato

 

For the last episode of this season of ZZAFF! I chose a simple but very scrumptious recipe. The base consists in cavollatt, an egg cream that was once consumed as an energy drink because of the amount of sugar and fat contained in it. The cream, alternated with ladyfinger biscuits, results in an excellent dessert that is perfect for the summer season. Cavollatt montato has to rest in the refrigerator and is to be eaten cold.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Roscòn de Reyes / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Roscòn de Reyes

Today for Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook a festive recipe. For once not a Christmas one but one dedicated to Epiphany instead, so you still have plenty of time to study it and find the time to bake it. For once I decided to cross cultural boundaries, flying to Spain. Roscón de Reyes is a doughnut shaped bread, made with a dough similar to panettone, which is decorated with candied fruit. This bread is prepared on the occasion of the coming of the Three Kings, on January 6th. In short, the Iberian version of the Swiss Three King Cake Bread! The dough I created is not the simplest to handle. For those who are not familiar with very rich and soft doughs I would recommend using a dough mixer. For reasons balance in the photographs but also to redistribute the Roscon to my various guinea pigs I decided to make mini portions, I think that for a larger donut 20 minutes of further baking lowering to 160 ° C will be surely necessary to bake the bread thoroughly. Try it…I bet you won’t find a softer dough!

MTChallenge n° 61: Hunger for tiramisu / MTChallenge n° 61: Miriam mangia il tiramisu a mezzanotte

Here I am, after oh so many tribulations, ready once more to participate to this month’s MTChallenge.This month’s recipe is only apparently an easy one to whip up: tiramisu. Susy literally threw at us a proper hand grenade…one able to shatter nerves and make our clothes explode under the pressure of fat and calories! Who would have imagined that making tiramisu would be so difficult? I’ll spare you all details of the various problems, errors and frustration I encountered all through my tiramisu journey on order to come up with a recipe that if only I had the skills would be a scream. No pastry skills, no party. What I managed to come up with is rather a tiramimoscio (an italian word I invented to describe my flaccid tiramisu). But I can assure you that if you do have the pastry skill necessary in order to make a proper tiramisu this recipe is truly remarkable. You can either choose to have it as tiramimoscio or a tiramifreddo (another invented word for the frozen version of this dessert). In fact those two version can be easily interpreted as the sweet incarnations of the two female characters from the film from which I drew inspiration: “The Hunger”.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Rye, Toasted Flour and Thyme Crackers / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Crackers di farina di segale, farina tostata e timo

New year, new life, new recipe. I start the year with new recipes, with Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook and some news. As already anticipated shortly I will be opening a new blog where I will talk about my new adventure with macrobiotics and develop my own recipes according to my new lifestyle. Some changes are necessary for this blog too. It is unthinkable for me to be able to publish twice a week in both blogs, so I decided to split up the posts on two different days, keeping Fridays as posting day for the current blog and keeping Monday for the macro blog. Here the focus will be mainly on bread, and if possible I will try to participate to the various bread collections and contest I took part to the past year and a half, as Twelve Loaves, Daring Bakers and MTC Challenge. Of course Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook column will stay so I will have to make some choices, probably picking just a few challenges from month to month. But now let’s move on to the recipe with which I greet the new year.

Childhood memories of my mother’s Clafoutis and Red currant Clafoutis / Ricordi del Clafoutis di mia madre e il mio Clafoutis ai ribes

Clafoutis. This dessert evokes many different images in my mind. The oven glowing with a warm yellow light, just like a lighthouse at the far right side of the kitchen, filling the room with the sweet and dense scent of cherries and fresh cream. I cherished those moments when – even though it sounds so un-poetic – my mom would take the bag of precooked pitted black cherries from the kitchen cupboard because I knew exactly what was coming on.

Bavarian Cream with White Chocolate, Cinnamon and Orange and Dark Chocolate Butterflies / Un bavarese a quattro mani e due cervelli: Bavarese al cioccolato bianco, arancia e cannella con farfalle di cioccolato fondente

As I promised to you here on my Garganelli homemade pasta post I am finally posting the recipe for the dessert me and Michela made while her visit in Switzerland. Pastry is a world that fascinates me. Accuracy, balance of ingredients, pure aesthetics. Three core elements that just thinking about them make me shake with anxiety.

My mother’s memories of a posh grocery and cheesecakes: Leicestershire curd tarts / I ricordi di mia madre, tortine al formaggio e un alimentari molto chic: Leicestershire curd tarts

This recipe has been “commissioned” to me by my mother so I am leaving the post to the words she e-mailed to me. The recipe she sent me can be found on this page which has some other Leicestershire recipes on it too. The pastry I chose is a quick “rough” one but proved to be very good, flaky and crisp. You can find it on British Larder, at this page.

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook: Cream Biscuits with Saffron and Raisins / Il Ricettario del Mulino di Maroggia: Biscotti alla panna con zafferano e uvette

Maroggia’s Mill Cookbook is back, this time with some cookies which in reality are a little of a failed experiment from an aestethic point of view but then such a delightful for the tastebuds I decided to publish them anyway. Let’s call them ugly but tasty cookies!

Sourdough Surprises: Monkey Bread drove us bananas! / Sourdough Suprises: Monkey bread, il pane delle scimmie che ci ha fatto perdere la testa

It’s the 20th and Sourdough Surprises is back. As always I am delighted to discover a new bread kind, and what bread! I must admit this has been a great hit among my new official recipe testers: Flavia (go and take a look at her work here, she’s an amazing photographer and graphic designer) and her studio buddies Daniela, Micha and Alessandro not to mention Antonio, Flavia’s boyfriend, who devoured 3 and a half out of 4 monkey bread balls she had taken home. I must admit I was quite skeptic, not being a huge fan of overly sweet things, and was a bit scared only looking at the shape and fierce fatness of this very special bread.

Celeriac, White Chocolate, Cardamom and Fleur de Sel Caramel tartellettes / Tartellettes al sedano rapa, cardamomo e caramello al fleur del sel

I have been toying with this idea for a long time now. The inspiration came both from Kate’s beautiful blog, Veggie Desserts, and a mock bechamel sauce I made a few years ago with the use of celeriac to avoid fatness and heaviness given by butter and milk while using the natural sweetness and creaminess of this plant. Creaminess, sweetness, white, white chocolate, cardamom.