Spark Simply - Recipes

Vegan meringue cookies

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 10:48:00 +0000

Made from aquafaba with peanuts and super creamy chocolate filling.

I was surprised by how easy it was to make these cookies using aquafaba. Usually meringues are made out of egg whites, but I've always wanted to try make them vegan. I managed to reduce the number of ingredients to a minimum - you will only need to use 7 ingredients! The recipe is very simple, but the main thing to do everything as instructed and with patience.

Ingredients:

For the meringue:

120-145g chilled liquid from a packet of Turkish peas (I use ICA I love eco Turkish peas)
220g sugar
120g peanuts
1 tbsp. potato starch

For the filling:

1 chilled can of coconut milk
250g dates
150g dark chocolate

Instructions:

1. Put peanuts on a heated pan. Carefully toast until golden brown and remove from pan to cool. Then chop into smaller pieces.

2. Pour the Turkish pea liquid into a large bowl and start mixing by slowly increasing the speed until a stiff foam is foamed.

3. Then start adding sugar 1tbsp. at a time and whisk until the sugar has melted. Add the peanuts and potato starch and carefully fold them in. Fill the confectionery bag and press small circle shaped cookies. Bake in a preheated oven to 150 degrees, but after placing the cookies reduce the temperature to 110 degrees. Bake for 1 hour.

4. While baking the cookies, prepare the filling. Put the pitted dates in the bowl and only the hard part of the coconut milk can (carefully taken from the top with a spoon), pour the melted dark chocolate over. Blend until creamy.

5. Arrange the cookies in pairs so that they are similar in size. Put the filling on top of one of the halves and then place the other half on top. And ready! You can eat right away, but they will taste better if you put them in the refrigerator for at least couple of hours.

Tips & tricks:

Peanuts can also be chopped with a knife. But it is important that there are no whole or large pieces left between the chopped peanuts, as this will make it difficult to squeeze the cookies out of the confectionery bag.
To make sure that the Turkish pea liquid is well whipped, the bowl can be tilted or turned upside down - the foam should remain in place.
Whether the sugar is melted can be checked with your fingertips by taking a small piece, if you feel large grains of sugar, continue whipping.
On the other side of the baking paper you can draw circle to get perfectly identical cookies.
If the filling seems too liquid after it's ready, put it in the refrigerator for a while.
Most probably you will not need all of the cream, because the recipe is adapted to the size of 1 can of coconut milk, either you can save it for another batch of cookies or you can add chopped nuts, cool a little in the refrigerator. Then form small balls and coat with the cocoa powder. There will be excellent truffles.

Focaccia

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:32:00 +0000

With sun-dried tomatoes, olives and oregano.

Imagine that you are going to a dinner party at your friends house. You've arrived, you're standing there waiting for the door to open and as soon as it opens you feel the smell which reminds you of something, like one of your travels while ago. Then, your nose brings you where the smell comes from and you see a painting. You become breathless. Once again those simple things combined and created something beautiful. The evening is full of talk and laughter, you're sitting down enjoying the painting. You're right there and in the moment surrounded by those little things of joy.

Ingridients:

280g wheat + 220g oat flour (mixed together)
460ml water at room temperature
14g dry yeast
1 tsp. sugar
6 tbsp. olive oil
oregano
sun-dried tomatoes
olives
salt
vegetables for the topping (I used spring onions, paprika, red onion and cherry tomatoes)

Instructions:

1.Combine yeast, sugar and water in a big bowl. Add half of the flour.

2.Mix all together. Add cutted olives and sun-dried tomatoes (as much as you want) and the rest of the flour.

3.Mix again. Place a towel over the top and leave to ferment in a warm place for about 30 minutes.

4.When the dough has doubled it's size, place it on a baking tray and even it out. Then pour over the olive oil and sprinkle oregano and salt.

5.Using your fingers poke the holes in the dough. And then get creative by decorating. (If you do not like to improvise, pinterest is full with ideas). Leave the dough rest for another 30 minutes. Then bake it for 30-40 minutes at 210 degrees Celsius until the focaccia is golden brown. Cool it down and enjoy!

Tips&Tricks:

you can skip the olives or sun-dried tomatoes
any other flour might be used instead of oat flour
baking time will depend not only on the characteristics of the oven, but also on the size of the chosen baking tray - the larger the shape, the shorter the duration of baking

Homemade zephyr

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 07:03:00 +0000

I've always wanted to try making marshmallows, so let the first recipe in this blog be something new for me too.

Marshmallows are most often made from apples because of their high content of pectin, therefor good puree comes from them, which is essential for the preparation of zephyrs. However, I think that apple puree does not have a very expressive taste, but in zephyrs without added flavourings it disappears completely, and as a result, zephyr tastes like pure sugar. So I tried making zephyrs out of only berry puree to naturally get an aromatic flavour. This was the 6th or 7th attempt making them until I was finally satisfied with the taste and texture, but each time the process was magical and beautiful, regardless of the result. Let's do it!

Ingredients:

For puree:

200g frozen or fresh berries (I use strawberries)
100g jam sugar
1 egg white at room temperature

Syrup:

5g agar
200g sugar
75g water

Tools required:

large bowl for zephyr mixing
saucepan for making puree and syrup
blender
mixer
surface lined with baking paper for marshmallow drying
confectionery bag with star shaped nozzle

Instructions:

1. Put unfrozen or fresh berries in a saucepan and add jam sugar. Heat on medium for 3 minutes. Then blend, if you want you can pass the puree through the sieve, then put it back on the saucepan and reduce for about 15-20 minutes on medium heat. The finished puree should not be runny. Put it in a larger bowl and let it cool down.

2. Add the egg white to the cooled purée and start mixing. Mix the puree for about 10 minutes until the mass has tripled in volume and becomes noticeably brighter and fluffier.

3. Put the sugar, agar and water in a saucepan. Heat on medium for 5-6 minutes until the sugar has melted completely. Syrup ripeness can be checked by lifting a spoon from the syrup. If the syrup from the spoon runs slowly and forms a kind of icicle, then it is ready.

4.Immediately pour the syrup into the whipped puree. Do it slowly by pouring the syrup with a small and even jet, so that it touches the edge of the container. Meanwhile continue mixing zephyr. When all the syrup is added, mix the mass for another 2-3 minutes until it becomes firm but fluffy.

5. As soon as the zephyr mass is ready, fill the confectionery bag with it and then start making zephyrs Leave to dry for at least 5 hours. Then sprinkle with icing sugar and find the other half of each and stick them together. :)

Tips&tricks:

practically any fruit or berries and their mix can be used instead of strawberries
if you use fruit or berries with a high pectin content, such as apples, then ordinary sugar may be used instead of jam sugar
you can experiment by adding fresh mint or vanilla to the puree before cooking for richer flavour
it is important to make sure that the fruit or berry puree is thick enough before adding egg white, otherwise the zephyrs may not harden
try to dip the zephyrs into the chocolate! put them in the freezer for just a moment before glazing so that the chocolate hardens immediately, after glazing put them in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes

Everyone, regardless of artistic abilities, will get fabulously beautiful zephyrs!

Moroccan lentil soup

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 07:02:00 +0000

While sunny Morocco is still on the "to do" list, let's go on a journey of taste! Super warming and super delicious Moroccan flavour-inspired soup.

Not long ago I was introduced with the beauty of Asian spices and from the moment I tasted this particular soup and it conquered my hear! Soups in general are one of my top dishes so get ready for a lot of soup recipes! I have eaten Moroccan lentil soup in several places (unfortunately only in Latvia) and got inspired to create my own variation.

Ingredients:

100g lentils

onion

3 celery sticks

2 carrots

sweet potato

a can of canned tomatoes

~1l water or vegetable broth

3 cloves of garlic

2 tsp. ground coriander

1.5 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. turmeric

1/2 tsp. hot pepper powder

a pinch of cinnamon

220 ml coconut milk

olive oil for frying

salt to taste

Instructions:

1. Peel and cut vegetables - carrots in rolls, celery and onion into finer cubes, sweet potato - into larger cubes. On a heated pan with olive oil put all the vegetables except the sweet potato and press the garlic over. Cook for about 3 minutes, then add the spices.

2. Cook for a little, then add tomatoes and sweet potato.

3. Put the vegetables to stew, while boiling the lentils as suggested on the package. When the lentils are ready, add them to the stewed vegetables.

4.Pour the water or broth over lentils and vegetables, cook until the sweet potato and carrots are soft. At the end add coconut milk and salt to taste. If necessary, you can additionally add hot pepper powder to make it more spicy , turmeric - for the colour, or other spices - to enrich the taste.

Tips&tricks:

instead of a sweet potato, you can use an ordinary potato or cauliflower
if there are objections to celery, it's okay to skip it, but I believe that it is a must in this soup, although I am not a fan of celery myself
you can use any type of lentils (red, green etc.)
feel free to experiment with the amount of coconut milk and spices

Chocolate, but make it special

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 07:01:00 +0000

My favourite story about chocolate comes from primary school, when a classmate gave all of her friends homemade Belgian chocolate bars decorated with Haribo teddy bears, almonds, coconuts on Valentine's Day... very simple, but from heart!

What's so special, simply melt chocolate and put candies on top, right? I've tried several times - many of them the chocolate came out to be inedible or melted quickly in hands. When science gets involved in my hobbies, I get too excited, so I did my research in how to get the perfect chocolate at home!

One of the main ingredients of chocolate is cocoa butter, but cocoa butter is a polymorphic substance, which means that it can form several forms of crystals after a change of temperature (melting, cooling). What does that mean? Chocolate can produce in total 6 different forms of cocoa butter crystals, each with its own characteristics. The first 4 forms will have a low melting point (will melt in your hands), soft, with grainy lumps, poorly breaking, white spots will form. 6-shaped crystals will form a very hard chocolate, which will harden in several weeks. However, 5-shaped crystals forms the usual chocolate, which is shiny, breaks well, does not melt quickly in hands and does not form white spots. However, in order to obtain such chocolate by melting chocolate chips or a chocolate bar, it is necessary to temper the chocolate.

I recommend Alex aka "fench guy cooking" Youtube video about chocolate tempering. Alex also tried to melt the chocolate by the Sous-Vide method (they use device that can maintain low, accurate temperature for a long time), demonstrating the importance of checking the temperature whilst melting the chocolate.

Ingridients:

chocolate (chocolate chips or bar, do not use baking chocolate)
toppings by choice
thermometer is a must!

Instructions:

I used Belconade 70% dark chocolate. On the side of the chocolaye bag there was also information about melting, cooling and working temperatures, depending on the type of the chocolate you're goint to use - dark, milk or white:

a photo of https://www.belcolade.com/

1.Pour a little water into the saucepan and boil until steam appears. Place a bowl on top (so that it is not soaked directly in water), pour in the chocolate chips (leave about a quarter for cooling) and constantly stirring melt until the chocolate reaches the melting (in my case 50°-55°C) temperature.

2.Then take off the bowl, continue stirring and put in the remaining chocolate chips broken into smaller pieces until the chocolate reaches cooling (27°-28°C) temperature.

3.Place the bowl back on a steam and constantly stirring heat the chocolate back to working (29°-30°) temperature.

4.Pour the meltef chocolate on a baking paper and even it out. Put on toppings by your choice. Place in the refrigerator until hardened. Break into pieces and enjoy!

Chocolate tempering might sound very stressful at first, but once you've tried you'll realize that the whole process is very simple and enjoyable!