Russian Season

I’ve always loved long relaxed weekend mornings when I could sit back with a cup of tea and savour my breakfast. With a newborn around (and no more weekends for me), I reappraised the freedom of morning hours. The little one gets quite fussy during night and then sleeps deeply and serenely through the morning. Which gives me a chance to not only get done with the housework in the kitchen and bathroom, but also cook something simple for breakfast. These stuffed French toasts were inspired by a gorgeous Strawberry and Mascarpone French Toast recipe I’ve once seen online and cannot find any longer - I’ve googled for it today, but to no avail. If I ever find it (I should have it somewhere in my bookmarks), I will certainly add a link to it here. Anyway, I had a pack of “Creme Bonjour”, a cream cheese similar to Philadelphia in the fridge, plus some bananas (probably the only fruit I’m allowed to eat uncooked), so I thought I’d try to use these for some stuffed toasts, based on that recipe. And I loved the result! Cream cheese worked even better than mascarpone here, thanks to a hint of saltiness, which balanced out the perfumy sweetness of bananas. That was also very quick and easy to make. So, here is the recipe: Read the rest of this entry »

As I already wrote, Latvians have some incredibly delicious desserts, a lot of them are made with rye bread, which is an essential part of traditional Latvian cuisine. There’s even rye breadcrumb ice-cream over here and yogurt with rye breadcrumbs – very tasty. Not to mention cream of bread, bread soup, etc etc. Even nowadays, as bread is losing its popularity (a lot of people are on a diet and think it’s too fattening), public opinion polls say an average Latvian eats up to 50 kg bread per year. And coarse rye bread is the sort which remains favourite throughout the years.

The dessert we will be talking about today is originally called Rūpjmaizes kārtojums, which means layers of bread. The most common method is to layer rye breadcrumbs, whipped cream, and cranberry or cowberry jam. Sometimes cream of cottage cheese is used instead. The dessert can be made in small individual ice-cream bowls or in a larger bowl and then cut in portions. We made it in a larger container for four and used mascarpone instead of whipped cream. Mascarpone has a richer taste than whipped cream; the only shortcoming is that it’s thicker and you’ll probably need to let sit your Rūpjmaizes kārtojums for at least 5 hours until the breadcrumbs saturate in jam and mascarpone. At least that’s what we did – and the result was very pleasing! Imagine rye breadcrumbs toasted with sugar and cinnamon, layered with tangy mashed cranberries, and topped with soft, vanilla-flavoured mascarpone; repeat once and top with those crunchy breadcrumbs. Sounds good, uh? And those fresh forest cranberries that Mom pureed with sugar came up really handy here: we store them in refrigerator and use for time-saving baking and dessert-making. Fresh cranberries can be replaced with cranberry jam, if you prefer.

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