Plum Tart / Zwetschgenwaehe

Love this time of the year with all the peaches, plums and fresh apples locally available. I’ve felt like making a traditional Swiss Plum Tart. Simple way of using any kind of fruits. Flaky, buttery crust, plums, cinnamon and I added a small Canadian touch by using maple syrup-simply delicious!

 

 

Plum Tart / Zwetschgenwaehe

Crust:

• 150 g white spelt flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 75 g butter, cold, cut into small pieces
• 3 – 4 tbsp cold water

Filling:

• 2 tbsp ground hazelnut or almonds
• 8 – 9 plums / Zwetschgen, cut into 1/4
• 100 ml cream
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp cinnamon

 

-In a  medium bowl add the flour and salt. Mix in the butter with your hands until  small crumbs form, add 3 tbs of water, mix until well combined, adding more water if needed. Do not knead to long. Refrigerate for 30 min.

-Grease and flour a 26 cm tart or pie form. Preheat oven to 375 F (convection setting).

-Roll out dough and fit into prepared tart form. Sprinkle evenly with the ground nuts.

-Whisk together the cream, egg, maple syrup and cinnamon.

-Arrange plums and top with the cream.

-Bake in preheated oven for about 30 min.

-Dust with some icing sugar, can be served with whipped cream.

 

 

Simply delicious!

Enjoy!

Ursula

 

You can find me on Instagram: littleswisslittlecanadian

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Peach Tart

Simple, rustic, delicious fruit tarts, in this case I used peaches. Niagara peaches are in season now and they are so yummy. Of course I had to make some kind of dessert!

This is how you make pies in Switzerland. It is the Swiss version of North American pies I guess;) I just like to call it a tart, rather. This is a very traditional “meal” in Switzerland, documents writing about tarts dating back to as early as 1556!

Easy pie crust filled with either fruit, veggies, cheese or meat. I slightly changed the usual crust, adding some ground almonds. We also add some ground nuts onto the crust before adding the fruit to absorb some juice while baking. And maybe the filling is different as well, a egg-milk-sugar filling.

 

 

 

 

Delicious Niagara Peaches

 

Peach Tart

Pie dough:

• 100 g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 100 g almonds, ground
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 85 g butter, cold, cut into small pieces
• 2 tbsp honey
• 4-5 tbsp cold water

-In a small bowl mix together flour, almond, salt and honey, add the butter and mix with your hands until resembles fine crumbs. Add the cold water and knead quickly until dough holds together. Wrap into plastic wrap and let rest in refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Filling:

• 5-6 peaches thinly cut into slices
• 100 ml milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tbsp honey
• optional: cinnamon, vanilla sugar or extract
• 2 tbsp ground almonds or hazelnuts

-Whisk together milk, egg and honey.

-Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Grease a 8 or 9-inch pie form.

-Roll out dough and put into prepared form. Sprinkle the nuts onto the dough then add/layer the peach slices. Pour milk-egg-honey filling over the fruit.

-Bake for about 45 minutes or crust is golden brown and liquid is set. Enjoy warm with some vanilla ice cream or let cool completely.

 

 

Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!

Ursula

 

 

You can find me on Instagram: @littleswisslittlecanadian

 

 

Swiss Carrot Cake

I hope you all had a happy Easter! And we certainly can not complain about the longer weekend;) Here in Canada our kids do not have spring vacation like my nephew and niece have in Switzerland. So we take the extra two days off of course! Also the weather was pretty nice and warm on Easter Sunday.

We have been making a few treats, like these carrot cookies!

I will definitely make these again, these cookies were so soft and just yummy!! I used coconut sugar for sweetening. I might be posting the recipe another time.

This year I colored our eggs traditionally with onion peels.

 

But the grand dessert was our carrot cake. Now a European carrot cake is a bit different than a North American carrot cake. So once in a while I like to make it the way I grew up eating it. Also in Switzerland you decorate a carrot cake with Marzipan carrots and I made some “grass” also using Marzipan. Now here in Canada, because you can not buy the finished product, you will have to make your own “carrots” using plain Marzipan and food coloring. I was lucky that my mom brought those when she was visiting:) This is not the original recipe I have in my 1982 Betty Bossi book: Kuchen, Cakes & Torten, rather a bit of a lighter version with less butter and flour. I admit, I did use coconut sugar, which turned out beautiful. We really, really liked it! And it is a keeper all year long! Make it a day or two in advance, it will taste even better:)

 

Swiss Carrot Cake

• 240 g almonds, ground
• 300 g carrots, shredded
• 90 g butter, unsalted, melted
• 6 eggs, egg whites separated
• 230 g sugar
• 1 organic lemon, zest
• dash salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp clove
• 60 g unbleached flour

-Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line the bottom of a 8-inch round baking pan with parchment paper. Grease and flour the sides.

-Cream together 100 g sugar and egg yolks. Add lemon zest, salt, cinnamon and clove. Mix in carrots, flour and nuts.

-In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff. Slowly add 130 g sugar then whisk again until shiny.

-Add 1/3 of the egg whites to the first batter and carefully mix under. Then add the rest. Mix in melted butter just until combined.

-Fill in prepared baking pan and bake for about 45-50 min, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool completely.

Decoration:

• almond shavings (around 50g)
• apricot jelly, or jam warmed and then strained through a sieve. Spread around cake then sprinkle the almond shavings on.
• Marzipan carrots
• green Marzipan (around 200g), roll out, in between plastic wrap, to cover the top. Then make some “grass”.
• or plain marzipan and orange and green food coloring and some pistachios for the “carrot top”.
• using a garlic press to make the “grass”
• Some chocolate eggs

 

-You can also simply dust the cake with icing sugar.

 

 

If you never had a European style carrot cake you might want to give this a try;) just saying…!!

 

Enjoy!

Ursula

 

Hazelnut-Butterfly Sweet Yeast Bread

There are some dishes from Switzerland, sweet or savory, that I am sometimes suddenly thinking off…maybe even missing a little. And that can be at times like right before I go to bed for some weird reason;)

Most of my baking is out off Swiss or German cookbooks, some old true and tested recipes that everyone loves. The other day my husband was asking for a Hazelnut Sweetbread. A traditional sweet yeast dough filled with ground hazelnuts. We call this a Russenzopf (Russianbraid, I do not know how or why it got that name). The great thing about it is you can take the same recipe and make hazelnut rolls or crescents called Nussgipfeli, which I LOVE and need to eat when we are in Switzerland, or like I did for this recipe, a butterfly.

However you shape it, it is delicious!

Now trying to cut down on white refined sugar, I used honey and coconut sugar. I will give you the original version as well, using white and brown sugar.

Hazelnut-Butterfly

Yeast dough:

• 350 g white unbleached flour
• 1 tbsp instant yeast
• 2 tbsp honey, or sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 125 ml milk, room temp.
• 25g butter, melted
• 1 egg

-Mix all dry ingredients together. Whisk together milk, egg and butter. Add to dry ingredients. Knead dough until smooth. Cover with a plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until doubled in size. About 1 hour.

Filling:

• 200 g Hazelnuts, finely ground (you can also use ground almonds)
• 5 tbsp coconut sugar, or 4 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 organic lemon, juice and zest
• 100 ml cream or milk

-Mix all ingredients together.

-Preheat oven to 180C/350F (Convection setting). Line a 30 cm loaf pan with parchment paper.

-Roll out dough into a rectangle. Spread filling out evenly. Cut horizontally. Roll each piece from the outsides to the center and lay both pieces on top of each other in a prepared baking dish. Let it rise for another 30 minutes. Bake in preheated oven for 40 minutes. Spread the icing on while it is still warm.

Icing:

• 4 tbsp icing sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice

-Mix together well.

Tip: Original recipe calls for 250 g Marzipan, 1 organic orange, zest and 1 tbsp juice. It is called Almond-Butterfly.

Recipe adapted from Dr. Oetker “Backen macht Freude” and Betty Bossi “Backstube”

Have fun and enjoy!

You can find me on Instagram. #littleswisslittlecanadian

Snowball-Apples

Several Years ago I received a cookbook that features 200 year old recipes from the beautiful Emmental region in Switzerland. If your wondering-yes, this is the region were the Emmentaler Cheese is from:)

Many recipes are well known dishes in today’s households. I am used to eat and prepare baked apples filled with ground hazelnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon. Such a classic!

Topped with Meringue, my kids thought these look a little bit like snowballs:)

 

 

In the book these are called Snow-Apples/Schnee-Aepfel.

 

Snowball-Apples

• 4 apples
• jam of your liking (I used red currant)
• applejuice
• 1 or 2 eggwhites
• sugar

 

-Preheat oven to 375F/190C

-Peel apples (I left the skin on), cut out the cores. Place apples in a baking dish.

-Fill holes with jam. Cover the bottom of your dish with some juice.

-Bake in oven for about 40 min. or until soft.

-Whip one or two egg-whites until soft peaks form, add sugar and keep whisking until shiny.

-Top apples with Meringue and bake 10 minutes, or until lightly brown.

 

–I used 2 egg whites which gave the snowball effect;)–

–I prepared the meringue with honey–

 

Recipe from the book: Aemmitaler Chuchi.

 

 

Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday Baking

I have fond memories of visiting my Grandparents on Sundays. We did not live that close by, so it was always nice to see them occasionally. My Grandmother was a very talented cook and we were always spoiled! Somehow I still find it special to have a nice meal and a homemade cake or any dessert on Sundays. Of course that doesn’t happen every Sunday here, I also like to relax a bit;)  The Swiss Marble Cake is just perfect. Easy, quick, simple and delicious! All time favorite!

Swiss Marble Cake

125g          butter, soft

3                 eggs

125g           sugar

1 pinch      sea salt

1/2 tblsp   vanilla sugar or vanilla extract

150ml        milk

250g          unbleached flour

1 tblsp       baking powder

3-4 tblsp  chocolate powder

1-2 tblsp  milk

Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, cream butter, beat in eggs, sugar and salt. Add vanilla and milk, mix well. Sift flour, add baking powder and stir into wet ingredients until blended

Spoon half of the mixture into prepared pan. In remaining mixture, add chocolate powder and milk, mix well. Spoon over vanilla batter. With a fork make twirling motions through the batter for marble look.

Bake for 45 minutes on lower rack, or until tester inserted in center comes out clean.

Store in refrigerator for up to a week.

Happy Sunday!

(Recipe from my old school cookbook, Tiptopf)