Russian-style Apple Pie

Yes, long-overdue, but here's another post! :D

This is probably the easiest thing you can make, I promise! I've tried a number of different apple pie recipes, but most North American recipes call for the typical crust-fruit-crust type of a pie. Being from Belarus, I'm used to more of a "mixed" pie variety (I might've commented on this before :P), some people would call that a tart.

I've made this Apple Pie before (a recipe from a Russian book I have), but it takes a bit of a commitment and I was feeling really lazy... So anyways, I was browsing on a Russian-language website and found this easy recipe of Sharlotka (aka Russian apple pie, or a Charlotte, if you will). I guarantee it, you'll love it! Minimal ingredients and depending on the type of apple you pick and the amount of sugar you use, it can be tart or sweet, or somewhere in between - the choice is yours!

Russian Strawberry Compote

I remember when I was a young I used to LOVE when the first harvest of berries came around our dacha. My grandparents always had an abundance of strawberries growing in the yard. So usually, after we would feast ourselves on said berries, there were enough left over to prep and preserve them for the winter. There was LOTS of jam (and I'm making some this summer!), but there were also large 3L jars of berries compote.

This is my first time making this beverage (and if preserved properly, it keeps well into the winter months), so I decided to search for a recipe online. Of course, if you search for "strawberry compote", you will find a recipe for something that has a syrup-like consistency and is meant to be poared over pancakes, ice creams, etc. Though there is nothing wrong with that (yum!), it wasn't what I was looking for.

So instead, I ended up searching for "клубничный компот" and finding what I needed :)

(in Russian, of course). It looks and tastes more like a strawberry juice.

I hope you enjoy it as much I do!

Who doesn't like cake? ("Rotten Tree Stump Cake")

Playing catch-up has been tough so blogging's been on the back burner a little...
This recipe was supposed to be shared with you, oh... about a month and a half ago! But, of course, life got in the way.

While vacationing in Belarus in January, my sister and I (well, more like my sister ONLY, I was mostly taking photos) made a delicious cake, whose name doesn't do it justice.

I do hope you attempt to make it as it is SO so easy! Here's a little preview:

Lemon Cheesecake goodness

I've been wanting something sweet this weekend, but didn't feel like eating anything store bought cause it's usually that buttercream stuff, which has lost its charms... So since it was Sunday, and I had some time on my hands, I turned to that Special Cookbook Edition of Canadian Living (mentioned a while back when I promised to make recipes from it).

Well... here it is - a recipe for Lemon Cheesecake Bars (well, mine was just a rectangular "cake"). I'll give you the amounts as the recipe lists them, but I will mention that I didn't have the proper bake ware, so I ended up cutting all of the amounts in half and making a smaller version of this delicious dessert. It turned out light and fluffy, unlike your usual "heavy" cheesecakes, and the hint of lemon added that much needed contrast in taste (kind of reminded me of a lemon meringue taste).

Enjoy!

Mmm... Sugar cookies....

Christmas time is THE time of the year when I think it's justified to indulge a little, food-wise (and refer to it later as a little "holiday" weight, he-he). I also think it's the time when the consumption of cookies increases sharply. So to add to that, I made some delicious sugar cookies!

I got this recipe for a mommy friend, who was kind to share it with us. She is a blogger mommy, so rather than re-write her recipe, just click on the link for step-by-step instructions to making these tasty treats: Amber's Sugar Cookie Recipe

Enjoy! And happy holidays!

Yup, MORE jam!

If you thought that I done jammin' you were wrong! He-he... :)
Zucchinis keep growing, which means I have to keep doing something with them (other than eat them right away, like I said I don't want to eat zucchini-something every day!).

This time I made zucchini jam with................ KIWI! That's right, kiwi! Only this time I photographed a step by step procedure for you so I dare you to try making this jam.

Time for jam!

Okay, so you remember that zucchini. That's right that SAME zucchini!!! There was still some left after making soup and zucchini bread... So I was trying to figure out what else I could do with it, and my mom tipped me off that I could make jam. What she had in mind was zucchini+kiwi. I've never heard of jams being made out of zucchini, but when I started searching online, turns out that there are quite a few recipes out there. And after I made it, I wanted to make more! So I asked my mom for her strawberry jam recipe. And the reason this last one is my favourite is because you get whole berries swimming in jam (it's the second recipe in this post, so read on).

Strawberry and Zucchini & Pineapple jams

Yummy Zucchini Bread

So... Where were we?... Ah yes, I was telling you about our harvest. One of the veggies we picked last Friday was that giant zucchini (it was hiding from me!). Well, it's great - we got lots of veggies! But what the heck am I going to do with all of it. Of course, easy answer is pickling... Right, but it's tedious (though I AM going to do that). Salads? Sure, but again, how many salads are we going to eat every day (same salads that is). I already made a vegetable soup - there is no recipe for this one, I just threw what I had into the pot, added some cubed beef, cooked it all and called it soup, he-he. It was actually pretty good - and what's even better, my hubby liked it (he's SUCH a picky eater that if he likes something, I know that it must be good!).

So here is a recipe of a Zucchini bread I found online. There were lots of different recipes, but I found this one looked easier to make (which it was). And what's even better, hubby liked it too!

Yum for Apple Pie

My friend Eugenia and I were talking about our favourite homemade foods, the ones our moms and grand-moms make. There are a lot of tasty dishes! I mean, A LOT! One of those mouth-watering things is a good old apple pie. This particular recipe that I'm going to share with you is a bit different from the usual North American "crust+filling+cover+make a hole" pie. It also takes a bit more effort than you would expect with an apple pie.

But first, let me tell you where I got this recipe, I don't want to take all the credit.

There is a show on Russian TV, called "Smak" ("Смак") that has been running since 1993. It's sort of a talk + culinary show - a celebrity guest must prepare something in the studio kitchen. It is up to each particular celebrity to choose what the dish will be. In 2001 they published a small recipe book featuring some of those dishes, which my mom sent over to me. This apple pie was made on the show by Georgi Taratorkin, Russian theatre and movie actor.

* NOTE: as you go down the ingredients list, you might think "wow, that's a lot of butter!"; however, all of the recipes I've made so far only contain REAL ingredients - nothing artificial, no preservatives. That's how people cook in many European countries and they are able to maintain their health and lifestyles because of those real foods. 

Here we go!

Mmm, apple pie!... (my hisband described it as "amazing!")