Wholemeal Sponge Cake with Jam

Its quick, easy to make and perfect for an afternoon coffee or unexpected guests. With just a few simple ingredients everyone has at home. 

Wholemeal Sponge Cake with Jam

• 4 Eggs
• pinch of salt
• 80 grams raw sugar or caster-sugar
• pinch of vanilla sugar
• 130 grams wholemeal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• some jam

Turn on the oven on 175 degrees Celsius. Whisk the egg-whites with a pinch of salt till stiff. Add raw sugar by the spoonful while still whisking. Slow down the speed of your food processor, add egg-yolks and combine for a few seconds. Turn off the food processor. Mix the wholemeal with baking powder, add into the egg mixture and combine gently with a spoon or a hand whisk. Pour into a tray and bake for about 12-15 minutes. Take out of the oven and cool it down. Spread the jam on the half of it and cover with the other half. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Fritters or Pancakes

We got lots of pumpkin at the moment and the pumpkin fritters are one of my favorite meals made out of pumpkin. Here is how I do it :)

You need:

• some pumpkin
• 2-3 eggs
• 1 tablespoon spoon flour
• pinch of salt and pepper

Grade the pumpkin, add remaining ingredients and cook on olive oil on BBQ or pan. Enjoy!

• Tips: You can eat it as a side dish or as a main dish with mushroom sauce or yogurt herbs sauce. 
• For the yogurt sauce, simply mix Greek yogurt with a pinch of salt and pepper and some herbs of your liking like chive, parsley, basil, garlic chive or any others you like.

Here with yogurt sauce.

Here with mushroom sauce.

Chocolate Ice Cream without Ice Cream Machine

Easy and quick. You just need to make sure you got very fresh eggs. If you are not sure about the freshness of the eggs, you need to whisk and heat them over a boiling water. I won't go into details as there are many recipes how to do it. We concentrate on fresh eggs today :)

Ingredients:

• 250g dark chocolate
• 250ml milk
• 2 whole eggs
• 3 Egg yolks (you can keep the egg whites for pavlova)
• 3 table spoons of sugar
• 300ml fresh and pure cream (like Paul's fresh cream)
• some vanilla and cacao to your liking

1. Place a larger pot with some water on a burner. Place your chopped chocolate and milk in a smaller pot. Set the smaller pot directly over the water of the larger pot. Bring the water to simmer and stir until the chocolate melts. Take it off the heat, add vanilla and cacao and cool it down stirring occasionally. Put it on ice or place in the fridge as the chocolate milk mix needs to be cold.
2. Whisk the eggs + egg yolks with sugar
3. Whisk the cream (don't over whisk it, stop when it's just firm and fluffy but still white, otherwise you make butter)
4. Add slowly the melted and cold chocolate-milk into the eggs while still mixing
5. Add the whipped cream and combine very gently.

Transfer the ice cream mix into cold container and leave in a freezer for at least 5 hours before eating.

  

Luffa Chili Chutney

My new invention from what the garden gives :) means that all ingredients fresh from my garden. Luffa-Chili Chutney. 

 Luffa-Chili Chutney

• Luffa
• Chili
• Curry-Tree leafs
• Garlic
• Turmeric
• Ginger
• Celeriac leafs
• Some sugar, salt and black pepper

Chop it to a very small pieces (I used my food processor). Cook for 10-15 minutes , fill into clean glasses, put the lid on, close tide and live in a dark place up to 3 months. Use as a dip or add as a spicy addition to any savory dish you like.

Sourdough Starter Recipe

It is easy to make your own sourdough starter. You just need some rye flour(organic is the best), water and about 5 minutes of your time each day for 5 days in a row. Once you have the sourdough starter ready, you need to keep it in a fridge and feed at least once a week. You can do it more often if you are baking a lot but once a week is the maximum of time without feeding. Otherwise your sourdough starter will go bad and you can start from the beginning.

Sourdough Starter - Old Traditional Recipe 

You need:

• rye flour, organic is the best
• filtered or lukewarm cooked water
• super clean glass jar or glass bowl (rinsed with a boiling water after you cleaned the glass)
• cling wrap
• rubber band

1st day: 

Mix 100g rye flour with 100ml lukewarm water. Cover with cling wrap, secure with a rubber band and leave in a dark warm place for 24 hours.

2nd day:

Add 50g rye flour + 50ml lukewarm water and mix together. Cover with cling wrap, secure with a rubber band and leave in a dark warm place for 24 hours.

3rd day:
Add 50g rye flour + 50ml lukewarm water and mix together. Cover with cling wrap, secure with a rubber band and leave in a dark warm place for 24 hours.

4th day:
Add 50g rye flour + 50ml lukewarm water and mix together. Cover with cling wrap, secure with a rubber band and leave in a dark warm place for 24 hours.

5th day:
Your sourdough starter should be ready by now. It has to have a very pleasant sour smell and have bubbles. If it doesn't, repeat the step from day 4, which also makes you wait for another 24 hours

6th day:
Your sourdough must be ready by now. If not, something went wrong.

Store the starter in a fridge


How to feed the sourdough:

1. Take out of the fridge for feeding
2. Feed at least once a week with good 1/2 cup of rye flour + 1/2 cup of filtered or cooked cool water. Leave in a warm and dark place for at least 12 hours by around 25-30°C room temperature or for 24 hours at around 20°C or less room temperature
3. Take 3 table spoons to make your bread, throw it away if you don't bake, cover the rest with cling wrap, secure with rubber band and put back into the fridge
4. You can also freeze the sourdough starter if you don't intend to bake for a while, however, it will lose its good quality after sitting in the freezer for over a month or so

Tipps:

• make sure the glass is super clean and rinsed with a boiling water to minimize any contamination
• when you see a very fine white film on the top of your sourdough starter, don't panic, this is normal
• when you see grey or black film, mould on top, this is bad. You can throw your starter away and start again
• your sourdough starter is supposed to develop nice sour smell and lot of bubbles after the third or fourth day, then you know, you did it well
• another sign that the starter is good to go is if you take a bit out of the jar and put into a glass with water. If it floats, you did well

My Sourdough Bread Recipe

There are many recipes for the sourdough bread. The recipe below is how I do it and it should be seen as a guide only. You will have to find your own way of doing it as there are so many factors like the sourdough starter itself, the flour you use, the amount of water required for the type of flour you have and so on, which might be different and the recipe won't work for you exactly the same way. Don't give up if you bread won't be perfect for the first few times. It is an evolution process which is worth trying. You don't get such a healthy and delicious bread anywhere else. It is not much work to do it either. It is like a routine after few times of making the bread.

My Sourdough Bread

• 1 cups plain flour not bleached
• 1 cup rye four
• 2 cups wholemeal flour
• 2 teaspoon salt
• seeds to your liking, I mostly use 1 table spoon of each: sunflower, pumpkin, black sesame seeds 
• 500ml warm water (filtered or cooked and cooled down would be the best)
• 4 good tablespoons of sourdough starter

1. Combine flour, salt and seeds.

2. Mix the sourdough starter and water with a plastic or wooden fork or spoon in a large cup. Add the starter-water mix into the flour mix and knead in a food processor for about 5 minutes. Move into a glass or ceramic bowl (dust the bottom with flour) and cover with a lid or cling wrap. I also cover it with a kitchen towel to keep it warm. Keep in a warm place til the dough doubles. This will very much depend on how warm it is. In the summertime (we live in a sub-tropical area) when we got around 30-35°C,  I have it sitting for about 4-5 hours. During winter, when the temperature at home is around 20°C, I do the mix evening and keep it over night.

3. Dust a clean surface with some flour and flip or scoop the dough out of the bowl. Stretch it gently and fold in the edges from the outside in forming nice round shape at the same time. 

4. Dust the bread basket with some flour and place the dough in it, the seam down. Cover with a light cotton cloth and leave in a warm place for about 1-2 hours until the dough rise again and you see a nice belly at the top :D

5. Place a pizza stone into a cold oven and heat the oven up to 240°C with the upper and lower heater on. The fan forces setting is not recommended here.

6. Dust a pizza paddle with flour, gently invert the dough onto the paddle with the seam looking up now and slide the dough onto the pizza stone. Close the oven, turn the temperature down to 230°C and bake for about 45-50 minutes until ready. Take the bread out of the oven immediately and place on a rack to cool down.

7. Wait for about one hour before cutting in!
ENJOY!!

Here the first step after combining all ingredients.

Gentle stretching and folding

and forming

I forgot to make a photo of the step where you put the dough seam down for the second growing. Will add it next time. Will add later.

Cooling the bread on a grid

I would love some comments after you tried this recipe :)

Wholemeal Banana Cake

“Banana Cake: Great recipe when you have some over-ripe bananas as the more ripe, the better for the cake. I wouldn’t like to eat the bananas anymore as the skin was already yellow-blackish. However for the cake is exactly what we want”

Simple Wholemeal Banana Cake

• 2 cups wholemeal (one cup is 250ml)
• 2 tablespoons of baking pure cacao
• 1 cup raw sugar
• 4 very ripe, already dark skin, bananas
• 1/2 cup sunflower or olive oil
• 2-3 Eggs
• 3 teaspoons of baking powder
• some vanilla powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Whisk sugar with oil and vanilla. Peel the bananas and process them in your knife-food-processor to a cream consistency. Add eggs and bananas into the bowl and combine with your sugar mixture. Mix wholemeal, baking powder, baking soda and cacao, add into the eggs-banana mixture and whisk all together. Bake for about 40-50 minutes at 180 degrees.You can do some chocolate icing if you like. Enjoy!

Country Cottage Dip

No more ready to eat dips from the supermarket for me. It is so quick and easy to make your own. Why should you buy a dip which is full of preservatives, artificial aromas, flavors.. The list can be long. Make your own and you know what you eat. 

Country Cottage Dip

• cottage cheese
• sour cream + Greek yogurt 
• garlic or garlic chive, onion or shallots, basil, parsley, chive
• salt, pepper
• You can also add some paprika, chili, fresh ginger or any other herb to your likening.

I don’t give the amount how much of all the ingredients as this is totally up to you. As a guide, I usually take about 300g of cottage cheese and about 100g of sour cream. Chuck the cottage cheese to a bowl, add sour cream and all other ingredients. Mix through. Done

Sebewa Pizza On Crispy Wholemeal Base

“Why Sebewa? Because of Sebastian and Ewa :) We are cooking this pizza always together and the recipe evolved over the years. The wholemeal base changes it to the more healthy wholefoods option. We love it! You get the best result if you cook it in a pizza oven or on bbq or, like we do it, on the wood fired bbq. Enjoy!”

Wholemeal Base (for 4 large pizzas)

• 400g wholemeal
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 2 teaspoon of dry yeast
• 220ml of warm water
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil

Mix all dry ingredients, add warm water and process in the food processor into a smooth dough. Add olive oil and combine. Cover up with cling wrap and leave in a worm place to grow :) Use the time now to prepare the toppings. We wouldn’t like to miss on our pizza:

• onions
• garlic, minced and combined with olive oil and salt
• tuna and or anchovies
• spinach
• and sometimes also some other ingredients like olives, paprika, broccoli or mushrooms, depends on the mood and what we got in the fridge at the moment :)
• and of course tomatoes, cheese and oregano!

Your wholemeal base probably doubled already and this is what we want :) The rest is pretty self explained. Check the photos and enjoy your pizza! Yumm!!

Tips:

• the dough should be very thin to enjoy all the flavors!
• the oven or bbq must be very hot! This is very important! Pizza loves it hot :)
• mix the garlic with salt and olive oil and sprinkle over your pizza before distributing the cheese. It gives the extra kick you will love :) if you love garlic!