Marzipan Perfect For Tea

There's nothing more indulging than a bite of a small sweet treat so refined and precise. Adapted from The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden this recipe for homemade marzipan (massapan in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish spoken by Jews in Spain) takes minutes to make, keeps forever and will go perfect with your afternoon tea.


The Ingredients:
500g ground almonds
300g sugar
1 cup water
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tsp ground cardamon (optional)
2-3 drop of almond essence
Powdered sugar 

The Recipe:
Boil the sugar, water and lemon juice in a pan for 10 minutes, until the syrup is thick and sticky and coats a spoon. Be aware not to let it caramelize. Now add the ground almonds, cardamon and almond essence and stir over low heat for 2-3 minutes, until the paste no longer sticks to the pan. Set aside and let cool.  Oil your hands lightly, take little lumps of paste and roll into 2.5 cm round balls. Coat in powdered sugar, and serve. A true indulgence. We like to make some extra and store it in the fridge. We roll it into a log, wrap in saran wrap and put it away for a rainy day (it will keep for months). And when some some friends come over for tea and there are no cookies, we can quickly whip out our homemade marzipan.

Homemade Marshmallows!

Get ready for a surprise... For our dear friend's birthday, we made our own homemade marshmallows. Inspired by a recipe by the beautiful Hungry Girl Porvida, we were a little uncertain at the beginning. But the recipe turned out to be quick, easy and the marshmallows are so much better than what you'd buy at the supermarket (not to mention they are quite impressive...) You will need a candy thermometer.

Ingredients:
1 cup cold water, divided
90 grams gelatin
2 cups sugar
2/3 honey
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup powdered sugar

Recipe:
First prepare a shallow pan and line it with baking paper. Sprinkle powdered sugar all over the baking paper.
Place 1/2 cup of water in the bowl of a standing mixer with the whisk attachment. Sprinkle the gelatin over the water and allow it to soften for about 5 minutes.
Place the remaining water, sugar, honey and salt in a saucepan, melt and bring to a boil. Continue boiling until the syrup reaches 240 F on the candy thermometer.
Turn the mixer on on low speed, and slowly pour the syrup into the gelatin. DO NOT pour on the attachment itself or you'll splatter boiling syrup all over yourself (ouch!).
Once all the syrup is incorporated, gradually increase the speed, and continue whisking until the mixture turns white, thick and stiff (like marshmallow fluff). At this point add vanilla and mix to combine.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan, and with wet hands smooth the top.
Dust with powdered sugar and let it sit in room temperature for at least 4 hours.
When ready just take the marshmallow out, and with a sharp knife cut into bite-size pieces. Toss with powdered sugar to coat the pieces (we threw them in a Ziploc bag and shook), and store in a container.

You can get creative and add other flavors into the mixture, such as mint, coffee, cardamon, etc. We will be sure to play some more with the recipe the next time we try it.

Pistachio Cherry Trifle

It's CHERRY SEASON! We were invited to a small dinner party where the guests all cooked a number of small dishes each. We thought it best to make a smaller dessert, since we could not imagine having enough room in our stomachs to eat an entire tart after the feast (or maybe we could, so it's best we did this instead). Dorie Greenspan had us salivating over Pierre Herme's Streusel Tart with Pistachios and Cherries from The Cook's Book. This served as our inspiration as we decided to deconstruct the dessert and turn a tart recipe into a trifle recipe.

Well, the original recipe called for a pastry tart filled with almond pistachio cream and cherries and topped with an almond streusel. We applied our architects' mind, developed over many years of intense study and carefully crafted individual pistachio cherry trifles.

See the recipe after the jump.

Baked Split Banana

So.... after a two week hiatus, we have decided to start posting our recipes back on The Royal Kitchen and to keep our two blogs separate. More recipes to come... 
The Royals
 

Baked Split Banana

Ingredients
1 ripe banana
1/2 tsp. light brown sugar
cinnamon for dusting

The Recipe
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Split the banana in half, lengthwise. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes. Dust with cinnamon and serve.

Some Changes

In an effort to consolidate our blogs we started posting our recipes on our lifestyle blog The Royal Excursion. Hope you continue to check in to see what we are cooking! Lately we have made homemade granola, an open face tahini and veggie sandwich and baked split banana.

The Royals

Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

Banana muffins are great for breakfast or a snack on the run. We like to always have some ready for guests who stop by to visit. These muffins are adapted from Dorie Greenspan's wonderful column Baking with Dorie on Serious Eats. Lately we have been eating a lot of whole grains and have emitted butter from our diet (summer is officially on its way). Here we substituted whole wheat flour for regular flour, vegetable oil for butter, brown sugar for white sugar, almond milk for yogurt and added chopped mixed nuts instead of chocolate. So... having once made Dorie's delicious muffins, these muffins are completely different, but we think just as delicious. They are also a healthier version.

 Ingredients

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup almond milk (you can alternatively use sour cream or plain yogurt)
3 ounces chopped mixed nuts, optional (I used a combination of Brazilian nuts, hazel nuts, walnuts and almonds)

The Recipe
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray 12 regular-size muffin cups.
Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together well.
Add the sugar to the oil, beat at medium speed for around two minutes. Beat in the vanilla, then the egg, beating for about 1 minute. Mix in the bananas. Then, mix in half the dry ingredients, all the almond milk and then the rest of the flour mixture. Stir in the chopped nuts. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.
Bake for 10 to 20 minutes (pay attention since every oven is different, we burned ours a little-oops), or until a knife inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean. Transfer the muffin tin to a rack, cool for 3 minutes, then gently turn the muffins out of the tin. Cool to room temperature on a rack.

Thai Black Grape and Cashew Muffins

In Bangkok we bought the wonderful Doi Khan Cookbook. It's a funny little cookbook, with a collection of recipes compiled by the Royal Project Foundation. The recipes are all written by Thai aristocrats including the Royal Highness herself! Though most of the book is Thai food, we found this delicious recipe for Black Grapes and Cashew Muffins and had to try it out. Apparently, Thais don't only eat Thai food, and if it's fit for their Queen, it will most certainly suit us Royals.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup lightly crushed cashews
1/4 cup sugar
1 tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
125gr melted butter
1 cup fresh black grapes

The recipe:
Preheat the oven to 200 C.
In a large bowl sift together the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder. Mix in the cashews.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs together with the butter and milk and then combine with the flour mixture. Finally, lightly stir in the black grapes.
Spoon into buttered muffin pans, making sure you don't fill them up completely (allow room for them to rise).
Bake for about 20 minutes, and serve warm.

Maronchinos (Almond Biscuits)

With Passover coming soon, it's a great time to try out some wheat-free recipes. Adapted from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food, we made these little almond biscuits and they turned out a huge success. It takes about 10 minutes to make, but the richness of the almond and rose essence give the impression you labored over them for at least a day. The biscuits are delicately moist and can go well either with coffee or tea or as a dessert.    

The Ingredients:

400 gr ground almonds

125 gr sugar

3 drops almond essence

3 drops rose essence

1 tbs vanilla extract 

2 eggs, lightly beaten

The Recipe:

In a large bowl mix the almonds and sugar. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix with your hands to get a smooth paste. Roll into walnut-sized balls, flatten them slightly with your finger and place in a baking dish on a greased baking paper. Bake in the oven at 180 C for 20 minutes. Let cool before serving.

 

 

 

Kumquat Marmalade

Come winter, kumquats start to appear everywhere and we couldn't resist buying a large package of these sweet and delicate treats.

We also found a wonderful recipe for kumquat marmalade at Gothamist, a New York based web magazine we like to read. We combined our adoration of kumquats, marmalade and winter and filled a few jars with excellent results.

Ingredients:

750 gr kumquats

4 cups water

4 cups sugar

The Recipe:

Slice the kumquats very thinly, reserving the seeds.

Transfer them to a large pot, add the water and seeds (tied in a cheese cloth). Let sit for 24 hours.

The next day, bring the mixture to a boil on the stove. Lower the heat and let simmer for an hour, reducing the mixture. 

Add the sugar while constantly stirring, and then cook for another 20 minutes.

Check to see if the marmalade is ready by dipping a teaspoon and watching the marmalade turning into jell when it cools.

Remover the bag of seeds, transfer the marmalade to jars (using whatever caning method you choose) and store in the fridge. This marmalade is so amazing you'll finish it up in no time...

Bitter Lemon Jam

A few weeks ago, we came back from a weekend brunch at E+D's overloaded with lemons straight from their lemon tree.

We sat staring at a huge pile of lemons and decided: we will make a lemon jam experiment. We asked ourselves: lemon jam?
The result turned out to be a bit bitter since we threw the lemons in with the peel intact. It goes very well with meat or on bread with sesame paste.

We ended up making a very large amount of jam (since we dragged home so many), storing it in glass bottles in the refrigerator.
This recipe should be enough for one jar.

Ingredients:
1 cup lemons, cut into four and then sliced, with the peel
1 parsimon, cut into four and then sliced
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 cloves
3 tbs white wine

The Recipe:
Place the ingredients in a pot on medium heat, stirring often.
When it starts to thicken remove from heat and pour into a sterilized jar. Close well, and store in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.

In order to store the jam for a longer period of time we followed Dorie Greenspan's advice on canning.
Another great canning information source is Saving the Season.

Olive Oil Muffins

We tried a recipe from "The Smitten Kitchen", a food blog with spectacular pictures we follow. It's an easy recipe which turns out good and simple.

 

Jerusalem Delights

A Saturday walk through the narrow streets of Old Jerusalem, around the corner from the Church of the Holy Seplecure, we discovered stalls selling localy made sweets. Prices and language vary by the tour group.

Slabs of Halva (dense sweet confection made from tahini) and mixed nut brittle.


Jerusalem bagels, date rolls and falafel.


Sweet roasted nuts and raisins.

Cooking Again, Bangkok

Our last day in Thailand was well spend with a final cooking class conducted privately by Lee at "Cafe The Flow". We collected a list of our favorite street food dishes and presented it to her a few days before. Lee showed no hesitation. She immediately jumped into her research, asking endless family members and "hawkers" (food stall owners) and came up with a fantastic one day workshop of Thailand's best: Fish ball soup, Satay sauce, Khao Mun Kai (Chinese chicken), Khao Kiab Pak Moh (steamed dumplings), sticky rice with mango and fried bananas. Yum, yum and yum.

Pink Deserts in the Market, Chiang Rai

We stumbled upon these pretty fluorescent coconut deserts in mid preparation. We didn't have the chance to taste them, but as they were so pretty, we had to share them with you.

Our Banana Lady, Bangkok

Our favorite lady vendor in all Bangkok makes the most delicious fried bananas we have had. Her stall was dangerously situated around the corner from our guesthouse (Samsen Road Soi 1, Bangkok, for those of you in the area). We think her secret lies in the sesame seeds added to the batter.
Deep fried bananas are a simple but divine delicacy. This one calls for a shorter yellow banana with a firmer body, sliced 1 cm thick (1/3 inch). The pieces are drowned in batter (the contents of which remain a mystery to us) and deep fried in a wok. Praise the Lord!

Deep fried bananas.


Our favorite woman in Bangkok.