A blog about gluten-free living and food

This cake was inspired by an article in a Finnish magazine about someone from the Finnish Gastronomic Society making a cheesecake; the cake was flavoured with some orange flavour and white chocolate. A cake like that would be perfect for an Easter dessert I thought, after reading the whole thing, and thus I decided to try it out. The article did not have a recipe included, unfortunately, but it is not hard to make a cheesecake.

I found the making to be quite easy and fast, if you do not include the time needed for the setting of the gelatine. The taste is just beyond good in my opinion, much of it was due to the fact that the only sweetness in the cake came from the white chocolate, no sugar was needed in my opinion - many times a dessert is ruined with too much sweetness, sugar can either heighten flavours or mask them, when too much is used it sucks all the flavour out of the dessert.

The base was made with these cookies, but you can of course use any kind of cookies you like, something like Oreos (Dominos) would be good, if you can tolerate gluten. I do not know much about the ready made gluten-free cookies, so I can not state an opinion about them here, but I am sure that almost any kind of cookies would do.

I might make some alterations when making this on Easter; I will probably add some quark instead of the cream cheese, just because quark belongs together with Easter. The other thing I would change -if there were sugar loving people at the table - would be adding a bit sugar to the cake, not much, maybe 1/4 cup would do.

A White Chocolate and Orange Cheesecake

Please try using a good quality white chocolate which means that it has cocoa butter in it, not some other vegetable oil. There is a big difference in the way chocolate behaves and it mostly depends on the oil used in it. Chocolate with cocoa butter will melt just the right way. I usually use Fazer’s white chocolate, it is no Valrhona, but it is good and only has cocoa butter as the fat in it.

The ingredients,

-approximately 180 grams/ 6 ounces cookies

-50 grams/1,7 ounces butter

-100 grams/3,5 ounces white chocolate

-the zest and juice of one orange

-200 grams/7 ounces cream cheese (I used Philadelphia)

-2 dl/ 3/4 cup whipping cream

-4 gelatine leaves

-1 tsp vanilla extract

Line a springform pan with baking paper. Crush the cookies and mix them with the melted butter. Place them evenly on the bottom of the springform pan. Leave the pan into the fridge while you make the filling.

Place the gelatine leaves into some cold water. Melt the white chocolate. Whip the cream and mix it with the white chocolate and the cream cheese. Add the vanilla extract and the orange zest.

Place the orange juice into a saucepan on medium heat and melt the gelatine leaves into it. Let it cool a bit.

Mix the orange juice after it has cooled with the whipped cream mixture. Pour it into the springform pan and leave to sit in the fridge for at least 3 hours.

Take a springform pan and line the bottom with some baking paper.

I have found that greasing the bottom with some butter before placing the paper on it is helpful.

Crush the cookies; I usually use my Bamix mill for something like is. The Bamix blender I have is probably the smartest purchase I have ever made for my kitchen, I got so tired with bying a new blender every now and then and finally decided to get a Bamix. I has served me well for years now.

Melt the butter and mix with the crushed cookies. Then place them into the springform pan evenly. Place the cake base into the fridge while you start with the filling.

Take the gelatine leaves and place them into some cold water. Leave them for a while.

Grate the orange and squeeze the juice from it.

Whip the cream and add the vanilla extract to it. Melt the white chocolate in a bain-marie, or in a microwave oven.  Add the cream cheese to the whipped cream and then add the white chocolate.

Mix them all together before adding the orange zest.

Place the orange juice into a small saucepan on medium heat. Take the gelatine leaves and squeeze them dry.

Add the leaves to the juice and let them melt together.

Take the juice and let it cool before mixing it with the whipped cream mixture.

Pour the mixture into the springform pan and let it rest in the fridge for at least three hours, or more.

Have a great Easter everyone!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Blinis, or blintz, are made from buckwheat and maybe best described as a Russian sour pancake - if you like sourdough bread you will probably love blinis.

Buckwheat blinis were born in Russia and I do consider them to be the single most delicious culinary gift the land of the Tsars has given; although I must say that in general Russian food is really good, blinis just happen to be extraordinarily tasty. Fermented pickles, fermented butter and fermented milk products like smetana all have a special place in my heart and they came here from Russia; most of the Finnish foods I like are actually Russian.

The process of making blinis starts with mixing some buckwheat flour with yeast and sour cream, the dough is then left to rise for some time either in the fridge for a longer time, or at room temperature for a shorter period of time. I usually leave it in the fridge over night; the sour scent from the dough is heavenly in the morning. After the fermenting some milk is heated and added to the dough with egg yolk, salt and butter, the egg white from the egg is whisked and then it is folded into the dough.

I would describe the scent at this point like the one you get from really strong beer.

The cooking in my house is done on a pancake pan made from cast iron with a lot of butter which needs to be hot enough, otherwise the outside will not be crisp, but it is left to be just too fatty and soggy. Blinis have all kinds of different fillings, but the most common would be some caviar, chopped onions and smetana, or sour cream, I also like to have them with some chopped cooked eggs mixed with butter.

Whatever the filling is, the blinis rarely disappoint.

A Blini Recipe

For some dairy-free blinis you could try using soy yogurt instead of sour cream, some soy milk instead of milk and lard instead of butter, some vegetable oil is fine too. In general I find lard to be better here than butter, but butter is more traditional. Organic lard is hard to get here - I get some pig fat from the organic pig we buy every now and then -so I usually use butter.

These are cooked just the same as regular pancakes, a cast iron pan is better because the heat distribution is different, but any pan would be fine.

Blinis

serves 4 people as a main course and 6 as a starter

Part 1

-400 grams / 14 ounces sour cream

-2,5 dl / 1 cup buckwheat flour

-20 grams / 0.7 ounces fresh yeast

-1 teaspoon sugar

Heat the sour cream until it feels warm when you touch it with your finger, add the sugar and the yeast. Mix them together and then add the flour.

Leave the dough to sit at room temperature for a couple hours, or leave it at room temperature for one hour and then over night in the fridge.

Part 2

-11/2 dl / 3/4 cup full fat milk

-1 tsp salt

-2 tbls melted butter

-one egg yolk

-one egg white

-a lot of butter for cooking

Take the dough out of the fridge, it should look like this.

Heat the milk and add the melted butter and salt to it. Pour it into the dough and mix the egg yolk to the dough too.

Whisk the egg white until white peaks form and then fold it into the dough.

Now the dough will be more liquid and it looks like this.

Heat a pan on medium heat.

It is the right temperature when the butter placed on it turns golden and foamy.

Cook the blinis. You can see that they are done when the bubbles on top turn into holes, then flip them and cook the other side.

Serve them hot with sour cream, or smetana if you can find it, some caviar and chopped onions. Or you could serve them with boiled eggs that have been mashed with a fork and mixed with butter and salt.

This my contribution to Go ahead honey, it’s gluten-free, which is a monthly gluten-free event, hosted this month by Naomi at Straight Into Bed Cakefree and Dried. The theme this month is gluten-free canapees.

Popularity: 45% [?]