I haven’t felt this winter. Again. :-D But it’s getting close to the end. I’ll tell you a few words about an ingredient I love and use in all seasons!

Today: yoghurt

What terrifies me the most when working with yoghurt? That I might leave it too much in the fridge after buying it!

Where do I get yoghurt from? Even though I also like Greek, French, and Italian yoghurt, together with the Icelandic version (skyr), I enjoy working the most with Romanian yoghurt. To me, it’s the richest. The cow and goat yoghurts may be delicious, but the buffalo yoghurt seems the creamiest.

Why do I love it? It enriches both a savoury meal and a dessert in terms of texture.

How do I use it? From pancakes to Romanian doughnuts, but also pound cake! There’s also a fruit cake, my Mom’s recipe (the Romanian doughnut recipe is also hers), that I bake often because it’s so ’easy to eat’.

Ingredients:

60g butter

120g yoghurt

120g whole-wheat flour

5g baking powder

a pinch of salt

4 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp cinnamon powder

for 25 cookies

Method:

Melt the butter.

Meanwhile, mix the flour, baking powder, pinch of salt, sugar, and cinnamon.  

Add the melted butter and the yoghurt.  

In a large baking pan lined with baking parchment, shape the dough as cookies.

Then, bake in the (preheated) oven for 15 minutes at 180⁰C.

How are they? J

Makes 4 pancakes (Φ 14 cm)

1 banana

1 egg

120g yoghurt

65g flour

4g baking powder

5g vanilla sugar

+ butter à pan

+ hazelnut spread à serving  

At times, we are craving a filling and fast breakfast. These pancakes can be a successful candidate to this end.

How to make them?

Mash the banana, add the entire egg, the yoghurt (I used buffalo yoghurt), the flour, the baking powder, and the vanilla sugar. Mix well.

Butter the pan and let it heat up. Spread a big ladle of batter onto the entire surface of the pan (thickness: 2-3 mm); flip the pancake only when you see bubbles form. (Be careful – banana pancakes have a different texture than regular pancakes; it is more difficult to work with them and are stickier.)

Serve them warm with a hazelnut spread. Not even our cats were indifferent.

I know, I know, I’ve promised 2 recipes since last week. Something occurred, though. Two days ago, I was searching for a solution dealing with some soured whipping cream... and I ended up clicking the recipes on my blog.

So, I told myself ’Why not make a list of recipes to bake/cook when we’ve got ingredients about to spoil?’

I’d like to keep it updated, by categories!

Basic ingredients

cottage cheese: papanaşi, baked papanaşi, Dobrujan pie

egg whites: Pavlova, pricomigdale, walnut cookies

milk: supangle, muhallabieh, galatopita, trileqe, condensed milk

sour cream: ashta

whipping cream: savarine, molehill cake

yoghurt: Romanian donuts, lemon pound cake

1 yolk: tart crust

several yolks: crema catalana

Fruits

apples: apple pie, apple strudel

bananas: Banoffee Pie, vegan coconut and strawberry dessert, vegan banana cookies, vegan banana and peanut butter cookies, vegan banana pound cake, banana and oatmeal cake, banana muffins

blackberries: syrup

grapes: grape pizza, grape cake

quinces: upside-down quince cake

raspberries: smoothie

rhubarb: rhubarb and strawberry cake, rhubarb sauce

Vegetables and herbs

basil: pesto

eggplant: mirza ghasemi

spinach: spanakopita

Already-processed foods

condensed milk: colchão de noiva, Deliciu

preserves: negresă (Romanian brownie)

rice cakes: chocolate cake bars

♥

16 brânzoaice

Dough

450g flour

1 egg

40g dry yeast

350ml sana or yoghurt

Filling

250g cottage cheese

1 yolk

a pinch of salt

150g sugar

raisins (as many as you like)

+1 egg white for brushing, flour for rolling out the dough

I used to love brânzoaice as a child – we could find them in all pastry shops around Romania. So, I wanted to bake them myself. I found an old recipe and I adapted it. It wasn’t as hard as I thought – and it never is when we do it with love.

If you like raisins, hydrate them in a cup of water a few hours before baking the brânzoaice.

Make the dough combining the flour, the whole egg, the yeast, and the sana (=fermented milk found in Romania) or the yoghurt and then knead a bit. Cover the dough and let it rise for one hour in a warm place.

Meanwhile, make the filling by mixing the cottage cheese, the yolk, the salt, the sugar, and the raisins.

On a baking mat, cut the dough into four pieces and roll out each sheet of dough adding as much flour as needed. From the centre of the sheet, cut out a rectangle and split it into two squares. Fill each square with the cottage cheese mix and stick the corners of the square in the middle, by also sticking together the dough on the sides, like a rag bag. Roll out the remaining dough – it will make two more brânzoaice; that’s four for each sheet of dough.  

After you finish rolling out all the dough sheets and shaping the brânzoaice, brush them with the egg white and place them into two baking pans (that’s what I needed) covered with baking parchment. Bake them in the preheated oven, at 200°C, for 12-13 minutes.

I really hope you like them! J