Made with a handful of basic pantry staples, and flavored with fruit purée, easy marshmallows are a delicious Russian confection, called zephyr or zefir.
Ingredients
250 g mixture of berries (any kind you like)
12 g of agar-agar
250 g of sugar
100 ml of water
2 egg whites
80 g of sugar
Directions
1I used a mixture of cranberries, blueberries, and strawberries. They can be fresh or frozen. In the medium bowl, pure the berries, add 250 g of sugar, agar-agar, and 100 ml of water. Mix well. We will be cooking berry syrup out of that. Put this mixture in a saucepan and set it aside for a bit.
2In a large bowl, whip together egg whites and sugar into a very thick meringue. So thick that if you would turn the bowl upside down, nothing will fall out. When this is done, we will go back to our saucepan with the berry mixture.
3On medium-high heat, bring the berry mixture to boil while stirring. When it starts boiling, continue stirring for another 3 minutes, the mixture should thicken a bit.
4The next step is to combine your meringue with this hot berry syrup. You do that by starting to whip the meringue again and slowly pouring the hot syrup into it. Once you combined both mixtures, whip on high for another 4 to five minutes till you see stiff picks. Vola, you have a marshmallow!
5Put your marshmallow into a piping bag and pipe it onto parchment paper. In about 24 to 30 hours, sprinkle it with powder sugar and attach pieces. Two pieces make one zephyr. For an example, look at the picture.
Russian Honey Cake is a gravity-defying layered cake with notes of honey and caramel. It is decadent, beautiful, and absolutely delicious.
Ingredients
3 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
3 eggs
11 tablespoons of salted butter
3/4 cup of light brown sugar
3/4 cup of honey
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of vanilla
CREAM INGREDIENTS
1 can of La Lechera Dulce de Leche
1/2 cup of light brown sugar
1 cup of sour cream
3 cups of heavy whipping cream
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Directions
1In the pan, combine butter, sugar and, honey. Put it on the stove and heat it all together at medium-high heat till everything melts and ultimately becomes one mass. When everything melts, it will look just like condensed milk. Make sure to stir this at all times, so it doesn’t burn at the bottom of the pan. Add baking soda and vanilla. It will start foaming up and doubling in size. That’s what we want to happen, keep stirring the mixture till it starts to change color. Pay close attention. If you leave it on the stove too long, it will burn. If not long enough, it will lose the pretty color. When it starts to look like a pale caramel, take it off the stove. Even though it isn’t on the hot burner, sugar is still cooking and will still be changing color. When it’s all done, it should look like a very pretty caramel.
2Pour the mixture into a large bowl and let it cool down for about 10 to 13 minutes while continuing stirring. When the mixture is hot but not hot enough to burn your skin add eggs one at a time. ( You know the mixture is cool enough when it leaves a ribbon trail. Look at the picture for an example.) When eggs are one with caramel, put it in the fridge for about 10 minutes.
3Now that our mixture is a bit warmer than room temperature, we will start adding flour about half a cup at a time till it forms a nice soft dough ball. And the reason we do that is that we don’t want to overdo it with flour. We should be left with a little less than 3/4 cup of flour. We will need that for rolling out the dough.
4Preheat oven to 355 degrees. While the oven is preheating, divide the dough into 12 equal balls. Roll out each piece on the parchment paper or silicone baking mats. The size of a circle should be about 11 inches. Poke holes in the rolled-out dough with a fork before putting it in the oven. Bake for about 4 to 7 minutes; it all depends on your oven. While it is baking, cut the circle out of the parchment paper about 10 inches around. You will need that to trim and make the edges clean or use a dinner plate. Keep the trimmings, you will need them for later.
5To whip up cream, in the large mixing bowl, whip sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. When sugar melts, add Dulce de Leche, whip for one minute, and slowly start adding whipping cream and continue whipping till cream reaches mayonnaise consistency.
6On a layer of cake, put two heaping spoons of cream, spread the cream eventually to the edge, repeat the process till you do that to every layer. You should be left with no cream. Now we are going to put the trimmings to use. Turn them into crumbs and sprinkle them all over the cake. Put the cake in the fridge for about 3 hours and enjoy.
1Mix together water, sugar, and yeast. Mix it all until yeast is dissolved. Into the mixture add the rest of the ingredients. I use the bread maker on a manual setting to knead the dough for me. If you don’t have one, combine all the ingredients in the large bowl and knead the dough for about 20 to 30 minutes, till it smooth and elastic.
2Divide the dough into two equal loaves and put them in the heavy greased bread pans. (Use coconut oil to grease your pans) Using a sharp knife cut the line on the top of each loaf. If you don’t do that, when you baking your bread the bubble will appear inside of it. And trust me you don’t want to have a giant hole in your bread. Let the dough rise. In the warm months, it takes about 30 minutes in the winter, and in early spring it will take about 50 to 60 minutes.
3Once your loaves nearly tripled in size, as you see here in the picture. Move them into the oven and bake them at 420 degrees for 25 minutes. (VERY IMPORTANT- DO NOT PREHEAT YOUR OVEN. Turn it on after you place your bread in the oven.) After 25 minutes, rotate the bread, cover it with foil and bake another 10 minutes. Enjoy!
