Mezna's Culinary Adventures

An Autruche classic passion fruit mousse cake 💃

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:27:46 -0400

An Autruche classic passion fruit mousse cake 💃

Grazie tanto 🇮🇹 @fatmasaifan 💃

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:22:11 -0400

Grazie tanto 🇮🇹 @fatmasaifan 💃

HELLO DUSTY BLOG, it’s been LONG! Here’s another...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:33:47 -0500

HELLO DUSTY BLOG, it’s been LONG!

Here’s another feature of mine on Teslam Eedich. I’ve been beyond fond of coconuts and basically trying to incorporate them in any form in ANY dish I could.. from desserts to soup. (coconut Thai soup Tom Kha Gai is DELICIOUS!)

Not to sound snobby but this is the best flan I’ve honestly tasted. It’s incredibly creamy & rich yet not overpowering with sweetness (love the usage of condensed cream instead of sugar.)

Since the recipe in the video is written in Arabic, here’s the written English version! -:

Ingredients:
Caramel:
1 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of water

Custard:
3 eggs
1 & 1/2 cups of condensed milk
1 & 1/2 cups of coconut milk
1 teaspoon of Vanilla essence

- Put the sugar and water in a pan over medium heat until it’s light brown in color. Approx. 7-10 minutes.
- Pour into prepared ramekins or baking pan, swirl to coat.
- Mix the eggs, condensed milk, coconut milk, and vanilla essence together till well combined and no traces of egg-yolks can be seen.
- Carefully pour into ramekins or baking pan and do not disturb.
- Bake in a hot water bath, for 45 minutes in ramekins. 1 hour for a 9-inch cake pan. Insert tooth pick and if it comes out clean it’s ready to go!
- Cool in fridge for 3 hours.
- Loosen the edge or put in hot water for 10 seconds and flip on plate.
- Top with toasted coconut shreds.

It has been over 6 months since I last wrote ANYthing that is...

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 06:41:00 -0400

It has been over 6 months since I last wrote ANYthing that is food-related. I can only blame it on my academic life and procrastination, but I come back carrying a video that’s featured me on Dubai One during the holy month of Ramadan! Yey!

The video has the Arabic version of the recipe.

This is the English recipe:
Crust:
250g of digestive biscuits
1/4 cup of melted butter

- Cover a spring form pan with aluminum foil
- Crush the digestive biscuits until powdery, add the melted butter and check if it holds it shape up, if not, add a bit of extra melted butter
- Shape and press the crushed digestive biscuits in the spring form pan with your hands
- Bake for 10 minutes at 350F

Filling:
1 kilo and 130g of cream cheese
1 & 1/2 cups of sugar
2 tablespoons of rose water
Saffron - as you please
4 eggs
1 cup of sour cream
a tiny pinch of salt

- Add the rose water to the saffron and set aside
- Beat the cream cheese for a minute, then add the sugar and beat for another 2 minutes
- Add the rose water and saffron mixture and the tiny pinch of salt
- While beating, add an egg gradually to the mixture till you run out of eggs
- And last, add the sour cream and beat till creamy
- Pour over the crust
- Bake in a water bath for 1 hour and 45 minutes at 325F
- Cool for 3 hours at least in the fridge before getting it out of the pan

- Served with date molasses and pistachio!

Dinner at Tiffany's by Saralia

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 17:03:00 -0500

A beautiful get-together set by Saralia - http://saralia-managements.blogspot.com/

Also made some macarons that were arranged in a Tiffany box.

What are your favourite cooking books? and which do you recommend ?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:09:00 -0500

My ultimate favorite is “Recipes from an Italian Summer”. Not sure who the author is, but the publisher is INCREDIBLE! It’s called Phaidon. Highly recommended for fresh and vibrant recipes!

As for home-ish desserts, “The complete Magnolia Bakery cookbook” is wonderful.

Also, if you’re serious about cooking (also for fun and learning!) I recommend you to get Larousse Gastronomique.. Amazing book and highly informative!

Tahini!

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 06:07:27 -0500

Delicious Lebanese dippppp goes well with practically ANYTHING! (Savory, not sweet!)

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic crushed with 1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of yogurt
1/4 cup of lemon juice
3/4 cup of Tahini (sesame paste)

Whisk in the yogurt to loosen it up a bit

Add in the Tahini

Aaaaaand the crushed garlic, and whisk it all up!

Add the lemon juice, and whisk again.

TA-DA!

You can always add more yogurt for a more loosened up consistency.

Pavlova

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:45:55 -0500

Grapefruit pavlova has got to be my favorite.

Easy & simple too.

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
16 tablespoons of sugar (yes I know. for each egg white = 4 tablespoons)
2 teaspoons of corn starch
1 teaspoon of vinegar
1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste/extract!

Whip up the egg whites, gradually adding the 16 tablespoons of sugar till firm like so!

Add the rest of the ingredients and fold in.

Till you get a shaving cream consistency!

Now, get a baking sheet with parchment paper on it. You can draw a circle on it to maintain a circular shape for your pavlova!

Put in your meringue… that’s it!

Hottttt oven at 350F and bake for 45 minutes and let it cool inside the oven gradually in order to stay chewy and marshmallowy from the inside!

Top it with whipped cream (make sure it’s very cool)!

Top it with practically any fruit you have…ANY FRUIT. But my absolute favorite is grapefruit and so, I topped it with so!

Bitter + sweet = fit perfectly.

Berries are great too. Or passion fruit and mango!

Aaaaaand tada!

Macaron Frenzy 3

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:43:45 -0500

Mint macarons. I accidentally over baked them *hides* they’re still pretty-looking though!

Drops of kelly leaf food coloring.. and a 1/4 teaspoon of mint extract AFTER I’ve folded in the almond and icing sugar mixture to the meringue!

(excuse the over-baking.)

Filled it with an extremely minty cream cheese filling and some fresh mint leaves as well.

(Notice how we can build a fort out of macarons?)

And tada!

Macaron Filling

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 08:23:19 -0500

I filled the Tiffany Blue macarons with this.

Half a can of sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon of butter
Vanilla bean paste/extract/pod
2 tablespoons of heavy cream

Put the sweetened condensed milk, butter, and vanilla in a pan over medium heat.

Keep on mixing till it comes off the pan just like so

Add the cream, and mix off the heat

And you’ve got this amazing spreadable, edible, liquid gold.

Macaron Frenzy 2

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:21:04 -0500

Tiffany Blue macarons

It was incredibly late at night when I made them, and I was sleepier than a person on that thing that sounds like atheist to put someone to sleep.

I used two colors to get the color right, since there’s no “tiffany blue/aqua blue” ready food coloring. Filled them with a spread that is somehow like Dulce De Leche, I’m not sure what it is honestly. But it’s similar to dulce de leche!

The non-circular shape shows how sleepy I was.

They were like droplets from heaven. Ignore the overbaked vanilla ones on the right. My heart still aches for accidentally overbaking them.

And tada!

Macaron Frenzy

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:16:04 -0500

Hi. How do you do? It’s been so long even time can’t remember the last time I logged in.

I FINALLY FINISHED THE FIRST SEMESTER OF MY SENIOR YEAR AND I HAVE MY WINTER BREAK RIGHT NOW AND I CAN’T BELIEVE IT AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO SAY IT’S LIKE I’M IN A DREAM OKAY? OKAY!

I’ve been on a macaron frenzy. (before my exams and till now) but I was too lazy to write any posts or upload pictures. So, here I start my macaron frenzy posts. I’m also on a profiteroles/eclairs frenzy. I can’t stop making them either!

But anyways.

P E A C H M A C A R O N S (& apricot)

I found Wilton’s Peach food coloring and it was too tempting not to get. I did get it, but I didn’t have any peaches or peach-like stuff to fill the macarons with, and so, I filled them with apricot jam!

Little feet like children <3

And tada!

I found my macaroons a bit lumpy and also not shiny ... please can you let me know the reasons for this

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 01:41:06 -0500

Lumpy = you probably did not sift the dry ingredients and the almond powder had big pieces in it

Not glossy = most probably you did not mix the batter enough (macaronnage)..it all depends on your strength while mixing and the stiffness of the meringue, so you might need to fold in more. (approximately 15 folds)

Thanks for the wonderful post. Your macarons look GREAT. I need slight clarification. Regarding the almond mixure, do u blanch the almonds before grinding them? Or do u literally take 200g of almonds with the skin and process till fine, then sift with 200g of icing sugar ? For the macaronage, you mantioned about folding half of the almond mixture into egg whites until well incorporated. You didnt mention about the remaining half of almond mixture. Would over mixing affect the macarons ? Thanks

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 08:27:00 -0500

Thank you!

Nope I blanch them, then make sure they’re dry and grind them up with the icing sugar for a very fine mixture.

And for the remaining half of the almond mixture, you DO fold them in, I don’t know how I forgot that I’ll fix it up right now!

and it somehow does affect it because you don’t need your macaron batter to be TOO loose, nor too stiff! You just need it to fall off your spatula in normal speed and create this ribbon-like pattern as it falls off.

:-)

Pretty in Pink. Français #4

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 04:15:00 -0500

When bored, bake macarons.

Pink macaron shells with blood orange filling that’s got a fuschia color.

EYE cardiovascular organ M A C A R ♥ N S

Now the recipe for this is a basic macaron recipe with a few drops of red food coloring! You can find the recipe in this old post I’ve written:-

http://mezna.tumblr.com/post/8615311841/francais

Now they’re a bit big in size than what a regular macaron should be!

But I also made baby macarons! (Even smaller than a penny lol)

For the filling, it was actually Chantilly creme (vanilla flavored whipped cream) with mascarpone, but I made it into “blood orange/grapfruit” creme with mascarpone!

Ingredients:

125g of heavy whipping cream (make sure its very cold)
3 tablespoons of icing sugar
125g of Mascarpone cheese
3 tablespoons of blood orange juice
Zest of one grapfruit
Red food coloring

Add the food coloring to the cream and mix to get the desired color. Then add the icing sugar and whip till stiff peaks and set aside.
Whip the mascarpone, juice, and zest together till creamy.
Fold the two together and set in the fridge for around 30 minutes then pipe them out on your macarons!

Triple Trouble

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 07:59:20 -0400

Triple the trouble = 3 kinds of chocolate in one cookie!

Now this is x10 better than a normal cookie especially if you’re the biggest fan of chocolate and cookies.

Ingredients:

125g of melted dark chocolate. (70%, I don’t understand humans who use milk chocolate in this. Just don’t.)
1 cup of flour, and two tablespoons extra!
2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
125g of soft unsalted butter
1/3 cup of brown sugar
3 & 1/2 tablespoons of white sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 cold egg
1 packet of chocolate chips! (A LOT, I KNOW RIGHT?)

As the base of probably any dessert, cream the sugars and butter together till fluffaaaaaay!

While the mixer is doing so, sift the dry ingredients all together (flour cocoa powder etc…) then sniff it. Yes sniff the cocoa. IT SMELLS SO GOOD RIGHT? PS: get the pure cocoa powder not that hot chocolate drinking crap that’s not even cocoa.

Add the melted chocolate to the butter mixture, make sure it cooled down (yet still of the same consistency = tempering. Keep mixing it while it cools so it doesn’t harden.) so the butter doesn’t melt while adding it!

Add the egg and vanilla extract then mix again.

Add the dry ingredients (it’s in the background of the photo, the batter was just too glorious to ignore.)

Add your glorious chocolate chips to your glorious cookie batter that seems like chocolate glorious mousse.

Use a spoon or a scooper to put on dollops of glorious chocolate chip cookies. I can’t stop saying glorious. Don’t forget parchment paper. Also don’t forget to space them out because they will expand during baking.

Bake at 350F for around 18 minutes!

Now this is how they’ll look like. Now smartie me forgot to take pictures of the whole batch because I gave those cookies away.

CHOCOLATE IS DELICIOUS OK? GO MAKE THOSE COOKIES.

Bai.

Berry Muffins

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 07:12:00 -0400

I have been on a semi-craze over muffins. I can’t stop making them, whether they’re those healthy stuff that I don’t believe in or double the trouble, chocolate oozing, orange scented muffins.

Well here are two varieties of simple blueberry muffins and raspberry muffins.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons of softened unsalted butter. (1 tablespoon of butter = 14g, 14x6 = 84g)
3/4 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream (125ml)
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Zest of an orange
1 & 1/4 cup of self-raising flour
1 cup of fresh blueberries, or raspberries! (for the raspberries, you might want to use a bit less and tear them apart because they’ll be a bit big in size.)

(Notice how incredibly soft the butter is?) Cream the butter and sugar together until really fluffy. The softer the butter the easier the process, you don’t even need a mixer if it’s soft enough.

Add the eggs and vanilla extract and mix

Now this looks incredibly disgusting I know, but anyway, add the sour cream and mix again! The sour cream (or buttermilk or yogurt or basically any kind of dairy product add moist to your cakes/muffins/cupcakes etc.. scintillating!)

Add one cup of the flour only, leave the 1/4 cup for the berries which I’ll show you what to do with next. Now mix them together.

Get your raspberries, add the 1/4 cup of flour, and coat them with the flour. This prevents the raspberries from sinking to the bottom of the muffins and getting burnt while baking!

Add to the batter and mix till everything is incorporated.

Now if you want to bake blueberry muffins, here’s what you gotta do.

Same thing as the raspberries, toss them in flour and mix it! Did I get you to think you were supposed to do something differently? ;) LOL

Now get your muffin tray and line some cupcake or muffin tins in them, scoop in the batter until 3/4 way full or basically one scoop of an ice cream scooper!

Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes.

Raspberry muffins.

Aaaaaaand the glorious blueberry muffins which were a bigger hit!

Look at the blueberry POP! Because of the intensive heat in the oven, which then it releases it’s juices and stuff. Yea. Delicious.

Frittata Cake. Eatalia #14

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:37:26 -0400

The awkwardness when you realize senior year isn’t like that everyone described it would be. IT’S INCREDIBLY EXHAUSTING!!!! It’s been over a month since I’ve last eaten properly or even cooked, I don’t remember the last time I actually entered the kitchen.

Thank God for cooking, it’s been so long since I last wrote I feel like I’m in a cave.

Let’s talk food!

Frittata is basically an Italian dish which has fried beaten eggs with a selection of fillings or flavorings then topped with cheese and finished up in the oven, also used in the Spanish cuisine. This dish is usually eaten for breakfast and brunch, but you can eat it at any time of the day!

A Frittata Cake is the same concept, yet stacked into several layers, between them are cooked up vegetables. Very easy to do and quick!

You’ll need

A selection of vegetables, like mushrooms, bell peppers, tomatoes, courgettes, eggplants, etc..
6 eggs - each two in a separate bowl
Around 2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
1 tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup of Mozzarella cheese & 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese
a tablespoon of butter
olive oil
salt and pepper

In a pan, add the olive oil, and begin with the veggies that take longer to cook. Like mushrooms/courgettes/eggplants/bell peppers

Towards the end, add your soft vegetables, which take less time to cook, like tomatoes! Then season with salt and pepper and set aside.

In a bowl with two eggs, add 1 tablespoons of chopped parsley and whisk it well.

Heat butter in a pan, with a touch of olive oil so it won’t burn. Cook the eggs like a normal omelet and try as much as you can not break it apart. You don’t need to fully cook it because you’ll be putting it in the oven later on. Set aside.

Now, repeat the same process with another two eggs and parsley.

Then, do the same thing BUT this time with the tablespoon of parmesan cheese! So in total you’ve got two parsley omelets and one parmesan omelet.

Assembling the Frittata:

In a cake tin or a baking sheet or whatever you want to use, set one parsley omelet.

Top it with the vegetables.

Repeat the process (Parsley omelet!)

Top it with the parmesan omelet, then with the cheese as a topping for all the cake!

Now I used two kinds of cheese (Parmesan and mozzarella) for the topping but you can use different kinds of cheese like pecorino (strong, so go slow), fontina, or even smearing some ricotta on top and topping the ricotta with mozzarella and leaves of basil (I wish I did that, I just got the idea lol!)

Now bake it at 375F for around 10 minutes till the cheese goes all golden and bubbly and delicious-looking! Wait till it cools before you slice it because all the vegetables will fall apart (just like it did in the photo because I was starving and couldn’t wait to eat it!!)

Happy cooking :-)

Poached Eggs. Français #3

Sat, 17 Sep 2011 07:01:47 -0400

Bonjour, it’s been a while.

A poached egg is basically an egg dropped into simmering water that’s been shaped with no moulds, with runny egg yolk. Taking it out of the breakfast category (like eggs benedict) it can be used in raviolis, on top of salads, or any dish that needs some sauce to it since the egg yolk does that job, or it can also be used for presentation!

(it kind of looks like buffalo mozzarella!)

A perfect poached egg is cooked for 4 minutes, with the egg whites covering the egg yolk completely and has a perfect oval shape. Using the traditional french method of poaching an egg, I won’t be using any ring to hold each egg or whatever.

As for myself, it took me two tries to get a perfectly oval-shaped poached egg!

You’ll need a pot filled with about 3 inches of barely simmering water, and a slotted spoon to get any excess water from the egg.

Now for the 3 inches deep water, you’ll need around 1 tablespoon of vinegar because this helps the egg shape up!

Break the egg into a bowl, and put it slowly above the water and drop it in, gently and immediately push the egg whites onto the yolk with spatula or a spoon but be careful not to break the yolk. Keep the water simmering but not bubbling up, and cook for around 4 minutes.

After taking it out of the water, test the egg by touching it, the egg white must be set and firm yet the yolk a bit soft to the touch. Place the egg in very cold water, this stops the cooking and washes off the vinegar.

If wanted, season with salt and pepper and top it with any kind of dish you’d like!

When you cut into the poached egg, the yolk must be runny just like so, and this looks so unbelievably good I think I need to make some more.

Served with a creamy mushroom semi-quiche, it went PERFECTLY together!

I read everything about poached eggs (and eggs in general) from Julia Child’s book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” which I highly recommend to whomever is interested in French techniques, cooking, and recipes. A book that says it all. BOTH volumes!

Monkey see, monkey do!

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:52:31 -0400

Banana bread. Probably the easiest thing to ever exist on this planet.

- You’ll need:

1 & 1/2 cups of flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of baking powder
1/4 tsp of salt
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1 & 1/2 cups of mashed bananas (3-4 bananas)
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp of cinnamon (optional, but it’s great to add!)

The mashed bananas must be well mashed, just like so.

Beat the eggs & sugar until really frothy and pale yellow takes around 6 minutes

Just like so, then add the vanilla, oil, mashed bananas, and mix again!

Mix all the dry ingredients into the liquid ingredients until well incorporated

It’s better to use a spatula when mixing in the flour instead of an electric mixer.

Grease a rectangle pan (used for loafs of bread) and preheat your oven at 350F and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes on the TOP shelf.

Leave it to cool completely, if you cut it as it is still warm it will fall apart. Needs around 2-3 hrs to cool down. Slice as thin or thick as you want, you can also spread nutella/peanut butter/jam on it!

Happy baking!