Author Archives: Better Baking Bible

Christmas Dinner Prep – A Guide for a Fast and Easy Meal!

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Christmas is just around the corner, and we can’t wait to get started with our Christmas dinner prep! Don’t sweat it, making a delicious dinner that not only tastes great, but also looks great, isn’t as hard as it may seem. If it’s your first year making dinner for the family, or if you are looking for ways to lessen the load, we’ve got all the tips and tricks to help you out on your way. We’ve partnered with Mayfair Granite this holiday season to bring to your this ingenious Christmas dinner guide that will make making dinner easy, peasy, and in a snap! 

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Traditional Christmas Biscuits: Sweet German Lebkuchen

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Lebkuchen is a traditional sweet biscuit that comes from Nurembery, Germany since the late 1300s. This soft, cakey biscuit is spicy, easy-to-make and marks the beginning of Christmas in Germany. It is a delicious biscuit that tastes almost like gingerbread even though there is no ginger in it! These cookies are round, have a sweet, lightly nutty taste and they give off a spicy aroma like nutmeg and allspice. 

You can enjoy these with a warm cup of tea or coffee, and they store really well so they are perfect to make ahead of time if you would like to get a kick start on your Christmas baking! Just keep them in a tin can or sealed container to maintain freshness and eat up whenever you like! 

*If you would like to share my recipe and photos please provide proper credit and a link back to this original post. Thanks!   

German Lebkuchen Christmas Biscuits

Sweet, soft, and cakey traditional German Christmas cookies.
 
Ingredients:
 
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 2/3 cup honey
  • 1 cup light molasses
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1 tbsp baking soda
  • 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tbsp cloves
  • 1 tbsp cocoa powder
  • 200g candied orange, lemon and citron peel, diced and mixed
  • 100g slivered almonds
  • 3 1/2 cups white flour
  • lemon juice for icing
  • powdered sugar for icing
  • * optional: dark chocolate for icing
Instructions:
 
  • In a saucepan over medium heat, warm brown sugar, honey molasses and butter. Mix together and set aside to cool.
  • In a mixing bowl, mix sour cream and baking soda and then add the cooled sugar, honey, molasses and butter mix.
  • Mix in ground cinnamon, cloves, cocoa powder, candied citrus peels, slivered almonds, and white flour. Keep mixing with your hands until you form a nice dough. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to rest overnight in the fridge.
  • The next day, preheat over to 350 F and roll out dough 1/4″ thick onto a lightly floured surface. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out circles and place onto lined baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.
  • Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. In a small bow, mix together half lemon juice and half water with some icing sugar and mix until a pourable icing has formed. Dip the top of each cookie into the icing and set aside.
Notes
 
  •  If you like, you can also dip the bottom part of the cookie in chocolate syrup. To do this, add half a bar of dark cooking chocolate in a small pot (about 100g of chocolate). Add a tbsp of oil and stir until all chocolate has melted. Dip the bottom parts into the melted chocolate and place on parchment paper and into freezer until cooled and chocolate has hardened.

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Madarica Kolac – Croatian No-Bake Layer Cake Recipe

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Loaded with chocolate, made in bite-sized pieces, and even better – no baking! If you love all of the above, you’re going to be drooling over “Madarica”, a traditional Croatian dessert that is simple to make, yet tastes VERY delicious. Plus, it looks super impressive which makes it the perfect dessert to prepare for a holiday coffee get-together or an after dinner dessert. 

Madarica has thin layers of chocolate and store-bought crust which make this delicious cake a year-round favorite dessert! This cake is easy to make if you are in luck and can buy the store bought crust by Podravka like the one seen here. This cake is called no-bake because you can purchase the already made layers. If you can’t buy the crust anywhere, no worries – we have included the recipe below! 

*If you would like to share my recipe and photos please provide proper credit and a link back to this original post. Thanks!   

Madarica Cake Recipe

 
A traditional Croatian chocolate cake with thin layers of chocolate and crust.
 
Ingredients:
 
For Cake Crust
 
* If you can’t buy Podravka Madarica Cake Crust, then use this recipe
 
  1. 5 ½ cups all purpose flour
  2. 2 egg whites
  3. 180g sour cream
  4. 1 tsp baking powder
  5. 1 ¼ cup granulated sugar
  6. ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
For Cake Filling
 
  1. 4 cups milk
  2. 5 tbsp all-purpose flour
  3. 5 tbsp cocoa powder
  4. 1 tsp vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
  5. 1.5 cups sugar
  6. 50g dark chocolate
  7. ¾ cup unsalted butter, softened
  8. 1 tbsp rum
For Cake Glaze
 
  1. 100g dark chocolate
  2. 3 tbsp vegetable oil
  3. 4 tbsp unsalted butter

Instructions:

To Make Cake Layers

  1. In a mixing bowl using an electric mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, egg whites, and sour cream until light and fluffy. Gradually add in flour and baking powder and knead to form a dough.
  2. Preheat oven to 356 F. Separate dough into 6 equal parts and roll out as thin as possible into rectangles on a piece of parchment paper. Transfer to a baking sheet and place another piece of parchment paper on top (to avoid burning the top) of each layer and bake each layer for 8 minutes. The layers must not turn golden, they must stay pale!
 
To Make Cake Filling
 
  • On medium heat, bring milk, sugar, and vanilla to a boil. Separate one part of the milk and whisk in cocoa and flour. Add the mixture into the boiling milk and add in the dark chocolate, always stirring until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in butter and rum. Cover with tin foil until cooled.
To Make Cake Glaze
 
  • In a pot over medium heat, melt chocolate with butter and oil and whisk together until combined.
To Assemble
 
  • Place the first cake layer onto a baking tray and evenly spread one part of filling. Cover with second layer and repeat until finished, making sure the last layer is a dough layer. Pour the hot glaze over the whole cake and transfer cake to fridge to chill overnight. The next day, cut cake into small rectangles and serve!

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*If you would like to share my recipe and photos please provide proper credit and a link back to this original post. Thanks!   

The Best Homemade Blueberry Cake Muffins

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Soft, moist, delicious, and freshly homemade blueberry muffins make the perfect breakfast option, snack, or dessert! I like to call these cake muffins since they don’t really taste so much like a muffin, but have the light and soft consistency of a cake.

If you grow your own blueberries like I do, these muffins taste even better with freshly picked berries. Or you can make them with store-bought frozen blueberries, which work just as good. These muffins freeze quite well, so even if you can’t eat a whole batch, just throw them into the freezer in a sealed zip lock bag or airtight container and take them out the night before for a quick home-baked breakfast!

The Best Homemade Blueberry Cake Muffins

 
Yields 18
Soft and light blueberry muffins with a cake-like consistency… so addictive!
 
Ingredients:
 
  1. ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
  2. ½ cup sugar
  3. 2 large eggs
  4. 1 tsp vanilla extract
  5. 2 tsp baking powder
  6. ½ tsp sea salt
  7. 2 cups all-purpose white flour
  8. ½ cup milk
  9. 2 ½ cups fresh or frozen blueberries
Instructions:
 
  1. Preheat oven to 375F place muffin cups in muffin pan.
  2. In a large mixing bowl using an electric mixer on medium, mix butter until creamy. Gradually add in sugar until light and fluffy.
  3. Slowly add in eggs, beating after each addition until well combined. Then, beat in vanilla, baking powder, and salt.
  4. Mix in half of flour, half of milk, and repeat. Fold in fresh or frozen blueberries.
  5. Scoop muffin batter into muffin cups using a spoon. Bake for 20 minutes until golden.

Vanilla Custard Cream Cake – Croatian Kremsnita

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A cremeschnitte (Croatian: kremšnita) or vanilla custard cream cake is not one of the best, but THE BEST dessert you will ever try. It has been my favorite cake since as far as I can remember, and brings back lots of childhood memories when I used to eat 7 slices as once!  No fancy decorative multi-layered cake can top this simple, heavenly vanilla cream, almost no-bake wonder. It tastes DELICIOUS and can be very addicting! Almost as if you are eating cold vanilla pudding with a soft crust and dusted with sweet powdered sugar.

It’s simple to make and requires no special baking skills – practically anyone can make this dessert. To add some pizzaz to each slice, I like to sprinkle powdered sugar on the top, drizzle with some chocolate sauce and place a few strawberries on a plate for some color. What a way to stun your guests for the holidays without too much effort! 

*If you would like to share my recipe and photos please provide proper credit and a link back to this original post. Thanks!   

Vanilla Custard Cream Cake – Croatian Kremsnita

Vanilla custard filled cake with puff pastry sheets as the crust.

Ingredients:
 
  1. 4 cups whole milk milk
  2. 8 eggs
  3. 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  4. 1 1/4cups white flour
  5. 2 tsp vanilla extract vanilla sugar
  6. 2 puff pastry sheets
  7. 3 cups heavy whipping cream
  8. 1.5 tbsp powdered sugar
Directions:
 
To Prepare Puff Pastry Sheets
 
  1.  Preheat oven to 350F and lightly flour a clean surface. Using a floured rolling pin, thinly roll out each puff pastry sheet.
  2. Place each puff pastry sheet on a baking sheet and bake for ten minutes. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
To Make Custard Cream
 
  1. Separate the 8 eggs from their yolks. Using an electric mixer, mix the 8 egg yolks with 1 1/2 cups of sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly add in flour, vanilla extract, and 1 cup of milk until well combined.
  2. Over medium heat, boil 3 cups of milk in a sauce pan. Fold in custard cream mix (from step 1) into boiling milk and slowly stir until thickened.
  3. Using an electric mixer, mix the 8 egg whites until very stiff and combine with the thickened milk mixture. Place 1 pastry sheet into a pan and pour the custard over the pastry, chill in fridge for a few hours until cooled and stiff.
  4. Beat 3 cups of heavy whipping cream with 1.5 tbsp of powdered sugar and pour over the chilled custard. Using a long, sharp and clean knife, cut the second pastry sheet into 20 squares. Place over the custard cake in place. Before serving, sprinkle each slice with powdered sugar.

Easy Post Holiday Leftover Recipes for Hog Roast

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Put your holiday leftovers to good use with our deliciously easy ideas!

It’s no secret that a great party includes a delicious hog roast. This is the kind of food great for a party that smells great, tastes fantastic and of course, it looks spectacular when you are cooking it. Most people love a hog roast and it’s easy to see why!

You can make your own roast at home with modern spittingpig hogroast machines that can cook a whole hog or other roasted meats easily. Load up the meat onto the spit, turn it on and voila – it doesn’t get any easier! A roasted hog goes a long way, which means lots of meat left over. There is no need for any of it to go to waste with these easy solutions:

Let Your Guests Take Some Home

Slice the meat up, wrap it up in foil, and send your guests home with delicious leftovers for the next day. If you made stuffing, send them home with this too! From a food safety point of view, make sure they are keeping leftover pork in the fridge, to keep them safe during the holidays.

Cold Pork Salad and Sandwiches

Another great alternative is to slice up the leftover meat and serve it later as part of a salad. Alternatively, you can serve it sliced with a stack of bread, wraps or buns alongside some butter, a selection of sauces and maybe some stuffing. Your guests can make themselves a delicious sandwich if they get the nibbles later in the evening.

Pulled Pork Pizza

Pulled pork makes a wonderful pizza topping to replace pepperoni, bacon, or chicken. You can shred the pork and mix it with thyme, Taleggio, and lemon-dressed rocket pizza dressing. Fast and delicious!

Chinese Pork Wraps

My favourites are Chinese style wraps; just take a handful of pulled pork from the freezer let it defrost. Warm it through quickly in a frying pan with a little oil and a pinch of five spices them serve it with Hoi-sin sauce in wraps with sliced spring onions and cucumbers. If you want to save on calories, you can also make lettuce wraps which are DELICIOUS without the guilt!

Curries, Goulashes and other Beautiful Dishes

Pork in chunks is fantastic in curries, stews and goulashes. It makes wonderful pies and pasties. You just need to freeze it in a way that makes it easy for you to grab a portion and defrost only what you need.

The great thing about this style of party food is that you can dress it up or dress it down. Serve it simply with applesauce in a bun or serve it more formally as part of a roast dinner. Whatever is leftover, just make sure to use your imagination and combine it with your favourite foods. Pizza, wraps, salad, and goulash, taste a whole lot better with a dash of home roasted pork!

Spooky Chocolate Orange Spider Cake With Cream Cheese Filling

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chocolate orange spider web cake recipe layered halloween ideas

Chocolate lovers, you are in luck! Today we are featuring a delicious chocolate layered, cream cheese filled master piece that comes just in time for one of my favorite festivities of the year – Halloween! This spooky spider web cake is loaded with mouthwatering chocolate and orange layers with orange flavored cream cheese. It is an absolute wonder, and to make things even better, the whole cake is smothered in chocolate ganache.

To switch things up a bit, we are not going to feature the recipe here, but send you off to one of my favorite bloggers – Robin from Bird on A Cake. She made this amazing cake for Halloween and we couldn’t help but share it here!