Last year in December a friend of mine, Anna called for a “vegastromania month“, where she invited everyone to cook at least one vegetarian or even vegan meal during the Christmas preparations. The main goal of this project was to make people think about vegetarian dishes and what they are eating everyday – which is usually far too much meat. The participants were allowed to submit any kind of recipe except for desserts, because they are mostly naturally vegetarian, less healthy and we already have more than enough of sweet recipes. Anna also assembled some famous Hungarian vegetarians, who picked their favorite recipe. The winner was invited to a very special vegetarian dinner at Anna’s home and also recieved a voucher for an ayurvedic massage. Fortunately, I got picked by the jury, so this January I had a wonderful dinner with Anna, Ági and Noémi. One of the dishes Anna served at this dinner was Mrs. Myrtleberry’s nutcake, which was quite an extraordinary and surprising experience. First, it’s absolutely delicious. But its texture was even more interesting, because it tasted just like minced meat – although there was no meat in the cake at all.
Tag Archives: cake
Peach and Almond Toffee Tart with Fennel Sorbet
Recently vegetables are becoming more and more popular as dessert ingredients. I don’t think it’s so unusual to use vegetables in desserts, because a lot of them are already pretty sweet on their own. Carrots, pumpkins or zucchinis became quite common as cake ingredients recently. Fennel for example can be applied in desserts too. The anise flavor has already been used for several hundred years as a spice for sweets. Combined with white wine, fennel makes a very nice sorbet, which can be paired perfectly with almond and peach, e.g. like with this delicious tart.
The Pink Dessert
The final dish of my meatless menu for the 2011 ZEITmagazin cooking competition is a variation of strawberry. I usually make the cake using rhubarb instead of strawberry and yoghurt for the mousse, but unfortunately the rhubarb season was already over when the competition was held. Because Goji-berries are about the same size as raisins, I used them similarly by soaking them in rum and adding them afterwards to the sponge cake base. Already in the cake alone there are three variations of strawberry present: diced and orange liquer marinated strawberry pieces, a light strawberry-yoghurt mousse and a quarter of raw strawberry at the top.