Now there’s a snack for you:  Preserved Lemon Hummus and Fresh Veggies

I’m sending you all off for the weekend with a short post.  The days here are so gloriously sunny that it’s hard to stay inside long enough to cook much, but the truth is that you don’t need to spend hours in order to make something awesome.   So I whipped up some hummus yesterday afternoon, and then grabbed my skis and hit the trail.  Good stuff.

I’ve written about hummus before in this post about Homemade Tahini.

Hummus is one of the most satisfying snacks I’ve ever had – great with cut up fresh vegetables, excellent spread on a sandwich with a big stack of lettuce, tomato and alfalfa sprouts, and a great dip for rye crisps or pitas if you want to serve it as part of the appetizer table.  This stuff is good.  And easy.  And oh by the way – good for you!  High in protein, low in fat, and destined for vegetables – what more could you ask for?

I have made it many different ways, but this time I added a twist by using up some Preserved Lemons and some of their liquid.  You may remember I pointed you toward Eating from the Ground Up and her  recipe for Preserved Lemons – nothing’s changed there – it’s still the one I use, though I typically double the amount of cardamom in the recipe.  It’s so good.

To use the preserved lemons for this recipe, take 2 lemon quarters and rinse them thoroughly to remove some of the salt.  Don’t discard the lemon pulp this time, though – toss that into the hummus with the rest of the recipe.  I also made this batch of hummus light on garlic, using just two cloves.  I like garlic to sit in the background when I am eating hummus.  I don’t want it overpowering the rest of the flavors and then have it continue to make itself known for hours afterward.  If you like a stronger garlic flavor, taste this, and then add a few cloves if necessary.

Preserved Lemon Hummus with Rye Crisps and Cucumber

I always soak and cook my own chickpeas for making hummus:  soak them overnight in a generous amount of water at room temperature, and then cook them for one hour in fresh water until they are tender.  Cool before beginning this recipe.   If you’d rather, you can use canned.  Just remember to reserve one cup of the liquid when you drain the chickpeas.

Lastly, add salt only at the very end.  The lemons you are using are preserved with salt, so you can adjust the salt needs at the end to suit your taste.

No Preserved Lemons?  If you don’t have preserved lemons, you can still follow this recipe to make hummus.  You’ll want to add an additional 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and you’ll need about 1 teaspoon of salt – but add the salt slowly and taste as you go to suit your personal preferences.

Preserved Lemon Hummus

3 cups cooked chickpeas, or the equivalent of canned chickpeas
1 cup of cooking water, reserved
1/4 cup Tahini
2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 preserved lemon quarters, rinsed and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons of the liquid from the preserved lemons jar
Juice of 1/2 lemon, about 2 tablespoons
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

Place all ingredients except the cooking water into a food processor.  Process the mixture until completely smooth.  If the mixture starts to look stiff and won’t mix well, add some of the cooking water.  Start with a half cup, and then add small amounts from there until you get the consistency you want.  I like the hummus to be fairly fluid while I am processing it as it makes it easier to dip and spread.

Stop the food processor.  Taste the hummus.  Add additional salt to taste, if needed.

You’re done!  Enjoy.

Makes about 3 cups.

Chocolate Mint Raspberry Cake

Last Friday, it seemed like a good day to make cupcakes.  It was freezing cold outside, but the sun was glinting off of the rooftops and off the shovels of the 3 guys removing snow from the top of the building opposite my apartment.

If you’ve lived in Finland, you’ve probably seen them:  they’ll be wearing neon vests (as though that sort of safety precaution 8 stories up is necessary) and dressed in light winter clothing and heavy work boots, equipped with shovels and wearing some kind of harness to which a safety rope is attached.  With one end of the rope securely tied to the harness, it remains a mystery where they hook the other end or how long the rope actually is.  Nevertheless, these professionals can be seen all over the city after a period of heavy snowstorms – typically two guys on the roof and one or two below.  Those on the ground guard the cones and attempt to keep pedestrians out of the path of falling snow, while those above do the heavy lifting, ensuring that the roofs won’t leak or cave under the burden of winter’s precipitation.

Layer on the raspberries over the frosting

I’d finished my cupcake batter with the sun streaming in through the windows and an occasional glance toward the other rooftop to make sure the workers were still standing.  And then I remembered that it was International Women’s Day, and decided that if there is an entire day designated as a holiday to celebrate my gender, then it certainly calls for something more exciting the humble cupcakes.  So the cupcake batter became cake and raspberries were added along with a luscious and feather-light frosting made from mascarpone, heavy whipping cream, vanilla and a touch of sugar.

We ate it all weekend long, before and after our skiing trips and maybe, though there’s no clear evidence of this, maybe even for breakfast.  It is that kind of chocolate cake.

You see – there are three types of chocolate cakes in the world: there are those that say they are chocolate cake but have so little chocolate and are so light in color that hardly deserve to be bothered with.  “Essence of chocolate” cake is not what we are going for when we dream of chocolate cake.  No.  You need to be able to taste the chocolate.  “Light chocolate” is just synonym for “bad idea” in my book.

Then there are the very serious, deep, dark, dense, take-no-prisoners chocolate cakes.  The kind where you cut yourself a slim sliver, close your eyes, and savor the flavor on your tongue, just one small precious morsel at a time, knowing that the cacao level is hovering somewhere near 70%.  The kind that require melted chocolate folded into room temperature butter and a layer of ganache made from more melted chocolate and a little cream.  But this isn’t that kind of cake.

Frost the bottom of the top layer and place over the raspberry layer

This chocolate cake is your friendly but definitely full-on chocolate cake.  The one you might make for a kids’ birthday party, or on an evening when friends are coming over and you want something tasty to share.  You might serve it without frosting, but with vanilla ice cream instead, and a spoonful of chocolate or caramel sauce. Or maybe you wouldn’t bother with any of that, and you’d instead slice a piece and stand at the window facing the sunlight, cake in one hand and steaming mug of coffee in the other.

This cake is easy to make.  It has just a hint of mint – enough to add interest but not overwhelm.  It’s elevated this time by the frosting – something that requires you have specific ingredients on hand.  I used frozen raspberries – if you do this, thaw them thoroughly and drain them just a bit so the juices don’t run.  Fresh would be best, but it’s the middle of Winter here (ahem, Spring), and I need to work through the frozen berries before summer begins.

There’s a secret inside of this one…

By the time the cake was cooled and frosted and in the refrigerator awaiting consumption, dinner was ready, the sun was hovering just over the sea, and the snow-removal crew had gone home for the day.  So we sat in the rosy red light of the setting sun, licking the last of the chocolate crumbs off our forks, planning what we’d do over the weekend – other than finish off the cake, that is.

The light mint flavor matches the sweet-tart flavor of raspberries perfectly.

Chocolate Mint Raspberry Cake
This cake was inspired by the One Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes in the Martha Stewart Cupcake book.  I used unrefined Spelt flour for this instead of white wheat flour, reduced the sugar and included brown sugar, substituted olive oil, added extra eggs yolks to the batter, and added peppermint extract.  It makes a mighty fine cake.

For the Cake:
1 1/2 cups / 3 dl spelt flour
3/4 cup / 1.5 dl / 89 g cocoa powder
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
3/4 cup buttermilk, plain yogurt or kefir
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
3/4 cup warm water

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Oil two round cake pans and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

In a medium bowl or in the bowl of a stand mixer, combine all of the dry ingredients together with a fork or whisk.  Add the wet ingredients and beat with a stand mixer or handheld beater until smooth.

Divide the cake batter evenly between the two cake pans.  Bake for 30-35 minutes until puffed in the center and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Remove from oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Run a knife around the outside of the cake inside the pan to separate the edge from the cake pan.  Invert the cakes onto a wire rack; remove parchment paper, and flip cakes over so they are right side up.  Cool completely.

For the Frosting: 
1 small tub (8.8 oz/250g) mascarpone cheese, room temperature
2 cups / 4 dl heavy whipping cream
2 teaspoons powdered sugar
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract (if you use vanilla sugar, omit the sugar)

1 cup / 2 dl fresh or frozen raspberries

In a medium bowl, whip the marscapone until it is light and fluffy, about 30 seconds.  Add the heavy whipping cream and whip with a stand mixer or a handheld mixer until soft peaks form.  Add the vanilla and sugar, and beat very briefly, just to combine.

Assembly:
Set one cake layer on a cake plate and cover the top with frosting.  Layer the raspberries over the top of the frosting so they completely cover the cake layer.  Frost the bottom of the remaining cake layer and lay it carefully, frosting side down, over the raspberries.  Use the remaining frosting to cover the entire cake with frosting.  Serve immediately or refrigerate until serving.  Can be made up to two days ahead.

Serves 16.

Blueberry Ginger Superfood Smoothie

This is a smoothie with a deep, dark secret.  A few of them in fact.

Since I’ve just published an article about making your own Oat Milk, and raved about how much I love it in smoothies, I thought it’d be timely to share with you one of my favorite smoothie recipes as well.

Smoothies are the perfect breakfast:  they are quick to toss together in the morning, taste cold, crisp and refreshing, and with the right ingredients, keep you full until lunch.  They are also a prime opportunity to use ingredients you may not otherwise bother with for breakfast – as in the case of this smoothie: ginger or chia seed or flax seed or dates. And then there is the darkest secret of all lurking in the depths of this benign-looking beverage:   a wild food, dried stinging nettle.

Stinging Nettle is extremely good for you and high in iron, along with a long list of other health benefits, but not something you are likely to sprinkle over your breakfast cereal.  I’ve used nettle combined with mint for a tea; tossed into a mushroom pie; added to soups and pilafs, but this was the first time I’d used it for breakfast.  I didn’t notice the flavor of the nettle as distinct or separate note; rather it simply combines seamlessly with the other flavors to make a deeply satisfying super food breakfast.

But once you have these ingredients combined into a smoothie, filling your breakfast glass with something cold and satisfying, you aren’t thinking about the annoying sting of the nettles or the gloopy texture of soaked chia or flax seed – you are simply enjoying a healthy breakfast.

Blueberry Ginger Superfood Smoothie

Bilberries or blueberries are what I most commonly use in a smoothie; specifically bilberries for me as I can pick big bucketfuls every summer out of the Finnish Forests.  I use “blueberry” in the title as my guess it is more universally available.  Ginger adds a special zing that suits the blueberry flavor’s mildness, and the other ingredients act as fillers, including the oat milk which rounds everything out.

Feel free to leave out the chia and flax seed and/or nettles – it won’t ruin the smoothie, but it won’t have quite the superfood power punch.   On a second thought go ahead, leave them in – you’ll be surprised at how good this is!

And then once you’ve tried Nettles and learn how delicious they are, you might want to head over and try the Dried Nettle Pasta from Hunger and Thirst or pick some fresh ones as soon as they poke their heads out of the ground this Spring (wear gloves! use scissors!) and make this Stinging Nettle Savory Bread Pudding.

Enjoy!

Blueberry/Bilberry Ginger Superfood Smoothie

2 cups oat milk
1 cup frozen blueberries
6 dates, pit removed
1/3 cup crumbled, dried nettles
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1 tablespoon ground flax seed
1/2″ ginger root, grated

Blend in a blender, food processor or with an immersion blender until smooth, about 3 minutes.  Divide between two glasses, and Enjoy.

Serves 2.

Note:  For those of you in Finland, you can find Chia seeds at Ruohojuuri, where they sell them under the Cocovi brand, or you can order them directly from the Cocovi website.