Goat's cheese pancakes with mango salad

I don’t have much to say to “explain” this recipe – other than to say that the pancakes are very yummy (with a nice twist because of the goat's cheese)

and the fruit salad makes this dish very refreshing and healthy. If you don’t like mangoes, you can substitute it for peaches and/or nectarines and strawberries.

Ingredients (for 4 pancakes):

100 g goat’s (or sheep’s) cheese

1 lemon

1 ripe mango

A handful of fresh mint leaves

1 small egg

70 g flour

1 tsp. baking powder

125 ml milk

20 g butter

Liquid honey

Salt

Preparation:

Mix the egg, flour, baking powder and milk in a bowl and whisk until the dough is smooth. Add a pinch of salt and the goat’s cheese (in little crumbs) to the dough. Grate the lemon’s skin and add to the mix, then stir well. Cut the mango into pieces and drizzle some lemon juice over the fruit. Cut the mint into small stripes and add to the mango salad. Bake the pancakes in butter for about 2-3 minutes (until golden brown) and serve with the mango salad. 

Summer rolls

It seems I have a blog-writing block. This could be related to the fact that I am currently in Italy, enjoying my holidays and not spending loads of time indoors. But let’s overcome this lethargy and be a more active member of the blogging community. And let’s do it with an Asian recipe – that always helps ;-).

So today, I propose a recipe for summer rolls, i.e. non-fried spring rolls.

Ingredients:

Spring rolls sheets (available in bigger supermarkets either frozen or dry)

50 g glass noodles

60 g bean sprouts

½ cucumber

1 carrot

1 spring onion

Cooked shrimp (as many as you have spring roll sheets)

Surimi sticks (1 per sheet as well)

Fresh coriander and mint leaves and chives

2 tbsp. dark soy sauce

Preparation:

Soak the spring roll sheet, one by one, in warm water, until soft. Similarly, “cook” the glass noodles by soaking them in hot water. Cut the cucumber and carrot into long stripes (not too thick) and prepare the filling for the rolls.

Place one spring roll sheet at a time on a damp kitchen paper towel and place the filling of the roll onto it (the mint and coriander leaves first so that they shine through the pastry). Fold in the sides of the roll (so that it looks like a Döner Kebap or an envelope) and roll the sheet.

For the sauces, you can either just use plain soy sauce or sweet chilli sauce or you follow the recipes posted when writing about the dumplings.  

Raspberry cupcakes

Recently, I was invited to a birthday party and tasted some of the most delicious cupcakes I’ve ever had! I’m normally a) not a big fan of desserts (except if they’re Asian of course ;-) ) and b) don’t like cupcakes that much because they’re just so heavy. But somehow, the version prepared that evening was very convincing and so I am sharing the recipe (which I adapted ever so slightly) with you. I hope I can convince some of you cupcake-doubters too and for those of you who are cupcake-lovers anyway, I hope this one is an addition to your favourites!

Ingredients (for a batch of about 20 big cupcakes or 25-30 smaller ones):

For the dough:

200 g sugar

125 g butter

2 eggs

1 vanilla pod

150 ml sour cream

180 g flour

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 basket of raspberries

For the topping:

200 g Philadelphia cream cheese

125 g butter

500 g icing sugar

1 vanilla pod

Preparation:

Mix the (melted) butter, sugar and eggs in a bowl. Cut the vanilla pod in half and scratch out the seeds with a knife; add to the paste. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt and sieve into the butter mix. Add the sour cream in between portions of flour. Put 2-3 raspberries in each cupcake form and add the mix with a spoon. Bake at 180°C for 20 minutes. In the meantime, mix the butter (at room temperature), Philadelphia and the vanilla seeds (scratched out of the pod) in another bowl. Sieve in the icing sugar and stir until it is creamy. Add a handful of raspberries and mix well.

Once the cupcakes are done and cooled, decorate with the topping.