Gundel Palacsinta

This is the recipe for the famous Hungarian pancakes with my own twist. It's simple and it will fill you up for a good amount of time.

Pancakes:
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1 cup plain flour
50g butter

Whisk the eggs and milk into the flour until you have a smooth batter. Let stand for 10 minutes. The consistency should be like pouring cream - you may need to add a touch more milk.
Heat a frying pan, add a knob of butter and move it around so that it covers the pan. When the butter is foaming, pour in a ladle full of batter, moving the pan around so that the batter covers the whole bottom.
Cook over a medium-high heat until the pancake is golden brown underneath. Turn it with a spatula, cook the other side then transfer to a plate. Continue with the rest of the batter and set aside.

Filling:
125g of Walnuts
1 packet of chocolate chips
1/2 tbsp of sugar

Finely chop the walnuts (or blitz in a food processor) and a bit of the chocolate chips. Melt the remaining chocolate with a bit of water until a heavy texture is approached. Spread the melted chocolate in the pancakes and put the copped walnuts and chocolate. Bend in half.
Heat a large frying pan with the butter and add the filled pancakes, frying gently to warm them through. Cook on both sides.

Chocolate sauce:
3/4 cups of chocolate chips
powdered sugar

Melt the chocolate. Sprinkle on top of the pancakes and garnish with powdered sugar and remaining chopped walnuts.

Enjoy.

Yann

So many people wonder who is him, the one who I talk so fondly about. I first discovered him when I saw the movie Amelie about a year and a half ago. the songs in this movie captivated me and I decided to look for its artist. To my discovery, it was a french man who wrote all the songs for this movie. His name is Yann Tiersen and up to this day, my favourite musician of all time. His music is hypnotizing and joyful. His skills in all the instruments that he plays is of great inspiration to me. I am a beginner percussionist (2 years now) but, one day I hope to be as good as him, to be widely known across the world like him.

Callah Bread

This makes a vast amount of bread and its flavour is exquisite. It's somewhat complicated at first, especially for those who are first timers but, it's great once it's done.

For bread:
6 cups of all-purpose flour
3/4 ounces of active dry yeast (or 3 packets)
3 tbsp of sugar
3 eggs mixed in with 6 tbsp of honey
2 tsp of salt
1 cup of lukewarm water
2 ounces of vegetable oil
cinnamon sugar- optional

For glossing:
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp of water

Stir together flour with salt in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Mix the active dry yeast with the water and sugar and pour it in the well. Add in the mixture of honey and eggs with the vegetable oil. Mix gradually until smooth dough is formed.

Put the dough on a floured surface and knead for about 10 minutes.
Put on a greased bowl and cover with a plastic wrap and let the dough stand, at room temperature, for about an hour until it rises and doubles in size.

Pinch dough and cover again. Let rise for another hour.

Roll out in a floured surface and divide dough into 3 equally divided parts. Roll out parts into 18in. approximately in length. Form a braid and join each end. Put on a greased baking pan and cover with plastic wrap, setting aside for about 30- 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F (176C).

Prepare glossing for the bread. With a pastry brush, gloss the dough and sprinkle on top a vast amount of cinnamon sugar, or as much as you would like.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until it approaches a golden colour. Let cool for about 10 minutes before serving.

Enjoy.

Linz Pastry

This is one of the first things I ever made in the kitchen, and let me tell you, they're still my favourite till this day. This is originally from Czechoslovakia and it's called Linecké Cukroví. It's simple and will leave you wanting more =]

Linz Pastry:
210g of all-purpose flour
140g of butter
70g of powdered sugar
2 egg yolks

Stir together flour and sugar. Then put in a mixing bowl with butter and egg yolks. Mix at a high speed until it forms a dough. Cool for an hour.

Preheat oven to 350F (176C)

Roll out dough on a floured surface. Make it about 1/4 of an inch thick. Cut out cookies into desired shapes. Make sure you have them in pairs. Put in a greased baking pan. Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Filling:
150g of butter
1 egg yolk
200g powdered sugar
50g of grated chocolate
1 tsp of rum
2 tbsp of melted chocolate for garnish

Cream together butter, sugar, egg yolk, grated chocolate, and rum.

After cookies have baked, put together in pairs keeping them together (pasting) with chocolate filling. Decorate with melted chocolate.

Enjoy.