My fruits recipes
January 7th, 2012 in Desserts by Julia Volhina This cake looked unusual even for me when I saw it first time: doesn’t it resemble a bunch of firewood covered with a snow to you?
This recipe is Yuriy’s mom speciality dessert and it often appears on the table during family celebrations. Yuriy’s mom preserves pitted sour cherries in their own juices under sugar each season, so there are always plenty of them ready for use.
If you don’t have sour cherries preserved in such way – you can always go with pitted cherry kompot like I did, but in this case add a bit of sugar to the dough, or cake will not be sweet enough.
I would want to tell you that this cake is easy and fast to do, but I can’t. It took me quite some time to make dough, prepare “firewood” sticks and then assemble the cake; but that is probably because I cooked it first time in my life.
After cake is assembled allow some time for layers to soak in sour cream frosting to get soft: leave it in cool place (but not fridge) at least over night (depending on how liquid sour cream is it may take longer). It is good idea to prepare cake at least a day before you are planning to serve it.
Tags: cake, dessert, flour, fruits, margarine, sour cherry, sour cream, sugar, ukrainian
October 1st, 2011 in Desserts by Julia Volhina We bought a big box of peaches on our way back home from vacation in South Carolina ocean side. They were very ripe and sweet and most important they were a lot, much more than we can eat in 2, even for longer time.
Even after eating big portion of them fresh and handing some out, there were still some left. It was a time to cook peaches before they spoil.
I found this recipe for stuffed baked peaches, and must say that baked peaches become one of my favorite desserts – cooked peaches are very tender and flavorful.
I will definitely improvise more in this direction once my hands get ahold of more peaches to try various stuffings.
Tags: chocolate, dessert, egg yolks, fruits, ginger, peach, stuffed, wine
August 27th, 2011 in Main Dish Recipes, No-meat by Julia Volhina I didn’t believe my eyes when I saw sour cherries (pitted!) in the Andersons grocery store. It doesn’t happen that often to me here, in US. So I couldn’t simply leave that store without my portion of sour cherries…
Of course, we enjoyed them plain with a bit of sugar, and also made some cherries with whipped cream dessert (didn’t make any pictures of this one to post a recipe, shame on me), however most of sour cherries went to ukrainian sour cherry dumplings – “varenyky z vyshniamy”, and for this one we made plenty of pictures.
With mentioned amount of ingredients you will get about 50-60 dumplings. Most probably you will not need to cook all of them right away – so just freeze remaining potion of dumplings for later use (first put wooden board with dumplings to the fridge until dumplings are frozen, then move them to a ziploc bag and store frozen). Frozen dumplings can be boiled right before serving, just like you usually do it.
Tags: dough, dumplings, egg, flour, fruits, milk, no meat, sour cherry, stuffed, sugar, ukrainian
April 23rd, 2011 in Chicken, Main Dish Recipes by Julia Volhina This roast chicken was a first real food we cooked in our new home since the move (yep, we got a house!). So it was kind of the “celebration of new home” meal 
.
If you are looking for some easy recipe for some special event – search no more: whole chicken roast stuffed with oranges is very-very juicy and has a bit unusual sweet taste.
It goes good with mashed potatoes or plain boiled rice as a side dish.
If you don’t like taste of orange zest – peel oranges before stuffing, that will smooth taste a bit.
Tags: chicken, dinner, fruits, orange, poultry, roast, romantic
February 26th, 2011 in Sauces & Dips by Julia Volhina First time I tried this green dip, it was served as a side dish to something very spicy in mexican restaurant, and it didn’t impress me. Probably, that was about color: I never seen avocados before and their bright green color seem almost artificial.
Nevertheless, I tried it and since then these unusual and very nutritious fruits are very important part of my diet: amusingly they have more potassium than bananas, have high fiber content and rich on vitamins E, B and K.
This variant of guacamole is a bit spicy. If you want to make it mild: either increase amount of avocados or reduce amount of serrano peppers and onion; adding sour cream can help reduce hotness as well.
Tags: avocado, cilantro, cookout, dip, finger food, fruits, green food, lemon, mexican, no meat, shallot, spicy, vegetables
January 15th, 2011 in Main Dish Recipes, No-meat by Julia Volhina This recipe is a step up for russian kefir based pancakes – oladi. My mom used to add slices of apple to oladi batter and that is the way how I prefer them – oladi with apple served warm with sour cream topping.
So the recipe is quite easy: prepare oladi batter, add slices of apple and fry pancakes.
This dish is a perfect choice for breakfast or brunch, or even fast prepared snack. I bet kids would love those pancakes as well. They taste good accompanied with a glass of kefir.
Tags: apple, breakfast, egg, flour, fruits, kefir, kid food, no meat, russian
July 24th, 2010 in Desserts by Julia Volhina Even though here I can buy strawberries almost any time of year, they are especially tasteful at summer. So yes, it is a strawberry time!
So if you looking for a nice recipe for strawberries – here it is: sweet whipped cream with puree of fresh sweet tasty strawberries and a bit of jelly. Easy to prepare, and even easier to eat
Of course, whipped cream is a bit heavy for the figure especially if it is mixed with sugar, but it is also totally delicious – so I allow myself to enjoy it every once in a while. But if you are trying to follow low calories / low fat diet this recipe is probably not for you.
Tags: cream, dessert, fruits, gelatine, jelly, puree, soft food, strawberry, sugar
