Tag Archives: honey

Medus kūka

The Medus kūka or Honey cake cake is a multi-layered cake with honey as its main ingredient – of course. It also has a creamy filling made from sour-cream between the layers. It is a sweet and delicious treat that goes very well served with an afternoon tea. The honey cake is one of the most popular desserts in Russia as well as the sourrounding countries. In Latvia  you can find both traditional and very modern versions of the cake, which makes it even more attractive. It is one of my favorite childhood sweets and I’m happy that I finally managed to bake it.  I hope that you will enjoy my recipe!

Honey cake

Honey cake

Yield: 12 portions

Ingredients: 

Dough:

  • 300ml honey
  • 100g brown sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • ca. 600g flour – I used whole-wheat flour
  • 120g butter
  • 2 tea spoons baking soda
  • 1 tea spoon apple vinegar

Cream 

  • 700g sour cream
  • 500g light philadelphia cream
  • 2 table spoons honey + some sugar
  • 1 tea spoon vanilla extract

You can add some more sugar to the cream if you prefer a sweeter taste. Since I had used a lot of honey and sugar in the dough, I added less in the cream itself.

Continue reading

Piparkūkas

Latvian gingerbread cookies

In Latvia gingerbread cookies are very typical for Christmas. Around that time, every single house is filled with gingerbread cookie smell. In Latvia, you usually buy the gingerbread cookie dough and bake them at home, but living abroad this isn’t possible. So, for the third year in a row, I’m preparing my gingerbread cookie dough myself. I still don’t get the perfect consistency, but the taste and smell are better than the store-bought ones.  Prepare your home for Christmas and bake some cookies!

piparkūkas

piparkūkas

Yield: ca. 4kg of dough (which means –  a lot of cookies!)

Ingredients:

  • 400g honey
  • 400g brown (or white) sugar
  • 400g butter
  • 1,5kg-2kg flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 20-30g of gingerbread spices: you can mix them yourself  using cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, ginger, black pepper… or just buy a prepared gingerbread spices packet, for instance from Santa Maria (from Sweden)

Continue reading