Baking with Tania

We've had some yummy "cultural immersion" days lately.  After our success making Ragaliki a couple weeks ago, I asked Tania if she would show us how to make blini (this is the Russian name;  in Romanian they're called blinele), the treats she had brought us once.  

She quickly agreed to teach us, and when I asked what ingredients I should plan to have on-hand, she gave me a list.  One of the ingredients was a mystery to me --I could not figure out what she was describing, so I finally just had her write the Russian word for it down on my list-pad.  Then when Pete went to the store on his way home from work later that week, he stopped at the store and showed one of the employees the word.  It turns out it was something similar to sweetened condensed milk!

So our baking day arrived, we had all of our ingredients (and Tania brought a few extra ones, including more fresh walnuts from the tree in her yard!), and we set to work.  Colsen was chosen as the apprentice for the day, but everyone else crowded around pretty much the whole time.

The blini/blinele were foarte gustos as we would say here!  (VERY delicious!)  They are like crepes, and people fill them with all kinds of things.  For these we used poppy seeds, walnuts and sweetened milk.

Then another day Tania told me she wanted to teach me how to make a popular cake here.  When she described it to me ahead of time, I was pretty sure she used the word "mushrooms" but I chalked that up to either a mis-hearing or mis-speaking.... but I was a little nervous anyway.

On that next designated baking day, she showed up with these ingredients:  2 packages of mayonnaise, dried apricots, 6 eggs, dried bananas and baking powder.  And she insisted that yes, sometimes she does put mushrooms in, but she decided to do it with fruit this time.  To report that I was skeptical or even scared would be an understatement.  But she was very excited, so we started to mix up the cake!*

Before we put it in the oven, the kids helped decorate the top with the dried fruit.

It only needed to bake about 15 minutes, and when it came out she drizzled chocolate on it.  I was beginning to come around on the whole thing....

And I have to say, the cake was also foarte gustos!!  We all LOVED it!  I didn't tell Pete about the mayonnaise until after he ate it.  :)

So we are now 3 for 3 in our attempts at Russian baked treats.  What a wonderful culture this is.  :)

And, in an attempt to immerse more than just the family's taste buds in the culture here, we watched "The Fiddler on the Roof" last week.  Even though it is set in the past, there are still a lot of elements and "traditions" that have carried through the years.  The kids all enjoyed the movie, history lesson and all, and I had a few miniature "Tevia's" dancing around the house for the next few days!

*The recipe for the cake was:  6 eggs, 4 cups of flour, 2 packets of mayonnaise (200 ml each), 1/2 cup of sugar, a little vanilla and a little oil.  Then you can add dried fruits, jam, etc.  (Or if you want to add the mushrooms instead, just delete the sugar!)  Bake in the oven for 15 minutes.