My Gastronomic Creations - Christina Marantelou's Portfolio

Cakes N' Desserts - Bakes

Homemade Red Velvet Cake

Birthday Chocolate Cake

Victoria Sponge Cake (my way!)

Clafoutis is a French dish that is sort of a cross between a flan and a pancake, a specialty of the Limousin region. Similar to a flan, clafoutis is traditionally made with black cherries but also sometimes with prunes, apples, or other fruits, a very easy dessert that always impresses!

Clafoutis

Traditional Greek Watermelon Cake (Karpouzopita) coming from the Cyclades (islands in the Aegean Sea) and having its roots in the antiquity

Preparing the watermelon mixture for the watermelon pie.

Remove all the seeds and cut the watermelon into small pieces.
After pulpifying the watermelon, put it in a colander and strain all the juice. Reserve juice.

In a large bowl, stir together the watermelon, flour, honey, sugar and cinnamon

Pour the watermelon filling onto a pie plate, which is covered with baking paper, the filling should be about 1 inch thick. Sprinkle sesame seeds over the top.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. The pie is ready when the edges are golden Allow to cool completely before slicing. Refrigerate leftovers.

I still had the two litres of water melon juice.

Real Coconut cake.

Happy Cake Party!

The chocolate - marshmallow madness.

#bitishproducts #homemade #creatingwithfriends

Chocolate - Marshmallow madness.

Secret Tip: I have melted some marshmallows into the chocolate sauce in the microwame to make it thicker and more stable!

Chocolate - Marshmallow madness.

Cake with vanilla icing and sprinkles of happiness!

Greek Easter Bread (Tsoureki) making of!

First we make a mixture of dry yeast, 200ml milk and 250gr from our flour! Cover it with a towel and let it rise for about 20 minutes.
In another bowl, beat our 5 eggs, sugar (or stevia), salt, spices and the rest of the flour at thensame time!
In this 2nd bowl add the mixture we originally made with the yeast and knead well so that it becomes a uniform mass.
Melt the 200g of butter in a bowl or add it slowly to our dough so that it becomes softer.
Then cover that mixture with a towel and leave it for about 20 minutes so that it doubles in size.

Greek Easter Bread (Tsoureki) making of!

Ingredients
1. 1 kg almond flour (to reduce the glycemic index
of the dish).
2. 300g Stevia powder or light brown sugar (I
used light brown-fairtrade)
3. 200g light butter
4. 5 eggs
5. 3 sachets of dry yeast
6. 200ml light milk 1.5% fat
7. Orange zest (1 orange)
8. 1 tbsp. mahlepi
9.1 tbsp. crushed mastic.

Greek Easter Bread (Tsoureki) making of!

Place our buns which we have shaped into
whatever shape we want and desire, and we have spread them on top with egg with 1 cooking brush!

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees.

Greek Easter Bread (Tsoureki) making of!

Bake for 1 hour (150-200 degrees) and we are ready! The texture and the color is different because we have used the almond flour and the light brown sugar but they are very tasty and aromatic due to the almonds and the mahlepi (I didn't add the mastic).T

he Greek Easter bread (tsoureki) is traditionally served in Easter and the three braids symbolise the Holy Trinity, it is also very popular throughout the year as a delicious mid day snack, breakfast or tea or coffee companion.

Greek Easter bread owes its full and rich flavour to the two aromatic spices used in this traditional tsoureki recipe, mastic and mahlab, which give it a really characteristic flavour and smell.
Freshly ground mastic (masticha), which is an
aromatic spice from Chios island, and aromatic
mahlab or mahleb (mahlepi), a spice made from ground seeds of cherry, are essential to prepare this tsoureki recipe. They give the traditional Greek Easter bread its sharp and distinctive taste so try your best to source some. You can purchase mastic and mahlepi at Greek grocers or online.

Homemade vegan energy bars.

Homemade vegan energy bars with dates, no sugar, no cooking.

Superbowl for breaksfast (with flaxseed and chia seeds).

Super simple and light apple cake with grandma's cookware.

Homemade birthday unicorn cake!

New Year's Eve Greek Lucky Cake!

New Year's Eve Homemade Dinner.

Festive prune-stuffed pork.

Easy, healthy, homemade hazelnut praline (nutella) without sugar.

Our raw material, roasted hazelnuts!

Making of homemade nutella!

Add the roasted hazelnuts and put them in the blender.
Add the sunflower oil together.
We start beating them until the hazelnuts dissolve completely and become like a very thin paste.This will take about 4'-5 '(we should not see any hazelnuts).

Making of homemade nutella!

Finely chop the chocolate and heat it in the microwave for 2 ', until the couverture heats up.
Pour it into the mixture.

Making of homemade nutella!

Stir the mixture very well so that it becomes homogeneous.
Add the cocoa and stevia and mix well (you can also beat them in the blender).
Store the nutella in a jar in the refrigerator.

Making of Mr. Pumpkin!

Mr. Pumpkin has a bright mind!

Meet my friend Mr. Pumpkin!

A splash of italian spring during
lockdown

Blueberry And Ricotta Lemon Pound Cake!

Ingredients

3/ 4 sugar (light brown for more interesting taste)
1/3 butter or margarine (melted)
3 eggs
3/ 4 ricotta
1/2 lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon lemon zest
splash of Moroccan almond extract (personal
inspiration
1 1/2 cups flour of choice (I used wholemeal self raising)
2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups blueberries

Method

In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter (melted) until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time to incorporate.
Preheat oven to 350° F.

Method

Add in the ricotta, lemon juice, some grated lemon zest and a splash of Moroccan almond extract and mix well.
Mix in the flour, baking powder. Mix until just incorporated. Fold in 1-2 cups of fresh blueberries into batter gently.

Batter will be thick, so spread carefully into a prepared loaf pan.
Bake in preheated oven for approximately one hour or until a tester comes out clean. Let cool before slicing and serve!

Prep time 10mins
Cook time 1hr

Blueberry And Ricotta Lemon Pound Cake!

Serves or Makes: 6-8

Blueberry And Ricotta Lemon Pound Cake!

Serves or Makes: 6-8

Edible Dyed & Marbled Blue Easter Eggs with Red Cabbage.

Edible Dyed & Marbled Blue Easter Eggs.

Healthy carrot cake with pumpkin seeds.

Hello everyone!

I hope you are staying safe and healthy through these unusual times! I am staying at home only on weekends, but I am trying to make something creative and useful.
That's why I start baking not just for me but also for my teammates at work. I usually bake confectioneries based on flour and sugar so everybody will eat them.
But this time I baked a healthy variation of my carrot cake with minimal sugar and oat flour, which is also closer to my perception of how we should eat.

So to begin with it, I used:

350 g oat flour
8 g baking powder
5 g cinnamon
5 g nutmeg
50g pumpkin seeds
3 eggs
100 g granulated light brown sugar
150 g extra virgin olive oil
350 g grated carrots

The steps of the baking process are the following:

1. We add in a bowl the oat flour, the baking powder, the cinnamon, the nutmeg, the pumpkin seeds and we mix them.

2. We add also the eggs in a bowl and beat them until they become fluffy. We add the sugar and beat them for 2-3 min.

3. We continue by adding the oil, the oat flour mixture and we mix them until they are homogenized.

4. At the end we add the grated carrots into the mixture and mix them until they are also homogenized.

5. We grease a cake pan and pour the mixture. We bake in preheated oven at 170 degrees for about 50 minutes.

Then we leave it to cool for about 15 minutes and turn it over on a plate.

Bon Appetit!

Naturally dyed Easter Eggs with onion shells & beetroot.

Pizza Cake.

Fruit Cake.

Chocolate cake with sprinkles of happiness.

Caffe concerto.

Affogato with chocolate ice cream.

Cup of Happiness, Macmillan Cancer Support.

Greek Vasilopita without sugar, eggs and butter with beetroot glaze... heartbroken

A vasilopita is a traditional sweet and moist Greek cake or bread scented with orange zest and mahlepi
and enjoyed to celebrate the New Year.

Hidden inside the cake is a gold coin wrapped in foil and the family member who is fortunate enough to receive the coin in their slice is said to have good luck for the rest of the year.
It is associated with Saint Basil's day which falls on January 1st. The Greek word Vasilopita is directly translated as "King's Bread" and when it is prepared, a coin is baked into the dough. Sweet flavoring and a spice called Mahlep is added to the bread to symbolize
the sweetness and joy of life, liberty, health
and everlasting happiness.

This age old tradition commenced in the fourth century, when Saint Basil the Great, who was a bishop, wanted to distribute money to the poor in his Diocese.
He wanted to preserve their dignity, so as not to look like charity, he commissioned some women to bake sweetened bread, in which he arranged to place gold coins. Thus the families in cutting the bread to nourish themselves, were pleasantly surprised to find the coins.

Saint Basil was the first person in human history to establish an orphanage for children and also founded the first Christian hospital in the world. He was considered one of the most wise and compassionate clergymen in the entire history of the Church.

Starter pack of my light forest fruit birthday cake with Moroccan almond extract, honey and edible glitter.

Making of the light forest fruit birthday cake with Moroccan almond extract, honey and edible glitter.

Covering of the light forest fruit birthday cake with Moroccan almond extract, honey and edible glitter.

Oatmeal Banana Bread with honey and nutmeg.

Creating my own oat flour.

Oat flour.

We will need also two eggs for our dough.

Some baking powder and the nutmeg.

Our mashed bananas, I used four very mature bananas.

We will need also around 150-200 g honey (instead of sugar)

Mixing of the dry ingredients (oat flour, baking powder and nutmeg).

Adding of the wet materials (mushed bananas, eggs and honey) to the dry ingredients.

Stirring of our mixture, so it would become an homogenous dough.

Placing some baking paper onto our baking try. I love my heart-shaped one.

Bake for 30 minutes, then loosely cover the pan with baking paper, making sure that the paper shields both ends of the pan (because the bread is sweetened with honey, it will caramelize and become dark at the corners). Continue baking for 35 to 45 additional minutes (65 to 75 minutes total) or until a small, thin knife inserted in the center of the loaf comes out without any wet batter clinging to it. Repeat the test once or twice. An even easier way to tell is to use an instant-read thermometer. When the bread reaches between 200 to 210 degrees F at the center, it’s done.

Let the bread cool in the pan for 1 hour.

It has an oriental, cozy amount of nutmeg, the banana flavor is pleasant and present, but not overpowering.

Slice and enjoy!

Zero-Waste Halloween.

Pumpkin carving kit.

Zero-Waste Halloween.

Making of, the child pumpkin.

Zero-Waste Halloween.

After the carving of pumpkin, keep the pumpkin insides, mash them and bake a fluffy and moist healthy cake without sugar, adding Greek style yoghurt, homemade oat flour and honey.
Don't forget to keep the pumpkin seeds also!

Zero-Waste Halloween.

Making of, the child pumpkin.

I used a led tealight candle, so that the pumpkin doesn't get burned.

Making of, the child pumpkin.

I used a led tealight candle, so that the pumpkin doesn't get burned.

These are the oats I used to create my oat flour.

Oats have been Scotland's main cereal crop (together with barley), simply because, unlike wheat and maize are willing to grow in damp, sun-deprived climate.

Place the oats in the high-speed blender or food processor and blend them until they form a fine flour, stopping to stir occasionally.

That's it!

Oats are among the healthiest grains on earth.

They are rich source of the water-soluble fiber B-glucan.

The effect of oat beta glucan on both serum cholesterol and blood glucose reduction is proven.

Pumpking insides. You have to be careful to mash very good the pumpkin fibers or otherwise take them out of the mixture.

Some baking powder to add into our oat flour mixture.

Our Greek style yoghurt.

Mix the yoghurt and the pumpkin filling.

Add the rest of the wet materials (honey and eggs) and stir well.

Add the baking powder into the flour (dry materials).

Mix them well.

Finally, mix the wet with the dry materials and stir them in order to create a homogenous mixture and pour it into a greased cake form.

Batter will be thick, don't worry!

Wash and dry the pumpkin seeds thoroughly.

Roast them in the oven for 15 min and make your own healthy snack, without salt and extra fat.

In Greece we call it "pasatempo" which means "passing time" from the combination of Italian words passo + tempo.

They are actually little health bombs.

Bake for 45-60 minutes. Baking times vary, so keep an eye on yours.

The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If you find the top or edges of the cake is/are browning too quickly in the oven, loosely cover it with baking paper.

Remove the cake from the oven and set the entire pan on a wire rack. Allow to cool completely.