What about a swirly dessert from Vienna?

You will have realised by now that I have a sweet tooth and love pudding! Therefore I chose yet another dessert recipe for this week's blog. Apple Strudel must be one of the world's most famous desserts. Originally from Vienna, in Austria, it is the perfect recipe to illustrate Lynn Crain's romantic time travel short story SEALED WITH A KISS, which is set in Vienna in 1874.

LETTERBOX STORIES is a bestselling anthology of romantic short stories and is available from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Letterbox-Love-Stories-International-Romance-ebook/dp/B01HJ41MKQ?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

What if a life-changing letter arrived in today's mail? Now imagine it leads to love and adventure! From the northern British Isles, across the mainland of Europe, and on to Turkey, nine international Award-winning and Multi-published Romance Authors share spellbinding love stories told across time. This collection includes contemporary, historical and futuristic time travel romances touched by magic. And each begins with a letter...

 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

SEALED WITH A KISS by Lynn Crain
In 2084, time travelling detective, Tandi Reynolds, tipped off by a letter, needs to stop an assassin before he kills a newly elected leader. When she finds him in 1874, Vienna, it’s clear a cold blooded killer is only one of her problems. Time is fleeting, so falling in love with her contact, the charismatic Count Leopold Radetzky von Radetz, is a bad idea, but keeping her feelings in check is not easy when she relies on him for her every need.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Apple Strudel
Serves 6
Takes about 30 minutes to prepare and 35 minutes to bake
 

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Ingredients
3 cups of Granny Smith apples or any other baking apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced

1 sheet of frozen Puff Pastry

1/4 cup of seedless raisons (which you soak overnight in rum or water)
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg lightly beaten
1 tbsp water

Instructions
1. Thaw the puff pastry sheet at room temperature for 30 minutes;

2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees;

3. Drain the raisins;

4. In a large bowl, mix the flour, the sugar and the cinnamon. Add the apple slices and the drained raisins. Make sure the fruit is well coated;

5. On a lightly floured surface, unfold the pastry sheet and roll it into a 16x12 inch rectangle (40x30cms);

6. Place the pastry so that the shorter end (12 inch / 30 cms end) is closer to you. Spoon the apples and raisins on the bottom half of the pastry, leaving a one inch border (3cms);

7. Roll the pastry like a jam roll;

8. Place the strudel with the seam side down on a baking sheet. Seal the ends;

9. Beat an egg, mix with the water, and brush over the strudel;

10. Cut slits on top of the strudel so that steam can get out whilst baking;

11. Bake for about 35 minutes until golden;

12. When the strudel has cooled, sprinkle icing sugar;

13. Serve with cream (whipping cream like on the photo) or vanilla ice-cream.

I hope you will enjoy this dessert as much as me...

And now, one last photo of beautiful Vienna!

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

A very Turkish Delight with Rose Anderson

Today I am 'delighted' to welcome bestselling romance author Rose Anderson (who also writes as Madeline Archer) for my weekly recipe post. Rose is one of the nine authors of LETTERBOX LOVE STORIES, an anthology of romantic short stories. Each story is set in a different European country – from northern England, through France, Spain, Austria, Italy, Sardinia and Turkey – but they all have one thing in common: they all begin with a letter which changes the life of the heroine.

 

Rose's romantic fantasy More than Wishes is mostly set in Turkey. Here is the blurb for Rose's story... Raised on a sailor’s tales of adventure and eager for her own, Stella Cunningham answers an advertisement for a traveling companion to the Orient. There she purchases an ancient bronze lamp with a secret. In the land of flying carpets and genies, Stella is about to have the adventure of a lifetime.

It would never have occurred to me to actually make Turkish Delights. I thought they would be far too tricky for my modest cooking or baking skills. However, thanks to Rose's recipe I am now determined to try...I hope you will too!

Turkish Delight
Known in Turkey as Lokum

Ingredients~

1 ½ cups water
3 cups granulated sugar

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

½ cup orange juice

3 tablespoons orange zest

3 (.25 ounce) envelopes unflavored gelatin  

¾ cup cornstarch

½ cup cold water

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

¾ cup chopped pistachio nuts

Confectioners' sugar for dusting

In a large saucepan, combine: water, granulated sugar and light corn syrup

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Stirring frequently, cook until the temperature reaches 240 degrees F (115 degrees C) on a candy thermometer. Set syrup aside, but keep the mixture hot.

Stir together: orange juice, orange zest and unflavored gelatin

Set aside.

In a small bowl, dissolve cornstarch in ½ cup cold water. Stir into the hot syrup. Place over medium-low heat. Stirring gently, simmer until very thick.

Remove thickened syrup from heat, stir in orange juice mixture, vanilla extract, and chopped pistachios.

Generously powder an 8x8-inch pan with confectioners' sugar (powdered sugar). Pour mixture into the pan, and let cool in a cool, dry place until set (3 to 4 hours). Do not refrigerate.

When cool, sprinkle the top with a thick layer of powdered sugar. Cut into 1-inch squares. Dredge each with more powdered sugar to coat. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

Thank you for this delicious recipe, Rose.

LETTERBOX LOVE STORIES is available from

Amazon ● Barnes and Noble ● ARe Romance eBooks ● Kobo ● iTunes ● GoogleBooks ● Fantastic Fiction

A sweet recipe from the Middle Ages...all the way into your plate

My Thursday recipe is a little bit special today...not only because it is, for a change, a sweet one, but also because it is from a long, long time ago - the Middle Ages. It comes courtesy from Lindsey Townsend, one of the nine authors of LETTERBOX LOVE STORIES, an anthology of romantic short stories which is now available for pre-order here. Lindsay's story, PLAIN HARRY, is set in the Middle Ages...

Hello Lindsay and welcome. Thank you so much for this delicious recipe for Pears in Syrup. Tell me, why did you choose this recipe for today's blog?

Every now and again I have a go at a recipe from the ancient or medieval worlds, officially for research purposes but mostly through a mixture of curiosity and greed. Since I now own a copy of Constance Hieatt's delectable book of authentic medieval recipes, Pleyn Delit, this time it was one of those deceptively simple but spicy, wine-warm sweets which the fourteenth and fifteenth century loved.

The recipe calls for 1 kilo/2 lb of pears, 500ml red wine, 1 tbsp. red wine vinegar, 125 gm sugar, 1tsp. cinnamon and 1/4tsp. ground ginger, plus an optional 6-8 whole cloves and a pinch of saffron. There are several methods of cooking this fifteenth-century delicacy in Prof. Hieatt's book (recipe 113: Wardonys in Syryp), and medieval cooks would have used pots over an open fire, but I like to keep it simple, so used a casserole and a fan oven.

Parboil the pears in water for a few minutes, then peel and quarter them and lay them in the casserole. Add the cinnamon and sugar to the wine in a saucepan and heat it through until the sugar has dissolved, then strain (if necessary) and pour the mixture over the pears. Cover the casserole and leave it in the oven for about an hour at around 250C (180C in a fan oven worked fine). Remove the casserole and add the wine vinegar, cloves and saffron. If necessary, remove some of the liquid and boil it for a few minutes to reduce it, which will slightly thicken and sweeten the syrup. Put the casserole back in the oven and give it another 15 minutes or so. 'Look that it be sharp and sweet (poinaunt an dowcet)', the recipe says. Cool, serve and eat.

For more detail, more cooking methods and a mass of other recipes, see Pleyn Delit. The medieval English cook may well have used Warden pears, grown at the Cistercian abbey of Old Warden in Bedfordshire, and the abbey's coat of arms (top left, from the abbey's page at Bedfordshire County Council Archives) shows three of them. A similar dish, 'peres en confyt', includes mulberries for darkness and appears in the fourteenth-century cookbook, Forme of Cury.

This is fascinating, Lindsay! Thank you so much... Lindsay's story in LETTERBOX LOVE STORIES is called PLAIN HARRY.

 The blurb for 'Plain Harry' by Lindsay Townsend

 Recovering from a brutal marriage, Esther is living quietly as a widow when a letter from her brother Sir Stephen destroys her contented life. Stephen orders her to marry Sir Henry—but who is this “Plain Harry” and how will he treat her?

Set in medieval England in a time when women had few rights, this story shows how love can flourish in the unlikeliest of places and between the unlikeliest of people.

My links:

Twitter account -

https://twitter.com/lindsayromantic    

Blogger – My blog - http://www.lindsaytownsend.co.uk/

My author page on Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1023449.Lindsay_Townsend

Lindsay Townsend, historical romance.   http://www.lindsaytownsend.com/  

or follow me at Twitter: @lindsayromantic