With the coming of the warm days, St Petersburg is getting even more magnificent 🙂 And while during the work days the city belongs to the cars and the stress, on weekends St Petersburg is all at your service. This feeling of owning the city, particularly its otherwise estranged and unwelcomingly jammed streets and places, is really something special. Myyyy precccccciousssss 🙂 A glimpse of St Petersburg on a Saturday evening in late May:
Salsa on Vasilyevsky Island
Field of Mars conquered by those who did not leave the city for the weekend
The Neva occupied by the boats of all sorts
The Hermitage takes a rest for the night from the hoards of tourists…
while the Palace Square is “full-house”
The Archangel on top of the Alexander column, which stands thanks to its weight only, observes the city spreading wide and far under his (its?) feet
And now some food for the weekend:
One year ago – Baguette Croccante Homemade and Twisted Bread
Two years ago –Ecco Una Collezione Italiana
Three years ago –Fried Flatbread and Beans a la Grecque
Upside-Down Pear Chocolate Cake adapted from marcussamuelsson.com will make rich, sweet and soft brownie-like cake with sugary fruit on top. Attention to the tricky caramel though! For the entire recipe, visit the link above.
Changes: used only 2 pears, added some cardamom to the batter.
Remarks: I had real problems with making the syrup into caramel… It just wouldn’t get anywhere apart from becoming… sugar again! So in the end, after adding more water like three times, I gave up and poured it into the baking pan anyway. I think half of the sugar also crystallized on the sides of the pan (I was too lazy to brush the sides with water as the author of the recipe suggests). If you succeed with the caramel, however, the fruit will be covered with a crunchy sugar crust. My syrupy cake on the contrary got very moist on top rather than crunchy. And although the caramel might be tricky, the process of releasing the cake from the pan and inverting it upside down was very easy and smooth.
Result: Moist and very sweet, with a super-soft top part from pear juice + the syrup. Very chocolate-y and very rich! If your fruit is sweet enough you might prefer to reduce the sugar in the batter.
Adding this to my St Petersburg, Sweet and Chocolate recipe collections.
G.
