This time it was used to sweeten sour cream for a quick creamy topping.  We often use sour cream whipped with sugar in desserts, and sour cream is always in my fridge. Substituting honey for sugar seemed like a good idea, especially if it was an unusual honey like the one I had.

So I changed my mind and made this strawberry tart for all mothers of the world, including yours truly. There was no time to search for a crust recipe, so I took it from my mind using previous experiences. The recipe for the custard was taken from my old baking book, the rest came in place by itself.

The dough is a puff pastry , but not a traditional multi layered type either. The crème that was used between layers is a combination of pastry cream and simple butter cream.  Mama also added a grated lemon for the middle layer to make it even fancier than it was.

When you are not inclined to spend hours mixing, grating, and baking, but still crave a homemade dessert, this improvised creation could come handy. The Muse of Improvisation visited me and pushed some buttons of my imagination. I rushed to my fridge where I had a cup of leftover sweet crumbs, the rest was done on magical impulse.

A British dessert dating back to the 1500's, fruit fool is as simple as its name suggests. Traditional fool (or foole ) is nothing more than pureed fruit folded into sweetened whipped cream. For Valentine's day I took it a notch further and added a bed of peaches and bourbon syrup under the swirly folds of cream.

Banana bread is a classic American dish. I've been going to make it for a long time, and now that I have I almost regret it, because it is absolutely addictive! Having one slice is just not an option.

For many years these sponge-like minis were one of the favorite festive desserts in my family. Not pretentious, pretty easy to make, they do not require a lot of baking skills or fancy ingredients, yet every time a serving plate of "Isabella" excites a cry of joy in all the participants of a party. I still have this recipe hand-written on a piece of paper yellowed by time, recipe shared  long time ago by my then friend Lena Koppa, a fabulous Siberian home cook.

Hurricane Irene is shuffling its way into New York City, and it's been raining like cats and dogs since yesterday afternoon. In anticipation of power outages, I decided to make a good use of my electric mixer and bake a cake. Raspberry puree with cognac, brown sugar and cocoa powder is what came to mind.

Just buy some simple vanilla ice-cream, and arrange it in a bowl with generous amount of currants and a splash of black currant liqueur (or jam mixed with brandy). Sit back and indulge in it! Notes: An even more simple way to eat black currants is to whip 1/2 cup sour cream with 1 tbsp sugar and mix it with berries.

5 hours to prepare (but ideally you'd want to keep it in the fridge for 4-5 hours more). It is summer, so I add berries. Blackberries, the most luscious of berries, are the best addition in my opinion, but you can go without if you like.

Funny enough, we couldn't find kolache , one of traditional Czech pastries, in any Prague bakeries that were on our way. Maybe we just didn't know the right place... or maybe they became one of those things people make at home.

Follow me... Real Prague knedliky were huge! Notes: What else you could do with this dough The dough was way too much for two persons, just for knedliky, so I decided to "diversify".

This coffee cake has a rich and crumbly chocolate crust and a fluffy inside with a hint of chocolate and nuttiness. The basic recipe for the batter comes from Rose's Heavenly Cakes , a book with amazing photography and recipes that are as good as they look. But the crust invention and the flavorings are all my own:)

May Peace, Love and Prosperity follow you at all times. I love Easter: winter with its snow aggravation is behind, the sun shines more, and people look happier. Today we had a lovely Easter branch with painted eggs, buns, and a variation of no-bake cheese cake Russian style that is traditionally prepared at Easter.

This is a Russian favorite (pronounced Shar-lot-ka ), and also probably the easiest cake you will ever bake. It requires hardly any preparation and only the most basic ingredients. And yet...

When shopping at my favorite Russian market, I glanced at a shelf with plain Russian cookies, cookies that I remember since my nursery school days. Indeed, there are some products that live decade after decade, and their popularity doesn't wither... Looking at these cookies, I remembered a simple recipe of a desert that I offer to your attention today.

This was a perfect occasion to seek out the imaginary pear tart that has been haunting me. I exploited my imagination and several cook books at once, and lo and behold - the tart of dreams rests on my plate. The idea here is a simple one: a pie shell is covered with a custard-like almond topping that prevents the liquid from the fruit from seeping into the dough.

Mazurka is a sweet quick bread made with a lot of nuts and dried fruit. The nuts and fruit constitute as much as half of the dough. Mazurka is astonishingly easy to make, and is not meant to be a sophisticated cake.

Even preserves and pie fillings are tastier if made from those fresh apples. I had another opportunity to see this the other day when making my apple turnovers. The apples I used for the filling were  Mitsu apples, and the filling was absolutely delicious - sunny yellow, transparent, and fragrant.

Dating back to the ancient Rome, where they were used as a non-perishable food carried by travelers, these crunchy dry cookies have since become widespread in Italy and throughout the world. In fact, the British biscuits take their name from Italian biscotti. Italians themselves use  biscotti  as a general term for a variety of cookies, and call the cookies we know in US as biscotti by the name cantucci.