written by: Kasia

My idea of how my involvement in this blog would look like was quite different. I wanted to write a fairy tale about our business. But since Maciek started telling you about the business aspect of what we create in his blog entries, I decided to put my "fairy tale" idea on the shelf.

Inspired by Marlena's last post about dreams, I decided to make one of my dreams come true and share my culinary travels in the form of a painter’s cooking blog :)

An important fact relating to this story is that I live with my three-generation family, on one floor, door to door but thankfully :) not window to window. This living arrangement provides a lot of inspiration, a lot of good times, a lot of support and is very rarely problematic for everyone involved.
But wait… to the point!

Today it will be all about food!

I want to emphasize that such a shared, multi-generational residence is a somewhat new situation for us. Try to imagine that all of a sudden our shared kitchen has to fit three generations of self-proclaimed cooks, all of them with established habits and their own culinary style :) :).

My grandmother's cooking is filled with pre-war influences, from beyond our eastern border. Everyday you can count on her serving all kinds of dumplings: cheese dumplings, lazy dumplings, plum dumplings, borscht or stuffed cabbage. Until I lived with my grandma, I had no idea that it was possible to cook so cheaply. Grandma is the true champion of economics in the kitchen. Her cooking is also ideal for me, because it has little fried products and little meat.

My mom is the master of quick family dinners with meat, potatoes and salad. So far I haven’t been able to make this simple dish as deliciously as my mother. And my tomato soup never tastes as good as hers. Mom is also an ambassador for juices and cocktails and it was one of them that gave birth to our muffins.

Then there’s me, the youngest on this chef team and probably the bravest. Thanks to my friendship with a vegan, I have been on such culinary adventures as bean meringues and potato cheese :). I am also fortunate that my boyfriend cooks as well, and the basis of our daily diet is usually a one-pot groat risotto.

Our common living arrangement has a huge culinary benefit, you waste a lot less food. Someone can always finish what you were eating, use it for something else or even freeze for later.

All of us share a love for sweets, which we eat constantly during endless joint coffee sessions. However, we all try to eat healthy. And so one day as the chief culinary experimenter, I baked a chocolate cake with zucchini. I was therefore scolded by my grandmother for allowing myself the extravagance of cooking zucchini when it’s not in season :) The idea of baking the zucchini cake was accepted however, and the cake was then complemented and devoured.

One day my grandmother announced that there were several kilos of beets about to arrive from the market. The economical cook then whipped up some borscht from some of the beets. The juice ambassador took the rest and made a very healthy juice. The juicer left some beet shavings and so grandma, inspired by the zucchini cake came up with the idea to give them to me, maybe I will be able to come up with something sweet? And so beet shavings fell to me. This is how the first two cakes were created, which tested different proportions and additives, and then the most delicious, perfectly moist chocolate beetroot muffins with beetroot cream :)

Here's a recipe for about 15 muffins:

Muffins:
4 glasses of grated beets from the juicer*
3 eggs
1 cup oil
1 cup any flour - I used millet
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 dark chocolate bar
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cocoa
2 packets vanilla sugar

Cream:
250g mascarpone cheese
100g natural yogurt
1 tablespoon of honey
4 tablespoons of grated beets

Recipe:
Warm up the oven to 175 degrees centigrade. Put aside 4 tablespoons of shavings for coloring the cream later on. Mix the other ingredients (except chocolate) with a large spoon or spatula. Cut the chocolate into small pieces and mix them with the dough. Put the dough into muffin molds. Bake for 30 minutes. Take out of the oven and allow to cool for a while.

Cream:
Mix mascarpone with honey and yogurt, add the yogurt gradually so that the cheese is silky but not liquid. Gradually add the beet shavings set aside earlier to obtain the right color. Apply the cream to the cooled muffins with a confectionery sleeve.

TA-DA!
*you can also use a mix of beetroot, carrots and apples.

PS: if you don’t have the time or energy to bake right after making the juice, you can always freeze grated beets for later.