Chocolate Chip Buckwheat Cupcakes

I was having some chocolate with some multi-cereal bread earlier on today, and I noticed I really liked how the chocolate taste combined with the malty taste of some of the cereals...

Then I remembered I had those dark chocolate chips that were almost as savoury as sweet: quite some bitterness from the dark chocolate and a bit of salt (they put a bit of salt in most things to underscore the taste, but this was a bit too noticeable), and very little sweetness. I thought that they might work well with something with a malty taste, like, say... buckwheat... Which I happened to have in the closet:-)

So this is another riff on my trusty banana bread recipe (which I really should post as is sometime;-) ).

Here we go:
- 300g buckwheat flour
- 100g white flour
- 12g baking powder
- 200g white sugar
- 200ml milk
- 3 plain yoghurts (pots of 125ml)
- 3 eggs
- 70g butter
- 275g chocolate chips
(This is what I happened to have on hand, you could play around with a quantities and see what it gives you... but I really liked the result so I'm putting it on the record as is).

Prep:
1. Mix the dry ingredients (except the chocolate chips).
2. Add the wet ingredients and mix some more (tip: melt the butter in the microwave so it combines more easily with the rest).
3. Stir in the chocolate chips.
4. Preheat your oven to 200 (fan)/220, and divide the batter into your cupcake tins (I got some individual ones from my mom which are very handy since my 12-cupcakes tin doesn't fit in our small oven/microwave/grill).
5. Bake for 15-20 min (depending on your oven, ours is a bit slow so it needs 20 minutes).

Result:

These are the ones I baked (I can only fit 12 at a time in our oven). The recipe gave me about 30, I froze the rest.

Very yummy, especially right out of the oven... And quite a different taste than regular cupcakes (which are often too sweet for my taste).

The chocolate chips are at the bottom!

Lemon Cheesecake

About a year and a half ago, I promised Kristof I'd teach him to make cheesecake, and I only got around to it this week-end (I know, shame on me!!!).

We used the lemon cheesecake recipe I always use, and which always produces a seriously yummy result (this is THE lemon cheesecake, at least according to my standards!).

The recipe is online here, but for some reason their site was down while I was shopping for ingredients (a bit of a "gaaahhh!!!" moment) so I'm posting it here too (I figure there are less chances of both sites being down).

 
Ingredients
 

For the biscuit base

        10 digestive biscuits or 20 dinosaur biscuits (which makes it even better, just use the ones without chocolate)
        75g melted butter
        1 tbsp clear honey

For the filling

        750g mascarpone cheese
        juice and zest of 2 lemons
        200g white powder sugar 

Preparation

1. Brush the bottom of your springform cake tin with some of the melted butter (this is totally optional since this is a no-bake cheesecake). 
2. Crush the biscuits and tip them into a bowl, add the melted butter and honey and stir until well combined. The butter and honey are what will hold the biscuits crumbs together.
   
   

   

   
   

   Unfortunately I can't promise that no dinosaur biscuits were harmed while making this cheesecake!
   
   

   
   

   

   
   
3. Tip the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin. Level it and tap the whole surface repeatedly to make it as compact as you can. Chill in the fridge while making the filling.
   
   

   

   
   
4. For the filling, mix the mascarpone cheese, lemon juice and zest and sugar together in a bowl.
   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   
   
   Do not over-mix or the mascarpone will become runny (if that happens your only hope is adding gelatine like I had to do for my caramel version, which doesn't impair the taste, but of course the texture is completely different!).
5. Spoon the mixture into the tin on top of the chilled biscuit mixture and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours. 
   
   

   

   
   
6. When ready to serve, unclasp the springform ring and ease the cheesecake out.
   
   
   

   
   

   

   
   And enjoy:)

Easy and Yummy Strawberry Tart

Kristof's team takes turns to make cakes for their Show and Tell meeting, every two weeks (a great habit if you ask me!).

This week was his turn, and since I wasn't around to help (Girls' Night!), I gave him some pointers for an easy strawberry tart I made a few years ago for my birthday. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

1 pie crust (puff pastry or shortbread)

1 basket of strawberries (about 500g)

1kg of mascarpone

vanilla sugar, to taste

Preparation

1. Unroll the crust in a pie dish, prick it all over with a fork and bake it "blind" according to the packaging's directions (in his case, that was 35min at 210 degrees Celsius).

2. Whisk the vanilla sugar into the mascarpone (Kristof used 4 packs, about 45g, but if you have more of a sweet tooth you might want to add more).

3. When the pie crust has cooled down, fill it with the mascarpone mixture and top it with strawberries.

Ta Dah!

It was yummy and disappeared quite quickly;) 

His colleagues complained that it was bad for their figure (apparently software developers are watching their figure these days!) but still went for seconds and thirds...

And here's the proud cook with his creation:

Goat cheese, bacon, leek and rosemary quiche

This is the best tasting quiche I've made so far (OK I don't make quiche that often, but that one is really really good!).
I used this as a starting point.

Ingredients

Pie crust (I just use a store bought one, easy peasy)
1 leek
100g bacon (diced)
1 log of goat cheese (about 150-200g)
200g cream cheese
1 egg
a little milk
rosemary (preferably fresh)


Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to the temperature indicated on the pie crust packaging (mine said 210 degrees -celsius!- but this oven is a bit slow/weak so I set it to 220).
In the meantime, slice your leek, sauté it in a bit of olive oil, and add the bacon when the leek is almost cooked.

2. Cook your pastry "blind" for 10 minutes. This basically means: unroll it in your pie dish, prick it with a fork, and set something kind of heavy on it so the bottom doesn't rise when cooking. The original recipe said to use uncooked rice or pastry weights (I've never come across those!), but I just put a smaller and heavier pie dish on top, on some baking paper to not pile on the washing up!

While this is cooking, whisk the cream cheese, egg and milk, and add some chopped up rosemary.

(I thought I had added way too much milk -a generous splash- but it turned out OK in the end).

3. Get your pastry out of the oven and add the leek and bacon mix, and the egg mix to it. Spread it nice and evenly, then slice the goat cheese and arrange the slices on top of the rest.

You can add a little olive oil and pepper if you want (I'd avoid extra salt, the bacon and goat cheese are salty enough!).

4. Cook it for the remainder of the time indicated on the package, or a little more if like me you went a little heavy on the milk and your oven likes to take its time (that was 25 minutes for me, still at the same temperature).

5. Check that it is actually cooked by sticking a knife into it (not too much stabbing, that'll ruin the look;) ), let it cool down just a little and enjoy!

P.S. That extra milk/extra cooking time thing was totally worth it, it turned out really creamy and light!
P.P.S. The saltiness of the bacon and goat cheese, the soft taste of the leek, the creaminess of the filling, the hint of rosemary... Yum!!! I really hope the rest of it tastes as nice cold tomorrow!

American style rhubarb pie

Rhubarb is one of those things I had never come across before moving north... But the BF is a big fan of it, so I had to try it. Turns out it's alright, not the best thing ever but quite nice in a double crust pie (those American style pies they have in Mickey Mouse cartoons...).

I've made it a few times now, using this recipe.

Here's a Europe friendly (metric!) version...

Ingredients

200g sugar

25g flour

1g cinnamon

2 eggs

15g butter

500g chopped rhubarb (that was about 4 stalks for me)

2 pie crusts (I use store bought puff pastries)

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth. 

2. Gently stir in the rhubarb. 

3. Line a pastry case with the bottom pie crust and add the filling. Dot with butter.

4. Cover with the top pie crust and seal the edges together (the original recipe says "Trim, seal and flute edges". I've no idea what this fluting business is, but what I usually do is fold the excess top pastry under and pinch it together with the bottom pastry edge. Then press a fork on the edge to make it prettier... This works just fine).

5. Cut slits in the top pastry so air can escape while its cooking, and the top pastry doesn't go flying off... You should have something like this...

6. Stick it in an oven preheated at 205 degrees C (or 185 for a fan oven), for about 45 minutes. As for most things, keep an eye on it the last few minutes;)

And this is what you get!

Yummy lemon muffins

I adapted this recipe from a banana bread recipe in a "cafe food" booklet from The Australian Women's Weekly (that I randomly found in an Irish supermarket a few years ago).

Now why start from a banana bread recipe? Well I'm a beginner baker so I don't have that many recipes under my belt yet... And that one is a favourite, so one day I tried pouring the batter into a muffin tray instead, and then tried making a batch with different ingredients... And it worked:)

So here we go:
- 185g flour
- 5.5g baking powder
- 100g white sugar
- 20g butter
- 1 egg
- 50ml milk
- 2 untreated lemons
- sesame seeds (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C (200 if using a fan oven) and line the muffin tins/muffin tray.
2. Mix flour and baking powder in a large bowl.
3. Rub in the butter (you can also melt it in the microwave to mix it in easier).
4. Stir in the sugar and milk.
5. Juice and zest your lemons, and add the juice and zest to the mix (watch out if you have cuts on your hands the lemon juice will burn!).
6. Spoon into the muffin tray and sprinkle with sesame seeds if desired (I did half with and half without in case somebody was allergic).
7. Bake in the oven for 15min (a little less if you want the center a little gooey).

And enjoy!

I made this for the Show&Tell meeting last week (meetings with cake are always more interesting;) ). One of my colleagues usually brings some cake, so I decided it was my turn this time (except I didn't mention it so I was one of 3 people that brought cake... So it was a very good meeting!).
It went down a treat and was all eaten:) And I got a great compliment as my colleague Gerd, who has been taking evening baking classes for a few years, asked me for the recipe:) Here's her blog about baking: Veel Afwas! (in Dutch). She's definitely not a beginner!

Here's the only picture I have (I saved mine for after the meeting as I was full from the other treats):

Donna Hay's Egg and Bacon pies

Well... pie, I only made one (the BF wasn't hungry... He usually gets up and has breakfast way before me in the week-end... I just like sleeping in).

Here's the recipe.

I lined the tin with 4 pieces of streaky bacon, and added a mix of 2 eggs, some milk, salt and pepper and some herbes de Provence.

I planned on adding cherry tomato slices, but it was pretty full and I didn't want the egg to go overboard. Maybe next time!

Waiting in anticipation:

And here it is:

Yum!

Caramel Cheesecake

I made a yummy cheesecake for New Year's dinner, starting from this recipe (I've made the original lemon version twice before, and it's fab!).
Here's the modified recipe:

For the biscuit base

30 speculoos biscuits
75g butter

For the filling

750g mascarpone cheese
100g brown sugar
100ml caramel sauce (or you could replace sugar + caramel sauce by 200ml caramel, made by dissolving 200g brown sugar in 200ml water)
a pinch of cinnamon

Preparation method

1. Brush the bottom of a 23cm springform cake tin with some of the melted butter.
2. Crush the biscuits and tip them into a bowl, add the melted butter and stir until well combined.
3. Tip the mixture into the bottom of the cake tin. Using the back of a spoon, gently push the crumbs from the centre outward, until smooth and level. This will form the base of the cheesecake. Chill in the fridge while making the filling.
4. For the filling, dissolve the sugar into the caramel sauce, with a bit of water if necessary (or make the caramel).
5. Mix the caramel and the mascarpone cheese in a bowl until well combined. Do not mix the mixture too much!!
6. Spoon the mixture into the tin on top of the chilled biscuit mixture and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
7. When ready to serve, unclasp the springform ring and ease out the cheesecake.

Tip

If you've over mixed the filling and ended up with "mascarpone soup" (like I did), leaving it in the fridge overnight won't help firming it up again. What you need to do is add gelatine:
1. Place 4.5 sheets of gelatine (or the appropriate quantity if you changed the amount of mascarpone, see here) under at least 3/4L of cold water in a bowl and leave it for 5 min.
2. Pat the gelatine dry.
3. Place it in a small quantity of warm water in a pot (I used about 100ml), and dissolve on low fire (don't bring to the boil).
4. Take off the fire and gradually add the filling to the gelatine (not the opposite - I don't know why this matters but apparently it does!).
5. Leave it to cool in the fridge for 2 hours (I put it in an ice bath before putting it in the fridge).
6. Tip it into the springform tin over the biscuit base (the filling should now be firm enough to not run everywhere), and smooth it with a spatula.
7. Leave it to chill for at least another 2 hours. And this should save your cheesecake without compromising the taste:)

Little note: During this whole operation I somehow got cheesecake in my hair! (of course this was right after washing my hair...). How does Brie Van De Kamp do it? ;)

I forgot to take a picture of the complete cheesecake, so here's what's left:

Jeroen Meus's Apple Crumble

Jeroen Meus is one of the local celebrity chefs, much raved about by the BF's mom. His specialty is making traditional Flemish food simple so that people can cook it in the work week.

I'm usually not much of a fan, as I've the same beef with Flemish food as with most "northern" food: too heavy, over-reliance on meat and potatoes, and (this one might be specifically Flemish) sauce overkill.
Our work canteen (with serves a canteen -read bad- version of traditional Flemish food) is no stranger to serving as many as 3 sauces in/on top of a single dish, not counting all the mayonnaise&co sauces you can add yourself...
Don't get me wrong, the Flemish/Belgians have some yummy dishes too (vol au vent, stoverij and waterzooi come to mind, and of course their world famous chocolate, fries, mussels, beer, speculaas...).

So anyway, I had never been inclined to try one of Jeroen Meus' recipes... Until he made apple crumble! Now that's not typically Flemish, but I suppose he wanted to introduce a bit of variation...

Here is the original recipe (in Dutch). I followed it pretty much exactly except for removing a few bits and bobs I didn't like (raisins, cardamom, star aniseed).

Here's a translation:

Ingredients for 4 servings:

For the crumble:
125 g flour
100 g oat flakes
115 g butter
100 g sugar
1 pinch of cinnamon powder

For the apple mix:
4 apples
3 tablespoons of brown sugar (yes I know he's mixing metric and imperial... I just sprinkled some brown sugar over the cut apples)
A slog of rum (he used rum to rehydrate the raisins, but since I wasn't using raisins, I figured I'd just add it to the apples)

Serving suggestion:

With 1 scoop of speculaas ice cream per person (speculaas ice cream is made from speculaas biscuits and is veeerrryyy good, but I just didn't have any...).

Preparation:

1. Dice the (cold) butter.
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, the oat flakes, the sugar and the diced butter.
Add a pinch of cinnamon and mix with your hands until you get a crumbly dough.

3. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
4. Peel and core the apples. Cut into chunks.
5. Butter an oven dish, place the apples in it and stir the brown sugar in the apples.
6. Add the crumbly dough evenly over the apples and bake for 25-30 min.

Verdict:

Pretty good, but a few things to tweak for next time:
- use less sugar in the crumble dough (it was too sweet for my taste)
- either cut the apples chunks smaller, or use a lower temperature and bake for longer (the apples were just about cooked while the crumble was browning a bit).

Damn, now I feel like apple crumble again :S

Gâteau au Yaourt (Yoghurt Cake)

This is a childhood favourite... and the only thing I could bake until recently:-D
It's dead easy, I'd say "suitable for ages 6 and up";-)
You don't even need a kitchen scale or measuring cup as everything is measured in a yoghurt pot...

I usually follow this French recipe. Here's an English translation:

• 1 yoghurt
• 2 (yoghurt) pots of flour
• 2 pots of sugar
• ½ pot of sunflower oil (or melted butter)
• 3 eggs
• ½ pack (5.5 g) of baking powder
• 1 pack (11 g) of vanilla sugar (optional)

 Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven at 200-220° C.
2. Pour the yoghurt in a mixing bowl.
3. Clean the yoghurt pot and use it as measure to add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl.
4. Mix well.
5. Butter your dish, pour the dough and bake in the oven for about 30 min.
To check whether it's cooked, stick a knife in the thickest part. If it comes out clean (wet but with no dough on it counts as clean), the cake is ready!

Savoury Turnovers

I love savoury pastries... Quiche, steak&kidney pie, pot pie, pizza, petits fours... Love them all, and they make great comfort food!

Yesterday night I tried to make turnovers, based on a recipe from realsimple.com (didn't know the name, just recognized it as yummy stuff from the photo!).

So my version included (for 4 turnovers):
- 2 store-bought pie crusts (the puff pastry kind)
- 350g beef&pork mince (I used 450g, but I found that was a bit much) - it would work well with 100% beef mince as well
- 2 carrots
- 4 shallots
- 250g fresh spinach (which is really a lot nicer than the canned version imo)
- 50g parmesan (add more if you want it really cheesy, I just wanted a hint of taste)
- 1 egg
- some rosemary
- salt & pepper

So here's how you go about it:
1. Slice the carrots and soften them in a bit of olive oil. Let them color a little.
2. Slice the shallots and add them to the pan. Season with rosemary. It will start smelling very good:)

3. Add the spinach little by little, and stir well each time.
4. When the vegs are cooked but still crunchy, transfer to a big mixing bowl and put the meat in the pan.
Season with salt and pepper (skip the salt if you're going to use a lot of parmesan, as it'll get too salty otherwise), and cook through.
5. While it's cooking, preheat the oven to 200 degrees celsius.
6. Add the cooked meat and the parmesan to the mixing bowl. Correct the seasoning if needed.

7. Cut the pie crusts in 2, spoon the meat&veg mix onto one side of each half-circle, leaving a 1cm border.

8. Wet the borders with a little water, fold the dough over to form a quarter-circle, and press firmly to seal (I crimped it with my fingers).
Cut 3 slits in each turnover.

9. Beat the egg and brush it over the turnovers (so they get nice and golden in the oven).
Transfer to a baking sheet with baking paper (I used the baking paper that came with the pie crusts) and cook for 15min (or until risen and golden brown).

There you go :)

Brood Pudding (Bread Pudding)

On Friday I discovered that the "healthy" biscuits I eat for breakfast on workdays have 450 kcal/100g, which is about as much as chocolate!!! Tiny shock of the day!!
So I decided to make cake for breakfast instead!! It feels decadent, but can't actually be worse calorie-wise (I'm talking about the wholesome straight-from-your-childhood home-made variety, not the colorful-and-sugary type...).

I was going to make my trusted "gâteau au yaourt" (yoghurt cake), but when I got home I saw a loaf of bread that was going to expire today. So I decided to go for a "brood pudding" (a Belgian classic that turns old bread into comforting yumminess).
It's the first time I'm making this, but I think it turned out pretty OK - I'm not sure if the texture is 100% right, but the taste is amazing!! And that's what matters, right? ;)

I used a recipe from broodpudding.be, and adapted it for the ingredients I had, that is:

- 300g multi-cereal bread
- 60g liquid margarine (margarine in a bottle for cooking and baking - I find that a lot easier to work with than a chunk of butter, although it doesn't smell great)
- 150g brown sugar (as part of this I used some cinnamon sugar I got as a gift from my sister, but you can just use plain brown sugar and add some cinnamon)
- 3 eggs
- a handful of sultanas
- vanilla extract
- a little honey

So this is how you go about it:

1. Cut or tear the bread into pieces and soak them in water (the original recipe said water, I'm sure milk would be better but I just didn't have any).
2. Mix the liquid margarine, sugar, eggs, honey and a dash of vanilla extract. Add the sultanas and mix some more.
3. Drain the bread, add it to the sugar mix and stir well. It doesn't need to be completely homogeneous but you shouldn't be able to see the bread color anywhere.
4. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
5. Butter a baking dish and pour the bread mix in it.
6. Cook for 60 min. A crust will form but it will still be pretty soft inside.

So here's what it looks like:

And it's yummy :-)

Mini Bruschettas

Here's what I'm making tonight (well it should be "bruschette" to be correct Italian but hey...).

Ingredients for 6 small bruschettas:
200g "passata" (tomato puree)
125 g mozzarella, sliced
6 slices of bread (I used medium slices of brown bread, but you can use anything)
A small tin of anchovies
Black olives, pitted
Olive oil
Herbes de Provence
Salt and pepper

Preparation:
1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees.
2. Toast the slices of bread (to prevent them from getting too soggy from the tomato sauce).
3. Make the tomato sauce: in a bowl, mix the passata with olive oil, the herbes de Provence, pepper and salt.
Use about 2 or 3 times the amount of olive oil and herbs you think you need (it will give a nice taste).
4. Place the toasted bread slices in an oven proof tray and spoon the tomato sauce generously over them.
5. Garnish with an anchovy or 2 (depending on the size of the bread slice and your taste for anchovies), a slice of mozzarella and some black olives.
6. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the mozzarella is melted.

Enjoy!!!

Yummy Cheese and Chive Biscuits

I found this recipe on The Purple Foodie.
It's a-ma-zing!!! I'm no baking whizz, but these turned out perfect the first time around... which means there will definitely be a second time;)

The only thing I changed is I replaced the cheddar, garlic powder and parsley by emmental, parmesan and chives (so for the same quantities as the original recipe, that was 100g emmental, a few handful of parmesan flakes, about 25g, and about half the contents of my dried chives shaker, so 2-3g, a third of that reserved to add to the melted butter to drizzle on the biscuits at the end).

We had a few right out of the oven, and it was very very difficult to eat only a few, even on a full stomach... I brought the rest to lunch the next day and reheated it in the microwave for my colleagues... I was still very good, although not as fantastic as right out of the oven.

I'm actually salivating just thinking about it... I'll definitely be making this again!!!

So here I go...

I've loved cooking for years, and have always loved the idea of crafts too, but so far that has consisted in:
missing doing craft stuff like when I was a kid,
reading about crafts projects on websites/blogs,
imagining stuff I could to to make my appartement look better but never actually doing any of it...

Meaning that my only "creative outlet" has been cooking :-D Mostly seeing what I can whip up with what's in the fridge/pantry ;)

So now I'm going for it:)

One of my new years' resolutions was starting to bake, and that turned out pretty fun, and sometimes yummy (not to mention it's one of the rare new years' resolutions that didn't go down the drain!). So that encouraged me :)

So I signed up for a sewing class!
Full disclosure: I actually wanted to be a fashion designer in high school, but my dad persuaded me to go to uni, which turned out pretty well since it was fun and I got a job I really like, but I haven't completely given up on the idea... Which meant, until now, vaguely planning to follow a fashion design course once I'm retired :D

But now I'm going to do something more concrete about it:) Not that I'm planning to switch careers or anything, but at least I'll get to see if I actually like making clothes (well, probably just pockets and small bags for the first while...).

On to new beginnings!!! :)