Buckwheat-Amaretti-Cake

Today, a shorter post as I am currently baking my behind off in the kitchen trying to make a shortlist of 'favourite bakes'.

Soon I will start my own cake catering business. I am brainstorming, creating, drawing and baking a lot to see what will work best. Luckily I am surrounded by talented people who support me in this goal and give me lots of help, challenges and new bright ideas! Thank you!!

One of my recent experiments:

Buckwheat-Amaretti-Cake

ingredients:

100 grams butter

100 grams sugar

3 eggs, separated

100 grams buckwheat flour

100 grams rye flour

7 grams baking powder

pinch of salt

2 apples in large cubes

10 amaretti morbidi (soft amaretti/bitterkoekjes) crumbled up

50 grams almond slices

50 grams of icing sugar

Preheat the oven on 175 degrees celsius.

Beat the butter with the sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs yolks one at a time till the mix is pale and airy.

Add the flours, salt and baking powder. Mix until smooth. Whip the egg whites til firm and fold in with the cake mix with a spatula 1/3 at at time, until just blended. Add the amaretti and apples and mix with a spatula. 

Prepare your baking form with batter and flour. Fill it with the cake mix. Mix the almond slices with the icing sugar and divide over the cake mix.

Make the cake for 45 minutes till golden brown and cooked. You can check this by inserting a knife in the centre, it should come out clean.

Best eaten warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and within two days.

Dutch filled spice biscuit

A few life changing events have pulled me away from blogging over the last year and a half....
We got married and had our beautiful son!
Both fairly time consuming, life changing, wonderful, big things that, in combination with a fulltime job, left me with no time to blog. I am trying to pick up my creative activities, combining it with being a mom...a challenge I can tell you, but the most wonderful one I can imagine.

This is the second time I've made this biscuit, and it's again a big success. A very traditional recipe we make (or buy) around Sinterklaas, the Dutch version of Thanksgiving basically.
On the 5th of December Santaclaus: Sinterklaas, together with his helpers, comes to bring us presents and candy and we all drink hot chocolate and eat erwtensoup.

See Wikipedia for a better explenation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas

It's a spicy, cinnamon, full-christmas-flavoured biscuit filled with rich almond goodness.

makes 30 pcs

Ingredients:

for the dough:

200gr flower (any type you like)

100 gr sugar

2 tablespoons of mixed christmas spice (speculaaskruiden) *

a pinch of salt

150 gr cold butter in cubes

2 tablespoons of milk

for the filling:

150 gr of peeled almonds

150 gr cane sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1 egg

for the finishing:

1 egg

30 peeled almonds

* To mix your own Speculaaskruiden mix:

4 tsp Cinnamon

2 tsp ground cardemom

2 tsp ground coriander ( ketoembar)

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground clove

To convert grams into other units: http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/conversions/grams/grams-to-cups-conversions

Start making the filling two days in advance (preferably). grind the almonds with the sugar and the lemon zest till it sticks together and is a fairly fine structure, you can add a bit of water to make it more sticky. Make into a ball and put in the fridge for at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius.

Then for the dough you mix all dry ingredients, the add the butter and mix till it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the milk and quickly combine to create a smooth ball of dough. Leave in the fridge for half an hour.

Take you filling and let it get to room temperature. Mix in the egg until smooth.

Roll out half the dough to a rectangle of about 20 by 25 cm and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Put the filling on top in the centre so it doesn't leak to the edges.

Roll out the other half of the dough to the same size and carefully place on top.

Now press down the edges and seal with a fork.

finish with one layer of egg wash, then the almonds in straight lines and another layer of egg wash.

Bake the biscuit for 40 minutes until lovely dark golden brown with cracks.

Let it cool slightly and cut into squares with one almond in the middle.

Best with a hot chocolate in the month of December...

just out of the oven

cut into squares

Focaccia del Turista

When summer arrives, our ways change. We wear sandals, skirts and dresses with no tights (what a relieve !). We exchange baking cakes for making salads and summer soups. We eat outside, where the last rays of sun shine and the blackbirds prelude the night.

Since last summer we have the habit of eating a pizza on Sunday nights at our favorite restaurant in Argegno.
They have the greatest pizza's there, the dough is different from any other pizza place and the ingredients are super fresh and delicious. I am especially in love with the 'Focaccia del Turista', a pizza with leeks, fresh salmon, cream, mozzarella and fresh tomatoes. How good does that sound!?

As I'm still only good with one arm, my shoulder is healing slower then expected, I tried to make a simple dish with leftovers. It turned out to be a delicious version of my favorite Argegno pizza.

Here is the recipe:

You will need for 1 big pizza:
1 sheet of store bought puff pastry
1 small leek
150 grams of smoked or fresh salmon
100ml of cream
1 small ball of mozzarella
2 organic medium eggs
a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper
(I had some left over mashed potatoes that I added, but this is not necessary at all)

Preheat the oven on 180 degrees Celsius.
Roll out your sheet of puff pastry and fold 1cm of the edges to the inside to make a border.
Finely slice and wash the leeks and sprinkle on top of the pastry. Add slivers of the salmon and mozzarella, poor over the cream. Break the eggs onto the pizza, one on each side. Add the thyme leaves and some salt and pepper to season. For some more body you can add some cherry tomatoes or small potato cubes. You can also leave the eggs out, if you don't feel like them.

Bake the pizza for about 20 minutes and eat right away with a fresh salad!

Buon appetit!

Focaccia del Turista

The real thing!

Tropical Icebergs

During the Christmas holidays, when at home at my love's mom, who has an amazing big TV, I saw the first episode of Frozen Planet by the BBC Earth. And watching this, you need a big screen.

I was amazed what beautiful wonders the warming of the Earth can create. It made me feel so excited and sad at the same time.
I have always thought, and am pretty sure, that nature can never be overruled in its beauty by manmade things. This series confirmed that feeling.
The countless shades of blue that hide in a piece of ancient ice. The slow transformation of a glacial landscape. The love-making of polar bears.

The closest I've ever been to an icy landscape like this was the Rhone and Aletsch glacier in Switzerland. We climbed the mountain next to it to be able to see the miles long street of thousands of years old ice. At the end of the Rhone glacier there is an ice cave that you can enter. It was covered with pieces of white cloth to reflect the warm sunlight and to keep the glacier from melting away even quicker.

Not that it has anything to do with it, I just thought they looked somewhat like little icebergs...I baked a tropical delight last week 'coconut rocks' or as we call them in Holland 'cocos macronen'.

I was looking for a 'quick and easy' recipe and that's exactly what this is.

You need:
180gr of ground coconut
2 very fresh eggwhites
120gr of table sugar
1/2 a stick of fresh vanilla
1 pinch af salt

Preheat the oven on 210 degrees C.
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Make whatever shape you like of them as long as you get between 15 and 20 pieces. Put them on a baking paper lined oven tray and bake them for about 5-8 minutes, depending on your oven. You can keep them for a few days.

After baking 

above 4 photo's from www.lovethesepics.com

Rhone glacier

Aletsch glacier