Kitchen crochet

I love the Catania yarn from Schachenmayr. It is my favourite to make toys for children (mine and my friends'). I got several books for Christmas, one of them is full of patterns for the children's toy-kitchen. I started a muffin-form when my son went to Kindergarten in January, but I didn't go far, lacking time really... Then last weekend I took my crochet bag with me and decided to finish it. I made a four-muffin-form instead of a six one. My children's oven isn't that very big and I also do not intend on making too many muffins (four to eight will do).

The felt sweets I made several years ago fit quite nicely, so I might not even bother making cupcakes or muffins ;)

I like the colours, citrus fruits and bright summer-sky blue! The perfect baking-form for summer!

In addition I used a bit of left-over yarn to make lollipops. N. and T. love them!

 

The SC & more n°326: Dessert

 I am back for the SC&more! 24 weeks without is a long time, but somehow after the  Christmas break I didn't manage to find enough motivation to come back. But today I have decided to try again :)

Isabelle requested a dessert this week and I happened to make a lovely one  yesterday. Here it is: 

Flan pâtissier parisien à la fraise.

 I made it with a powder I bought in France "poudre impérial", it's every time a tri to memory lane, my mother often made flan, my favourite was with raisins. Anyhow, this time I made it with strawberries we had in our freezer from last year and a shortcrust pastry (my husband said more sugar is needed in the pastry next time). Three adults and two children... we ate 3/4 of it! It was so nice and refreshing. The rest we will eat today for "goûter" (16h snack). 

Check out the museum for the other participations! And see you hopefully next week for the next challenge :)

Sweet Apple "Pizza"

A while ago I posted a picture of a sweet "pizza" and some of you asked for the recipe. I am sorry it took so long, but here it is! Finally! 

The dough (for about 500gr):

190ml of milk

60gr of butter or margarine

1,5 egg

260gr of flour

6 Tbsp of sugar

A large pinch of salt

1/4 tsp of dry yeast

We used the bread machine to make the dough.

After putting the dough on a baking sheet, we put apple pieces on it and sprinkled rather generously sugar and cinnamon on top. 

In addition we put "crumble" dough:

150gr of soft butter

200gr of sugar

1 sachet of Vanilla sugar

250gr of flour

Don't hesitate to be generous with apples, an alternative can be to put a small layer of apple sauce. Then bake it until the dough looks nice and golden. Bon Appétit!

Russian Cherry Cake

I have found a picture of a delicious looking cake on Pinterest, but when I followed the link, the recipe was actually in Russian. I first asked my parents-in-law for help since they took Russian in school, but they still needed the help of an online translator ;)

Here is the translated recipe, I cannot guarantee that it is exact, but after testing the recipe I can say that it looks about right:

Ingredients for the dough:

200gr of soft butter
A pinch of salt
3 cups of flour
1 cup of Kefir (apparently a sort of cream cheese - I replaced it with plain yoghurt but next time I'll use something a little thicker, it made the dough a little sticky)
A sachet of baking powder
A sachet of vanilla sugar

Ingredients for the filling:

500gr of cherries (without stones)
1 cup of sugar

Mix the ingredients for the dough - I did put the yoghurt last, and then I left the dough to rest a bit before rolling it out while I was getting the fruits ready with the children.

Then roll out the dough in a large rectangles on 3mm thickness. Cut bands of about 7 to 8 cm width (I think next time I'd make them a tad wider). Put the fruits in the middle of each stripe and sprinkle with sugar. Form rolls and place them in a round form.

30 to 40 min. in the oven at 200°C

and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.

It looks good and it tastes brilliant. I also loved working with the dough, it was quite supple and easy to use.
I will try the recipe again using different fruits such as plums. Yum, I'm looking forward to it already !!

In der Weihnachtsbäkerei...

In der Weihnachtsbäkerei... here is my children's favourite song at the moment! They love it and ask me to play it over and over again. I rather like it too, but I am getting slightly tired of hearing it. I've tried to find a video online but somehow they won't play on my computer. So if you are curious, try to find it by yourself ;)

It is about making Christmas biscuits, they get burnt at the end but at least the children making them had fun.

We also have been making Christmas goodies as well as buying some at our local bakery. We made Mince pies, our first ones in 4 years. We had loved them when we were living in the UK and we were missing them very much. So we opened again our Delia's Christmas book (wedding gift!) and made mincemeat and mince pies. If you are not lucky enough to own a copy of the book, you can easily find the recipes online. 

The mince pies were absolutely delicious and luckily we have enough mincemeat to make another two batches soon! 

Now onto things that we haven't baked ourselves but which are part of our Christmas favourites: speculoos biscuits, Dresdener Christollen (see pic below), Domino Steine (some chocolate type of sweets), Lebkuchen etc. There are many delicious things to eat around here and Christmas time is NEVER the time to try losing weight ;) which ok I guess since winter can get pretty cold, so we need to fat reserves don't we?

Cookies

 I do not have the whole recipe for those cookies, I received as a present this beautiful jar and was told to add: 250g of butter, 2 eggs and vanilla :)

 

They were just delicious! Thanks again many many times Steph!

Recipe without words: Apple pie - Guest post from G. in France

 

Raspberry Cheesecake

Two weekends ago we stayed home for the first time in a while. It was nice to just laze around. A., my husband, decided to do some cooking and baking. Cheesecake, a mix of two recipes found in our Jamie Olliver's books:

It was simply delicious! Maybe a tad too sweet when getting to the third helping, but then I guess that is my own fault for being so greedy ;)