Happy Easter!

Today we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus-Christ. It is a feasting day and I hope you can all celebrate and have a lovely day with your families and loved ones.

Happy Easter to you all!

Little N.'s flowers in full bloom

Easter decorations

Easter is coming up and Little N. is old enough to make some decorations with a bit of my help. 

We started last week with decorating a polystyrene egg for a small competition at our local "Apotheke" (pharmacist). We got the results two days ago. Little N. was 19th out of at least 30 children. She did not win a big price, but every paricipating child got a small bag filled with some presents which is a lovely idea. We also got the egg back and it is now hanging in our living-room:

We then got on making some cards to send to our families:

Then we painted some hard-boiled eggs:

And finally we made some more polystyrene eggs to give as presents:

Here is a picture showing everything that we have been using to make the eggs (actually we used pretty much the same materials for the cards):

 

Little N. rather liked making all of this but by the end of it she got fed up. We did the different things over several days but it still seemed to be asking for a little too much concentration. I guess I need to learn to adapt to her rather than do as much as I want to be done.

And to finish on Easter decorations, I am forwarding you to a previous post to show you our Easter mobile . 

Would love to get new ideas for next year, does anybody have suggestions? Little N. will then be 2 and a half, and Baby T. 1 yo.

A bag to go to mass [Swap - part 1]

Some time ago now I received a bag for Little N.'s mass books. Soraya from Les Facéties de Louis-Marie made it for us and I just love it!

I gave her the "instructions" on how to make it so as to look like the ones I made last summer. My machine does not do embroidery which is the reason why I asked Soraya if she could do it for me, she had some patterns which I really liked.

Here it is:

Now, my lovely blog-friend said that I did not need to send anything back to her because she likes to make presents, but I also love making small things to people I like and I found recently the perfect idea! I just hope she will enjoy it once I get round to making it and sending it ^^

 

In the meantime Little N. will be inaugurating her bag on Easter Sunday. Thanks a lot Soraya! :)

 

Zupfkuchen [Cheesecake with Chocolate topping]

The Zupfkuchen isn't exactly the same thing as a Cheesecake, but it is the closest translation which I seem to be able to find. Try it, it is delicious!

Ingredients:

For the chocolate dough

* 200 gr of flour

* 100 gr of sugar

* 100 gr of butter
* 20 gr of cocoa
* 1 egg

* 1 sachet of baking powder

For the other dough

* 250 gr of sugar

* 200gr of butter
* 4 eggs
* 500 gr of curd cheese

* 1 sachet of vanilla blancmange powder (pudding in German)

* 1 sachet of vanilla powder
* juice of one lemon

For the chocolate dough, mix the butter and sugar to obtain a foamy mixture (the electric whip comes in handy there), then add the rest. You should get a nice homogeneous and malleable dough (quite similar to a pastry dough).

Put it aside until you need it.

For the creamy dough, mix again the sugar and butter into a foamy mixture, then add the eggs one at a time, and then add the rest of the ingredients. The dough will be more liquid.

Place half of the chocolate dough at the bottom of your baking form, and press it so that it covers all the surface. Pour the cream on top. 

Make small pieces with the remaining chocolate dough and drop them all over the cream.

Bake about one hour at 180°C (may need a little more or a little less depending on your oven).

Bon Appétit!

500!

over 500, that is the number of pageviews I have had this month! First time ever that I reach this number!!

A big thank you to all those who read my blog whether regularly or not.

Spring at home

Around here in the far east of Germany, we still have snow and low temperatures. I have heard that it is the same in England and France. We are all asking the same question: WHEN IS SPRING GOING TO ARRIVE?

Here is a picture that has been going around on Facebook and which made me laugh:

Installation of Spring 2013 3.1

Installation interrupted... please wait.
Installation failed...!! Back to Winter.

Anyway, we went shopping some time last week and I bought a flower pot with Narcissus.

 It is N.'s duty every day to give them a little bit of water (under my supervision as she is still quite clumsy) and she can also touch the flowers and look at how they grow and bloom. 

Now we are waiting for Spring outside, sunshine and warmth will be more than welcome to put a bit of colour on my children's pale cheeks.

Roast-beef, cooked rare :)

In the very little spare time I have from my house chores and looking after my children, I still try to keep my needles working. 

 A slice of roast-beef is the latest addition to Little N.'s cooking toys. There are more to come as I try always try to make everything in four (she has four plates).

  This time I did not use felt (I had only just placed an order for more, but I had not received it yet) but fleece. It is nice and soft.

 

 Little N. is delighted every time I give her something new and she loves playing with it. We will have to look into making her a small kitchen now with nice shelves to tidy all her ingredients and cutlery.

Soon to come: cheeses. So keep an eye for coming posts. Have a lovely weekend!

Are you human?

I am sorry for all those who are kindly leaving comments on my blog, but I have decided to start using the Comment Word Verification. I do check the comments myself before publishing them, but I have had several spam messages in less than 24h. 

I hope this will not put you off and that you will still write lovely comments on my articles!

Wishing you all a very nice day!

Salt dough

My 19 months old girl is starting to really enjoy some activities such as drawing, colouring, painting, getting dressed up and so on. She has unfortunately been ill last week and was in a rather whinny mood, which is nerve wrecking! Since on the weekend her Dad was at home, I decided to take a little bit of time with her only while he would look after Baby T. ; we made salt dough. I remember the fun I had as a young girl making all sorts of things (actually even as a teenager!).

One cup of salt, two cups of flour and water... that does not sound complicated, does it? I still managed to mess up the quantities and used three cups of flour instead of two. It worked out nevertheless and Little N. had a lot of fun.

She seems too young though to actually shape anything with the dough, but I did think of making a ball with a nose, gave her some tooth-picks and let her make a hedgehog :)

A day or two later we even painted some of the stuff with Oma's help.

The Brezels and round yellow thingies are meant to be used for playing cooking, the "religieuse" still needs painting - it is a French pastry - and that will also go to N.'s tea-set.

An afternoon of fun with my daughter, that is priceless!

No butter, no eggs...

What do you do when you have a birthday to celebrate (your husband's) but you have no eggs and no butter in the fridge on that day? When the children are not to be taken out because one is ill and there is snow outside? You do what I did: google "cake recipe no egg no butter" and take the simplest one that you find ;)

And you end up with this:

Search your cupboards for remains of chocolate and the cake will look like this:

 

At first the chocolate was supposed to have time to cool down and become hard before we were to eat it, but with the visit to the doctor my baking schedule was ruined and we ate it like this. It wasn't a big problem anyway! Warm melty chocolate is always so nice!

The cake's official ingredients:

# 2 yaourts natures,
# trois pots de yaourt de farine,
# un pot de yaourt de sucre,
# un sachet de levure chimique,
# un demi pot de yaourt d'huile

and I added: raisins soaked in a remain of rum and chocolate chips.

It did work out and my husband seemed happy with his birthday cake. Job done! :)