Cranberry scones

It looks like autumn is passing away. The leaves are gone, the beautiful colours outside are gone, it's getting really cold.. But we still like to make something that gives us the flavours and feelings which suits this time of year.

We have been so busy with school and things in other cities, that we haven't spent much time together in the kitchen here. I miss it, but during the weekends we try to make something delicious and enjoy it so much the more. This weekend we had a cold, stormy saturday. We were thinking what to do with our lunch. Something warm, something sweet, something with fruit: we only had some cranberries left, so we ended up with these delicious scones! 

They are so easy to make; in under half an hour you will have warm, delicious smelling scones on your table! So let's get started!

Scones with cranberries.

yield: 8 big scones.

Ingredients:

250 gr all purpose flour

1 tbs regular sugar

3 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

100 gr cold, unsalted butter

2 eggs, beaten

1,25 dl whipping cream

85 gr cranberries

1 egg, to brush

some raw sugar, to top

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 185 degrees C.

Combine the flour, sugar, bakingpowder and salt together. Cut your cold butter into cubes and combine these with your hands into your mixture, just until crumbly.

Combine the eggs and cream together and add this to your crumb-mixture. The best way to mix this is to start with two knives and continue with your hands when it starts to come together. 

Now sprinkle your cranberries with some flour and gently fold these into your dough. Work your dough out to a 15 x 15 cm square. Cut this square into quarters and halve each quarter. Place the pieces together on a baking sheet and brush them with your egg. The last step is to sprinkle them with some raw sugar to give them a crispy top!

Bake the scones for about 15-20 minutes or until they are golden brown.

Serve them warm together with some clotted cream, whipped cream or butter.

(For the clotted cream, our favorite!, you can combine 125 ml whipping cream togehter with 250 gr mascarpone.)

Enjoy!

Raspberry muffins

Imagine...A cozy evening, everybody is at home, craving to something sweet.. There are some raspberries and you start to think about it.. Cake? Muffins? Cookies? Raspberry muffins can be so good. These in the oven will fill the home with warmth and delicious fragrances.


This recipe gives you some muffins that are:
fresh - because of the raspberry and lemon zest.
airy - the muffins will be so fluffy and moist, just perfect!
rich - the creme fraîche in the batter, and the butter-crumb on top!
crunchy - the top will give this muffin a bite.
just delicious - this combination! mjum. Please try this at home!

On the couch when having a talk, around the table when drinking tea, during the pause when we need to study.. These are all moments when we enjoy being together and eating something delicious home made.

Raspberry muffins
yield : 12 muffins

Ingredients:
for the cake
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (+ some extra for the raspberries)
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 cups fresh raspberries
1 tsp vanilla extract

For the crumb
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
zest of 1 lemon
4 tsp unsalted soft butter

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 180 C.
Line up your muffin tin and spray it with non-sticking spray.
First we're going to make the topping. Combine the flour, sugar and lemon zest and whisk this together. Add the soft butter and mix this with two knives until the mixture becomes crumbly.

For the cake. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In an other bowl, whisk together the eggs, sour cream and vanilla extract until you create a smooth mixture.
Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add your wet ingredients. Fold this together, be careful not to over mix. Mix your raspberries with a tablespoon flour and add these to your batter. Pay attention to whisk as less as possible. Take your big icecream scooper and fill up your muffin tin. Sprinkle over the crumb.

Bake these muffins for about 15-20 minutes or until dry on the inside and golden brown on the outside. (Take a tooth pick to test if the inside is ready). Let them cool a bit and they are ready to eat!
Enjoy!

Sablés à la confiture

These little cookies are Sablés à la confiture. A typical french cookie, made from very little ingredients with some jam between them. According to the letters of the Marquise de Sévigné, these biscuits were created for the first time in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in 1670. Sable means sand, which can refer to the soft, crumbly texture of the biscuits and their golden colour.

These cookies are perfect to give to someone for his/her birthday (like I did!)/a special occasion, or for yourself as a small treat. They look very cute, taste delicious and make you want to take an other one.

This recipe will take you some time, but, believe me: it's worth it!

Petits sablés à la confiture
yield: 25 cookies (50 individuals)

Ingredients:
250 gr all-purpose flour (+extra)
70 gr regular sugar
pinch of salt
200 gr cold, unsalted butter
1 egg
vanille extract
1/2 zest of an orange
strawberry jam

Directions:
Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a big bowl. Cut your butter into little cubes and add these to your mixture. Try to combine all of this with two knives just until crumbly.
Add your egg, zest of the orange and vanilla extract and mix this together with your hands until well combined. Your dough should come together by now.
Flatten your dough with a rolling pin and flour to a 5 cm disk. Cut out shapes (make sure your cut out 2 individuals from 1 shape). Keep repeating until done.
Place your dough shapes for one hour in the refrigerator.
Now preheat your oven to 170 C. Bake your cookies for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Let them cool completely.
Spread some jam on one individual cookie and place the other half on top of it. Repeat until all cookies are done. You can serve them with some icing sugar on top.
These cookies will keep for a week in an airfree box.

Enjoy!

Peach galettes

As we said in our previous post, we were looking forward to autumn food. We had some lovely peaches and then the idea came up for a lovely dessert: peach galetes with spices and wipped cream.

We both love fruit! Apples, peaches, nectarines, all kinds of berries, mango, melon.. you name it! We also cook a lot with it. Most of the time we use raspberries. They have a good texture for all kind of cakes, muffins/cupcakes or desserts. They are also easy to get, even when it's winter. Not even spoken about the taste.. Delicious and a good combination with cream or chocolate. Or both.

We also like peaches or nectarines to cook with (an offcourse to eat them just raw) and you can get them everywhere now. The perfect time to do something with these lovely flavour bombs. Together with the spices they create a smell and flavour that represents this season; the stormy weather outside and the warmth inside. The rain outside, heat on in your home and comfortable on the couch, these will warm you up and make it cozy.

Peach galettes
yield: 8 individual galettes

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 sticks (228 gr) cold unsalted butter
1/2 cup ice water

4 peaches
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 lemon (juice)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tbs all-purpose flour
2 tbs cream

sugar to sprinkle on the dough
whipped cream to serve with

Directions:
The first thing you want to do is preheat your oven to 180 C.
To make the dough:
Combine the flour and salt. Add you butter in small cubes and try to mix this in with a fork until you create crumbs. Slowly add the ice water. You could need a bit more or less, so don't add it al in one time. Test by squeezing a small amount of dough together. If it is still too crumbly, add a bit more water. Now put it in a piece of cling film and leave it to rest in your refrigerator.

Mix your dry ingredients together. Peel and slice your peaches. In a large mixing bowl combine these with your lemon juice and vanilla extract. Now mix in your dry ingredients and stir gently.

Remove your dough from the refrigerator. Make thin circels with a diameter of 15 cm. Place your peach mixture in the middle of the circle, leaving a few centimeters on the side. Fold your edges in over the peaches. Brush the edges of the dough with cream and sprinkle these with some sugar.
Bake the galettes for about 40 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and the peach juices are bubbling. Let them cool for a few minutes. Serve them warm with some whipped cream (or ice cream).

Enjoy this autumn moment!

Chocolate lime cake

A chocolate cake without flour is so easy to make and so easy to eat that you can make it whenever friends are coming over at the last moment. It is a light and fluffy but moist and a bit chewy cake that smells and tastes like heaven. The lime gives this dark chocolate flavour some freshness.

Autumn has started. The air is cold, the leaves are turning red and falling off and it is getting dark so soon. I love this time of the year. We are all together in a warm and cosy house, with candles and fireplaces. We're looking forward to autum food. The smell, the spices, the warm desserts.. mmm!

This is a cake that you put in your oven, and your house will smell incredible. It will be difficult to stay away from it for the 35 minutes it needs. The crust on the outside, the warm, moist and little bit gooey cake inside..


Chocolate Lime Cake

Ingredients:
150 gr pure chocolate
150 gr soft, unsalted butter
6 eggs
250 gr caster sugar
100 gr ground almonds
4 tsp good quality cocoa powder
1 lime (zest and juice)
icing sugar to decorate

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 180 C.
Line your cake tin with parchment paper and grease the sides with some butter.
Melt your chocolate and butter au bain-marie (in a heat proof bowl above a pan with boiling water) en let this cool down for a few minutes.
Whisk together your eggs and sugar until they have increased in their size three times. Your mixture should be pale and foamy. (We advise you to do this with a mixer, otherwise you will have to whisk for a very long time..)
Now combine your ground almonds and cocoa powder. Add this to your egg and sugar mixture and mix this in with a spatula. Now fold in the cooled, melted chocolate. And then the last ingredient can be added: your lime zest and the juice can go in.
Pour this mixture in your cake tin and bake it for 35 minutes. Start checking your cake after 30 minutes. You don't wat this cake to be cooked trhough but still a bit gooey on the bottom. So take a toothpick and take your cake out of the oven if it comes out with only a few pieces of batter on it.
Let the cake cool for a few minutes and sprinkle some icing sugar on top befor serving. Ready to enjoy!

Pasta salad with olives and sundried tomatoes

The first time we tasted this recipe was almost 10 years ago. The mother of a friend of us made this all the time for her sons because they liked it so much. When we came around to play with them, we could enjoy that delicious pasta salad at their home. Soon enough our mother had asked for the recipe we were so enthousiastic about, and since then it has become a family recipe for us as well.

This pasta salad is so easy to make and it won't cost you more than 15 minutes if you do the steps all together. Children love it, and if they don't like the sundried tomatoes or olives, these ingredients could easily be omitted or subsituted by something else.

It is a ultimate recipe for busy evenings when you have to make a delicious but easy and fast meal for the family. But it is also very easy to make this for a big group or as a side dish when you have an extensive dinner.

We keep enjoying this recipe every time and we're sure that the tradition will continue furthermore.

Pasta salad with olives and sundried tomatoes.

Yield: 20 persons (as a side dish)

Ingredients:

750 gr pasta

300 gr sundried tomatoes (with oil)

120 gr black olives

5 eggs

250 gr grated cheese

3 little red onions

Directions:

Bring your water for the pasta and your water for the eggs to a boil.

When the water boils, cook your pasta al dente and boil the eggs for about 6 minutes. You want them to be a bit undercooked so that your eggyolks will combine everything.

In the meantime, cut your onions into very small pieces, pitted your olives and cut these into small rings and slice up your sundried tomatoes into small strips.

Now combine into a big bowl your onions, olives, sundried tomatoes and the oil from your sundried tomatoes. Add to this your grated cheese and mix well. When your pasta is done, add those straight from the pan (when they are still very warm) into your bowl. Mix well so that everything combines and your cheese can melt. The last step is to slice your eggs and add these. By doing this as a last step, the eggyolks can still combine everything and give it a glaze but stay intact as well.

Enjoy!

Sweet strawberry vanilla jam

We know that the strawberry season actually is over by now, but we can not withhold you from this recipe. We made it a few months ago, when there were strawberries in abundance in our garden. Now that we have eaten our last jar, we were brought back to reality and realised that we still had this recipe to post! So here it is, our sweet strawberry vanilla jam!

There were so many bruised strawberries this year which we couldn't use on top of a cake or on our bread (what we like so much!) and got overripe after a while because we didn't use them. But the solution for these discarded strawberries is to make a lovely jam of them. The overripeness gives the jam something special: it will become a strong and rich flavour.

So remember that when you have some - a little bit overripe -  strawberries left over, it is the perfect time to make some jam!

Strawberry Vanilla Jam
yield: 3 jars

Ingredients:
1,5 kg little strawberries, chopped roughly
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 cups sugar
1 vanilla bean, scraped

Directions:
Cover your strawberries with the lemon juice and let this chill overnight.
The next day: Combine your strawberries with the sugar and vanilla seeds and bring this mixture to a boil over medium high heat, stirring frequently. Use a fork to smash the berries a bit. Now reduce the heat and let this mixture simmer for about 1 hour. Stir well a few times so that you will end up with an almost smooth liquid. Skim off your foam (on the top) and turn off the heat. Now add your lemon juice and stir gently. Your jam is ready!
If you don't know for sure if the jam is firm enough, you can test it by taking one drop of the mixture and put this on a glace plate. If it hardens after a few minutes, it is o.k., if it keeps running you could better let the mixture simmer for some extra minutes.

When you are canning your jam, use sterilized jars and boil these filled jars for 10 minutes. They will store up to one year at room temperature. If you'd like to store jam in the freezer it will keep for several months and in the fridge it will keep for several weeks.

On any kind of bread, on toast, in your yoghurt, on your pancakes and many more this jam is yummy!

Spicy thai tomato chicken soup

This is the ultimate soup recipe. 

-It is easy to make for many people. 

-It warms you up when it is cold, but also helps you to cool down when it is warm (pores open!)

-It is spicy and with lots of flavour!

-Many people like it because it is a (sort of) tomato soup.

We make it a lot for the people who come to our company, and all we hear are positive reactions. These pleople wanted to know how we make this soup, and that is one reason why we are posting this recipe now. But we are also posting this recipe because it is our most favorite soup! And it is for many years now. While other soups can become a bit boring after a while, this one won't! We can assure you that. So go on and try it!

Giant chocolate chunk cookies

We know we've already posted chocolate chip cookies here, but we just can't do without. We bake them all the time... 

We love chocolate.

We love cookies.

We love the smell they give us when they are in the oven.

We can't wait any longer when we've made them and they need another 20 minutes to bake.

We fall in love with them when they smell heavenly, look giant and delicious and feel warm in our hands.

We eat them straight away from the oven, while they actually need to cool a bit because they are too hot for our mouths.

And we eat them with a big smile on our face.

I think there are no more words necessary for you to understand? (:

  

So here is the recipe for some vanilla chocolate chunk cookies. We hope you will enjoy them as much as
we do!

Little bite: cherry tomato with fêta cheese and basil.

This is an ideal little bite for party's, large groups of people, friends who come over or just as a healthy snack. We're using this 'recipe' for ages in our family and we won't get rid of it soon, believe us.
It isn't really a recipe, but this composition of cherry tomatoes, fêta cheese and basil is just devine!

..and we're back!

Hello again! 

It's been a while, but we're finally back again. We've been baking and cooking a lot this summer, but we were gone and enjoying our vacation as well. From now on we are hopefully going to post a lot! Starting with a little bite in the next one.

The photo's show you our lovely raspberries from our garden. Not the well known raspberry (pink), but sweet golden yellow ones! We've picked them this morning. There are not enough raspberries to bake something with them, but straight to the mouth isn't that bad! ... delicious! 

Salmon, cream and shallots

To be honest with you, we haven't tried many recipes the last month(or two..). I think that's the reason why we didn't post one.

A good reason to share with you our lovely baked salmon. It's a go to recipe, witch is perfect for dinner with a big group.(You can do a few steps the day before, so that makes live a lot easier.)

One thing more to say before we start: we forgot to make a picture of the result because we were too busy eating it with some lovely potatoes.. 

The ingredients:

2 large salmon fillets (around 600 g each and make sure the are as even as possible)

1 lemon

oregano, thyme, sage, rosemary (total 20 g)

200 ml crème fraîche

3 garlic cloves

3 tbs olive oil

500 g shallots

Ok, let's start!

PREHEAT YOUR OVEN (200 C)

Step 1: Take a baking dish and brush it with some olive oil and place one salmon fillet on top.

Step 2: Take the oregano, thyme and sage apart and leave the rosemary aside. Chop finely.

Step 3: Mix the crème fraîche with the herbes, crushed garlic, lemon zest and juice. Season as well.

Step 4: Coat the salmon with the mixure and place the other salmon fillet on top. Brush the salmon with some olive oil. Insert small sprigs of rosemary in the salmon.

Step 5: Peel the shallots and cut them in half. Coat them with around 1 tbs olive oil and arrange them around the salmon.

Step 6: Put the salmon into a 200 C oven, around 20 min or until the salmon is still slightly pink inside.

Step 7: EAT!

One last tip: you must serve the salmon with baked potatoes. It's so so good (and simple).

You will need 1 kg new potatoes and 1 tsp coarse sea salt. Cut the potatoes into bitesice pieces and coat them with a little olive oil and the salt. Bake at the same temperature for at least 45 min or until they are brown and crispy.

happy days!



Mango tiramisu

A nice evening with some sun between the days of rain means eating outside! Altough that it was a bit cold,  so we were sitting close to each other and wearing thick sweaters (cozy!), it was nice to spend dinner-time in the garden. It was mothers day so we had to come up with a lovely dessert. No raspberry tiramisu today, but a new -try out- recipe: mango tiramisu! So fresh and perfect for spring days!

What we need for 5 portions:

1 ripe mango

250 gr mascarpone

250 gr whipped cream

the zest of an orange

some lime juice

150 gr ladyfingers

optional: some yogurt (to make it a bit more fresh)

5 jars

To do:

Beat up your cream together with some lime juice. 

Then fold in the mascarpone and add, if you like so, again some lime juice. You can add to this mixture some yogurt as well, to make it a bit more fresh.

Crumble the ladyfingers and put half of them on the bottom of your jar.

Pour over half of you mixture. Now put on some orange zest and half of the mango pieces. 

Repeat this one more time the same way.

And ready is your delicious, fast, summer dessert! Enjoy!

Spring and vegetables

The weather isn't that nice this spring, but when you take a look in our orchard you can tell that it's almost summer. Our appletrees are amazing! They are in bloom and have these cute pink flowers. Some of them still closed, other ones wide open. It's just an amazing view..

Our greenhouse is making progress! In one month (photo 1 to photo 2) the lettuce has grown like weeds, and we can almost plant them outside in the garden. 

Beside the lettuce we have beetroots, carrots, radishes, courgettes and peppers in our greenhouse to make them ready to go outside. The potatoes, onions and artichoke are already standing in the garden. Now it's waiting for them to be ready to be prepared and eaten! Mjum! 

We do also have some non-vegetables in our greenhouse: herbs! We've started with mint and basil. They need a lot of warmth and can't withstand rain, so we keep them inside. After quite a long time they have finally started to grow! See down here: our little basil plants! (:

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Lovely chocolate chip cookies, made with our KitchenAid (and our hands, the ingredients and the oven offcourse!)!

When you don't have much at home but you can't go to the supermarket, and you do want to make something delicious, fast and something with chocolate: try this!

You will probably have most of the ingredients at home. And perhaps some pieces of chocolate left? (although it is hard to eat only a bit of chocolate and leave the rest for an other day or time..) I hope you do, so you can make these in a few minutes and eat them straight away from the oven. (mmm, so nice, soft, warm and delicious!)

What you need:

This makes about 14 cookies

150 gr unsalted, soft, butter

125 gr light brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1egg yolk

300 gr flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

300 gr chocolate chips/chunks

And what to do:

Preheat your oven to 170 C.

Put you butter with the sugar in a bowl and mix this together.

Pour in you egg, your egg yolk and the vanilla extract and mix this until you have a creamy mixture.

Into this mixture goes your flour and baking soda. Make sure you don't overmix this. Stop when everything is just mixed up. 

Now fold in your chocolate pieces and done is the mixture!

With an ice scoop you can make perfect sizes. Just fill it up and squeeze it, so the mixture falls out. Push them a bit down until you have the thickness you like.

Bake them for about 15-20 minutes, until they are a browned on top and a bit soft inside.

Let them cool a bit, but they are irresistible when they come straight out the oven! 

Enjoy!

KitchenAid IT IS!

Yay Yay Yay Yay!!

Look at this! We finaly have got a KitchenAid!

We are amazed, stunned, overwhelmed, happy and full of joy! We always wanted to have this machine, but we didn't know which one to buy or where to get the best one. We went to hundreds of stores to stare at these lovely colours and amazing machines for hours, but still didn't know which one to buy. Finaly, after a long, long time, the time was there: we were going to buy one!

As a surprise for Margot I bought the yellow one -which she would die for!!- on my way home from the south of Holland (also with the asparagus story). Back home I couldn't wait to show her our KitchenAid, but I waited until we were going to eat with the family. And what a surpise! She was so happy! We unwrapped it together and explored it the rest of the evening. And -offcourse- made plans straight away to bake some nice cookies, cupcakes and whip up some cream. After the test it was clear: our machine is fantastic!

We are going to use this one a lot!

Finally! It's asparagus time!

The asparagus season has started a few weeks ago, and that means we can finally eat this lovely meal again! Everywhere along the road you can see - and buy! - them, so on the way from the south of Holland to our home we stopped somewhere and bought 2 kilo's of fresh asparagus.
The same evening - offcourse - we prepared them and enjoyed it with the family. However, we thought it would be nice to post this recipe for you. Read on and discover!

You don't need a certain amount asparagus for 4 or 6 people (or more or less). You can choose your own amount, with what you feel comfortable. We love to have about 4 per person. 

We used, for 6 persons:

2 kg asparagus

1 kg small potatoes

6 eggs

500 gr ham cubes (smoked)

125 gr butter

To do:

Cut your potatoes in the size you like. Put them in a preheated oven (180 C) with some oil, salt and pepper. Keep you eye on them and toss them now and then. They need to stay there for about 30 minutes, or until they are softened, crispy and lightly brown.

Peel the asparagus until there are no tuff pieces left.

Put them straight standing in a pan with boiling water, with their tips just above the water. Let them cook for about 20 minutes, or until they are soft and flexible.

In the meantime you can boil your eggs. When you like them to be a bit soft, take them out after 10 minutes or so. Otherwise you can let them boil a few minutes more.

Now melt the butter in a saucepan. When it has melted completely, pour in your ham. (Make sure that you don't bake the meat, because you want this to be a warm buttersauce with heated ham cubes). When the sauce is warm you can peel your eggs and cut them in four pieces (or other sizes and shapes) and warm them up in your sauce as well.

Now put your potatoes on your plate with the asparagus and pour the sauce over. Serve -and eat (: - immediately.

Enjoy!

Homemade pesto

PESTO. Who doesn´t likes it? 
It's one of our favorite go to ingredient with pasta, bread or pizza. 


Today we made it ourselfs again for a lovely pasta pesto with broccoli, peas and parmesan cheese. Who know's, maybe we will share that recipe sooner or later! For now, let's move on to the pesto!


You will need:


1/2 clove of garlic
salt and pepper
basil, about 3 handfuls
lightly toasted pine nuts, about 1 handful
parmesan cheese
olive oil
lemon


To do:
Pound the garlic with a pinch of salt and the basil in a pestle and mortar. 

Then add the pine nuts and pound again. 

Put the mixure in a bowl and add half of the parmesan cheese. Stir gently and add a bit of olive oil.

It needs to bind the sauce and make it a oozy consistency.

Keep adding cheese and olive oil untill you are happy with the taste and consistency. 

  

If you want to, you can squeeze some lemon juice in the pesto but it isn't essential. 

Simple and delicious. Enjoy!