Freshly baked cakes and brownies

For christmas I bought my teenage girls each a cookbook.  They both love baking.  So this holiday we are often spoiled with delicious and freshly baked cookies and muffins.  Our house smells wonderfully cozy when they are busy in the kitchen and they even clean up afterwards.  Yesterday they made brownies and little cakes with sundried tomatoes and black olives.  The cakes were made in small silicone loaf pans that came with one of the cookbooks, easy to use and so much more fun to look at. 

I really loved the little savoury cakes. For everyone who likes to try it, here is the recipe:

• 2 eggs
• 7 cl olive oil
• 7 cl milk
• 120 g flour
• 70 g grated Gruyère
• 1/2 package of baking powder
• salt and pepper
• 100 g sundried tomatoes cut in pieces
• 100 g black olives without the seed and sliced

You mix everything together and use some of the olive slices to decorate on top. For these small cakes, you only have to bake them for half an hour in a preheated oven of 180 degrees celsius.
Enjoy!!

I'd like to wish all of you a wonderful 2012 with lots of

love, laughter, warmth, good health, joy, happiness and creativity!

Quince jam : recipe

We had a lot of quinces again this year.  And I always make jam with them.  I try a different recipe every year.  This year I found some recipes and I mixed them together and then made my own.  A lot of recipes tell you to just use the juice and throw away the pulp, but I always have a hard time throwing away edible things.  So I decided to use everything and just mix it all up.  I made two batches as you can tell by the different colours.  The yellow one didn't cook as long as the reddish one.  I prefer the red colour though.  So I just let them simmer for one extra hour.

Here is my recipe :

You don’t have to peel the fruits, just rub them vigorously to remove the velvet on the skin. Cut them in quarters, and remove the core. You should remove the seeds from the core and put the seeds in a piece of cheesecloth that you add to the pan because the seeds contain a high amount of pectine.
Put the quarters in a large pan and add some water. For 1 kilo of quinces I use one litre of water.
Bring to the boil and let it simmer for at least one to one and a half hour, with the lid on the pan. The longer you leave them simmering, the more reddish they become.
Remove the seeds, and just mix everything else with a blender. For every kilo of this pulp I use one package of jam sugar.  Nowadays you can find different brands in the store.  I always use 500 gr of sugar for 1 kilo of fruit.  Bring this pulp with the sugar again to the boil and keep stirring for about 3 minutes without the lid on.
When a drop of the jam thickens on a cold plate, you can fill the jars, close the lids and let them cool upside down.

Et voilà, we're finally done!! If you have a great recipe for quinces too, I'm always interested.  Next year I will probably have to be creative again with all the quinces.

Chocolate pie

 
















It was so cold and grey this weekend that it almost felt like winter.  We lit the fireplace for the first time this autumn.  It felt so cozy.  And because we have so many walnuts this year and I had a craving for chocolate I decided to make a chocolate pie with nuts.  I have a great easy recipe for it and we ate it lukewarm with of course a great cup of cappuccino for me and my husband and some hot chocolate for the kids.  It was the perfect weather for this rich pie!

 

To make this pie, you need 350 grams (12 ounces) of milk chocolate, 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of butter, 5 eggs, 100 grams of chopped walnuts and 225 grams (7.9 ounces) of cane sugar, 1 tablespoon of coffee and 3 tablespoons of cacao powder. First melt the chocolate with the butter over low heat, whisking constantly until smooth.  Mix the eggs with the sugar, coffee and cacao powder, add the walnuts and the melted chocolate.  Grease and flour a pie plate, pour batter into it and bake it for about 40 minutes on 180 degrees (350 degrees fahrenheit).  It's done when it is still a bit moist on the inside.  You can eat it cold or lukewarm. 

 

I hope this will get you through all the grey days that we'll probably be having some more this autumn.  Try it and enjoy!!