Note to one self :: apple cinnamon cake

Made this cake yesterday. I used our basic cake recipe, cinnamon sugar and two crumpled and sad looking apples and threw things together in a mixing bowl. Everyone loved it. So, I had to write down the recipe... For next time when we end up with crumpled apples.  


Cinnamon Apple mixture  

1/4 cup of white sugar 
2 tsp cinnamon 

2 apples, peeled and cored and cut into small cubes


1. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.
2. In a bowl, add 2 tsp of the cinnamon sugar mix to the apple cubes. Mix with a spoon to make sure all apples are coated.
3. Reserve the rest of the cinnamon sugar for later.  


Cake recipe:  

125 g butter, room temperature 
150g sugar 
2 eggs, room temperature 

250g flour, combined with 2 tsp baking powder (i.e. 1 sachet de levure chimique, when you're in France) 
and a pinch of salt 

2 tbsp of yoghurt

1. In a mixing bowl, mix butter and sugar until white and fluffy.
2. Add eggs to mixture and mix until well combined.
3. Next, mix in flour and mix until well combined.
4. Mix in yoghurt.
5. Stir in apple cinnamon mixture.
 6. Pour cake mixture in a round cake mold, coated with butter and flour. You could also use a round piece of parchment paper on the bottom.
7. Generously sprinkle cinnamon sugar over batter before inserting in the oven.
8. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean in a 180°C oven.
9. Let cool on a rack.

Whatever's left of the cinnamon sugar mix, I keep in a little jar with lid. The girls love this on their toast in the mornings (not sure if the dentist would approve, though...).

Enjoy!

Easy X-mas cards

Tonight little H. and I made a bunch of X-mas cards for the children at the local children's hospital - a great project initiated by a class parent.
We came up with several homemade cards. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures of them before they went in an envelope, except for this one, which I made earlier in the day. Very easy to make if you want to give this a try. All you need is a piece of vellum, some colorful sequins, card stock, some contrasting thread and a sewing machine...

Some of our other cards included fingerprinted moose and snowmen to which details were added using a felt tip marker (look here for inspiration), and a very cool Keith Haring inspired Christmas tree with presents and stars by little H.

Fun with... pizza dough!

Both girls had a friend over for a sleep over (sisters too!). They had a lot of fun together, and though I know that at this age they can play together really well without 'help' of a grown up, I did foresee a couple of activities to do together. One of them was baking. M. had a pizza atelier a little while ago with her friends for her birthday and there they made 'viennoises au chocolate' with left over dough. A great idea, if you ask me. This reminded me of a recipe I read somewhere (I can't remember where, unfortunately) for cinnamon bread sticks made from pizza dough. Instead of bread sticks, we decided to make cinnamon rolls and to give the chocolate viennoise a try as well. We had no idea how both of these would turn out but it was worth a try, we figured. We split up in two teams and made two delicious snacks in no time!

Keep on reading if you want to give this a try. As you'll notice it's all very intuitive - you can't go wrong really.

For the cinnamon rolls you'll need one package of pizza dough - ours was not frozen and already rolled out which made it even simpler. If yours is frozen, let thaw and then roll out the dough with a rolling pin, the way you would for a pizza. With a brush spread melted butter over the entire surface of the dough, next sprinkle the entire surface with sugar and cinnamon. Roll the dough now to obtain a log. Cut the log into 1-1 1/2 inch pieces. Place each one of them in a muffin pan lined with cup cake liners (unfortunately, I just had the girls grease the pan - I'm soaking the sticky pan with baking soda now, in an attempt to get the melted sugar off... I added the liners for the picture and to hide what's missing... LOL). Bake in a 350°F oven for about 20-25 min or until golden and the sugar bubbling. Let cool on a wire rack. Easy!!



Even more easy are the pizza dough viennoise au chocolat. Same here, roll out your dough, as you would when making pizza. Sprinkle some chocolate chips in a line at one end of the circle, next roll the dough such that the chocolate chips disappear inside, sprinkle some more chocolate along the fold, roll, sprinkle, roll,... and continue like this until you've obtained a log. With a sharp knife make some cuts on top. Brush the top with  melted butter and bake in a 350°F oven for about 20 minutes or until golden. Let cool on a wire rack. Bon appétit!

Note: Our cinnamon rolls were really crispy (and SO yummy!) because the dough was rolled out really thin - if you like them moist and soft, use more butter and roll out the dough less. Adjust the baking time if necessary.

More cookies and flannel sleepwear...

...that was in a nut shell my weekend. And there was fresh snow too!

I can't remember the last time I wore flannel sleepwear. The last flannel PJ's I can remember, are the PJ's I bought for at that time still little M.. They had little duckies on them and she wore them all winter. She posed in them under the Christmas tree at my parents'. It was right before our big move to California. M. was 18 months old and recovering from a double ear infection. And there was snow too then. M.'s first snow ever. She would look at it falling down through the kitchen window of my parents' apartment. She can't remember, but I can - she had to stand on her tippy toes in order to see. Little H. wore the flannel ducky PJ's too, later on, in California - no snow - until she too outgrew them. I can't remember what happened to them after but I do remember both of my girls looked adorable in them...

So, when I was looking for our Christmas ornaments (yes, we did get a tree - an even smaller one than last year) and I came across a bag with among other things a big piece of checkered flannel in it, I knew right away what I wanted to make out of it. Flannel sleepwear - for me this time! I found a pattern in an old Burda I still had laying around, altered it slightly and fixed it in an afternoon. Nothing special, not even pretty but warm and cozy - bringing back those memories!

And then we baked cookies and they too brought back memories. The idea was to bake speculoos. I found a recipe, the spices - the only thing I didn't have was the dark brown sugar. The label said the box contained cassonade, but it was still too blond to make real speculoos which is supposed to be really dark. But never mind - the cookies turned out really good. They actually taste like the Trader Joe's Alphabet Cookies and Animal cookies we used to buy! In case you want to give it a try: You can find the recipe here - I added a second egg and combined 1/2 teaspoon of pain d'épices spices with 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon to obtain 1 teaspoon of mixed ground cake spices, and I added 1 teaspoon of vanilla, just because we like it. We planned on taking some cookies with us to Belgium for the holidays, but I'm not sure they'll last that long as we've been munching cookies all day!

Yummy! :: Cranberry-Pistachio Biscotti

The holiday season or maybe winter in general, traditionally is baking season. One of our home made favorites are these cranberry-pistachio biscotti (biscotti literally means baked twice). Even K. who doesn't have a sweet tooth at all or doesn't even care about desert, can't resist these. They have a nice nutty flavor to which the cranberries add the right amount of tang. I made a batch late Friday night and they didn't last through the weekend! The recipe is adapted from a Martha Stewart recipe.


ingredients (makes about 20):

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder (levure chimique)
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup cane sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup pistachios, peeled

1. Preheat oven to 350° F/ 175-180°C.
2. In a pan roast the pistachios until golden or slightly brown. Set aside.
3. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt and set aside.
4. Put flour butter in a bowl and mix on medium speed until smooth. Add sugar and mix until pale and fluffy. Mix in vanilla and eggs, 1 at a time, until well combined. Add flour mixture at once and mix until well combined. Add cranberries and pistachios and mix with a fork until well combined.
5. Transfer dough to baking sheet lined with parchment paper and dusted with flour. Pat into a long flat log. Dust hands with flour if too sticky. Bake until firm, golden brown and cracked on top and an inserted toothpick comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack, about 20 minutes.
6. Transfer to a cutting board and cut 1/2 inch thick slices using a serrated knife. Arrange slices onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake cookies until brown at edges, about 12-15 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Bon appétit!

Summer fruits...

Reines Claudes

This was a summer of indulgence - at least that's what my balance is trying to tell me. Plus two kilo - about four and a half pounds! Nothing dramatically, I know, but I just can feel it - the excess sitting somewhere around the waist, I mean... And knowing myself too well: it will be hard to get rid of the excess fat. Too much ice cream for dessert over the past few weeks, I'm afraid, and too much of everything else too - it just came with the happy feeling of a good summer celebrated in good company.


Poires Williams

So, no more unhealthy desserts for me for a while. I'll just stick to yummy summer fruit instead: plums in all their varieties, nectarines and peaches (soon their season will be over...), pears, figs, grapes, red and green ... I just love the fruits (the end) of summer brings.

And: no Martha Stewart Rustic Plum Tart for me right now, though it used to be one of my favorite's at this time of the year... It's SO good!
So maybe YOU should just try it and let me know what it was like...

Not so "moelleux", but yummy!!

When I asked H. yesterday which birthday cake she wanted, I was totally surprised to hear her say "moelleux* au chocolat". She never had a "moelleux au chocolat" before to start with because of her egg allergy, and unlike her sister she's not that big of a chocolate eater. But it was her birthday after all and some birthday wishes, like the cake, need to be granted.

Hence, I started an online search for "moelleux au chocolat sans oeufs". To my surprise I found quite a couple of recipes (here, here and here). So off we went to the grocery store for some cocoa, butter, flour and yeast. As we needed bread too, we made a stop at our local bakery (one of the many) and it was my lucky day (at that point it still was, that ought to change soon - just continue reading ;) ) as the baker himself was helping the clients. He knows about H.'s allergies and so I asked him for a couple of quick suggestions on how to bake a moelleux without the eggs - that's another thing I like about Paris: people know what they're doing and are (most of the times) very helpful in giving some advice and insight into their products. He suggested to use cream instead of milk. Perfect! We still had some in the fridge!

Back home, the girls were really eager to start cooking. Cooking's actually one of H.'s favorite pass times. They'd already started to measure the flour, sugar, cocoa,... when I realized I forgot to turn on the oven. I turned on the oven - or I thought I did - but, hey, that was weird, the LED light didn't turn on, and I didn't hear the zooming sound the oven usually generates. And hey, the clock didn't work either. What about the burners? Same thing! Then I looked at the dish washer - didn't I turn it on before we left? And the washer?
You guessed it: no electricity. I checked the other appliances and the kitchen light. Those seemed to work fine. A quick look at the fuse box, showed there was a problem at just one side of the kitchen, let that be the side we needed. Resetting the fuse didn't help, no matter how many times I tried. What about the neighbors? They had their electricity working just fine, they told us! Time to start moving those appliances to check the outlet. I pulled the dishwasher from under the sink and immediately found the culprit: a small puddle and water dripping down - from the cord! What had happened was that the drain from the dishwasher had come loose and the rest you can guess. Well, at least the fuse had done its job!
I disconnected everything from that particular outlet, reset the fuse and we had a fully functional cooking range again!

By that time, seeing the mess I had to clean up later, the dishwasher in the middle of our already tiny kitchen, and the entire content of the kitchen cabinet where the leak was on the floor, my good mood had gone way down below zero. I decided to finish off the batter myself - sorry, girls! next time I'll make sure everything works just fine, so you can do the cooking! Promised! I greased the muffin pan and threw everything in the oven - for 30 minutes, just as in one of the recipes I found. 30 minutes - for a big sized moelleux, that is... Way too long for a muffin pan, though, but I only realized this after the second batch had come out!

Hence, we had 12 "moelleux au chocolat" which turned out not to be moelleux at all! The heart of the moelleux should be silky and creamy. That's what it is all about - tenderness, not done-ness. Sure they tasted really good, and so said the girls and their friends too, but honestly: they were overdone. In an attempt to save mine, I poured some really strong coffee over the center, and I must say it not only made it more moelleux, but it tasted really good too! To the extent that I actually might incorporate the coffee in the batter next time I make them.

If, after reading all this, you're still interested in making some "moelleux" yourself, then keep on reading as here's the recipe. The recipe might be subject to some minor changes still, which I will add as I go. The nice thing about this recipe is that it's egg-free and hence makes it suitable for people with an egg-allergy. The recipe is based on the recipes mentioned above and I added the suggestions made by our pâtissier.

If you fancy a nice French desert, you definitely need to try the moelleux!



Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour Oops! 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour should be plenty
1 cup granulated sugar
1 bag of yeast (11g)
1 cup unsweetened Dutch cocoa
3/4-1 stick butter, room temperature
200 ml reduced fat cream
milk, to add if batter turns out to be too stiff

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
2. Mix all ingredients in a mixing bowl and with the mixer on medium speed, mix until a smooth and silky batter is obtained. Add milk, if necessary, one tablespoon at the time.
3. Grease a cake pan or muffin pan. Next, flour the pan, to avoid the moelleux to stick to the pan.
4. Pour the batter in the pan (when using muffin pans, fill to about 1/2 to 3/4 height).
5. Bake for about 30 minutes when using a large pan or 20 minutes when using a muffin pan at 180°C (350°F). A toothpick inserted at the center should come out slightly creamy; the top though should have a nice crust.
6. Let cool down in the pan for about 5-10 min, next out of the pan and on a cooling rack.
7. Optional: Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top.

Very nice when served with vanilla ice cream and/or red fruit.

Enjoy!!

* moelleux: mellow, tender

L’heure du crime...

L’heure du crime

Minuit. Voici l’heure du crime.
Sortant d’une chambre voisine,
Un homme surgit dans le noir.

Il ôte ses souliers,
S’approche de l’armoire
Sur la pointe des pieds
Et saisit un couteau

Dont l’acier luit, bien aiguisé.
Puis, masquant ses yeux de fouine
Avec un pan de son manteau,
Il pénètre dans la cuisine
Et, d’un seul coup, comme un bourreau
Avant que ne crie la victime,
Ouvre le coeur d’un artichaut.

Maurice Carême

This is one of the poems M. had to study a little while ago. We liked it and she reminded me of it when she saw this artichoke lying on the counter.

But it's actually little H. who made me buy the artichoke, intrigued as she was by this beautiful plant (I believe they're beautiful too, especially the ones with a hint of purple in them - need to find one of those). Though a little early still - the artichoke season runs from June till the end of July here - they've recently shown up in our supermarkets and fruit and vegetable stores. I checked before buying to really make sure it was grown locally (well, in France that is) and it was. So, maybe I'm just wrong about the season...

Now I have a (one!) artichoke sitting on my counter waiting to get cooked and chopped up. The problem is I don't know that many recipes using artichokes except for this one (delicious) pasta dish with lots of olive oil, sundried tomatoes and poultry, of which I'm sure the kids won't like it because of the sundried tomatoes in it. So I think I'll just keep it simple for this one and have the kids taste it right after cooking or steaming with a tiny bit of lemon juice...
But I want to be prepared for the next one ending up in our grocery basket, so if you know of any good artichoke recipes feel free to let me know...

Cheers!


Note: I'm working on another tutorial - I have it all worked out in my mind. I just need to find some time to actually get to my sewing machine. I'll keep you posted...

A favorite :: lentil salad

Monday evenings are always hectic in our household. M. has a gym class right after school and we usually don't get back before 7 p.m. (well, little H. and I make it back home in between, only to leave again about 30 minutes later to pick up M.). This means we don't have a lot of time for cooking big meals, so we try to keep it simple on those days.

Here's what we had for dinner tonight: a healthy - fast and easy - lentil salad.



It's a favorite here so I decided to share the recipe.

This is what you'll need:

- about 400g lentils (to go a little faster I typically use pre-cooked vacuum packed lentils, but you could go from scratch, of course)
- 1/2 to 1 red bell pepper, depending on the size
- 1/2 to 1 green bell pepper, depending on the size
- 1/2 cucumber
- cherry tomatoes

for the vinaigrette:
- approximately 1/3 cup of olive oil (I don't really measure, I just pour whatever amount I believe should be enough...)
- juice of about one lemon
- 1 tbsp honey
- salt and pepper to taste

1. Pour the pre-cooked lentils in a salad bowl.
2. Cut the seeded red and green bell pepper and cucumber in small dice and mix with lentils.
3. Quarter the cherry tomatoes and mix with the other vegetables.
4. Prepare the vinaigrette, mixing the olive oil, lemon juice, honey, salt and pepper. Taste and add more of one or the other ingredient, according to taste (it shouldn't be too sweet nor too sour...). Add to the vegetable mix. I actually got this vinaigrette from Jamie Oliver's book "The naked Chef", and I believe it goes really well with this salad.
5. Optional: usually, I add either freshly chopped cilantro, parsley or scallions. Since I didn't have any of these tonight, I went without and it was still ok...
6. Refrigerate for about 30 min. - take out 5 minutes before serving.

This salad goes really well with poultry or grilled salmon.

Bon appétit!

Egg-free Chocolate Chip Cookies!!

We made some Chocolate Chip Cookies this afternoon!! The three girls together! We just did our first tasting and they are GOOD!! Really good! M. took one to gym-class now for her coach...

We haven't done any baking since, well... I believe since we've left California. We used to bake a lot. From cookies over bread to fruit pies. For quite a while I would bake all of our bread. The bread soon became a staple at potluck dinners. I just loved every single step in the process: the kneading, seeing it rise, the smell while it's rising or in the oven, the excitement every time you take it out of the oven, as every loaf looks different from the previous one, the sound of the knife in the freshly baked crust...
Since we moved to Paris, there is no incentive for baking our own bread anymore. We have at least ten bakeries within close walking distance...and the bread here is SO good - what did I say? Outrageously good!

For cookies and pies, Martha Stewart was my main resource. I just loved her recipes. I subscribed to Living and Food Every Day, would buy the specials,...
However, we had one limitation: no eggs! no nuts! - as one of our girls was diagnosed with a severe egg and nut allergy when she was about six months old. As most baking recipes call for eggs, baking cookies was quite a challenge at the beginning. That is, until I found out about EnerG's Egg Replacer. It took a while to get the dosage right, but once that problem solved, we could make just about everything - and I believe I can say no one ever noticed there weren't any eggs involved! Baking became a fun activity with the kids. Especially little H. enjoyed our baking sessions.



The absolute favorite were our egg-free chocolate chip cookies. The recipe below is an adaptation from a Martha recipe - tried-and-true! Instead of using water to dissolve the egg-replacer, as suggested on the box, I use milk - something I do for most baking recipes. Also, the egg-replacer tends to color down the cookies a bit, so I've replaced part of the granulated sugar by light brown sugar. Depending on your oven, you might also want to increase the baking time a bit. Just keep an eye on them as they bake!
A batch of these usually doesn't last long, here!

Egg-free chocolate chip cookies

US version
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon coarse salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 teaspoons egg-replacer dissolved in 8 tablespoons (lukewarm) milk
2 cups semisweet- or milk-chocolate chips, or a combination of both (about 12 ounces; Trader Joe’s semisweet are great!)

European version
250 g self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
150 g unsalted butter, softened
150 g granulated sugar
50 g packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon coarse salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 teaspoons egg-replacer dissolved in 120 ml (lukewarm) milk
200 g dark or milk chocolate chips, or a combination of both; if you can't find chocolate chips, just smash a bar of chocolate to pieces...

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175-180°C). Whisk together flour, salt and baking soda in a small bowl; set aside. In a separate bowl beat together on medium speed butter and sugars until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Reduce to low speed and add vanilla and dissolved egg-replacer; mix until well combined, about 1 minute. Add flour mixture; mix until just combined. If necessary, add more milk, one tablespoon at a time and no more than two. Stir in chocolate chips.
2. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through baking time, until centers are set and edges are golden, about 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets 2 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks using a spatula; let cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an air-tight container at room temperature up to 1 week (but they usually don’t last that long…).

A little side-note: As I don't have a decent mixing bowl nor a good mixer, the batter would keep splattering around. I had already moved the whole setting to the counter near the sink, when M. got a paper plate. "Hey, wait a minute! That's a great idea! Let's cut a hole in it and place it between the mixer and bowl", I said. The girls thought it was hilarious, but it worked! A more transparent plate would have worked even better! And M.? She went to get her little camera...

Disclaimer: Before starting, make sure to check all the labels of all ingredients you're about to use for the presence of possible allergens!!

Figs… in Paris

The first time I spotted them was fall, last year. Figs, growing in huge numbers at the park we pass through every day on our way to school. By the time they were ripe, however, the park was shut down for some serious pruning and trimming. So, sadly, we didn’t get to pick any to try. I was actually a little surprised to find them growing here, in the middle of Paris. I would think our moderate climate not to be very favorable to growing figs. This maybe explains why there seems to be less of them this year, at our little park. The many produce stores around here, however, have them “en masse” right now.
This brings me to sharing this fast and easy, but, I believe, very sophisticated recipe. It actually is a “new take” on a recipe I got a long time ago from my friend Liz. She served this dish at a dinner party she hosted – the first one of many for us, as our families grew very close over the years. The original recipe asks for dried prunes, which I now substituted with fresh figs. And, it works wonderfully well, doesn’t it Nina?

So, Liz, Nina, this one’s for you!

Oh, and did you see the clear blue sky in the picture? That was yesterday. A lovely, sunny, autumn day… in Paris.

Marinated chicken with fresh figs

Ingredients:
Pre-cut chicken breasts or chicken tenders, to serve 6

Marinade:
Several cloves of garlic, pressed or finely chopped
1/8 cup dried oregano
¼ to ½ cup balsamic vinegar
¼ to ½ cup olive oil
¼ cup Spanish green olives (I usually take them marinated in olive oil and garlic)
¼ cup capers
3 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

2 tbsp brown sugar
¾ cup dry white wine
4 to 5 fresh figs, quartered lengthwise
Finely chopped cilantro or Italian parsley, optional

1. In a large bowl combine marinade ingredients and chicken. Cover and refrigerate overnight or at least 8 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 350 F.
3. Arrange chicken in a single layer in a shallow baking pan and spoon marinade over. Add figs. Sprinkle chicken with brown sugar and pour wine all around.
4. Bake for about 35-40 min (less if using tenders).
5. (Sprinkle with cilantro or parsley). Serve. Can also be served cool or at room temperature.

This dish goes very well together with green beans or green asparagus on the side and couscous or boiled potatoes still in their peel (boiled with a crushed - but not minced - garlic clove still in its peel, one bay leave, a little dried thyme and coarse salt added to the water).

Enjoy!