Gateau Breton

After being healthy with just a soup, I think now it is time to get onto a non-healthy recipe hehe.
This is a cake my mum makes and that I requested ^^ I made it myself before but as everyone knows, no matter how many times you make something the one your mum makes is always a bizillion times better. Yes, this is a fact ;) So yes the pictures of the cake you see here was made by Mama Rithuu! Mercii!

In any case, it is a pretty simple recipe and absolutely delicious as long as you like butter and the sweet and savory combination! :) This recipe is from my mum's region in Brittany and it's very similar to dutch boterkoek (also really delicious by the way). So if you like boterkoek, you will definitely like this recipe! A must try at home! :)
Recipe also available in French at the end of this post!

Ingredients:

• 300g of flour
• 240g of butter 
• 240g of sugar
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 pinch of baking soda

Preparation:

Little advice: best to use Breton salted butter for this recipe like the one on the photo below. If it's not available where you are, just use salted butter (very important that it is salty!)

1. Melt the butter and mix the sugar. Then add the egg yolks (make sure the butter isn't too hot so it doesn't cook the eggs ><)
   
2. Add flour and mix well until it becomes dough-y.
   
3. Butter your mould and flatten the dough into it. 
4. Lightly brush with egg yolk so it becomes golden brown when baked! :) Use a fork to do the little design as shown on the photo and bake for 30min at 180 degrees!

And when it's ready... nom nom nom

So yeah as you can see it's a pretty straight forward recipe! It's really tasty and super delicious to have for breakfast or just as a snack :P or just anytime... hehe 

Just remember, it is important to use good quality salted butter for this recipe!

Hope you try making it! :D

Recette en Francais:

Ingredients: 

• 300g de farine
• 240g de beurre
• 240g de sucre
• 3 jaunes d'oeufs. 

Preparation:

1. Faire fondre le beurre et y ajouter le sucre. Ajouter les jaunes d'oeufs.
2. Ajouter la farine et mélanger le tout
3. Mettre dans un plat beurré. 
4. Dorer le dessus au jaune d'oeuf.
5. Faire cuire pendant 30minutes a 180 degres. 

Voila! :D

Tiramisu

Ok so maybe the picture does not look super appealing but I can reassure you this recipe is very good. It's the one my mum makes and it's so yummy and very simple! I've made tiramisu many times when we had big gatherings for birthdays with my friends and I think everyone liked it :)
Hope you try making it!

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs 
• 300g mascarpone (sometimes they only sell 250g ones and that quantity is also ok. Makes the mascarpone mixture more liquid)
• 50g Sugar
• Salt
• 250-300g of lady fingers
• Lemon zest/lemon juice
• 1 dl of very strong coffee 
• 3 tablespoons of Amaretto
• 5 tablespoons of rum
• Chocolate powder

For this recipe you will need 2 large bowls and an electric mixer! (very important!)

Preparations: 

1. Prepare some instant coffee (add lots of it so it's very strong) and a teaspoon of sugar. Add the amaretto and rum and set aside so it cools down. 
2. In 2 large bowls, separate the egg yolk from the white. 
3. In the bowl with the 2 egg yolks, add 50g of sugar. Mix with the electric mixer until it becomes white/beige-ish. Add the mascarpone to the mixture (best here to just mix with a spoon/fork and not the electric mixer. Might make it a little too liquid-y). 

   

   Mascarpone mixture!

4. In the bowl with the egg white, add a pinch of salt and use the electric mixer to beat until they form peaks. As you mix, add a table spoon of sugar. It will become pretty compact and you will be able to turn the bowl upside down (and the egg white should not fall. If it does then it's not ready :P). As the cake noob that I am, I have messed up the recipe one time because I was lazy and did not wash the electric mixer (after using it to mix the sugar and egg yolk) before beating the egg white... It will stay all liquid-y so make sure there's no yolk or anything else before beating the white! (Just don't be lazy like meee! :P)

   

   fluffeeeehh

5. When it's done, add the egg white to the mascarpone mixture very delicately. For this you can either use a spatula or a spoon and mix in a circular motion not to destroy the egg's white fluffiness. 
6. Place the coffee into a bowl and dip each lady finger generously and place them in a mould (I usually use an oven dish ^^). Create one layer and add one coat of mascarpone mixture. The repeat this process (lady fingers dipped in coffee-rum-amaretto) and coat with the rest of mascarpone (ok I always have a problem here, I always either use too much in the beginning or not enough so try to make it equal unlike me :P). You may also realize that you just don't have a perfect amount of lady fingers.... (like me) so just YOLO it up. 

   

   Make it work :P
   
   
   

   

7. When you're done, cover it and refrigerate it for half a day or 24 hours (24 hours is usually better) so all the flavors sink in the lady fingers! 
8. When you are about to eat it, cover it with some chocolate powder and it's done! :D

You can cover with dark chocolate powder but I've used Nesquick as well and it works :P

How to: Afternoon Tea

I discovered afternoon tea in England. It is very typical british, and I love the way it looks. It's supposed to be taken in the afternoon (around 3 or so? until more or less 6) It makes you feel like having something super shmancy when it's actually pretty simple to make!
I've had quite a few afternoon teas here and there in England and I can tell you the ones in London are just... SO GODDAMN EXPENSIVE! Always more than 15£. When you go outside of London, you can have some for maybe 12. They might not look and be as fancy as but still a nice afternoon snack ^^

Afternoon tea consists of: a couple of finger sandwiches, scones, and some cakes/pastries. And of course, TEA. Sometimes you can also have Champagne afternoon tea which can add another 15£ to it -_-
So the price of afternoon tea can be rather discouraging... why not make it at home? I think it's very nice to do when you have guests (the whole thing usually leaves quite an impression on people? :P). I would really recommend you to try making it yourself, it's fun, easy and it just looks good :D

How to:

• Cutlery: What is essential for the afternoon tea is this little afternoon tea set, where you can place your food. This, really makes it an afternoon tea. To make it more into a british atmosphere, it is important that you have some nice tea cups. If you don't have that double/triple story set (I don't know the correct term sorreeeh) just nice looking plates will also do! :D
• Drinks: tea of course, whatever you like (english breakfast, or just simple early grey?). And if you want to make it fancier, have some champagne or prosecco (it's cheaper too :P)
• Sandwiches: try to buy the bread without the crust or otherwise you can always cut the crust out. Usually, you always have salmon one and an egg one (some places also have a cucumber one). For the salmon one, I put a thin layer of philadelphia cream cheese and salmon. For the cucumber, again a layer of philadelphia and thin slices of cucumber (remember it's supposed to be delicate and fancy so best when it's thin slices :P). And for the egg one, hard boil 2 eggs, add some mayonnaise (personally I use the japanese one) until it becomes quite creamy, pepper and a little bit of parsley. Cut the sandwiches into either triangles or rectangles and it's DONE!
• Scones: if you live in the UK, you can just buy the already made scones in local supermarkets (which is what we do most of the time :P) or make them yourself! :D (recipe coming soon ^^)
• Pastries: here you can basically make any cake you want! Sometimes I made cup cakes, or get French pastries (Eclair au chocolat? hehe). Carrot cake, cheese cake, lemon tart, nutella cake... As long as it's a small portion since you might already be stuffed from sandwiches and scones, everything is good. I've had pretty creamy/heavy cakes which I could really not finish anymore so I think keeping them either light or small portions will be best! :)

So these are pictures I have taken of the most recent afternoon teas at home! We also offered some chocolates (on the picture: Ferrero Rocher, my favorite chocolates of all time and orange-chocolate truffles).

If you want to spoil yourself some more, you can also do Champagne Aternoon Tea. Yes, it makes you feel even more luxurious and fancy. Champagne is a bit too much you say? Cheaper alternatives are prosecco or some other Italian spumante (sparkling wine)!

Prosecco Afternoon Tea I did with some of my girlfriends

With usual finger sandwhiches, steamed cup cakes, raisin scones and short bread ^^

Hope you try this at home! :D

Alfajor -Review-

Alfajor is like THE most devoured snack in Argentina. Recently, when my relatives from France visited and went to Portobello Road in London, they found alfajores, cookies filled with dulce de leche (a form of caramel very very popular in Argentina). There are MANY MANY different types of alfajores in Argentina and they can vary greatly from one to another (I remember having alfajores from Milka as a school snack sometimes). Obviously, in Europe you cannot find them easily. The Havanna brand, is I think the most commonly seen brand outside of Argentina and also the one people bring back the most when they go visit. This brand has other confectionaries than alfajores (like little chocolate drops filled with dulce de leche and white alfajores etc.). I remember people saying that the Havanna brand was considered to be the best kinds of alfajores and these are the ones you find at the airport! The box is pretty easy to spot being all yellow :P

Anyways, it had been a while since I ate these... And to be honest, I didn't even eat that many alfajores when I was in Argentina... I was kind of sick and tired of dulce de leche to begin with because everything had dulce de leche :P (cookies, doughnuts, churros, toast, EVERYTHING). I think the fact that I am not much of a sweet tooth matters (and alfajores and dulce de leche are both pretty sweet products). It was nice to eat one the other day though, reminiscing of the good old days.

Gold wrapping :P

If you ever go to Argentina, you will most definitely have many choices for alfajores and I would definitely recommend you trying some (any brand really... Maybe try to try other ones than the Havanna ones, those you can't find in Europe or other places)! The Havanna one I had is pretty good, though for me, half of it is enough. But if you are a big sweet tooth Nomster, this should be on your must try list! :)

Dulce de Leche in the middle! :)

Nutella Cake

For this year's Christmas cake we decided to make something new: Nutella cake. I think everyone is a big fan of nutella and most people would probably enjoy this recipe. As a baking noob, this recipe was still quite easy to make (even for me). I found the recipe on a French site and the link in French can be found at the end of this post! :)

Ingredients for 4 nomsters

• 6 spoons of Nutella
• 150g of flour
• 120g of sugar
• 1 yoghurt (plain yoghurt)
• 3 eggs
• Half a pack of baking soda

Preparation

1. Pre-heat your oven at 180C and butter your mold and cover it with flour so the cake doesn't stick. 
2. In a big bowl, mix the eggs with the sugar (you can use an electric mixer for this). Add the yoghurt, melted butter and mix well. Once it becomes smooth, add the flour and baking soda while mixing. 
3. Finally, add the Nutella. It didn't say in the recipe but we used the electric mixer (Nutella is quite thick so it was quite a hassle to mix. It was just faster!). 
4. Once the Nutella is incorporated, add it to mold and bake it for 30 min! 

Yeeey, so easy! Ok so this cake was pretty good. One minus point, it did not taste like Nutella as much as I thought... A little disappointed with this but it was very soft and spongy. It was also nice that it wasn't too sweet. If you add more Nutella it might be a little too intense... But yes, I think you should definitely try this out! We ate it with creme anglaise (vanilla flavoured *recipe coming soon*) and it was absolutely delicious! 

Nutella cake with creme anglaise

We made it Christmassy by adding powdered sugar (kind of like snow hehe) and some little decorations as you can see on the photo :)

Can you tell how spongy it is? :)

Recette en Francais --> http://gateau.com/gateau-au-nutella-facile.htm

Enjoy!

Madeleines

They reminded me of a submarine when I was small :P

Madeleines, are small vanilla flavored French cakes. They are very easy to make and very tasty. The shape of these small cakes are very crucial to their identification. They look a little bit like sea shells. The mold you should use for this recipe resemble like this:

One important thing for this recipe is to have the appropriate mould. I’m sure you could make them in a non madeleine shaped one but I feel like it would lose something and they wouldn't be madeleines anymore :P Up to you to try though! 

My mum used to make them for me as an afternoon snack for when I came back from school. I remember drowning them into my chocolate milk until no more bubbles would appear on the surface (yes I was an evil child). 
They are simple to make (20min preparation and cooking time) and delicious to eat so I decided I would try making them myself with my mama’s recipe.

Here is my mum's recipe! :)

Ingredients for 8 madeleines:

•          1 egg
•          40 g sugar
•          60 g flour
•          30 g of butter
•          1 pinch of salt
•          1 pinch of baking powder
•           Few drops of vanilla extract

 Preparation:

1. Preheat the over at 200-210 degrees
2. Beat the egg with the sugar
3. Add a pinch of salt and a few drops of vanilla extract
4. Add flour and mix
5. Add the melted butter and mix until you get a homogenous paste
6. Fill the moulds and immediately bake it in the oven for 10 min!

What my mum told me to do is use the back the spoon to make sure that the mixture is filling the molds so you get a nice madeleine shape J  

Make sure your little madeleines tan a lot and become golden brown! The first time I made them I didn't bake them enough and they looked rather pale and unhealthy :( 

Personally, I think the madeleines are best when they are fresh out of the oven. The smell of warm madeleines is just amazing and they feel extra soft! *drool*

フワフワ！so sooooft!

I used salted butter when I made them the first time and you could feel bits of salt in them. In case you don't like the savory-sweet mix, you can use regular unsalted butter as well :)

The preparation time is so short that it is also perfect to make them when you have unexpected guests and no snacks to offer!

This is how they look like underneath! 

Recipe also available in french and spanish! :)

Recette pour environ 8 Madeleines

Ingrédients:

• 1 oeuf
• 40 gr de sucre
• 60gr de farine
• 30gr de beurre
• 1 pincée de sel
• 1 pincée de levure
• quelques gouttes de vanille

Préparation:

1. Préchauffer le four a 200-210C.
2. Battre l’oeuf avec le sucre
3. Ajouter le sel et les goutes de vanille
4. Verser la farine et mélanger
5. Ajouter le beurre ramolli
6. Remplir les moules et faire cuire immédiatement pendant 10 min

A déguster tiède ;)

Receta para 8 madeleines:

Ingredientes:

• 1 huevo
• 40 g de azúcar
• 60g de harina
• 30g de manteca
• sal
• algunas gotas de vainilla

Preparación:

1. Calentar el horno a 200-210 grados
2. Mezclar el huevo con el azúcar
3. Agregar la sal y la vainilla
4. Agregar la harina y mezclar bien hasta obtener una mezcla homogénea
5. Agregar la manteca ablandada
6. Llenar los moldes y meterlos en el horno inmediatamente durante 10 minutos.

Para que tengan una linda forma de madeleines, se puede usar una cuchara para llenar el molde.

A disfrutar cuando todavía están calentitos y/o con un vaso de leche!