How to use Easter eggs

I hope you had a great Easter.  The next question is what to do with all these Easter eggs? Here are some ideas on how to use Easter eggs.  The outcome result will be directly proportional to the quality of the chocolate of your eggs.  Because Easter eggs are often done with very sweet chocolate, I will advise you to reduce the sugar quantities in each recipe.

Three ideas to use your Easter eggs:

  1. Use the easter eggs in choc chip cookies.  You can use my great choc chip cookie recipe.  You will need to reduce the sugar amount probably 50 g less for each type, simply because Easter eggs are usually very high in sugar.
  2. Melt the chocolates and use them in a simple chocolate cake.  One of the easier recipe, made so many times as a child and now if the Queen of Sheba Cake (Reine de Saba). Again here, reduce the sugar by a third.  double the base recipe given and use a round cake tin for an afternoon tea cake.
  3. Easter eggs go around cake! This is a plain cake in which we insert two circles of Easter eggs.  The fun bit is that those eggs often fall in the cake and cannot be seen once the cake is cooked. This is the recipe I am sharing below.

Easter eggs go around cake:

I made this one this weekend for a bunch of children who were spending the afternoon with us.  One of the child helped me making the cake.  She loved placing the eggs around.  There was no left overs!

how to use easter eggs

Ingredients:
  • 4 large eggs
  • 240 g of butter, melted
  • 180 g of caster sugar
  • 240 g of flour
  • 1.5 tspn of baking powder
  • Easter eggs (about 20)
Method:
  1. Preheat the oven at 180°C.
  2. Butter the bottom and sides of a large round tin, line the bottom with baking paper.
  3. Place the eggs and sugar together and beat (using a large whisk or a food mixer) until light and fluffy.how to use easter eggs
  4. Add the butter slowly mixing.  Then add the flour and baking powder together and mix with a  wooden spoon.
  5. Transfer the batter to the tin, unwrap the chocolate eggs and place in two circles or in a pattern of your choice.
  6. Bake until firm at the touch or golden brown.

 

Homemade Easter Eggs!

Spare time this weekend? What about homemade Easter eggs?

eggs chocolate

I tried this last weekend with my daughters.  This is a lot of fun, and yes, the children do tend to eat a fair bit of the chocolate in the process.  I used couverture dark chocolate, couverture milk chocolate and couverture white chocolate.  Now if you do not have the couverture chocolate, use a good quality one from the supermarket.  For white chocolate, it will not change anything because white chocolate is purely cocoa butter (and sugar).  What is important to ensure the little eggs and bigger eggs too come off the moulds in one piece and all shiny, is to temper the chocolate. You do need a special thermometer with a range at least between 25 and 55°C.  Those are easy to find in any cooking shop. And since you are going to that shop, get a few moulds for chocolates!  For small pieces, silicone or plastic moulds are fine, for larger pieces, I prefer the plastic ones, they are easier to use when comes the time to pop out the piece from the mould.

Tempering the chocolate is a three stages process, the chocolate needs to be melted slowly (ideally on a bain marie), then cooled down to about 26-27°C.  For that stage, there are a few approaches.  Finally, the chocolate is slightly warmed up to 31-32°C which makes it easier to work with (a little more runny).

The cooling down of the chocolate (step 2) can be done by:

  1. Waiting until the chocolate cools down mixing from time to time.  Pretty straight forward but the longest in term of time.
  2. Adding to the melted chocolate some finely cut pieces of the same chocolate. This exchange of energy will make your mix cool down much quicker. Keep mixing until the added pieces are fully melted.
  3. pouring the chocolate on a marble top, spreading and gathering it with a flat spatula.  You may have seen that method on TV cooking shows.  Go for it if you want to try it, I can’t tell you much about it.
eggs chocolate
Measuring the temperature during the tempering process

Making the chocolates

For the black ones, we actually make a salted caramel chocolate truffle preparation to use a filling (at least the day before).  You can choose a plain chocolate truffle if you are not fan of the salted caramel one.

For the little pieces:

Now is the time to use your little moulds, if you want to have them hollow for filling latter, pour tempered chocolate over the mould, distribute to each print, it must be full. Then place yourself over the bowl of chocolate and pour back the excess. Use a large knive to clean the top surface and place to cool down  in the fridge.  Once they are hard, you can do the filling.

If you want full eggs (or other shape), keep the print full, clean the top surface and let to cool down and harden (again quicker in the fridge).  You can choose to mix up colours or to have a little of another chocolate for a feature part of the item, as is the case on the flowers we made.

eggs chocolateTo attach two halves together, heat up a baking sheet (not too hot). Place each half on it to melt the edges a little. If you are filling the eggs with a truffle, fill them ensuring they do not overflow.  Then stick the two halves together!

 

 

 

 

Tips: try to keep clean hands to avoid leaving traces on the tempered chocolate

Tips: White chocolate, then milk chocolate will harden much quicker than dark chocolate. Tis is directly related to the proportion of cocoa butter in the chocolate. 

Making larger pieces

This can get a little tricky.  The key is to make sure the thickness of the chocolate is sufficient in the fragile parts: the edges, the collars of the bunny, ears of the bunny , etc.

Pour the chocolate, remove the excess after 2 minutes. Cool down (quicker in the fridge). When solidified repeat and place face down on a baking paper sheet.  If you judge that the edges are too thin, use a kitchen brush to add chocolate along the edges. Cool down completely.  The shapes will actually come undone from the mould on their own, this can take overnight.  Alternatively, when you see it has solidified, you can pull out opposite sides of the moulds to check if the form is ready to come out.  Then you just need to assemble by melting the edges of both pieces on a warm baking sheet and joining together.

HAPPY EASTER !

eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate eggs chocolate

 

The perfect season for the sugar tarte!

This is the perfect season for the sugar tarte or maybe just an excuse to do it as really it can be done and remains delicious all year round.

I think I promised this recipe a long while ago, and I spoke about it in my rhubarb post.  It is a specialty from the northern part of France and from Belgium.  For me, this tarte au sucre, as I know it, means the smell of the fresh yeast which had to be mixed up with a little milk, then the touch of the soft dough when spread in the tin and of course the final taste of it!

If you are wondering who are the biggest fan of it, no hesitation: kids! That said grownups also love it.

La tarte au sucre, the concept:

A simple yeasted dough with a topping of soft brown sugar and cream.

sugar tarte

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to make it? Yes!

Ingredients:

For the dough

  • 200 g of plain flour
  • 100 g of butter
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tbsp of milk
  • 1 tbsp of caster sugar
  • 10 g of fresh yeast (or 4 of dry yeast)
  • 1 pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)

For the toping:

  • 125 g of soft brown sugar
  • 1 dL (100 mL) of cream
Method:
  1. In a large bowl, place the flour in the bowl and with a spoon, make a well (a hole in the middle of the flour in which you will place all the other ingredients).
  2. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk.
  3. Add in the well, the yeast, butter, caster sugar, egg and salt.
  4. Mix until you obtain a nice dough.
  5. Transfer into a large bowl, cover with a clean tea-towel and allow to rise in a warm corner until almost double.
  6. Preheat the oven on 180°C.
  7. Butter and flour your tarte tin. Transfer the dough and using the palm of your hand, spread it gently making a little edge.  in the centre spread the soft brown sugar, then randomly pour the cream.
  8. Bake until the edges are golden brown.
  9. Eat warm or cold (do not place in the fridge).

Rhubarb!

Rhubarb! Some may know, some may wonder what I am speaking about.

Rhubarb is definitely not, or maybe not yet, a fixture in the average customer’s grocery trolley.  In places it is even hard to find. Well, well, it is the right season around Sydney. Let me introduce you to it.

The rhubarb plant

Rhubarb is a perennial (it means it grows again and again every year on its own) low-lying plant.  The plant is half a metre tall and consist of long stalk of reddish colour which thick very large leaves. As a kid, we used to pinch leaves from the veges garden’s plant and use them as umbrellas!

The plant typically grows in temperate climate, hence you shall find plenty reference to it in Northern France, England, Belgium, Germany, etc and their equivalent climate countries around the world.  The stalk is what is eaten, cooked.  The leaves (I recently learned) are toxic!

rhubard stalk preparation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rhubarb Preparation

This is something you can get your child to help with, it is fun.

rhubard stalk preparation

  1. Cut the leaves and discard.rhubard stalk preparation
  2. Rinse/wash the stalks.rhubard stalk preparation
  3. Cut the bottom part of each stalk and pull any stringy skin that comes with it

Your rhubarb is ready.

What to do with it?

Here are 5 ideas of what to do with it:

Stewed rhubarb:

stewed rhubarb

This is the easiest use! Just cut in 5 cm pieces, place in a saucepan, add water until mid-heigth (of the rhubarb) and cook gently for about 15 minutes. When stirred it should come apart, just add some white sugar to taste. Want more precision, look HERE.

Rhubarb, yogurt and cereal breakfast

A great combination for an uncommon breakfast.  The name and the photo say it all. More HERE.

rhubarb, yoghurt & cereal

Roasted rhubarb

This one works great as a side to a vanilla pannacotta or the topping of a cake.  To find how to prepare it, click HERErhubarb

A simple rustic rhubarb tarte

This one is a french classic.  A short crust pastry, the rhubarb stalks are diced quite small and placed on the pastry.  There are 2 choices then: just add sugar and a few nuts of butter (not pictured here) or add an egg, milk, almond mixture, then bake! Yummy. The details HERE.

rhubarb tarte

And finally, a leavened dough rhubarb tart

This dough makes use of the roasted rhubarb and a northern France traditional tarte which dough is made with fresh yeast, the sugar tarte (tarte au sucre).  I will cover that tarte au sucre in an upcoming post, just delicious!

Rhubarb roasted on leevened dough Rhubarb roasted on leevened dough

Back to bread

Back to bread!

It has been a while since I last wrote about breads.  Let’s go back to breads!  I have updated my sourdough bread explanations with some photos and more details.

If you are still struggling with some aspects of the bread making, don’t be to hard on yourself, it takes time.  I remember posting on FB a photo two years ago of a bread I found amazing. Looking back, it was not such a good bread, a beginner’s bread starting to get the hang of it! Keep perseverating!

Just for fun, here is a gallery of sourdough overtime, all mine.

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More fun with 100% hydration breads

100% hydration bread is not to be confused with 100% starter hydration.  I am not blaming you if you are not sure of the difference, I wasn’t onto it myself for a bit, I thought this only related to the starter.  So, without being too technical, here you are:

100% hydration starter

This is when the starter contains exactly a ration of 1 to 1 of flour and water (by weight).  So, if you are always using a liquid starter (for those who make bread every day or every two days),  and feed it an equal weight of water and flour, you have a 100% hydration starter.

For those like me, who make bread from every two days to every week (or more), we would keep our starter as a stiff starter to ensure it doesn’t have a mega tantrum.  That is 2:2:1 (starter, flour, water).  In words: same weight of starter and flour, but half the weight of water.  It allows a slower development of the yeast and thus keeps for longer. When I save my starter, I take away 50 g of the developed starter (the rest will go in the bread I am about to make), 50 g of flour and 25 g of water. I mix it all in a ball and put back in the fridge!

Une petite disgression sur les ratios…./ lets explore these ratios….

As a result, when I develop the starter, the ratio of hydration is slightly less than 100%.  For a feed of 200 g water, 200 g flour, the starter is 25 g short of water to be 100% hydration (it is 90% hydration).

Does it make much a difference? It depends on the quantity of bread you make per batch.  For me 25 g out of a total weight of water (starter and bread) of 620 g of water (25 g in starter, 200 g in feed, 420 in the bread, minus removal of new starter assumed 25 g water), is a 4% difference in hydration.   In the end using the 90% or 100% hydration starter in the bread with the quantity I use does not make any difference.  The type and origin of the flour will have more influence at that stage that your hydration ratio.

When I go on holidays for a couple of weeks or more (it has worked up to 3 weeks, I have not tried more), I feed it additional flour and water keeping the ration 2:1 (twice as much flour as water).

Have I lost you? 

In brief, if you do a few breads at the time (750 g of flour or more), using a stiff or liquid starter before feeding it will not influence the end result.

100 % hydration breads, a trial

I have been reading blogs and following some keen bakers (Ca mia for example has great results with that method) working hard on 100% hydration breads.  This ratio applies when you make the bread itself (using 100 % hydration starter or your normal fed starter of course). For those breads, water is used in the same proportion as water. This makes for a very liquid dough.  Be assured, the process is completely different. Why do people do it? because of the bubbles! Big beautiful bubbles.

So, I gave it a go this week.  I doubled my quantity of starter at the feed stage (just making 2 “normal” sourdough as a back up!). And I had this watery mix which sticks so much to your hands and can end up in a big big messy kitchen before you know! That time you need plenty flour to prevent the dough from sticking onto the workbench or onto your banneton (I use a tea towel shaped in a “U” shape in my roasting dish).  When I baked it , I did not give it a chance to come back to room temperature thinking that the cold shape will be slightly firmer to move.  Even so, it is really very soft!

sourdough bread And the result? Yum!  In taste, much lighter, it is another bread! It is closer to the ciabatta.  One bread was a bit flat, the other bread was quite high but had a big bubble in the upper section in one part of the bread.  There is definitely a fault in my technique there.

sourdough bread

 

 

 

 

Welcome to autumn!

Welcome to autumn! Yeah !  And goodbye to summer fruits.  Ohhh 🙁

Here are two inspirations for you:

Autumn inspiration:  roasted fresh figsroasted figs, to serve with a panna cotta, ice cream, a cake or simply starte aux peches et romarinome yogurt.

 

 

End of summer inspiration: a peach frangipane tart.

Roasted figs

The first one is a dish everyone can make without much kitchen skills.  You need a non-stick fry-pan, some butter (salted is better), balsamic vinegar, honey and obviously fresh figs.  I bought a tray of over 40 figs for $15 last week, very cost-effective when you consider they can be at $2 piece! It is peak season, so go for it, it is now or never.  I had not cooked figs like this before and I must say I will do it again. Make sure to roast them just before serving.  And if you are into it, why not flamber them?

Recipe HERE.

roasted fresh figs roasted fresh figs

 

I served mine with a vanilla panna cotta and an orange semolina cake.  The cake recipe is from the GoodFood website.  The cake is surprisingly moist, even before adding the syrup (for the syrup I did not follow the recipe).

As for having figs, plus panna cotta plus cake at once, it was a bit of an extravaganza! The cake was not strickly necessary, it could have been some small dry biscuits, but I thought the children may not be so fan of the panna cotta (and I was wrong).

The frangipane peach tart

tarte aux peches et romarin

For this tart, I was pretty pleased with myself I must say. Ambrine was preparing a pizza (a school assignment was to prepare a meal).  I wanted to do a tart to use some peaches which didn’t look too good.  They ended up being really good actually! I decided at the last minute to use a tall edges tart tin and dress it up a little bit.  This is by no means something hard to make, it takes just a little more time. It took me from start to finish the same time as the pizza from start to finish (including dough), so about an hour and a half.

The tart is a plain short crust pastry, lightly blind baked, a frangipane custard at the bottom then the slices of peaches and to finish it off a brush of apricot jam and some rosemary. Yum!

Recipe HERE.tarte aux peches et romarin

 

Another school lunchbox bake!

Ricotta muffins

Here goes another school lunchbox bake.  This one is born out of last week storms. From Friday to Sunday, we had strong lightning storms at the end of the days, the storms were quite gusty too! As a result we lost power for a couple of days from Sunday.  Not just our house, but all of Scotland Island and the western foreshore actually (map here); a couple of trees brought lines down.

Back to my story, I had this block of beautiful ricotta in the fridge which on day two I realised was not going to last much longer.  What do you do with ricotta.  Ricotta pancake? Yum, but, no thank you that day.  Pasta ricotta bake? Yum, well, one of my daughter is not fan. I was also planning to bake a plain cake of some sort and divide into portions for the children’s lunch boxes.  Think a second, what do you like ricotta with? Orange, honey, rhubarb, figs, berries, nuts…all those end of summer, early autumn flavours.

And them these two muffins recipes were born:

Raspberry and ricotta muffin and Orange, honey, walnut and ricotta muffin. Really good and not dry at all (ricotta based cakes can be a little dry).

Honey walnut ricotta muffinsThe orange, honey, walnut and ricotta muffins

The cake of the week, a 4 minutes chocolate mousse cake

This is the cake of the week. I had been going through my list of recipes “to try”. I must have had this one for a few years!

In essence it is a chocolate cake.  What is great is the texture, light and soft. The taste is intense chocolate heaven! Ahah! It is very strong in chocolate warning. We had this cake over two dinners.  Try it, it will take 10 minutes to prepare and 4 to bake!

It is not a very tall cake (or use a smaller diameter tin than me, it was my smallest at 18 cm). The recipe is HERE.

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Pages Updates

I have updated the birthday cakes page and I am updating the lunchboxes page at the moment.  Keep browsing!

 

 

3 quick last minute desserts

3 quick and last minute desserts to help fix that lunch or diner when you are either pressed for time or not willing to spend much time behind the stove!

Then keep scrolling down for a few photos of the week trials! Some are part of upcoming posts!

1 The Summer Fruit Log

summer log

 

This is really simple and requires a very low level of effort! You need one good quality puff pastry,  some cream for whipping and some berries.  The photo says it all or pretty much!

Such an australian dessert in its style!

summer log

2. The Chocolate Friands (for tea or coffee after lunch) for that little extra craving…

This is one of these recipes where you place all the ingredients together, mix, place in the oven and bake and this is it!

The plus +++ of that recipe is that they are gluten free, loaded with chocolate and of course quick and easy to make. And by the way, GF!

YUM. Recipe HERE.

friand choco hazelnut

3. Back to basics with this yoghurt and berry ramequin

This may not impress the crowds but will definitely please the whole family.   Whiz some strawberries with a little icing sugar.  Roughly mix it to the yogurt. Add blueberries and sliced almonds on top.

When I do this at home, it goes in a flash!

yahourt and fruits ramequins

The week in image

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Loaf cakes

When I say loaf cake, I am not thinking of the french size long tin, which we refer to as “moule a cake”.  Yes, as funny as it is, we have a cake in France which name is the word “Cake” as such, that is in English! How funny!  I will do a post on this famous “cake” and the numerous derivatives mastered by the French, I am not kidding there are tens of books on those “cakes”.

Today I am speaking about the large ad generous loaf cakes.  They are not top elegant (like the “cake” cake) but are so comforting.  They also have a great advantage: they can feed a crowd!

Here are two of them: the classic australian banana cake and a quick orange cake which I am asking you to try because it is really worth it!

The classic banana bread

Yum! I am warning you :

  1. it is delicious
  2. it is nutritious and even more if you serve it with a salted caramel spread, it then becomes quite indulgent.

So freeze these very ripe bananas until you get a few and go for it! The recipe is HERE.

LOAF CAKE BANANA BREAD

The not so known quick orange cake

I like to think of that one as the “hubby bake”. If my husband was one day to bake a cake (he never has), he would like to put it all in the food processor, press start, transfer to the tin and bake. Well this is pretty much this cake! you put everything, the whole orange skin and all! I have made this orange cake again and again over the years.  The recipe is from a Australian Country Women cook book given to me by friends years ago (because they wanted to give me something Australian  and liked coming home for some meals!). Not sure if they are reading today but thank you!

This time I added some walnuts, but it is also great without. Just give it a try! The recipe is HERE.

No health warning here, butter has been swapped for oil.

orange cake loaf

School lunchboxes are back!

School lunchboxes are back!

Yeah, yeah.  In New South Wales, school starts officially tomorrow.  We have just moved house, still in Sydney but on an island! I managed in time to get my baking goods out of boxes to prepare a great lunch box slice for this week.

choc fondant slice

You can’t make it easier

This is as easy as it can get really.  There are 4 ingredients, no cooking skills required (i.e. make your child mix it all) and it is ready and baked in a flash!

Hopefully you have a can of sweet condensed milk in the pantry.  I had to buy one to do it tonight, I found that recipe or variations of it on many french websites when emptying my pantry before our move.

Follow the link to the recipe

Go to the recipe HERE.  Have a go at it, it is pretty simple (and not just for children of course).

choc fondant slice

choc fondant slice, school lunchbox are back

 

 

 

My clafoutis story, with pits and stems!

Today is about my cherry clafoutis story. A few weeks ago, a friend asked me for a cherry clafoutis recipe. A clafoutis is a very simple dessert: a few fruits placed at the bottom of a dish on top of which you pour a simple batter.

I had not made a cherry clafoutis before, I guess the cherries somehow always appear to vanish too quickly from their bowl for that!  Find the guilty! I wish I had a cherry tree!

My cherry story

My grandmother in the Champagne area in France has this orchard that was quite magical for us kids.  Not only were there stories of old wells not to go near as we could fall into and disappear, but there were also a number of fruit trees, including quite a few cherry trees along a white earth garden alley leading to a small door in the property wall facing the village’s church.  Those cherry trees were loaded with fruits at the start of summer.  My Grandma used to make preserves and fill these tall glass jars.  I have a very clear picture of those glass jars being brought to the kitchen one at the time when required, but don’t ask where they were kept (I don’t know).

Bonne Maman (this is how we called my Grandma) used the cherries mostly in cherry tarts, they were so delicious and beautifully presented on a glazed terracotta platter.  Those tarts are associated with Dad’s loud comment (he still brings it up when we mention those cherry tarts) that the cherries still contained the pits (which obviously annoyed him)!

Now why have I told you my childhood cherries story you wonder? Simply because the cherry clafoutis comes with its controversy about keeping or removing the pits!

Pits or no Pits?

A little bit of research has taught me that the cherry clafoutis originates from an area called Limousin, in central France. There, the clafoutis must be served with full cherries.  This makes sense, think that the clafoutis was a simple countryside dish (Limousin is essentially a rural area), why bother removing the pits? What a loss of time, removing all those pits!

I can only agree. I started removing the pits for my first clafoutis and realised quickly it was taking ages.  I stopped at half and decided to make 2 clafoutis to try the differences, one with and one without pit!

Here is the outcome:

  • With pits, the dish is neat and the fruits retain their juice;
  • Without pits, the juice of the fruits can freely run out of the cherries, it gives a runny look to the clafoutis which can be quite satisfying but when eating a cherry, it will have lost a fair amount of its taste.

clafoutis

Tip: to remove the pits easily, make a small cross cut with a sharp knife on the bottom part of the cherry.  Then using a chop stick, push the pit out by inserting it through the top where the stem was attached.  It works also well without the incision, but it gets really messy if you misfire the pit!

I preferred the cherry with pit version.

Now, my version of the clafoutis

Yes, with pits and stems!!! So fun!

clafoutis with pits and stem clafoutis with pits and stem

 

 

clafoutis with pits and stemThe batter of the clafoutis is normally just eggs, milk, flour and sugar.  With the cherries I found that utterly boring! The recipe needed something to marry the cherries well with the rest of the dessert.  My version swaps some of the milk for greek yoghurt.  It was perfect. And since I was not removing the pits, I decided to leave the stems as well! Now if you do that, make sure your children don’t pull out all of the cherries before touching the cake bit.  It is quite fun I must say.

Click HERE for the recipe.

Other tips about clafoutis in general:

Tip: use a deep dish.  You need the batter to be poured 4 to 5 cm thick (or the clafoutis may be dry).

Tip:  The clafoutis rises during baking.   So have a couple of centimetres of free board (it deflates when taken out of the oven)

Tip: I more generally make apricot clafoutis.  That recipe includes almond meal to soak up some of the juice made by the fruits while cooking.  Another great clafoutis is mirabelle (a type of plum) clafoutis.

The clafoutis keeps well for a day or two.

clafoutis with pits and stem

Two recipes for early January

Happy new year dear readers!

While on a claim for the perfect cherry clafouti, I have disgressed to other desserts.  So, no clafoutis stories this week, I have a couple more of them to make before that.

I am back in front of my computer (it went all the way to Singapore for repairs and back, there was a fan noises issue!).  Times have been busy, as always at this time of the year, even more for our family as we prepare to move house and have decided to renovate sections of the house we are moving to before getting there…

I am feeding you two desserts recipes in tune with January in Australia.

A lime & yoghurt cheesecake

Easy to make, no cooking required, perfect to support digestion (the yoghurt) on a hot day.  And what else than lime to finish diner when it is still over (or much over) 25 degrees out there.  It won’t take long to make, which is great as we are all making the most of summer and not much in the kitchen in this season.

You need to make it a day ahead. Apart from that, the recipe is yours! It is served with a berry coulis.  The desert is born from a need to empty my fridge, freezer and part of my pantry before the move.  I also had a number of limes which were getting on.

refreshing lime and yohurt cheescake

 

 

 

refreshing lime and yohurt cheescake

A chocolate galette des rois

Never heard about the galette des rois? It is a french tradition early January to invite family and friends to share the cake.  The galette refers to the celebration of the three kings bringing presents to the young Jesus, the Epiphany.  There is a little piece of ceramic, called “feve” in French which has been hidden during the making of the galette.  The one who has it in its piece of cake becomes the king!

The traditional galette des rois has a plain creme frangipane as a filling. This version has a chocolate filling (with almond that is).  This saves having to do a creme patissiere! It is seriously good!

And before you ask, yes, it is my making.  Just had a spare box and needed to keep it safe for a few hours!

chocolate and puff pastry kings pudding

 

The “Tough Cookie” post on coconut sugar…

Ever wondered about the trend for coconut sugar.  This post on coconut sugar by Nila who blogs on the “Tough Cookie” is pretty good in providing a nutritious review on coconut sugar.  I tend to be of the same opinion than Nila on the use of coconut sugar.

I read about coconut sugar through 2016, what the post does not go into is the sustainability of the production of coconut sugar. the topic is highly controversial.  Leave this to you do your homework there.