This version of the french traditional yoghurt cake contains double the amount of yoghurt. It is a great cake, even better when served with poached fruits and the poaching liquid reduced to a syrup.
This recipe is from Delicious, Simply the Best by Valli Little. In the book, the cake is served with sangria poached fruits, I served mine last time with white wine poached pears.
Ingredients:
1 cup (280 g) of Greek Yoghurt
1 cup (220 g) of raw caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80 ml) of sunflower oil (sunflower oil will not alter the flavour of the cake, olive oil will change the taste)
2 eggs
1 2/3 cup (250 g) of plain flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
finely grated zest of 1 orange
Method:
Preheat the oven to 170 °C and grease a 20 cm spring form cake pan and line with baking paper.
Combine the yoghurt and sugar in a large bowl and whisk to combine before adding the eggs. Beat well between each addition.
Add at once the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Use a whisk is you have some lumps, they will disappear straight away. Finally add the zest and mix to combine.
Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 45 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the centre comes out clean. If the cake is getting brown too quickly cover loosely with aluminium foil.
The Palets Bretons are a specialty from Brittany in Western France. I discovered how simple they are to make. The only constraint is having a mould (silicone or not) with little cavities between 3 to 5 cm wide. You can have the children helping to cut out the biscuits and place them in the mould.
Ingredients:
Makes the quantity you can see on the above photo.
140 g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
150 g soft butter (either use unsalted butter and add 4 g of salt) or use salted butter
200 g plain white flour
15 g baking powder
Method:
In a first time, you need to make the dough:
Mix egg yolks and sugar until white and creamy (use a whisk)
Add the soft butter and combine (swap the whisk for a wooden spoon or similar)
Add the flour and baking powder
Bring the mixture into a ball. Wrap in cell film and place in the fridge for a few hours or even better overnight.
The second part is the cutting and cooking:
Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
If you are using metal muffin trays or pastry rings, grease them with butter and place the pastry rings on a sheet of baking paper on the cooking tray. If you are using a silicone mould, no need to grease.
My improvised cutter and moulds for the Palets Bretons
Lightly dust with flour your kitchen bench and roll the dough to 5 mm thick.
Cut out round shapes for your palets bretons using either one of the pastry ring or if using a muffin tray or similar something in your kitchen of same diameter as your moulds (for example: a small glass, an egg cup, a towel ring).
Place in the cooking moulds.
Cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Turn over or slide on a cooling rack.
You can keep your palets Bretons in a cookie box for a couple weeks. Use them to go with desserts such as apple compote or apple puree, a yogurt mix or even chocolate mousse. Have them with a cup of tea. Palets Bretons are also great for lunch box snacks.
My kitchen is being taken over by my children! It started with a menu written by Ambrine a few weeks ago, then a tentative to make a chocolate dip Nutella like which saw the stock of chocolate seriously reduced (I wasn’t home), a tentative to make caramel in the micro-wave (with chocolate, I wasn’t home either), a double serie of strawberry & white chocolate cookies, because the first ones were eaten sooooo quickly. This weekend, we were treated by a full breakfast with coddled eggs. And now a massive bunch of chocolate hazelnut friands for a school assignment.
The latest item was not to be so significant until a few kids at school came together with the idea to bring in their goods to the class. The assignment reads “Masterchef: your masterchef challenge…Bake some cookies for your family. Use photos or a drawing to show how you shared them equally.” It seems like the brief has been adapted to fit the fun of sharing!
You are in for a treat, the strawberry and white chocolate cookies
So lets share today the strawberry and white chocolate cookies. Children love them (tested for you on a few different families). Personally, I really like them warm, when not completely cooled yet, simply because I am not a big fan of white chocolate. Small warning, it is also quite sweet. What I really like is that the recipe shared the fats between cream cheese and butter, it brings in a really nice taste which works perfectly with strawberries and white chocolate.
Recipe from the blog omgchocolatedesserts adapted for units and technical preferences (more practical, less washing up too!).
Ingredients
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt (remove if using salted butter)
1/4 cup butter-softened
120 g cream cheese
3/4 cup caster sugar (1/2 cup is probably enough, I find them a bit sweet)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chopped fresh strawberries
2 tablespoon lemon juice
150 g white chocolate-chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Pour fresh lemon juice over chopped strawberries, drain them after a few minutes. Chop in pieces as convenient (not less than one centimetre)
Beat butter with sugar and cream cheese until it’s light and fluffy.
Add egg and vanilla and mix well.
Toss together 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, salt, chopped white chocolate, chopped stawberries and baking powder.
Add flour mixture to the wet mixture and fold in gently. Either use a large scoop or your hand.
Drop heaping tablespoon of batter onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Make sure to leave a couple centimetres space in between.
Set the cookies in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes before baking.
You can choose to bake them for 13-15 minutes until the edges become golden brown, they will be very chewy and quite friable, I baked my second round with spots of golden brown over the top, it was a bit easier to handled and when cold they are more tasty (more cooked).
Transfer the baking paper to the cooling rack (slide it). Let the cookies cool a few minutes and them remove from the baking paper.
This recipe is the one I grew up with and cook for my family. The recipe calls for beer which lighten the batter and allows for thin crepes. The alcohol disappear during cooking.
I recommend a crepe pan. I have tried in other
Crepe pan
fry-pans, I can tell you, it is not easy because of the high edges and because your pan must strictly be not sticky and not scratched.
The crepes recipe below calls for a resting time of 2 hours, if you don’t have that time in front of you, it will also work, the crepes will be thicker. If you have no beer or prefer not to use beer, use water and milk. Crepes are very forgiving in terms of ratios. Careful not using only milk or your crepes will be brittle. If you increase the quantity of eggs, your crepes will be quite thick and filling.
Ingredients:
This will easily serve 4 people for dessert. Left overs can be covered and placed in the fridge.
500 g of plain flour
4 eggs (depending on size)
1 beer (300 ml)
1/2 cup oil (sunflower)
1/2 L milk
water
Method:
Place the flour in a large bowl, make a hole (we all it a well in French) in the middle and place in it, the eggs, oil, beer and milk.
Mix with a whisk until smooth. You may have a few small lumps, don’t worry to much at this stage. The batter will be quite thick, you want to make it thinner by adding water, the consistency must be the one a drinking yogurt.
Let it rest for at least two hours.
Get yourself ready to cook, things can go quickly, get organised, everything must be in close reach.
To cook, use crepe pan (s). Heat up the pan, when hot pour 2/3 of a ladle in the pan, by turning your wrist (while holding the pan), spread the batter over the bottom of the pan. Pour out the excess if too really too much. Pop any bubbles if they form.
Cook until the sides are brown AND the bottom is fully dry (no wet spots), turn over, cook for a bit less. Transfer to a plate.
Now 3 MAJOR tips:
The first crepe if most of the time a write off (for the cook)
If you pan needs a bit of greasing, cut a potato and stick the section cut at the end of a fork. Place the flat edge in oil then “paint” the bottom of the fry-pan. This method will limit the amount of grease you use and avoid using multiple absorbent paper sheets. If you have a piece of lard, it works perfectly well too.
Tip – use a cut potato to grease your pan
The heat under the fry-pan will need adjusting, somewhere between low and high. It will take a few crepes to get there.
To serve
The most simple fillings are:
white sugar with (optional) a dash of lemon juice (yum!)
soft brown sugar
jam
honey
lemon curd
chocolate / Nutella.
One crepe recipe which became quite famous is “Crepes Suzettes”, this requires a little more work.
Many of you would have seen crepes filled and then folded in two and then further folded to form a triangle. This is not the case everywhere. In my family, we rolled them, much more fun especially when you are a kid!
Keep the crepes warm by covering them with some aluminium foil and placing them in a warm oven (switched off).
Coddler eggs for breakfast is another child friendly recipe. This is all about the fun of little vessel called “coddlers” used to cook eggs. Coddlers are, traditionally, English porcelain egg cups with a metal lead. Very Britishsh! Egg coddlers have been used in England since the 1800s. The original name for an egg coddler was pipkin. My sister sent me a microwave version of them for a recent Christmas, what a great find! The advantage of the microwave version is the cooking time, it cooks in 30 seconds whereas the ceramics ones are cooked in a bain marie, this takes for ages!
Microwave Coddler
All you need to do is:
Crack open the egg and gently put in the coddler
Add salt, a teaspoon of cream, pepper if you want. You can add many more things like cheese, spices, …
Close the lid
Place in the microwave for 30 seconds (this will depend on your microwave and requires a bit of trial and error)
That is it! Bip! Ready!
Cooking an egg in a coddlerEgg cooked in a coddler
This baked salmon tail with capers and grape tomatoes is perfect for a light lunch or diner. It serves 5 people. You can bake a slice of salmon the same way if you want. We generally get the salmon tails from the fish market, I have also seen them at some grocers vacuumed packed.
I did not get the time to take a nice shot when the dish was cooked, but you can guess it was yummy!
Ingredients:
One salmon tail
2 tablespoons of capers
1 long tomato grape (1 punnet)
1 carrot peeled and sliced
Salt, pepper, olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
Fresh rosemary
Method
Pre-heat oven at 180°C.
Place the salmon in a large sheet of baking paper in a roasting tray, you want to aim at keeping the juices close to the fish (i.e. no leak). Place wine, rosemary, tomatoes and carrot in the tray. Season with the salt and pepper. Drizzle olive oil over salmon and tomatoes. Add the capers.
Bring back the baking paper more or less over the fish.
Place in the oven. After 20 min baste the fish with the juices.
Cook until the fresh pulls apart when inserting a knife along the main bone. Do not overcook.
Serve with Steamed broccoli or beans and a green salad.
“C is for Cookies, that’s good enough for me Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C”
I use these choc chip cookies for many occasions: lunch boxes, presents, travels, picnics, playdates, …
What I like with this recipe is that you can make them very small, bite size like or maxi over indulging size! This recipe describes medium (normal) size biscuits.
Ingredients
200 g of butter, melted
150 g of white sugar
200 g of brown sugar
2 eggs
450 g of flour
1 teaspoon of raising powder (1 sachet if using that version)
300 g of good cooking chocolate chopped with a knife (or use packets of chocolate chips from the shop)
Method
Heat the oven up on 180°C
Mix together the eggs, white sugar, brown sugar
Add the butter and mix well
Add together the flour, raising powder and chocolate chips. Mix by hand.
Cover 2 baking sheets with baking paper, with a spoon (or with your hands) place on the baking sheet little mounds the size of an apricot,push down very slightly. Make sure the mounds are not to close to each other (at least leaving space of the size of one mound between two mounds) as they will spread during baking.
Bake until the colour starts to change slightly golden brown. Do not overbake.
Slide the baking paper with cookies on it on the cooling rack. Leave to cool for a few minutes before moving them.
You should expect to need two bakes if using two baking trays at the same time.
Ingredients:
