Sugar syrup cake

Now that I am on Christmas break from university I have time to bake again. I decided to make an easy, but tasy cake. Because of the use of sugar syrup this cake stays moist a bit longer than if you would only use sugar.

Ingrediënts

200 g self raising flour
150 g butter
100 g cane sugar
100 g sugar syrup
2 tsp koekkruiden (mixed spice is similar)
2 tsp cointreau
2 eggs + 1 yolk

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Sift the flour in a bowl and add the sugar and the koekkruiden (or mixed spice). Melt the butter a little but so you can mix it through the ingredients in the bowl easier. Add the eggs, and mix well. Than add the sugar syrup and the cointreau and mix untill the batter has a smooth consistensy. Put the the batter in a baking tin that is lined with baking paper or make sure it is well buttered. Bake the cake for about 30 minutes in the middle of the oven. 

Enjoy!

Lemon tarts

It has been a while since I baked something. Most of the time I bake simple cake or cupcakes, but this time I wanted to make something different and decided on lemon tarts.

Ingrediënts

Dough
200 g flour
100 g butter
2 tbsp sugar
1 egg yolk
cold water

Filling
3 lemons
2 eggs
125 g sugar
60 g ground almonds
125 ml whipped cream

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Sift the flour into a bowl and add the sugar. Add the butter in little pieces and mash it through the flour and sugar. Add the egg yolk and a little bit of water and knead the mixture until it is a smooth dough. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and line the cake tins with it (I had enough dough for about 6 tins of 9 cm diameter). Line the cake bottoms with baking paper and place baking beans in them. Bake them for about 10 minutes and then remove the baking paper.
Put the juice of the lemons in a bowl and add the eggs, sugar, ground almonds and whipped cream. Whisk the mixture and pour in on the cake bottoms. Bake it for about 20-25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Oat flake cookies

As a kid oat flake cookies used to be one of my favorites! They are really easy to make and taste very good. If you think them to plain, you could add pieces of chocolate or raisins for instance.

Ingrediënts

100 g self raising flour
200 g brow sugar
125 g butter
1 tbsp milk
150 gr small oat flakes

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the sugar and mix. Add the butter and cut it into little pieces, then mash it through the mixture. Add the milk and make sure the mixture has an even consistency. Then you can add the oat flakes. When you think the oat flakes are evenly spread throughout the mixture you can make small rounds of it, flatten them and put them on baking paper. Make sure to leave enough space between the cookies, because they will spread due to the self raising flour. Bake for about 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy!

How to make pepernoten

Pepernoten (spice nuts) are a special dutch Sinterklaas treat. They are very small round cookies. They are not really difficult to make, but I still managed to burn my first batch today. The recipe is enough for 3 baking sheets full of these, so I still had two batches that turned out nicely.The recipe uses speculaas spices, which you can buy in dutch supermarkets but probably not anywhere else. Click here to see how you can make it yourself.



Ingrediënts
250 g self raising flour
125 g brown sugar
6 tsp speculaas spices
150 g butter
2 tbsp milk

How to make it
Preheat the oven at 160 degrees C. Put the flour, sugar, speculaas spices and the butter in a bowl and mix it until a dough starts to form. Then slowly add the milk and knead it through the dough. Put a sheet of baking paper on the baking sheet. Make small rolls of the dough, put them on the baking paper and flatten them a little. Bake them for about 10-15 minutes. Check from time to time to see if they already have a nice golden brown color.

Enjoy!

Cheese-curry cookies

I wanted to bake something, but we didn't have any eggs. I thought a while about what I could make and finally I settled on cheese-curry cookies. I love them and always eat way to many of them. They make for a great party snack.

Ingrediënts: (I got 1,5 baking sheet full of them)
100 gr flour
100 gr butter
Pinch of salt
2 tsp curry
100 gr rasped aged cheese
100 gr rasped Parmesan cheese

Instructions:

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C. Sift the flour in a bowl and add a little bit of salt, the curry and the cheese. Mix until everything is evenly spread. Add the butter and knead it through the rest of the mixture. First it will become crumbly, but later it will get a more dough-like consistency. Make flat rounds with a diameter of 5 cm and bake them in the oven for about 10 - 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Scones

I love scones! They are easy and quick to make and taste great with clotted cream and jam. It had been a while since I made them, but last sunday I was up for it. Thursday I made them again, because they are so tasty!

What you will need:
350 g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
100 g butter
1 egg
1,5 dl butter milk (or milk)

Preheat the oven at 190 degrees C. Put the flour in a bowl and the salt. Add the butter and mash it through the flour. The consistency will be crumbly. Whip up the egg. Keep one tablespoon of the egg aside and add the rest of it to the butter milk. Pour the mixture in the bowl with the flour and butter and knead the dough. When it has a smooth consistency make small rounds of it (about 1 cm high) and put them on the baking sheet. Spread the egg over the scones. Bake them for about 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!

How do you eat your scones?

Simple jam filled cake

A couple of days ago I wanted to bake something and decided on a cake.I didn't want to make anything to difficult or time consuming, so I kept it simple.

The cake itself turned out pretty good, but not very high. I'm still working on finding the best cake base recipe.

Ingrediënts:
250 gr self raising flower
200 gr sugar
250 gr butter
4 eggs

How I made it:
I put the flower in a bowl and added the sugar. I melted the butter a little so that it was easy to mash it through the other ingrediënts. Then I added the eggs and made sure that the batter had a smooth consistency. I put the batter in a baking tin and baked it for 30 minutes at 160 degrees C.

When it came out of the oven I let it cool down and sliced the cake open. I filled it with strawberry- rhubarb jam and I spread buttercream on top. I decorated it with casting sugar and sprinkels.

Eventhough the cake wasn't very high it tasted great!

Spanish and Mexican dinner party

A few weeks ago my friend Suzan and I hosted a Spanish and Mexican dinner party for some friends. We made a lot of food, put on some mexican music and decorated the place and I think it looked great. We even made our own piñata!

We made cupcakes with mustaches, sombrero's, cactuses and peppers, sombrero cookies we found on Pinterest, patatas bravas, little tortilla rolls, zucchini rols with goat cheese, chicken-ananas skewers, tomato salsa, guacamole, taco's and tortilla's.

Above you can see our cactus piñata. For more inspiration for your own Mexican/Spanish themed party you can check out Suzan and mines pinboard here.

I love themed dinner parties!

My mom's birthdayparty

A while ago my mom had her birthday but my father and brother were out of town, so Suzan and I decided to throw her a little party. There was no one else who was able to come, but I think my mom liked it nonetheless.

We made chocolate cakes, salad, vegetable tart, tzatziki, sandwiches and we had mint tea and cookies. We decorated our living room and I gave my mother a book and a painting (made by myself ofcourse).

I love throwing birthday parties, no matter how small they are.

What is your perfect way to spend a birthday?

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Cakes with cinnamon and syrup

Today I made these easy cinnamon and syrup cakes. They were done within the hour and I didn't use an electric mixer!

What you will need:
200 g self raising flour
200 g butter
4 eggs
175 g sugar
3 tbsp syrup
2 tsp cinnamon

How to make them:
Preheat the oven at 150 degrees C. Sift the flower into a bowl. Heat the butter so it gets a little softer. You don't need to melt it entirely. Mash the butter into the flower. Add the eggs one by one and stir. Add the sugar and stir again. Then add the syrup and cinnamon and stir until the mixture is smooth and all the cinnamon and syrup is evenly spread.
Bake the cakes about 30 minutes until they have a nice golden brown color.

Get-together with friends

Last saturday me and my friends had decided to watch Alice in Wonderland. Everyone would bring some food. Suzan made scones, Chantalle made muffins, Sophie made a kind of pindarotsjes (peanuts and marshmellows covered in chocolate) and I made chocolate-coconut cake.

Left to right: me, Sophie, Suzan and Chantalle

I had already seen Alice in Wonderland several times, but I still love the movie. It's not just the story that I like, I also love the magical world and the beautiful costumes that are used in the film. Every time I watch it, I get so much inspiration to make things.

After we watched the movie we made pizza en decided to watch an other movie, Into the wild. The story is really tragic, but the film is beautifully made. I still would love to someday live of the land for a short period of time.

This weekend...

 ... did I bake a chocolate coconut cake of which the recipe needs a little perfection and is then ready to be shared,

... did I do a lot of homework in the sun,

... did I discover a new tv show called Da Vinci's Demons, which I already like quite a lot,

... and did I make some sketches after I had gotten a new idea for a story.

I hope you also had a great weekend!

Chocolate cupcakes with frosting

Today I made chocolate cupcakes with frosting. They turned out pretty small, but they tasted so good! I never made frosting before, because I thought it would be difficult to make, but then I found a recipe which seemed supereasy. And it was! The recipe I used can be found here.

Have a lovely weekend!

Birthday party with family and friends

Because I'll turn 18 coming week, I celebrated my birthday yesterday with my friends and family.
I had made so many plans to make food, but I think I wasn't totally being realistic, because is was way to much work for the short amount of time I had. At the end my mom helped me a little, but still one dish I couldn't make. But I'll tell you wat I did make!

I started by making a cake with strawberry and white chocolate filling. I wasn't quite finished when my friends showed up, so Suzan and Sophie helped to decorate it. It think it turned out really pretty and it also tasted great.

I made Harissa, Feta and Tomato Tartlets, you can find the recipe here. They tasted really good and looked so beautiful! The photo of the end result I took later that evening. It already was quite dark outside, so the photo is really bad, but it'll give you a little impression.

To the right you can see grilled suchinni pizza slices I made, using this recipe. Furthermore I made crepe lasagne with spinach and ricotta.The recipe was in french, so I used Google Translate to translate it. It turned out a little funny, but it was clear what the directions were supposed to be.

My parents had bought champagne, to toast on my birthday. My friends and I played boardgames and ate a lot of food the rest of the day.

Although it wasn't my birthday yet, I had an amazing day.

Easy brownie recipe

Hi guys,

Today I celebrated that it's weekend once again, by making a brownie. (I love brownies) This recipe takes little time and is so easy! I make it so often... This time I put the baking tin to high in the oven, so I had to put a sheet of alluminium foil on top of it, to keep it from burning. Because of this, the upper part of the brownie, wasn't whole anymore. But who cares, it still tasted great!

Wat you'll need:
4 eggs
125 g sugar
125 brown sugar
150 g pure chocolate
150 g self-rising flour
150 g butter
1 little bag of vanillasugar

Wat you need to do:
Start by pre-heating the oven on 175 ºC. Break the chocolate into little pieces and melt them along with the butter. When that's done, add the sugar, brown sugar, vanillasugar and flour and mix it al together. Last, add the eggs one by one. When the dough has a smooth consistency you can pour it in your baking tin (grease it with butter first).

Let me know how it tasted!