A simple Spicy Salad

Sometimes I can have a certain craving, I had one today. Most cravings are brought on by a familiar smell or picture, this one was actually brought on by necessity. The necessity of keeping inside the amount on your bank account that is.

When this situation arises, it is not always a bad situation for me. It forces me to take out everything I have in my cupboard and go experimental or finally eat that pasta I put in the freezer two weeks ago. But today I had an ingredient to work from. A bunch of carrots laying around in my fridge. And suddenly the craving was there, a craving for a carrot couscous salad.

To the Dutchness will return soon with the launch of Fronella's Bakery *Delicious, pure but most of all honest* Honest for animals and environment!

Scones in a sec.

What do you do when you have time to spend. Wait, let me correct that. What do you do when you need to study, but you absolutely do not feel a bit for that?

Right, you bake something.

In my case, I decided to make some fabsome scones for a visiting friend. And these easy peasy scones are a good way to light up any depressing afternoon.

Now this is a special family recipe, so if you never hear from me after this blog, there has been some sort of avenging.

Scones

220 gr flour

10 gr baking powder

pinch of salt

50 gr cold unsalted butter

25 sugar

1 egg

around 60 ml cold milk

Preheat oven to 220 degrees.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together. Then using a knife, cut the butter into the flour mixture. Do this as fast as possible, creating a crumbly mixture.

Then add the egg and half of the milk. Quickly knead untill you have a doughy structure. If necessary, add some more milk. But be carefull, when you knead for too long, the scones will not rise.

Roll out on a floured surface, and use a glass to cut out the scones.

Or just tear of pieces and form scones by hand. (again, make sure you do not knead it too much).

Use the left over milk to coate the scones and place on buttered and floured baking tray. They should rise to around twice

Bake them for 10-12 minutes, untill golden.

I added raisins to half of the bunch, which was a nice touch. You could also add some chocolate! Make sure you fold them inside the sone, otherwise it might burn in the oven.

The best way to eat these babies, is right after they come out the oven! Add clotted cream, sour cream is also perfect, spoon up some jam and enjoy!

Have a Nutty Trufle Valentine!

Dearest lovers and all you other friends out there!
Seeing as Valentine was around the corner, I decided to indulge myself. And poison all my Japanese schoolmates. I am such a cute person muahaha.
I took this change to futher explore the sweet sweet heaven called ' peanutbutter combined with dark chocolate '. One day exploring the internet for interesting recipes, I bumped into this recipe:
If you are to lazy to look it up, it is... PEANUTBUTTER CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE DOUGH TRUFFLE! I know you are drooling.





Seeing as I had most of the ingredients already in stock, I pulled out my beloved jar of peanutbutter and started throwing it in a bowl!
Here is the list of ingredients with converted measurements. I also put in a little less brown sugar and used chunky peanutbutter. I just love my nuts!




130 gr peanutbutter with chunks
60 gr melted butter
85 gr brown sugar
1 theelepel vanilla extract
62,5 gr all-purpose flour
1/8 theelepel salt
182 gr dark chocolate chips (or finely chopped dark chocolate bar)

250 gr dark chocolate for the outer layer
whatever chocolate you want for decoration (use imagination and food coloring =D )

You just start with throwing peanutbutter, butter, sugar and extract in a bowl!

Oh it smells so sweet and good... And then you stir.

Still hungry?
But just throw in salt and flour, stir well and add the chocolate. And then you have to exert some selfcontrol and not start eating already.Shape the dough a bit smaller you want your truffle to be. I would say nickle size for a small bite and big marble size (from when you were still a child!) for the big loving.

Now you need to exert a bit of self-control when letting them chill for several hours in the fridge. Make yourself a nice meal, watch some tv. Or throw them in the freezer for 20 minutes and make yourself a madame croque!

When you are done cleaning up the mess you made for lunch/dinner, you can start melting the dark chocolate. Just use the microwave and stir every 40 sec. Also, I can recommend not melting everything at once. The dipping takes some time, so you need to reheat the chocolate every once and a while. You never know what might go wrong! (it can turn bad) And start dipping

And after adding the decorating you will have a big big plate of delicious, finger-eating truffles!

Dark Loving

Yes I know, this sounds a bit wrong. And like all things wrong it is soooooo good!
So let me make a nice introduction to this recipe! While I was in Japan, my wonderful, beautifull American roommate introduced me to my doom: Reeses Cups...
*starts drooling*. I loved them so much, she even made her parents ship me some bags al the way from Chigaco Area!!! (still very gratefull, thanks parents!).
But, when I got back to Holland, I only found the normal Reeses here Pete Bakes . And they are not half as good. But thanks to internet, and some searching, I found... A RECIPE!
And even one for a dark chocolate version, which is just plain awesome since I am definitely a dark chocolate lover.
So thanks to , I made my own very nice reeses cups!
I will give the European measurements here, the American measurements and recipe can be found here: Pete Bakes! recipe.

I do need to note that I used about 1/3 less chocolate then in Pete Bakes! recipe. Some chocolate coating came off with the liner, but since I was using extremely dark chocolate, this amount was already very heavy. So for all the dark chocolate lovers out there, DO NOT USE TOO DARK CHOCOLATE!!! Also, with that amount of chocolate, I was able to make around 20 cups. But it will depend on how much chocolate you want around your filling =)
Also, I replaced the graham crackers with digistive cookies, seeing we do not have graham cookies in Holland. But it smelled and tasted just the same as reeses!! *hearts*

Dark Chocolate Cups

around 200 gr dark chocolate
120 gr peanut butter
25 gr powdered sugar
4 tablespoons crushed digistive (this will be around 3/4 whole cookies)



Combine the peanut butter, powdered sugar and cookie crumbs in a blender. Mix untill you have a firm texture which smells very very lovely. Refrain yourself from licking kitchen knife.

Melt the chocolate au bain marie, so you can keep it warmer for a longer time. I recommand to make sure the chocolate does not get to warm. It does not apply very good to the liners when it is very fluid.

Use a brush or a spoon to cover the liners with a good layer of chocolate. Try to get as much as possible up the sides.

But in the freezer for 10 minutes. Take out and devide your peanut butter-cookie filling between the cups. Cover with more chocolate and put back in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Eat on room temperature. Wait, excuse me, nom nom nom nom on roomtemperature =)













NOM

Celebrate with Carrot Cake

Well, hello everybody who drops by! Finally I am doing it for real! Sharing all my love for eat... I mean baking with you guys. I hope you will like the stuff I put up here. I actually planned to put some yummy crunchy Dutch cookie recipe here... But they got eaten before I took pictures... Twice. Hehehe.
But the good thing is, my friend Celia came by the other day and we decided to make this fabulous Carrot Cake, of which the recipe she got from a teacher. And well, of course, we had to add some Dutchness! I put it as an optional at the end of the recipe, and it’s well worth the extra effort!
In the same sense we changed the icing. In the original recipe they use a icing based on mascarpone, but I always think that is a bit on the heavy side. And you want to eat as much cake as you can, not as much icing as you want! So we made a basic icing off egg white with sugar and it is just as fingerlicking good. You don need a dishwasher for that bowl I can tell you!

Carrot Cake
A 4 eggs
300 gr whole wheat flour
300 gr sugar
B 3,5 tsp. backing powder
3 tsp. cardamom
2 tsp. vanilla sugar
3 tsp. cinnamon
150 ml. sunflower oil
500 gr rasped carrot

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Prepare a Ø24 cm. springform by covering the bottem with parchment paper. Start by whisking all the ingredients A together until you get a fluffy mass. Add B. If you want to add some Dutchness, you can add the following ingredients:

1 cup walnuts, chopped (keep some for decoration)
½ cup hazelnuts, chopped
½ cup raisins, which have been soaked in water DRAIN BEFORE ADDING. (for awesome taste add a splash of your favorite liquor to the water, I recommend Captain Morgan Spiced Rum)

Put in the oven for one hour or until a needle comes out clean. Let it cool down and remove spring form.

Icing (original recipe)

100 gr mascarpone
125 gr icing sugar
50 gr butter
½ tsp. vanilla sugar

Put all the ingredients at room temperature. Mix together and spread on top of the cooled down cake. Decorate with chopped walnuts and freshly grinded cinnamon.

Icing (Dutchness)

1 egg white
200 gr Icing sugar

Mix together until you have a firm, shiny and kind of chewy kind of … Kind of… Gum? Spread on top of the cooled down cake. Decorate with chopped walnuts and freshly grinded cinnamon.



And then just eat! Remember, you need to get your daily amount of vegetables, so eat half of this cake and you are just fine!

P.S. There are still some things I need to learn with food-blogging… Like, taking more pictures of the making process! But luckily, it is not a very hard recipe, so you will be fine without!