Swirl cookies

Dear all,

It must be cookie season! Today I present swirly cookies:

Two types of dough, one chocolate, one vanilla:



Placed on top of each other, cut to size, and then roll 'em up!



Cut into slices you get swirly cookies, yum yum!



Merry Christmas!

xoxo Jennifer

xmas cookies

Dear all,

Today I have some cookies for you. X-mas cookies! Even better, they are 3D christmas tree cookies. Unfortunately I did not take enough pictures but you can use your imagination, I'm sure!

The 3D cookie is made by baking a base and a tree (and then you can put them together). Here are is a before and after decorating picture series:






Now you may have noticed a funny shaped christmas tree in the first picture. That's right, that's not a christmas tree but a moustache. A what!? My friend has moustache shaped cookie cuttes and here is what we made of them!! Christmas moustache anyone?



Happy Holidays everyone!

xoxo Jennifer

Sinterklaas & Speculaas

Dear all,

In Holland we celebrate something called sinterklaas around the 5th of December. It is similar to christmas in a way with an exchange of gifts etc. There are also certain kinds of sweets we eat around this time of year. For a small get together with friends I made some of the more traditional sinterklaas sweets:

First up: kruidnoten (also referred to as pepernoten, althoug this is incorrect). They are little round cookie type sweets, flavoured with speculaas (a combination of cinnamon, ginger, cardamon, nutmeg, white pepper and cloves).





'Speculaas' is the name of the spice as well as the biscuit. A popular version of this sweet is the 'filled speculaas' - it is the speculaas cookie with almond paste as filling (the same stuff found in stollen). Here is my version:



So it consists of a layer of speculaas cookie, then a layer of almond paste (mixed with a bit of egg) and then another layer of speculaas.



Put some almonds on top to decorate, and voila!



And finally, another treat is the 'banket staaf', made of puff pastry and almond paste. Made into the shape of an 's' for 'sinterklaas'.



Once baked it looks like this! So we topped off our evening with a trio of filled speculaas, banket staaf, and de-licious green tea scones with white chocolate made by a good friend. Wowie!



Almost christmas now, I wonder what lovely treats we have in store...

XOXO Jennifer

Jelly Castle

Dear all,

Recently I realised a long cherished dream: Roxy and I made a jelly castle (or made a good attempt at anyway). We made it for her bf's birthday... check it out!

So a jelly castle involves lots of jelly (and waiting....) and in this case, lots of funky candy to decorate with . We had dinosaurs, an octopus and various other colourful decorations.



The waiting was done between layers, as we had 6 colours. I used my castle baking tin for this project (makes sense, right?) and poured the jelly in one layer at a time, letting it set in the fridge for an hour in between each layer. We put in dinsosaurs as watchmen. We watched Pirates of the Caribbean for mid-layer entertainment, which may or may not have led to inspiring us to put a treasure chest in the jelly castle!



Making the castle was time consuming but not very difficult. Getting it out of the mold was going to prove more difficult. I had read a suggestion to put the whole thing in warm water to loosen it up - but I did not know how long it was supposed to be put in warm water and as it turned out, I put it in a bit too long... The towers started melting and an octopus was found swimming in the innter moat!



Fortunately it did not melt so much that the dinosaurs were able to escape and it kept its castle shape - sort of - and all in all it was jelly good fun (har har).



And what happened to the treasure chest? It was guarded ferociously by an orange T-rex. arrrr.



See you next time for some sinterklaas yumminess!

XOXO Jennifer

Soda Bread

Dear all,

This week I have baked something savoury. I wish I had known how easy this was to make before, because it IS easy, and delicious! So today I present you: soda bread.

The good thing about soda bread is, you don't have to let it rise or anything. So little can go wrong, it's amazing. What you do is you just mix the ingredients (flours, soda, buttermilk), gently fold into something that resembles bread, plonk it on a floured baking tray and you're good to go.



Out of the oven these breads come out beautifully golden brown. It's one of those breads with a great crust and soft center. Yum.



By slashing the bread pre-baking you can make the bread look even more authentic. I of course immediately tried two types of soda bread. I made just the regular kind, and a walnut version. See here the results:



And here's my serving suggestion: Nice glass of wine and some garlic butter (though not necessary, it's so good you can eat it just like that!)



XOXO Jennifer

Sarajevo Sweets

Dear all,

Last week I visited friends in Sarajevo so I didn't have any time to bake anything. Intead I present you some Bosnian delights!

On our first morning we were taken to this lovely cafe with home made sweets and huge pots of tea. The awesome design of the cafe was even reflected in the tea pots and cups that were made especially for them:


See here Bosnian cranberry tea and a walnut tea cake type thing (don't remember any names, sorry!).





Having cake was of course inevitable. We were taken to Torte i to which pretty much specialises in cheesecake. This was my brownie cheesecake.
It's a shame I don't have pictures of the other cakes because they were truely to die for!!




One last chocolate stop: a chocolate bar! Here they served chocolate cocktails...



This basically tasted of really sweet melted milk chocolate with chopped walnuts. A little too sickly for my tastes but an interesting experience none the less. And it sure looks good!

xoxo Jennifer

Happy Halloween!

Dear all,

Hope you all had a great halloween, I sure did. I was a pirate this year, arr. This year for the first time I decided to make pumpkin pie for halloween. In fact, I made two. Here they are!

First I made the pastry, with a pretty leaf-pattern rim.



Blind bake...



And fill with pumkpin goodness! I roasted the pumpkin I had and then pureed the lot, added cream cheese, a bit of brown sugar, spices and two eggs. Voila!



It had a surprising but lovely texture (I've never made or eaten pumpkin pie before!). Sort of fluffy but substantial at the same time..









The next day I made another pumpkin pie (me and my dinner parties!) but this time I used a tin of pureed pumpkin. Basically I made it the same way, minus the 2 hours it took me to roast, cool, peel and puree the fresh pumpkin. And for a change I made a plaited rim.



And here is the result. And as for the comparison? Well, I have to say they were both equally yummy, so maybe next time I might just use the cheat method with the tinned pumpkin and save the real pumpkin for some other yummy treats!



xoxo Jennifer