Snicker cake

Because that’s what it is. It’s chocolate cake with peanuts in it and a gooey filling that is just HEAVEN especially when you eat it warm! I’m going to have to make this recipe again if it were only for the snicker filling. The gooey filling was also long gone before the cake was ever finished. I suspect my mom. She’s dieting and you know how people are when they start dieting!
But I’m glad she loved it, and so did the rest of the family. Apparently I’m even making snickers especially for my grandpa for his 50 years of marriage!



Chocolate cake with peanuts
Ingredients:
5 eggs
175 grams caster sugar
50 grams flour
50 grams cacao powder
75 grams butter
1/4 cup peanuts

Gooey filling
Ingredients:
30 grams butter
100 grams sugar
2 tablespoons milk
3/4 cups marshmallow fluff
2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Whisk the eggs and sugar until thick and pale.
2. Sift the flour and cacao powder together and add it to the egg-mixture. Gently fold the wet and dry ingredients together.
3. Melt the butter and fold this together with the peanuts into the mixture as well.
4. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a cake tin and pour the batter into the tin. Leave the cake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a skewer comes out dry. When done, leave to cool.
5. Melt the butter in a pan and add the sugar and milk. Keep stirring until dissolved and leave to cook for a few minutes.
6. Add the marshmallow fluff, peanut butter and vanilla extract and stir until smooth.
7. Pour the gooey filling over the chocolate cake and eat straight away!



You can also leave the filling to cool a bit so it becomes spreadable, perhaps giving a nice effect. My cake had a well in the middle so it could easily keep the filling in one place, but when it’s warm it does tend to drip a lot. I’m thinking of using the same idea again and instead of using only half of my heart filling cake pan use the lot of it. I’d fill the heart with the gooey filling and cover the cake in chocolate ganache and sprinkle chopped nuts over it. Perhaps in between too. It’ll be lovely! It could actually be a way better idea than making snickers for my grandpa. Maybe just make both to be sure. Maybe I should make loads and keep some myself then too. What do you think?

Banana gingerbread

This is a recipe I wanted to try out because a friend of mine said she loved bananas. It just made me want to bake with them. Also, everyone loves gingerbread. You can’t exist if you don’t. So I pulled out one of my biggest and most wonderful books and baked up a recipe that looked way too delicious for its own good. I did substitute the main ingredients. I know I almost always end up changing recipes to my own liking, but I simply don’t have black treacle and malt extract around and I wouldn’t know where to buy it. If you do have some, use two tablespoons of each and omit the vanilla extract.



Ingredients:
275 grams flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
4 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons mixed spice or cinnamon
115 grams soft light brown sugar
60 ml oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 eggs
4 tablespoons orange juice
3 bananas
115 grams raisins

1. Sift the flour together with the soda and spices. Add the brown sugar and the dry ingredients together.
2. Mash the bananas with a fork or put them into the mixer. If you like, leave the raisins in a bit of orange juice to swell.
3. Make a well in the center and add the oil, vanilla extract, eggs and orange juice. Mix thoroughly.
4. Lastly, add the raisins and bananas and mix again.
5. Pour the mixture into a greased brownie tin and bake in a preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20-30 minutes.



Cut them into slices and serve them warm straight away or if you can resist leave them to cool. Don’t cover this cake straight away or it will get a bit sticky from the condensation. Other than that, I don’t have much to say. It turned out perfectly after my first try and it’s just really nice. On the other hand there will never be anything I make that will be good enough, so this time I’m complaining about the pictures. They’re horrible and in no way do they display the beauty and deliciousness of this cake. Forgive me for that one and enjoy the recipe!

Leek and mushroom quiche

I wanted to make a quiche for the family as they came home from a vacation last night and liked to eat something easy. Leek and mushrooms were the only vegetables I had so that’s how I came up with the idea of making this quiche. I tried out a new pastry this time as well. I didn’t much feel like cooking up a potato and making the potato pastry out of that, so I used one of the plain flour-butter-and-water pastries out of my pastry book. I couldn’t tell you much about the difference in taste, but I think it is minimal. It does, however, save you a lot of time cooking and dicing potatoes. So this is what I’ll be using from now on. On the downside of this sort of pastry, it seems to need to be baked for about 10-15 minutes separately first, before you add the filling. I didn’t do this and didn’t have to with the potato pastry, but afterwards the bottom and the middle were slightly soft so it might be a good idea to bake it for a few minutes beforehand next time. Anyway, let’s go on to the recipe:



Pastry
Ingredients:
200 grams flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
90 grams butter
4 tablespoons water

Filling
Ingredients:
6 eggs
200 ml milk
150 ml (double) cream
1 leek
2-3 hands-full mushrooms
Salt & pepper

1. Cut the vegetables into small slices and cook them in water.
2. In the meanwhile make the pastry by sifting the flour and salt together.
3. Add the butter and crumble it together with the flour with a fork. Lastely, add the water and knead. Then leave in the fridge.
4. Beat the eggs and add the milk, cream, salt & pepper and mix it all together.
5. Wash the leek and mushrooms until they have cooled and add them to the egg-mixture.
6. Grease a cake tin and line it with the pastry. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius or 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Bake the pastry for 10-15 minutes, or add the filling straight away and bake the whole quiche for about 30-40 minutes.

I made a Greek mini tart variation on this the same day. That involved a bottom of tomato/pasta sauce and a topping that included Greek yogurt, egg, milk and herbs. It was very nice as well, although it looked a lot less appealing as the cupcake-sized quiches exploded like volcano's (quite literally with the red sauce), slightly burned on the top and completely sank in after they cooled down a little. But everyone said they tasted nice, so who’s complaining?
Apparently leek is a terribly good option for a quiche. Initially I thought it would be very plain or somewhere lacking something, but it was really nice. The little bit of mushrooms I had through the quiche also gave it more taste. If you think a quiche is not complete without cheese, add some grated cheese to the egg-mixture or sprinkle some on top in the last 5 minutes of baking. I tend to do that as well sometimes!
Anyway! Enjoy this recipe and feel free to use this pastry as a base for whatever quiche you can think of. (I’m begging you to be creative!)

Apple Crumble Spiced Muffins

It takes you longer to say the name than to eat these muffins. I can assure you!
I made these because I wanted to make something sweet for my grandparents for when they came by and just baking a Focaccia wasn’t enough, especially not sweet enough. So I decided to make muffins and stick with one of the best recipes for muffins that has yet to fail me: Doughnut muffins. This time an apple crumble variation! It wasn’t exactly in the spirit of Queens Day, in which the Dutch have the colors orange and our flag-colors: red, white and blue all over the place. I didn’t have anything to fit those colors, but they enjoyed it and we ate about 8 of the 15 in one day with the three of us together. That says enough. It also brings me to the point that, somehow, when it comes to cupcakes and muffins, I always have at least 3-5 extra, even though the recipe always claims to make the standard 12. Having extra cupcakes to eat can be so very frustrating!



Topping
Ingredients:
50 grams flour
40 grams butter
30 grams sugar
30 grams chopped almonds

Muffins
Ingredients:
275 grams self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
100 grams caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon mixed spices
75 ml sunflower oil
150 grams (Greek) yogurt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 apple
1-2 hands-full of raisins

1. Start with the topping by adding the flour and butter and ‘crumbling’ it with a fork. You can also use a food processor for this.
2. Add the sugar and the chopped almonds and mix.
3. On to the muffins: chop the apple into small pieces and, if you like, leave the raisins to soak in apple or orange juice until needed.
4. Sift the flour, the bicarbonate of soda, sugar and spices together.
5. In a separate bowl add the oil, yogurt, vanilla extract and eggs together and whisk. Add the apple and (strained) raisins to the mixture.
6. Then add the dry ingredients and stir until everything is thoroughly mixed. Try not to beat the batter any more than necessary as the muffins might be dry.
7. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake cups and drop a spoon in each case. Crumble the topping over each muffin.
8. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius or 375 degrees Fahrenheit and leave the muffins in for about 16-20 minutes.



One thing I learned with making these muffins is keeping the wet and dry ingredients separately until the oven is done preheating. Then mix them and quickly pour them into the cupcake cups. This reduces the time in which the wet and dry ingredients are in contact with each other and thus reduces the chance that the muffins are tough and dry.
Other than that you just can’t go wrong with this recipe. I always use a bit more yogurt than needed for this recipe, just because it makes me feel healthier. I haven’t dared to omit the the oil altogether, something might go wrong when I try although I have no clue what exactly.
I made these apple spice muffins a few times without the topping which is certainly worth a try as well. Somehow the topping makes them look cuter though.
Enjoy!

Focaccia

I felt very much like making bread this week and decided this was one of the most lovely breads around so I had to make it myself. It turned out just as lovely! It just proves how you can never go wrong with flat breads or anything Italian.
Well, the first time I made it was for my grandparents who came that same day. The bread I made didn’t rise, was quite tough and very salty. Apparently salt destroys the capability of yeast to make bread rise so the problem might’ve been in the salt. That, or the fact that I put the oven on the lowest temperature to make some heat for the dough to rise, but 50 degrees Celsius could be slightly too much for dough to handle. Even through the fails I quite liked it and my grandpa said he loved the ‘spice’ of the bread. Anyway, I learned from this and two days later I made the bread again for my family. I cut the salt inside the bread and sprinkled some on stop last moment instead. Also, I added herbs for more taste and just to be cautious I added slightly more yeast than needed. It was lovely! I made two loafs and they turned out perfect! Both of them were gone that very evening. The only comment I got was that I could cut on the salt sprinkled on top, but that apparently was also one of the best parts of it. Perhaps next time I could slightly variate the two breads to fit everyone’s taste.
Here is the recipe for two focaccia loafs:



Ingredients:
500 grams flour
2 teaspoons salt
7 grams instant yeast
325 ml water
3 tablespoons olive oil
1-2 tablespoons herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, oregano, etc.)
Topping like sea salt and rosemary

1. Sift the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the middle. Add the yeast in the middle together with the water and olive oil.
2. Knead for about 10 minutes until smooth and firm.
3. Lightly oil a bowl and place the dough inside. Cover the bowl with cling-film and leave it in a warm place for about 1-1,5 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Knead the dough again and add the herbs. Divide the dough into two equal pieces and shape them into a circle. Put the shaped dough in a greased cake or brownie tin. Cover with cling-film again and leave in a warm place for about 30 minutes.
5. Poke holes into the dough and lightly oil the top. Sprinkle your topping over the dough. Cover with cling-film and leave the dough for another 30 minutes.
6. In the meanwhile preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius or 400 degrees Fahrenheit. When the bread has doubled in size place it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
7. When done remove the breads from their tin immediately and leave to cool on a wire rack.



If you leave the breads to cool on a flat surface or leave them covered for a bit they will become slightly softer as the bread will still loose steam, but this steam has nowhere to go when the bread is completely or partially covered. This does give a softer effect provided you don’t cover the bread for too long, otherwise it will become soaky.
Also, like I said before, go easy on the salt in the bread. I’m not sure what effect adding herbs in the first step would have. It would spread the herbs out more evenly and I don’t think it’ll have an effect on the rising process, but I’m not sure.
The last time I made this bread I used a package for white bread, with flour, salt and yeast added already. It might be handy for those of you who don’t make bread that often anyway and don’t want to buy a whole pack of flour and yeast. It works just the same as well.
There’s no more tips or notes I can think of for you so I just hope you enjoy this Italian flat bread!