Melon pan

I’ve made these lovely little buns a few times before (like here and here), but I decided it was time to try a new recipe. Especially because I found a recipe video of melon pan on youtube. Someone made a youtube channel entirely dedicated to food and recipes. It was amazing. A whole new world opened up to me. Did you know there are so many people on youtube with whole channels dedicated to food? It’s amazing! I never knew! It makes me want to give it a try as well, but I already know I wouldn’t very much like seeing my face on the internet or hearing my voice nor my talent for filming or my editing with windows movie maker. No, the whole thing is just a terrible idea. I’ll just stick to watching other people.



Back to the lovely bun. I finally know why it’s called melon pan. I’ve always thought it was called melon pan due to the taste. (I still wish it was.) I was totally wrong. The buns are called melon pan because of shape, which is supposed to resemble a melon. I’ve seen this being called pineapple bun, which I believe would be more accurate. I wonder how it would taste with a hint of pineapple. Oh, I wonder about all the different tastes I could put in it. So far I’ve tried banana, chocolate, vanilla –of course- and mocha. I’ve also finally made my turtle melon pan’s! Next time the shells need to be green. What taste can I try that goes with green? Green tea? Pandan? Oh, the possibilities are endless!

Ingredients for the bread dough:
140g bread flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons milk powder
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon beaten egg (about 1 small egg)
70ml lukewarm water
15g butter

Ingredients for the cookie topping:
25g butter
35g sugar
25g beaten egg
80g flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1. Start with making the bread dough: sift the flour into a bowl.
2. Add the sugar, salt, milk powder and instant yeast and mix it with a whisk.
3. Beat the egg and the water together and pour it into the bowl. Mix it in with a fork and then knead until you have a slightly sticky dough. Add more flour if needed.
4. Place the butter in the dough and knead until it is fully incorporated. Then leave the dough to rise (in a greased bowl with plastic wrap or towel over it) for about 40 minutes or until doubled in size.
5. Knead the dough to remove the trapped gas and roll it into a cylinder. Cut the dough into 6 or 12 equal pieces. (Or any other amount depending on the size you want.)
6. Roll the pieces into balls and put them on an oven tray (greased or lined with greaseproof paper). Let them rise for another 20 minutes.
7. Now comes the tricky part: we’ll cover the dough-balls in cookie dough. You can see a picture of it on an older post of mine on melon pan here or watch this youtube video for a good explanation. Start with putting sugar in a bowl and cutting two pieces of plastic wrap.
8. Take a bit of cookie dough and shape it into a ball. Place it on a piece of plastic wrap and cover it with another piece of plastic wrap, then flatten it into a large circle with your hands or a flat object. The plastic wrap will prevent the dough from sticking to everything. Then take one of dough-balls we shaped before and roll it again. Take the flat cookie dough and place it on your dough-ball, wrap it around the ball, leaving only the bottom open. ‘Pinch’ the bottom with your fingers and hold the dough-ball in one hand like that, and roll it into sugar. Then place it bake on to the baking sheet.
9. Repeat step 8 to cover all the dough-balls in cookie dough and sugar. Take a knife and make 2-3 diagonal cuts on the bun and another 2-3 crossing those (think melon/pineapple!). Leave them to rise again for another 40 minutes.
10. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius or 340 degrees Fahrenheit. Leave the buns in the oven for 12-15 minutes and voilà!



These are without a doubt the most fluffy little buns I’ve ever tasted. I’ve made them so many times now I can’t even remember. Did you follow step 7 and 8? I honestly didn’t know how to put it down in words so someone would understand. When you don't understand, just watch the video. It's very easy to do, just hard and long to explain. Don't let this hold you back from making them because you're seriously missing out if you haven't tasted them before!
If you’re wondering which of the recipes to go with, I can tell you they’re not that much different. I realized the cake topping is practically the same. The recipe for the sweet bun is also very much alike. However I did get more success with this recipe rather than the previous ones. Whether that is due to practice, the flour I used, the way I baked them or the minor changes in the recipe, I wouldn’t actually know.

A note on the turtle melon pans: if you want to make your own, make the bun first and cover it in cookie dough. Then add little balls for the feet and head later. It comes out prettier that way. I didn't add any pictures of these totally cute buns, mainly because they came out completely horrible on the picture. The day I made these was the second day in a row that I was "forced" to make melon pan and the whole family attacked the food as soon as it was out of the oven. I barely had any time to save my life let alone my buns to take a picture.

Aglio et olio

I’m all exited about blogging again. I’ve speed-posted five recipes in two days! If only I had sat down to do this before. I’m also still very excited about my camera and all the things I can do with it. I spend about 10 minutes making this recipe and at least another 20 trying to make a good picture. Just looking at them makes me feel like I’m not even close to a perfect picture and I can’t wait until I make something truly wonderful. Not just the taste, but also the looks of it and then also the way I put it on my camera. One day it’ll be amazing! Maybe it'll be after I buy a new (bigger, better and more expensive) camera and get myself some photography gear (I want, I want!). But you just watch! I will do it!



Okay, now I’ll stop ranting on about my dreams of food photography and styling and share a very easy recipe. It’s perfect for any leftover spaghetti you have that you didn’t throw into any sauce yet.

Ingredients:
Spaghetti (leftovers or cooked and cooled)
Olive oil
Garlic or spring onions
Parsley or basil
Salt & pepper to taste

1. Pour the olive oil over the spaghetti until it’s ‘wet’ all over. It all depends on the amount of spaghetti you’re choosing but you’ll probably end up with a spoon or three. Just add one and mix and add more until you’re satisfied. Remember it’s easier to add than to take out!
2. Cut your garlic or spring onions – not both, it’ll be too strong – and mix them into the spaghetti as well.
3. Chop up your basil or parsley and throw those into the spaghetti as well.
4. Lastly add the salt and pepper to taste. My taste requires quite a few pinches of salt and no pepper at all, but you’re probably off best adding what you’d normally add to a dish.
5. Serve cold with tomatoes (cherry tomatoes, mmm) or a salad. This is a very plain main dish so make sure you eat enough vegetables on the side!



And there you have it. I couldn’t really choose an easier recipe to make today. I didn’t put all the spaghetti I had on the plate and I was quite happy I could eat those leftovers of the leftovers while taking pictures. And after that, I ate it all. With some help.
A little note on the recipe: use good, high quality, olive oil. You can buy an olive oil, with a taste like pepper, lemon or basil and you might even get away with a completely different oil like walnut oil (although I wouldn't think so). However, don't use any oil you don't like the taste of naturally. Some cheap chemical-tasting olive oils will do fine for cooking, but the taste will be too prominent in this dish and in the worst case will make it taste horrible. I also really wouldn't recommend sunflower oil, but if you're desperate I suppose it might be worth a shot. Just be sure to use as less as possible when you don't like the taste or you're unsure.



Maybe you noticed but I posted this recipe before, with not so many words. But I felt obliged to post it again, especially after all the inspiration I got which has no where to go.

Eierkoeken – Dutch “eggcakes” – with Peach Trifle

Eggcakes would be the very literal translation. If I ever come across a better word for it, you’ll be the first to know. I do know that there isn’t really anything like it in English. Having that said, even this recipe is nothing like the thing you’ll find in Dutch supermarkets. The ones you find in supermarkets are super big, fluffy and don’t dry out easily. This recipe, when baked slightly too long or when not eaten the same day will dry out into biscuits. Mind you, they won’t be bad biscuits. They’re actually very tasty, but they won’t be what we originally had in mind when baking.



I really wanted to make a trifle so I decided I needed these for in between the peach and cream. I have made a Peach Trifle before, in which I used eierkoeken from the supermarket. This time the trifle I made turned out completely different.




Ingredients:
3 eggs
150 grams sugar
1 bag vanilla sugar (7 grams)
150 grams self-raising flour
30 grams maïzena

1. Separate the eggs and whisk the egg whites until fluffy.
2. Add both sugars to the egg yolks and whisk until the mixture becomes creamy.
3. Add both egg mixtures and mix again.
4. Sift the self-raising flour and maïzena over the egg-batter and mix again.
5. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius or 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line an oven tray with greaseproof paper and spoon the batter onto the tray in circles the size of your fist (but then flat, actually, just think of the palm of your hand).
6. Leave the “cookies” in the oven for about 20 minutes until the edges become brown and the middle is fluffy.

Don’t worry if the eierkoeken don’t turn out soft and fluffy. I’ve tried different recipes for these cakes and they all have the same flaw.
So then I made the trifle, which was really nothing more than layering the cookies we just made with slices of fresh peach and a home-made cream. Home-made cream sounds nice doesn’t it? It really wasn’t more than mashed bananas with a bit of peach puree I had left from making peach lemonade. I also added a bit of Philadelphia cream cheese. I think I stopped there, but I felt like proper scientist making this cream (a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, oh! Some more of this one too..). And then it was time to stack. I tried to do it really nicely as these pictures were the first in which I tested my camera settings and several lighting options. Say, they didn’t turn out too bad right?



Maybe you noticed, but I also tried to photoshop two of the four pictures. Can you tell which ones? I really hope my peach doesn't look chemical now! There's really so much for me to learn.

Cheese cake

I’ve made this cheese cake two times already now. The first one was a great success. The second one was less so, since the sides caramelized and the cake completely collapsed. I renamed the second version Caramel Cheese cake and all was well again. I made the Caramel Cheesecake for my birthday for the family and I got a lot of compliments about it, even though I thought it was kind of a failure myself…
That’s how the post would’ve started had I actually posted it around three months ago. It’s the proof that I have been doing some things and saved them on my computer. The reason I’m posting it now is because I made another cheesecake just the other day. I never had time to take pictures of that one. It was gone in less than 24 hours! And I only ate one piece.



Ingredients for the cookie base:
850 grams digestive cookies
6 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar

Ingredients for the cheesecake:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
900 grams cream cheese
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs

1. Crush the cookies with a mixer or the back of a glass. Melt the butter and mix it, with the sugar, through the cookies. Press the mixture onto the bottom of a greased or lined cake tin and leave in the fridge.
2. Beat the cream cheese until smooth. This could take a minute or 3-4.
3. Gradually add the sugar and beat until it is completely mixed in.
4. Now add the vanilla and mix again.
5. Add the eggs one by one, while making sure one is fully incorporated before adding the next. Mix them in on a the lowest speed of your mixer as to not over-beat the mixture.
6. Pour the cheesecake batter onto the cookie base and leave in a preheated oven of about 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour.
7. Eat the cheesecake with a lemon jam or other and enjoy!

I noticed in some of the cheesecake recipes they ask to put the cake tin in a bath of water in the oven and leave it that way. I have tried this once and it was a complete failure! Also, I’m pretty afraid of something going wrong with that much water in the oven. This means that I’m probably using the wrong settings for my oven, as I’m not using any water. However, the temperatures worked for me before so I have no intention of changing it a lot. What I’m trying to say is that the texture is slightly different of the cheesecakes of the original recipe and there is a chance it will fall apart and, like my cake, caramelize at the sides. Still, there is no way this won’t taste good.



I’ve been trying to update my blog more lately and I’m also trying to push some changes through. See the row of pictures at the side? Or did you notice how my pretty recipe index at the other side, which took an awful lot of work, has turned into a simple drop-down menu? By the time I actually post this – mind you, I’m still typing this in Word – perhaps my banner will have changed as well. Changing the looks of my blog is always an exciting process, but it makes me feel bad too. All the time I spend in recipe indexes, blog banners and little adjustments here and there is all gone, because I’m erasing them and starting anew. I do like the way my blog is evolving though. I feel sometimes it’s starting to look more professional or at the very least less like the work of a 5-year-old who’s been messing with her computer. It feels like growing. Wonderful!

Marbled pound cake

There are people out there who have never eaten banana bread, peanut butter or even marbled cake. So spread the word. Or rather the cake in this case, because I’ll be showing you a recipe for marbled pound cake. Since I’m still not anywhere near my home I’ve had to browse the internet for a recipe. I’ve found one for a marbled pound cake. What the difference between normal cakes and pound cakes is I would for the life of me not know. I do know that this recipe works and it gave a very nice consistency to my cake. Plus the recipe is easy enough to make all over again and requires ingredients I have at home already anyway.
I also know that the pictures still don’t do any justice to the taste of the cake, or even the looks at that. I so wish I had a better camera and, most of all, more skills to convey the plain wonderfulness of the things I bake. Waiting for all of this takes so long!



Ingredients:
2 cups white sugar
1 cup butter, softened
4 eggs
3 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (unsweetened) cocoa powder

1. Beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
2. Beat the eggs in one by one while making sure to fully incorporate one before adding the next. Mix in the vanilla extract
3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and mix it through the batter.
4. Lastly add the milk and mix again.
5. Put about half of the batter in a separate bowl and add cocoa powder.
6. Grease or line a cake tin and put one spoon of vanilla batter on one side of the tin and one on the other, put a spoon of cocoa batter in the middle. For the next layer put the chocolate batter on the sides and add a spoon of vanilla batter in the middle. Keep layering the cake like that until you’ve used all the batter.
7. With a skewer, fork or spoon cut and twist through the batter to give it a swirly, marbled effect.
8. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit and leave the cake in for about 40-45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.



Quite a lot of the comments on the original recipe stated that the cake was far too dry. I made some adjustments to prevent this, but this cake still tastes better with a glass of milk. Other than that you’ll love the taste. Somehow I found my cake to taste slightly different from the normal vanilla or chocolate cake, in a good way.
I had some left over peanut butter meringue frosting and that goes very well with this as well. I still have to post the recipe for this one, so I owe you one! Just don’t remind me of all the things I still owe you and all the things I have on my computer that haven’t been posted yet. Oh, I have so much to do!
Until I see you next time then – I promise it will be soon. Enjoy!

Banana Cake

It’s been raining banana’s here. Okay not really, but everyone seems to buy them and no one’s actually eating them. This is one of the first things I thought of to get rid of them. I’m no fan of plain banana’s, but I’d never say no to banana cake. I browsed the internet until I found something that would work for me. I found a Banana Cake that required melted butter. Having found a recipe that sounded good enough to me, I set straight to work.



Ingredients:
200 grams unsalted butter
175 grams caster sugar
100 + 150 grams plain flour
4 eggs
1 lemon
200g banana (about 2 bananas)
3 tablespoons baking powder
Powdered sugar and lemon juice for glazing

1. Start with mashing the banana and zesting the orange.
2. Melt the butter and mix it with the sugar until smooth. Add 100 grams flour and mix again.
3. Beat the eggs lightly and add them to the mixture in 4-5 additions, beating well in between.
4. Lastly mix in the lemon zest, 2 tablespoons lemon juice and the mashed banana.
5. Sift 150 grams flour with the baking powder over the batter and use your mixer one last time.
6. Line or grease a cake tin and pour the mixture into the tin. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius or 320 degrees Fahrenheit.
7. Leave the cake in the oven for about 35-45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.
8. For the glazing, add lemon juice with enough powdered sugar to make a thick, but still liquid consistency. Spread over the top of the cake with a brush.

The cake came out so beautifully moist! I was quite surprised this came out so wonderful. I can’t even begin to describe how horrible the oven is I’m using so anything that comes out the way I want it is a miracle.
I’m going to have to admit again that I could’ve spend more time on taking pictures. Or on the glazing I put on it at that. I just couldn’t help but want to eat it. I wish I could tell you how it smelled or made it look better to make you drool all over the place. But you’re going to have to do with this. And take my word for it. You want this.

Banana Oat Cookies (2 ingredient cookies)

I haven’t posted anything in ages! I’m so SO sorry. But I’ve got a good excuse! I’ve been abducted by aliens who got stuck in traffic mainly because the bridge was open and they forgot time and all they really wanted to do was keep me from posting. Good news is they weren’t after my brains so I survived all of this. No. Actually I have vacation and I’ve been too busy and too lazy. I’ve been baking a lot and wrote down a lot of recipes, but I simply haven’t posted them. I have some actual Good News though. I’ve been trying to hone my photography skills so my pictures should start to look better from now on.

So now for some actual baking. I found this recipe when I was searching the web for some DIY things to do. The writer was totally enthusiastic about the two ingredient cookies. For the most basic cookie I can think of you need at least butter, sugar and flour, so cookies with just two ingredients sounds amazing! I’m not sure what made me make these cookies as banana’s are definitely one of my least favourite fruits and I was never a fan of oats either. The idea of adding raisins was nice though. But I think what made me make these cookies was the writers enthusiasm about her 2 ingredient cookies and my curiosity on actual two ingredient cookies. So I made it. And ate them all. I didn’t actually share them either. I’m horrible, I know!



Ingredients:
2 bananas
1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup extra’s (like raisins or chocolate chips)

1. Mash the bananas in a bowl with a fork until you’ve got rid of the biggest lumps. I like a few banana chunks in there, but feel free to mash it all the way.
2. Add the oats and whatever else you’re adding (or not) and mix away.
3. Dump the ‘batter’ in cookie-sized bites on an oven plate (either greased or lined with greaseproof paper!!) and dump into a preferably preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-15 minutes.

See? It’s totally easy right? This is the easiest 100% no-fail recipe I’ve ever seen and I actually like it. It’s totally healthy too! I’ve made it quite a few times since the first time and added chocolate instead of raisins as well. I’m going to have to agree they don’t look the most appetizing, but I’m sure you’ll be surprised!
Enjoy! And have a nice vacation to those of you who have also gotten lost in the space-time continuum!