Procrastination (a.k.a. rhubarb muffins)

Hey! Happy Wednesday!

It's been a while since we talked! Or actually since I talked. But really just wrote. And you read. Anyways, I had things to do, so obviously I decided it was time to bake again haha.

Lately I've been obsessed with rhubarb, and for the non-foodies amongst us I'll get into Jamie Oliver mode: "What is up with these kids nowadays, they can hardly recognize a potato! Rhubarb is a plant with long stalks that are green at the tips and bright red at the bottom, uncooked it is really crunchy and sour but when cooked they get really soft and silky and they are really good in savory recipes as well as baked goods.

I saw those bright red stalks in the shops last week and suddenly was craving a rhubarb and apple crumble. I had some of the apple-rhubarb mixture left over and I've been eating it for almost a week for breakfast with some yoghurt and muesli! So good! Then this morning, I had the last little leftover and I hurried to the shops and buy some more. This time no crumble however, too mainstream for me. I wanted to make rhubarb muffins but for some reason I couldn't find any recipes on the interwebs that sounded good enough?! In the end I decided to modify a banana and cinnamon recipe that I found in one of my cookbooks, and I was so pleased with the result I decided I couldn't keep it to myself.

So here you go: My rhubarb banana and cinnamon muffins: 

Ingredients: 
400g of Rhubarb 
5 tbs of sugar

350g of flour
3/4 tsp of salt
1 1/2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
2 tsp of ground cinnamon
160g of caster sugar 
375 ml of buttermilk (Or 375 ml of milk with two tbs of lemon juice)
1 egg
1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
70g of unsalted butter
1 banana, peeled and mashed

1. Cut the rhubarb into small pieces, add them to a pan with the 5 tbs of sugar. Let it cook down until you are left with a jammy mixture that is slightly sweet but mostly tart

2. Preheat your oven to 170C 

3. Mix all of your dry ingredients together (the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon) 

4. Mix the buttermilk (or your milk mixture) with a beaten egg and the vanilla. Add this to your dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon until just combined

5. Melt your butter and add together with the mashed banana to the mixture, mix again with the wooden spoon until evenly dispersed

6. Spoon the mixture into muffin cases in a muffin tin. On top of each muffin add a tsp of the rhubarb mixture

7. Put it into the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, this really depends on the size of your muffin tins, mine were really small so they were done really quickly. I covered them with tin foil for the last 3 minutes to stop them from browning

This really are the best muffins I've ever made, they are really fluffy, absolutely not dry and not overly sweet! I had them with a nice cup of green tea but once they are cooled down I think they are also very nice with some lemonade as that would complement the tartness and sweetness of the muffins! 

I'd love to hear what you think of this recipe, and whether you share my love for rhubarb! To what do you like to add rhubarb? Or do you prefer some other type of summer fruit in pastries? 

Thanks so much for reading, and I'll write to you soon ;)

lots of love,
Floor

Millionaire's Shortbread

Hey there! Happy Tuesday!

What's that? You've got a craving for chocolate, caramel AND cookies? 

You can't choose? Why would you, when there is such a wonderful thing as millionaire's shortbread?

A famous writer once wrote: 

"Everything in moderation, including moderation"- Oscar Wilde. 

And that is exactly what you should keep in mind when making and eating these delicious treats. You will have bowls that are covered with sticky caramel and melted chocolate that are impossible to get out, so you will feel the strong urge to clean everything with your finger and your tongue. I wouldn't discourage that, but do it in moderation, because you will be to nauseous to even try the shortbread when it's done! 

I made this last thursday with the 'Boyfriend', and he had a jar full of good quality salted caramel from a foody type of birchbox. We just baked the shortbread, spread the caramel on top when it was cooled down and added the chocolate. The recipe does not call for this but I did have some gluten-free flour lying around and we thought it would make the shortbread more crisp and flaky while at the same time we would limit the amount of gluten in the cookie, which for some people is a good thing! 

The result looks like this, and the ingredient list and recipe you can find below! 

Tiny treats, great for sharing (or not)

Millionaire's Shortbread

1 tin of condensed milk

150g of flour

100g of gluten-free flour

75g of white muscavado sugar 

300 g of flour

125g of sugar

200g of pure chocolate

Start with the caramel, I didn't make this myself but this recipe for caramel is fairly widespread so I think we can assume it will lead to the same kind of result! Of course if you can find a good quality caramel in your shop, you can totally go for that instead.

If you're making the caramel, put the tin of condensed milk covered in a pan with boiling water with a lid on top and boil it on low heat for three hours. Check every now and then whether the water level is still high enough, the tin should be totally covered! After three hours take it out of the pan and let it cool down for 30 minutes. Then melt 125g of the butter in a pan and add the sugar and let everything melt together. Add the caramelized condensed milk and let it warm up for 5 minutes. You can also add some sea salt to make it a salted caramel, the jar I used did have salt and the result was awesome!

Heat up the oven to 180 degrees C. Crumb the two types of flour and the rest of the butter (175g) together and add the white muscavado sugar. Kneed the crumbs together to a dough and press it down in your square baking pan lined with baking paper. With a fork make some little holes in the dough and bake it for 30 minutes in the middle of the oven until it's nice and brown and done. Let the shortbread cool down completely. 

On top of the cooled down shortbread spread your caramel and let it set for a little while. I put it in the freezer so it would set a bit faster and if you do that it only takes 10 minutes to set. While it's in the freezer, melt your chocolate au-bain-marie, and then spread the chocolate on top of the caramel. We also added some sea-salt flakes on top of the chocolate to give it an extra kick! Put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes and then you can take it out. 

Take the Millionaire's Shortbread out of the baking tin and cut it into small pieces. Again, everything in moderation, including moderation. That goes best if you cut it into small pieces, so you don't end up eating half the thing in half an hour and getting completely sick with all of that chocolate and caramel. 

So... good luck with that. I can't stop eating those things, it was a good thing I wasn't at home this weekend otherwise I would have eaten even more... But then again, I had more than enough treats this weekend, I was at my parents place I had so much good food once again! At least now I have some more little treats to get myself through the week haha! 

I'd love to hear your comments, whether you've tried to make them or any other recipe's for me to try! So do let me know how you get on! You can contact me through facebook, twitter, instagram or in the old fashioned way, through the comments below this post! 

Lots of love,

Floor

Something new: YouTube Video!

Happy monday everyone!

I hope you're all surviving the first day back at work or back in school, and I hope you didn't have any problems getting out of bed this morning! I had to get up at 7 am. It was just not the right time if you know what I mean!

Last week I've been thinking about about what I wanted to do for my blog, since I really like to try new things and trigger my creativity. Unfortunately my creativity failed on me, but the reason for that was perhaps that I was focussing a bit more on some other things. I'll ramble on about those things in a second but in the end I did manage to make something new for you guys: it's a youtube video!

Last week I had another one of those weeks where I didn't cook anything all week besides my breakfast. I know my mother would love to have a week like that but feel really disconnected if I don't cook my own food, I like to know what goes in it and the process of buying the ingredients and cooking everything is very soothing to me. I was also wearing a new (not necessarily pretty) accessory: a borrowed fitbit. If you're a bit into fitness you might have picked up on this hype, it is a little sensor that detects how many steps you take every day, how many stairs you climb, how many calories you burn etc. So at the same time I was focussing on moving around a bit more, but I was eating very unhealthy and I didn't cook anything... That seems a bit unbalanced, doesn't it?

This week I'm cooking again, and I'm also focussing on my fitness because I got some new running gear from my dad, which is a good incentive for me to go for a run. (By the way, if you are in need of some new running gear to get you out of the house, check out the H&M. I got the cutest and most comfortable top in bright orange with long sleeves and a little orange jacket to go with it and I'm soooo satisfied with the quality of the fabrics! And it's H&M so the prices are really wallet-friendly!)

My new flashy running gear :)

Back to the cooking... Most of the time I cook pretty healthy anyways, but I do like to bake. My personal philosophy is that if I have baked it myself it's not as bad as when I buy my treats because I'll end up sharing more and I only put in good ingredients in anything I bake. So when I finished my assignment on sunday afternoon I thought I deserved some little baking-time. I made madeleines again, and if you've been reading my blog for a while you know I have a blogpost about honey and earl grey madeleines, but this time I made lemon and poppyseed madeleines. This change is not really worth writing a whole new recipe so I did something else instead! I made my recipe into a little video!

It was very funny to film because I used my iPad, so I was holding it while stirring or picking things up, so every now and then you'll see me mis-grab something or just being very clumsy in general haha, but in the end it turned out to be quite cute, so I thought that would be a fun thing to start this week with!

I hope you guys enjoy it as well, please let me know if you do because then I know whether I should try to make these little clips more often! You can like it or comment on it or send me a message via twitter or via facebook, in general I just love getting messages from you :).

Lots of love,
Floor

Cheer up recipe: Scones

Happy monday everyone!

Have you survived your weekend? Did you manage to drag your but out of bed this morning? I know I had some issues this morning... I still had to do all these boring house chores and find time to finish writing a paper, so very boring...

But I have the best way to help you cheer up! It takes you half an hour in total and you instantly feel a lot better! Have one of these scones in the afternoon with some tea and take some time to feel proud of all those boring things you ticked off your to-do list! (On top of that, the amount of sugar and butter that goes into these delights is, if you ask me, very limited, so you don't have to feel guilty for having a treat). If you don't get the monday blues you could also bake these scones for a friend, it's always nice to help someone else feel better ;).

I made these with one of my best friends a little while ago when we had our own little tea-party. We don't get to see each other very often so we always need a lot of time to catch up when we do, so I made these scones and she made some lovely sandwiches! A couple of days later I saw a video of Fleur de Force who had filmed the making of her own tea-party with one of her friends, such a funny coincidence! You can watch the video below if you'd like :). But she made fairy cakes and I really prefer scones :) (or maybe she doesn't have a good recipe for scones... Maybe I should send her this link haha...). Anyway, it is a good thing to make for yourself, but even better to share with friends, as goes for all baking I guess!

Buttermilk Scones

makes: 10 scones

450 g of selfraising flour

1/4 tsp of salt

100g of cold diced butter

85g of sugar

284ml of buttermilk (Dutch: Karnemelk)

2 tsp of vanilla extract

a splash of milk or a beaten egg

I've tried a number of different recipes but I discovered this one recently and it is definitely the easiest one I've come across and (if you have all of the right ingredients) it is a real no-brainer!

Start with pre-heating your oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Add the diced butter to your self-raising flour, make sure it is self-raising, I forgot to do this last night and my first batch was a total failure haha. In case you don't have self-raising flour you could just take normal flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder for every 100 g of flour. 

Add the butter to the self-raising flour

Using only the tips of your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until you get a sandy texture. It is important to only use the tips of your fingers because that will ensure that you don't melt the butter with the warmth of your hands. If you've done it right the mixture should a little bit like this: 

Butter and flour mixed together

Now add in the sugar and the salt and mix it a bit more with your finger tips. After doing this take a cup and mix the vanilla extract with the buttermilk. Put the cup in the microwave for half a minute on medium heat, you don't want it to become 'hot' but you slightly want to heat it up. 

Vanilla + buttermilk

Now take a separate bowl and add a bit of the flour mixture to the bowl, add a bit of the vanilla and buttermilk and mix it together either with your hands or with a spoon. Keep repeating the process until everything is more or less mixed together. 

Mix the wet and the dry ingredients together

Make sure you don't over mix it! So when everything is almost combined, turn the bowl over on a clean work-surface dusted with some flour and slowly use your hands to really bring everything together (you want to use all of those ingredients, don't leave anything behind!). 

Finish it off with a bit of kneading to make a dough

You now want to flatten the dough a bit, it should look like a really thick cookie, about two fingers high. Then use a round cookie cutter or a small glass to cut out little rounds. 

Put the rounds on a baking tray lined with baking paper and glaze the scones with some beaten egg or some milk to give them a nice brown color. If you have the feeling your dough is not really cohesive and it is a bit flaky, don't worry, you've done well! 

Put a bit of milk or egg on top of the scones

Bake the scones for about 15 minutes or until you feel satisfied with the way they look, some ovens work a bit different than others :). This is the way they should look when you take them out of the oven:

Nice golden brown little scones

They're best when they are still warm and with a bit of clotted cream and jam or lemon curd! In the first picture you see I also have dried apricots lined up, and that is what I sometimes like to do: add some raisins, some dried diced apricots, maybe some lemon peel and poppy seeds... whatever you like! But this is a really good basic recipe, at least: it's the best one I've tried! 

So give it a go and let me know how they turned out! Or some other suggestions you have for added flavourings for scones, or what you like to eat your scones with (a cup of coffee, cup of tea?). And do you have any other way to cheer yourself or your friends up? Let me know! You can send me a facebook message, a tweet, an instagram, or a comment, whatever you like :) 

xxxx 

Floor

Earl-grey honey madeleines on a sunny Saturday

Hey everyone! How are you? Did you have a nice and sunny sunday? I don't know whats up with the weather in the Netherlands, but it was so sunny here this weekend, I almost thought it was spring already. Cray-cray and I'm loving it!

Sunny view in the living room

I've been eyeing this recipe for green tea madeleines by Sorted Food for a little while now, the flavors really intrigued me and I loved the idea of small, portioned and light cakes! So when my mom treated me to a madeleine pan I knew what I wanted to make. Unfortunately I didn't have the ingredients to give my madeleines the green tea twist, so I went for a culture clash theme: delicate French madeleines with traditional English flavors! The result was sooooo yummy, and they look so cute on a pretty plate or cake standard, how could anyone resist?

Earl-grey honey madeleines

3 bags of traditional English tea or Earl grey

3 tbsp of boiling water

3 tbsp of melted butter

2 eggs

1/3 cup of sugar

2 tbsp of honey

2 tsp of vanilla

1/2 tsp grated lemon peel

3/4 cup of flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

Pinch of salt

Start with steeping your tea in the three tablespoons of water, over the cup you're making your super strong tea in! Leave it for 30 minutes and then add the tea to your melted butter untill you see something like this:

Melted butter with very strong tea

Mix your eggs with the sugar for about four minutes or untill you're left with a pale and foamy mixture, then add your flavourings: the honey, vanilla and lemon peel and let it mix for another minute. Then sift in your dry ingredients and slowly with a spatula fold the dry ingredients in and after that do the same with your melted butter / tea. Be very gentle because you don't want to beat out any of the air!

Sifting flour, salt and baking powder

The finished batter

Put clingfilm on the surface of your batter and chill it for at least 3 hours. After that the batter will seriously look like a mousse, so if you pull off the cling film and you see all of the air bubbles you know you've done well! 

Butter and flour your madeleine pan, preheat your oven to 200C and then carefully heap tablespoons of the batter in the madeleine shapes. You don't need to fill them completely, the mixture will rize a bit! 

Madeleine pan

Leave them in the oven for 10 minutes and I can recommend you to stare at them while they're cooking, I can promise you they won't freak out ;).

When they're done they are light and yummy and perfect with a cup of tea, especially when they are sprinkled with icing sugar!

Give them a go and let me know what you think, or please leave me a comment on my facebook page or in the comments below if you have any other flavor combination!

Lots of love,

Floor

Hyper Smash

A very merry christmas, here's a christmas gift for you!

Merry Tuesday!

Oh no :( I started writing this post on my iPad and accidentally deleted everything half way through...

Still, I wanted to wish you a very merry christmas now, since tomorrow you'll all be having a wonderful day with your families!

Traditions vary from country to country and from family to family. In my family we really enjoy our breakfasts, we set up our christmas tree right after Sinterklaas has left the country on the 6th of December, we like to go to the church at christmas eve to listen to the beautiful music and we love to bake. A lot. Our kitchen was filled with the best smells today, my mom made a berry cheesecake and a zucchini layer cake with cream-cheese frosting (i helped here and there), and I made mince pies.

Now mince pies are not really a Dutch tradition, I guess it is British. But as you know I am a bit of a youtube addict and I have been watching Sorted Food, Zoella, Tanya Burr and many more give these treats a try so I wanted to follow in their footsteps. As our shops don't sell the filling pre made I had to make everything from scratch. To be honest, the first batch was not great. But that was to be expected  because I'd never tried one. The second batch however was absolutely lovely!

So here my christmas gift to you: 

My mince pies

my mince pie recipe.

500g of dried fruits (apricots, prunes, raisins, cranberries, anything you like!)

75 g dark brown sugar

60 ml red port

Juice and zest of one orange

Juice and zest of half a lemon

1/2 tsp of ground cloves

1 tsp of cinamon

60 ml of brandy

1 tsp of vanilla

2 tbs of honey

350 g of flour

225 g of cold and diced butter

100 g of sugar

1 egg

The zest of one orange

 A pinch of cinnamon

Mini-quiche or muffin tins

Now for the filling, I chopped up all of my dried fruit first while I heated up the port with the sugar and the spices, then I put all of the fruit in the warm mixture and I added the juice of both the orange and the lemon plus the zest. Then I let that simmer away for about 30 minutes, it has to start looking a bit jammy (if not, don't worry, there is always the blender!). At this point I added the brandy, the vanilla and the honey and I gave it a nice stir, the I let it cool. You really want a soft and mushy texture with not too many large pieces.

Pre-heat the oven at 220C.

For the pastry it is most important to have things COLD (oh baby it's cooooold outside!). Put the diced butter in the flour and use your fingertips to combine both and create a sandy texture. Then I turned the mixture from the bowl onto a flowered surface, I added the zest, sugar, cinnamon, and the egg and a mixed everything together. Try to do this as quick as you can and try not to overmix the mixture. When it has formed a ball, split it into two smaller balls, cover them in clingfilm and pop them in the freezer for 20 minutes. 

Roll out one of the dough-balls and cut circles that will fit your muffin tins. When you have finished doing that, pop the whole tin in the freezer! It will help make the dough nice and crispy. After 10 minutes take them out and fill them with the jammy mixture. Before you do, make sure you taste it to see whether you like it. You might want to add a bit more lemon juice to cut through the sweetness of the dried fruit, or add a bit more brandy to get everyone a bit more cozy and cheery ;). Then from the rest of that dough-ball cut smaller circles to cover the top and use a little star-shape to cut out a little whole in the lid. (From half of the dough I got 12 pie-cases plus lids and I kept the other half in the freezer for later use.) Cover the pies, use a fork to stick the bottom and the top together on the edges, brush the top with some egg or some milk and sprinkle over some sugar. Put them in a pre-heated oven at 220C for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Sprinkle them with some icing sugar and ta-daaaaa!!! Some really tasty treats for you to enjoy while watching a christmassy movie!

Please let me know if you gave them a try, and if you have had real mince pies before, let me know if my recipe lives up to the original! 

Have a very merry christmas, I hope you're all surrounded by lots of friends and family members and that you don't have to worry about a single thing.

Lots of love,

Floor

Me and Joost