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

Birthday entertaining (+recipes)

Happy Saturday everyone!

How's your weekend so far? Mine started yesterday already and I've been having a great time! Tomorrow it's my birthday, so I used the opportunity to throw a little birthday party yesterday evening. I had been working on an assignment until 1 the night before so I tried to sleep in on friday morning, but at 9.30 am I was too excited to start baking and cooking that I got up and started my chores.

I expected around 20 of my friends to come of which two of them would stay for dinner so I wanted to bake two types of cake. I was looking for some crowd-pleasers, at least one of my favorites and I had to take into account that I was baking on a budget. It was a long and hard thought process, but in the end I settled for a banana bread and Jamie Oliver's 'Children's Party Cake'. I've made the banana bread a coupe of weeks before and it was a real crowd pleaser and the Party Cake is one of my favorites, it has a lot of chocolate, fruit and whipped cream, everything you want in a cake ;). You'll find the recipes below!

The party was a huge success, at least that is what I thought. Everyone loved the cakes, I got many awesome and very thoughtful gifts, we danced a little, laughed a lot and at 2 am I was in my bed. Exhausted but sooo happy because I got to see so many friends!

Wearing my new scarf!

If you ever find yourself in need of a good recipe for a cake either one of the two posted below are great options. The banana bread is a lot quicker to make if you're short on time, but the chocolate party cake is a real party favorite!

Jamie Oliver's Chocolate Children's Party Cake

I started with the Chocolate cake because that had to cool down before I could cut it in half, cover it in whipped cream and oranges. In his recipe Jamie tells your to use two separate cake tins but I have a teeny tiny oven and it would take way too long to bake two cakes.

You need: 

200 g butter (at room temperature)

4 tbs of cocoa powder

3 oranges

200 g of sugar (as fine as possible)

3 eggs

1 tsp of baking powder

1/4 tsp of salt

200 g of self-raising powder

200 ml of cream

100 g butter for the icing

100 g of pure chocolate

100 g (or less) icing sugar

Preheat the oven on 180C degrees. 

Cream the butter and the sugar in a bowl, if you've made sure that your butter is soft enough that should be fairly easy to do. Mix the cocoa powder with 4 tbs of hot water and add the mix to your butter/sugar mixture. Add the eggs one by one and add the zest of 2 of your oranges. Mix together the dry ingredients and start adding them to your wet mixture, make sure not to over-mix it but it should be a nice and creamy cake consistence. Now this is very important: try not to eat all of the mixture. I know, it tastes great, but you should have enough left to fill a round cake tin for at least 1/3 of the height. Before you add the mixture to your cake tin grease your cake tin properly and put a piece of baking paper on the bottom. Bake the cake for 40 minutes or until a when you test the center of the cake with a skewer and it comes out clean.

Let your cake cool down for about 40 minutes.

In the meantime you can make a banana bread ;) (That's what I did). 

Whilst cooling down, add the chocolate, butter and sugar in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water. It'll look incredible, but again, try not to eat it all... 

Try to eat not all of the chocolate icing... 

Once it has cooled down, carefully cut your cake in half, whip your cream until you reach stiff peaks, segment the two oranges you used for the zest and add the cream and the segmented oranges to the bottom half of your cake. Press the top half of your cake on top and drizzle it with the chocolate mixture. Let your cake cool down in the fridge for about half an hour and then it is ready to eat! 

The chocolate cake, cut in half

Cover it in cream and segmented orange

The best banana loaf ever!

250 g of flour

2 tsp of baking powder

1 tsp of cinnamon

1/4 tsp of salt

100 g of butter

200 g of white muscavado sugar

1 tsp of vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup of creme fraiche (125 ml)

3 bananas, mashed

100 g of pure chocolate, cut into pieces

(optional: some nutes, pistachios or walnuts and some brown sugar)

Here comes the easiest recipe ever: 

Preheat the oven on 180c degrees.

Cream the butter and the white muscavado sugar, add the eggs, the vanilla and the creme fraiche. Mix the dry ingredients and add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients spoonful by spoonful (otherwise you get a flour explosion in your face). Add the mashed bananas and the chocolate and mix. Pour it in your bake-tin that you have lined with baking paper (to understand how to do it look at my picture below, it has proved to be my personal miracle to get out my cakes in one piece). If you'd like you can add the brown sugar and the nuts on top to create a little caramelly-top. Bake your cake for 60 minutes (in the middle of the oven if you have different settings, I don't, as I said, my oven is tiny haha). Let the cake cool down for 20 minutes and remove it from the cake tin!

Banana loaf batter

The cooked banana loaf

All in all it was a great day, I love taking the time to bake and it's even better if I don't have to eat it all myself haha! I hope I've inspired you with these recipes and let me know down below in the comments what your favorite birthday cake is!

Thanks for reading! 

xxxx

Floor

Work hard, play hard!

So here I am: monday night, quarter to eight in the evening, in my bed wearing PJ's...What a difference from the last couple of nights!
I've mentioned it before but I am part of a committee that organizes cultural activities for international students in Utrecht (the Netherlands). Twice a year we organize a complete weekend in contrast to the usual day-trips. Last weekend was one of those weekends and we went to my birth-region: a weekend filled with doing dishes, running around, counting people, getting on and off the bus and a serious lack of sleep! None of these things sound particular nice, but we had a lot of fun as well! Some highlights were the dinner organized by a caterer (at least for me... I love good food, especially in enormous amounts) and the visit to a local brewery. We stayed at a large farm transformed into a group accommodation located on the southern-Dutch country side of which you can see a picture below.

But all of this has its consequences, I woke up this morning sooo tired that I slept through my alarm (and believe me, that never happens), my whole body was aching: ears, head, body, everything. That was to be expected, but the sad thing is I have two exams this week... so cross your fingers for me! 

When you're ill you have to eat soup, not only because it's good for you but also because I really couldn't bring myself to cooking anything else. So I made my favorite: zucchini/courgette soup. I hope you are feeling well, but if there ever is a moment when you're not feeling so well I can advise you to make this soup:

Zucchini Soup

for 4 people:

2 zucchini's

2 small onions

2 cloves of garlic

750 ml of water

1,5 stock cube

1 tbs of boursin

a little bit of butter or olive oil

1 tsp of dried parsley

0,5 tsp of dried thyme

Chop the onion and the garlic really fine, when your large pan is hot, add your butter or oil and start to sweat off your onions. When the onions are starting to get soft add the garlic. Chop your zucchini's in small pieces and add them to the pan. Let them cook for about 15 minutes or until all of the zucchini's are nice, soft and a little bit mushy. Add the parsley and the thyme and then add the water and the stock cubes. If I had the time I would make my own stock, but when I'm ill I don't even want to bother, I just want some soup :P. I let the soup bubble away for 15 more minutes and then I wizz it up with a hand-held blender (in Dutch: staafmixer, honestly the word blender is not a good translation google!). Then I add the boursin and I wizz it up once again. 

Pour it into a nice floral bowl or any other bowl that makes you happy, serve with breadsticks or crackers!

Pfff okay... I'm just going to read one more article and then I'm going to sleep. Give the recipe a try and leave me a comment if you'd like seeing some more recipes on my blog! 

Thanks for reading!

byeeee 

xoxo Floor

Should do, have to, want to, will.

I feel like I should write something on my blog whenever I want to get my thoughts straight and today is one of those days. I'm not much of a planner, at least I don't like to plan but I do see the benefits of it. The result of never wanting to plan is that all of a sudden there is nothing else to do but to plan.

The next stage in my very logical thinking process (ahem) is to "just figure things out and make a little list in my head, because who needs pen and paper to sort things out". But honestly, that makes things even more chaotic, I wake up panicking in the middle of the night trying to keep an overview of all the things I have to do. What I then have to do is make a list of all the things that need to be done. Suddenly I realize there are only five things on my list...

Real to do lists are always more realistic than the ones in your head

Do you guys recognize the feeling that a to do list is always bigger in your head than in reality... what a realization... I should write that down ;). With having to write down your lists comes having to cross tasks off your list, but finishing your tasks takes a lot less time than thinking about them. Another reason why to make lists!

When you have finally finished all of the tasks on your list it is time to think about what you want to do. Personally I can't wait for this week and the next week to be over, both my head and my to do lists are filled with deadlines, even though some of them are a lot of fun to do. But I haven't cooked a single meal this week, I've been out for dinner every night, even though cooking is my number one way to de-stress. 

I also really wanted to write a blog post, so I guess I  should do that to make me feel better. Maybe adding fun stuff to your to do list is something that you have to do... I know I will ;). 

Some fun things you should do are:

• watching this video clip: 

• And if you enjoyed reading this post leave me a comment, because that would make me so happy, and making other people happy can never be a bad thing, right? ;) 

xoxo Floor