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

What I did this evening.

So imagine your favorite food is tiramisu.

You could eat it whenever you want to, but usually you only have it as a desert, and not even every day (because come on, no one could remain looking great if they ate tiramisu every day...)

Then one day someone comes along and they tell you that from now on the only thing you can do all day, every day is eating tiramisu.

You would enjoy it for approximately... 3 days maybe? And then you start longing for some fruit, maybe just any type of dinner.

My tiramisu in this example is writing. I like to write, but I like to do other things as well. But then came my master-degree and it told me 'you have to write all day, every day from now on'. *le sigh*.

What I'm trying to say is: I'm sorry. I've had lots of things to talk about, but there were other things that I had to be writing about. Every time I thought I wanted to write a blogpost the little angel on my shoulder told me 'if you're planning to write anyway, why not work on an assignment?'. So that is what I did for two weeks long.

Now my to-do list is coming to an end, very slowly, but still, the end is in sight. I've got one more paper and one more take home exam to go and then my Christmas holiday can start!

The last couple of days however I've realized that I really should be doing things that I enjoy to do as well, that is why I baked some cupcakes yesterday (only five and I'm limiting myself to one a day... I still want to fit in that christmas dress), and look at what naughty me did tonight:

My first home-made bread

Doesn't it look pretty? The kitchen smelled so wonderful when I was proofing the dough, and even better when I was baking it. The only reason I was baking it was because I only had one slice of bread left over for lunch tomorrow and I need to focus on (guess what) writing tomorrow so I don't have time to go to the supermarket. 

I used the simplest recipe ever! It's from the Jamie Oliver website.... again...:

Recipe for the easiest home-made bread

250g flour

7g of dried yeast

207 ml of tepid water

2/3 tbs of suger

1/3 tbs of salt (preferably sea-salt)

I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a bowl with half of the tepid water, when it starts to come together and you feel it getting dry you add the other half of the water. When all of the ingredients stick together you put everything on a clean surface and you start kneading. You do that for about 5 minutes or until you have a nice and flexible dough. 

You then put the dough in a clean bowl, you cover it with cling-film and you put it in a warm place to proof for 30 minutes. After that is done you punch back the air in the bread for a couple of seconds and then you can shape and flavor the dough in any way you want. I just wanted a simple bread so I didn't add anything, but you could add raisins or cut down olives by kneading it into the dough. After you've add all of the extras and you've shaped it you put it on a flat surface with some flour, you cover it with cling-film again and you let it proof for another 30 to 60 minutes. 

Now you have to be extra careful not to knock all of the air out, put some egg mixed with milk over the top (carefully!) to give it a nice brown shiny top and put it on a preheated oven of 180 degrees Celsius for 25 to 30 minutes. 

Tada! Your own home made bread!

You really should give it a try, it's so satisfying to knead the dough and it's not difficult at all! Hmmm yum I can't wait to eat it tomorrow! 

So I hope you've been well, I'll try to write a bit more fun stuff from now on, maybe it'll give me some inspiration for writing the more serious stuff :). 

Thank you for reading and let me know what your favorite food is and for how many days in row that could be the only thing you'd eat! 

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

Surprise, Surprise!

Cup of tea with a view

So, what do you think?

Do you like my new layout? I'm quite proud of the banner I made, I made it for my last lay out as well but there were some bugs in it and now I managed to fix it completely! I decided to change it up because I was getting bored of the color-scheme, so this time I chose for a design that has my favorite colors in it. I hope you guys like it too and that I didn't scare you away with my new lay-out ;).

Another thing that has changed is that I've now added a 'recipe' button to my navigation bar. Before it was a 'photo' button, but even though I like photographing, I don't take enough pictures to put them on display on a separate part of my blog. Recipes however, that is something I know I will be posting lots of. Food, whether it is a nice dinner or a fabulous pie, has some magical power. A nice plate of food and even preparing food always make me smile, and I'm convinced it works that way for most people. No better reason than that to include it in my blog.

The fact that I've added a new section to my blog called 'recipes' does not mean I will only be posting recipes as there are many things that make smile, but every time I post a recipe it will show up on my home page, and it will be collected under 'recipes' as well.

A part of my collection

As you can see in the picture above I have a nice little collection of cookbooks (actually, this is not all of it, I've got some stored at my parents place as well). I love getting them out and looking through them, but I hardly ever make recipe exactly as Jamie or Julia tells me to do. I am and remain (at least for the next year) a student and I often don't have the budget to cook recipes that have ingredient lists longer than one page... So the type of recipes you will find here are all student-budget-adaptations of some of my favorite recipes (and on top of that, all the recipes that I will post will be in English).

So, are you still there?  I hope I didn't scare you away ;), so let me know what you think of my new lay-out and leave a comment below :).

lots of love,
xoxo Floor