A weekends treat: Chocolate-caramel fudgy brownies

Happy Sunday everyone!

Hows your weekend? Did you have any fun activities planned, or did you just lounge around the house and enjoy some quiet time? My weekend has had a bit of both: on Saturday is spent the whole day in Groningen, which is the largest most northern city in the Netherlands. I went there on an excursion organized by ESN, and if you've been reading my blog for a while you know that I am on its culture committee and that we organize these excursions a couple of times a year. Groningen is beautiful but the weather was a bit of a disappointment, at least the first half of the day. The second half ended up being quite sunny but by 4 pm I was on the train to Nijmegen for a dinner party at one of my best friends house. All in all a very fun day that was concluded quite late when I was back at home in my cozy bed.

This morning I didn't have to rush so I enjoyed that cozy bed a bit longer than necessary, wasting my time, watching YouTube video's as always haha. In the afternoon I had to go into town and the weather was surprisingly beautiful, it almost seems like spring is in the air... but that can't be, right? I had the sun in my face when I walked into the inner city of Utrecht and treated myself to a cup of coffee. On my way back I did some grocery shopping and by accident I ended up with all the ingredients for brownies... Oops! :D Now let's hope there'll be enough people to help me with eating it...

The recipe is one of my all time favorites, I found it in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and I've been using it for literally YEARS. You end up with deliciously fudgy brownies and they're horrible when you were planning to loose some weight. The recipe is also very basic, so it allows you to add some other ingredients to make it a bit more special. This time I chose to add caramel and sea-salt flakes, but you could also add chocolate chips, chopped nuts, dried fruit, mini marshmellows... basically anything! I think everyone should have a brownie recipe on hand, so that is why I'm giving you my special one, I hope you enjoy it!

Chocolate-caramel fudgy brownies

Ingredients: 

125 g of butter

100 g of chocolate

2/3 cup of sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp of vanilla

2/3 cup of flour

1/4 tsp of baking soda

a pinch of salt

and I added

1 tbsp of Cocoa

a handful of caramel fudge

a sprinkle of sea-salt flakes

Start with pre-heating your oven on 180 C. Grab all of your ingredients, one large bowl that is heat-resistant, a pot with boiling water, a wooden spoon, a chopping board, a knife and a cake tin. 

Put the glass bowl over the pot of boiling water, break the chocolate in small pieces and add it to the bowl together with the butter. Make sure everything is almost completely melted and then take it off of the heat.Add in the sugar and it cool down for a bit. After that add in the eggs one at a time

Mix all of the dry ingredients together (the flour, the baking soda, the salt, and the cocoa) and add it to your liquid mixture. 

When you've reached this stage you've finished the basic recipe. After this step I chopped up some of the caramel fudge and I added it to the mixture. 

Put everything in your greased and floured cake tin and sprinkle it with some sea-salt flakes. Then put it in the oven for at least half an hour if you're using a real brownie tin. I used a cake tin, which gave me some thicker brownies, but I had to cook it for about 15 minutes more. 

And then comes the most difficult process: waiting. I'm always way too excited to get my brownies out of my tin, so I try to wait at least 15 minutes before turning the cake tin over, but really you should give it a bit more time... My brownie crashed and the bottom looks horrible haha, still it tastes really nice and especially the sea-salt gives it another dimension.

So guys, I hope you enjoyed this recipe, give it a try and let me know what you think, or tell me in the comments below what your favorite brownie recipe is! Enjoy the last bit of your weekend and have a great start of the week tomorrow!

Lots of love,

Floor

Things I've been loving in October:

Happy saturday!

I hope you're enjoying your free time as much as I am! At the moment I'm seated at my parents' kitchen table, I finished a belgium beer and an apple pie (baking the apple pie... not eating it, and for the record, drinking the belgium beer, nog brewing it). The Netherlands has turned into a multi-colored painting, from a vibrant green to a yellow/red/green/blue sky canvas. It is the best time of year to be near the country side so there was no better occasion to come back to my home town for the weekend.

Apple pie and autumn go together as an umbrella and rain, even though you can buy apples all year round, you get the best quality in autumn and what better way is there to celebrate them than by baking a pie? I will be adding a separate page to my blog where I will post my favorite recipes, so keep an eye out for that!

the best apple pie ever!

Autumn is my favorite season because of various reasons: it starts to become a little bit colder which means I can wear more layers that keep me cozy and warm, it is the season of apple pie, the colors of the leaves turn the whole world into a beautiful painting and it is my birthday! In about 2 weeks I will turn 23 for another year (ha-ha, beer increases my sense of humor exponentially)! The best thing about my birthday is that I will get to see some of my friends that I don't see too often, I'm already looking forward to that.

Lovely autumn colors

My second favorite is a beauty related item. I really like watching beauty youtube videos, especially the ones by Sprinkleofglitter, Zoella, Tanya Burr (Pixi2woo) and fleurdeforce. At least one of them has talked about a dry shampoo by Batiste. I've bought my first dry shampoo over a year ago (still, quite late, I know) from a brand called 'Andrelon' which is a Dutch brand and I HATE IT. It smells horrible, I can't seem to get the white stuff out of my hair and it doesn't make my hair feel fresh AT ALL. Then 2 weeks ago I was walking around one of the two larger Dutch drugstores (Kruidvat), and to my surprise I suddenly saw some little cans of Batiste... you can already guess my reaction. I bought the one with the coconutty-flavor (I didn't take a picture and I didn't bring it with me to my parents...) and I LOVE IT. I don't like washing my hair too often, absolutely not every day, usually every other day but I if I can I wash it every three days. I feel like it goes limp and life-less if I wash it more often. This is where Batiste comes in:

1. It smells wonderful, not too overpowering, but every time my hair swings around my face I get a nice whiff.  
2. I can hardly see any white powder.
3. It makes my hair feel like I just washed it. 

Three great reasons to buy a large can of Batiste if Kruidvat will be so kind to keep stocking it <3.

The last thing I've been loving this month is ASOS. Actually, it's not really this month, I could love ASOS all year long but I'm a bit nervous ordering clothes online. Especially today my love for their website has blossomed again, I went into town to shop for some new clothes but it was one of those days... Everything I tried on was just not right, not the right color, not the right fit, not what I was looking for. And then I went online. I found at least six dresses that came in the fit I love, the colors I love, and they were dresses: just what I was looking for! If I end up ordering one or two I'll put some pictures up, before I do that I'm going to have to make a decision...

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you liked it, I'd love that ;)

xoxo Floor

I segment oranges for fun

I had a very challenging day today and the one thing that really helps me to calm down is cooking a nice meal, as you can see on the picture. I made spaghetti with meatballs, and honestly: those were the best little meatballs in the world. You'll find the recipe below.

I can almost hear you thinking: why that title? Well, I made my store bought tiramisu look a bit fancier by putting it on a plate with some segmented oranges. It looked really nice, so nice I finished it before I had time to take a picture haha. But it was fun to try that technique :).

And now the recipe:

250g of pork mince

250g of beef mince

1 egg

1 handful of parmesan

A few sprigs of fresh rosemary

1 handful of breadcrumbs

2 teaspoons of mustard

Pepper and salt

I mixed everything together and made A LOT of little meatballs with wet hands, using wet hands makes it easier to roll them. I then put them in the fridge while I made a tomato sauce (2 onions, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 red chilli, 2 cans of chopped tomatoes, 1 tbsp of tomato paste, half a chicken stok cube and let it bubble away for half an hour). Then I got the meatballs out of the fridge and I put them in the oven until they are nice and brown (I play around with the settings, I started with a regular oven on 200 degrees Celcius and then I switched to a fan combined with the grill, doesn't matter how, as long as they get nice and golden brown). When that is done I dunk them in the sauce and I cook the pasta. 

Done! Give it a try, I'd love to hear what your recipe for perfect meatballs is :).