Last weekend was our sons Birthday party. He wanted it to be a witches party.

We made some really fun things like a very scary witches cave in our cellar and we cooked  some serious magic potion with our witches.

Kids party means chocolate cake but since we always invite friends for beer and chips afterwards and we never have enough food I started to rummage through some cookbook in search for more cakes I could bake. It happened what always happens ... I can't decide, I find plenty of things I'd love to do. Whilest my studies I came up with the idea of having a very scary round table with things witches eat  - like toad slime and bats poo.

I baked till total exhaustion but it was worth it. Lot's of fun and my son really loved it.

Work in progress.

Pierre Herme's Nutella tart .

The spider ring.

Insects pie.

the lovely cheese cake from foodbeam for the fearful ones.

spiderweb cakes.

matcha cupcakes.

and of course some jelly and a proper birthday cake.

My son and I, we do a lot of baking. He's a fuzzy eater and I hope helping in the kitchen will open his mind and his taste buds. These little chocolate cakes are cute and easy to make. He loved everything about them, so small, so cute and so easy to make.

120 gr dark chocolate
120 gr Butter
120 gr sugar
4 eggs
1 pinch of salt
70 gr ground almonds
60 gr flour

Pre heat the oven on 175°

Melt the chocolate, butter and the sugar in a pan over medium heat.
Beat the egg white with the salt till stiff. Mix the yellow with the almonds. Add the chocolate mixture and slowly add the egg whites. Fill into the buttered cake forms and bake for approximately 15 min.

Last winter I decided that I want to make my own macarons. This may sound stupid since we have sprüngli in Bern and zürich and now we even have Ladurée in zürich. But the idea to be able to make my own little colorful macarons was to tempting. I'm really getting into baking recently, but would I manage this task? I bought "solution macarons" from mercotte -  in french! All my cook books are either in english or in german. My french is not too bad but my kitchen french definitely need some improvement.... Then I had to place some online orders to get all the equipment. Perforated baking trays, a thermometer, colors .... I read the recipe a hundred times then I had to decide wether I should make a meringue italian or meringue francaise . But foremost I needed egg whites that have been separated from the yellows for several days. So this weekend I finally managed to have everything ready.
Here the some images from my first try:

And here they are, aren't they sweet? They don't look perfect ( but quite good :-) )but they tasted really nice.

Macaron à la menthe

Macaron au chocolat

This mornings work are these Chocolate- lemon Madelaines also from Pierre Hermé's cookbook "Chocolate Desserts".

An other nice tea cookie, easy to make, all the need is time ( most precious good I know ).
Gives you 12 Madelaines.

70 gr all-pirpose flour
3.5 tbs cocoapowder ( dark and unsweetened )
1/5 tsp baking powder
90 gr sugar
pinch of salt
grated zest of 1/4 lemon
2 large eggs at room temperaturs
100 gr soft butter

Sift together flower, cocoa abd bakin powder.
Put thew sugar, salt and the lemon zest in a bowl and rubb everthing together with your fingers until the mixture gets moist.
Beat the eggs into the lemon sugar until blended.
Add the soft butter . Gently whisk in the flour mixture.

Chill for at least 6 hours to get the nice little bump on top of your madelaines. Or, if you can live without it put in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven on 220°
Butter and flour the madelaine mould.
Fill the mould with the doug. You don't have to flatten it, the heat will do that for you.
Place the pan in the oven, leave a wooden spoon in the dorr to keep it slightly open. Turn down the heat down to 180° and bake for 15 minute.

I have a queue of things I want to do that lasts to Afrika. On the list is lot's of weeding but also planting as important things as soybeans, imagine picking your own edamame in your garden! Then comes lot's of cooking and baking I have some new cookbooks I haven't even touched. And then there's less interesting things like washing our down jackets or cleaning the cellar.
There's a week of holidays coming up and eventually I manage to make a few of these things.
The start make these little fellows - Financiers. A chocolate pastry perfect for tea time.
I always buy them from sprüngli in Zürich.

I came across this recipe in Pierre Hermé's cookbook "Chocolate Desserts" . There's plenty of other nice things I crave to try in the book but most of them way more complicated than these sweeties.

100 gr bittersweet chocolate ( 70% or more )finely chopped
3 large eggs at room temperature
125 gr sugar
100 gr finely ground almond powder
125 gr soft butter
100 gr tepid water
50 all- purpose flower

Melt the chocolate in a bow over simmering water (without touching the water). Let it cool down a little bit. Meanwhile  mix the almonds, eggs and sugar on medium speed until the color of the mixture tunes pale. Add the butter and mix an low speed. Add the chocolate and mix to blend. Add the water and mix on medium speed till incorporated. Fold in the flour.
Grease and dust the boat shaped financier molds. ( Size: The should hold approx. 3 tbs water ) Bake in the preheated oven 180° for 17 min. Let them cool on a rack for 3 minutes, then run a knife around the edges and carefully take out the financiers.

I work way to much at the moment, it's buying season and instead of trying new recipes from my lovely new cookbooks I run from one fair to the other.  Hotel breakfast and the junk food one usually eats  during the day don't make me feel too good either. In the evening we usually eat out but tis time I was to late with reserving tables so all the new restaurants I wanted to try were already fully booked.
Anyway I have a weekend at home and was full of ideas of things to do and to cook. Sadly I realized very quickly ( friday evening this means) that I am way to exhausted. And that instead of cooking great dinners, sewing this new pants I intended and blog a lot I should go for a walk in the wintery landscape and sleep a lot.
At this state I wish I would know more fast but yummy dinner recipe. Usually I do THIS but this involved too much different pans and plates, means to much cleaning up afterwards ...

This is probably the simplest  dinner I know and while it's baking one can take a hot bath, read a book or watch some telly.

Recipe:

you need:

6-7 pears
puff pastry
roquefort cheese

Roll out the dough, wash the pears cut into quarters and lay out on the dough.
Bake on 200° for 20- 30 minutes. Take the pie out sprinkle over the the roquefort cheese and put back into the oven and bake for another 10 minutes on 150°.
Serve with green salad or maybe a light soup.
Bon app!

An other new discover are these little fellows. All you need is good a biceps muscle. I didn't expect it to be so hard to squeeze the pastry out of the icing bag. But after the first try I was already tired.
This is an all year round biscuit that goes wonderful with earl grey tea. I can think of many variations to this. Filled with different jam maybe orange or dipped into black chocolate at one end ....

Pastry:

175 gr Butter room temperature
75gr icing sugar
3 egg yolks
1 pinch of salt
250 gr flour
1 good pinch of backing soda

Filling:

100 gr real nice apricot jam
juice of 1/2 lemon

Mix the butter till light and fluffy. Add icing sugar, egg yolks and salt and continue stirring until light. Add flour and baking soda. Bring the dough together with your hands. Cover and refrigerate.

But the dough into an icing bag with jagged head and make half moons on greasing paper. Refrigerate again.
Bake in the preheated oven ( 175° ) for 10 minutes. Let them cool.

Heat the jam and the lemon juice. Coat the bottom of one cookie and stick two together. Dust with some icing sugar.

The cookie is pictured on an other page  of one  my favorite art books: Shades of time by the swiss photographer Annelies Strba by Lars Müller Publishing.

I found an other cookie I really like, chocolate orange cookies. They are easy to make and already the dough is delicious ( important to me because I lick to pinch ;-) ).
I'm not to much into all these christmas cookies that smell of cinnamon, cloves and nuts. Don't know why. Ginger is ok though. But if there's  chocolate, I can't resist.

Pastry

150 gr butter
100 gr sugar
1 pinch of salt
2 fresh egg yolks
1 organic orange zested
50 gr dark chocolate cut into small cubes
250 gr flour
dark chocolate glazing

Beat butter till fluffy add sugar, salt, egg yolks and orange zest. Mix till light and fluffy. Add chocolate and flour and knead to bring the dough together .
But into cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Roll out on a lightly floured working surface to a thickness of 7 mm. Cut into shapes with the cookie cutter of your choice.
Bake for 9 minutes in the preheated oven ( 180 °). Let them cool decorate with dark chocolate glazing.

The cookie is pictured on an other page  of one  my favorite art books: Shades of time by the swiss photographer Annelies Strba by Lars Müller Publishing.

Yesterday we started making cookies, rather late I realized, last year we started a whole month earlier. Must be the weather, it was way to warm to get into christmas mood.
As always we started with a kids cookie, hoping that while they are busy decorating we have time to try some new things. It worked, at least for me. My friend was very busy keeping the kid from eating all the dough, liking all the icing and pinching all the sugar decoration.
Our kids cookies are very simple, make a sablé dough and then mix many icing colors which the kid love, we always end up with way to many different color pots. Pink is a must for my boy, my friend needs at least green and yellow, her boy usually wants violet and I make a proper red. But then we still don't have a nice ice blue ....
And then I get out the big red box filled with every possible cake decoration accumulated during the last 5 years and the boys are quiet for a second, the first and last time today. My advise: if you want eat some of these cookies too, set some aside because the rest will be loaded with decoration.

Pastry:

250 g Flour
175 g Butter,
75 g Sugar
1 pinch Salt
a little bit of Vanilla pith

Beat the butter mix in all the other ingredients. Make the dough. Put into cling film and refrigerate for 1 hour. Roll out on a floured work  surface to a thickness of 7mm. Cut out your shapes and bake for approx. 8 minutes.

Icing:

Mix a little bit of fresh lemon juice with icing sugar. Color with food color.

The cookie is pictured lying on one of my favorite art books: Shades of time by the swiss photographer Annelies Strba by Lars Müller Publishing.

.

Certainly one of my favorite desserts, warm apples a hint of caramel and double cream.... yummy.
But somehow I never mange to make it. Often I make the dough but then I am busy cooking dinner and have not time to cook the apples and after dinner when everyone wants a dessert it would just takes to long to cook and bake the cake....
I suggest it's better to make tarte tatin for afternoon tea and not as a dessert after a whole menu when you have guests.
Anyway, it's definitely worth making especially now that it's cold and grey outside.

Pastry :
200gr plain flour
50 gr icing sugar
125 gr Butter chilled and cubed
1 medium egg yolk

Begin by making the pastry. Stir the flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl or food processor. Add the butter. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour or pulse the ingredients in the processor until the mixture resembles brad crumbs. Mix the egg yolk with 2 tbs water, then using a blunt knife, stir just enough of this mixture into the dough to make it come together. Wrap the pastry into cling film, pat it down into a flat disc so that it will be easier to roll out later and place in the fridge for 30 minutes to chill.

Topping
50 gr Butter softened
125 gr caster sugar
6 large dessert apples
1 lemon finely grated zest

To make the filling spread the butter over the cold oven proof frying pan and sprinkle the sugar over the top. Place the apples around the edge, round side down. Tilt them slightly, allowing them to overlap, as they will shrink later. Place over low flame and cook for 10 minutes so the sugar dissolves slowly. Once it has dissolved, turn up the heat to a medium high flame and cook for 15 - 20 minutes, occasionally giving the pan a light shake to prevent the apples burning. The juices will start to turn a glorious rich, amber colour. Be brave you want the apples to hold their shape, but you also want the juices to darken to a colour that will give the tart that rich caramel flavor with a slight hint of burnt sugar.
Like Mahogany .
Take the frying pan off the heat, scatter with the lemon zest - a must to stop it from being too sickly - and allow it to cool for 10 minutes so the pastry doesn't melt.

Preheat the oven to 200°. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll out to a thickness of 3 mm - make it the size of your frying pan.  Place it over the apples. Patch together any cracks that appear. Place it on a backing sheet, to catch any drips - and cook for 25  -  30 minutes until the pastry is golden and dry.

Remove from the oven with proper oven gloves, the sugar will be dangerously hot and let it sit for 10 minutes.
Run a knife around it. Place a large plate over the top and flip over . If any apples are left in the pan simply scoop them out and replace them on the tart. Serve it as it is or with double cream or vanilla ice.

The perfect cake to be eaten after a long walk through winter landscapes or  a foggy autumn afternoon.