PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

What is a group of owls is called? A flock? Do they even ever fly around in groups? I don't think so...But can you picture my surprise as I found these cute little fellows outside my window? :)




Use any favorite shortbread recipe, preferably without any chunky additions. Shape into ovals, place an almond (I used particularly long hazelnuts) in place of nose, score with a toothpick the eyes and the feet, bake according to your recipe.

When ready let cool. In the meantime melt a bit of chocolate and pipe the inside and the outside of the eyes and the feet. Take a last look. Add milk. Eat.

When life gives you walnuts, make walnut-bread pops


After seeing the recipe for Seeded Flatbread on 101 Cookbooks, my all-times favourite blog, and seeing virtually kilos of walnuts in the pantry, I decided I wanted to try it with walnuts and rosemary, baking the plops of bread inside the empty shells. It worked out just fine, resulting in a nice "head" to tear off and munch right away, and then crack the shell to get at the crunchy inside part. Quite an "interactive" eating!


Walnut-Rosemary Bread Pops
(adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

• 2 1/4 cups Whole Wheat Flour

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup walnuts
  
• 1 tbs rosemary needles
  
• 2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil

• 1 cup water, ice cold

This weekend was dedicated to pre-Christmas baking. Gingerbread-baking, to be exact. Coming from Germany, I am completely spoiled when it comes to gingerbread, as in Germany (like in most Nordic countries) gingerbread for Christmas is really a BIG hit, and there are thousands of different styles. Virtually each city has got its own recipe, and the supermarkets offer further temptations, like chocolate-covered jam-filled gingerbread hearts. I decided to try a recipe for soft molded gingerbread that I've cut out of a magazine years ago, wanting to use once again my new shortbread pan.

Like most gingerbreads, also this one calls for baking soda and for an overnight refrigeration before baking, so plan ahead accordingly. The results are well worth waiting - the resulting gingerbread is soft and kind of fudgy in the middle, with a nice spiciness from ginger, nutmeg and cloves, but not overly so. The glaze gives it a nice touch, but according to me is more of a visual addition than a taste-wise one.

All in all, definitively a keeper. And a beautiful one, too.




Soft Molded Gingerbread Recipe

1 cup butter
3/4 cup + 2 tbs sugar
1 gg
1/2 cup molasses
2 tbs honey

3 3/4 cup AP flour
1 tbs cocoa
4 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
a dash a freshly ground pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda

Cream butter with sugar, add the egg, the molasses and the honey, beat well until fully incorporated.

Mix together the dry ingredients, add to the egg mixture, mix well first with a spoon, then with hands until a dough pulls together.

Wrap dough in clingfilm, refigirate overnight.

Take out of the fridge and let sit at room temp for 15 min. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease the gingerbread pan, put the dough into pan and pat with your fingers until distributed evenly. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until the top appears dry (not overbake it! It should be still soft inside!)

Let rest in the pan for 5 - 10 min, in the meanwhie mix 1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar with about 2 tbs of water to make a glaze. Take the ready gingerbread out of the pan, brush with glaze, cut into slices and let cool. Enjoy!

You can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it, as well. Adjust the baking time accordingly to about 10-15 min.

I love cooking, but I don't have a lot of cookbooks. Usually, I prefer internet as a source of inspiration instead of spending 20-30 euros for a collection of recipes, most of which I never come around recreating. With Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson it was a different story altogether. I first discovered her wonderful blog and loved virtually any recipe I tried. From there, it was only one step to buying Heidi's book that is chock-full not only with gorgeous pictures and tasty dishes, but also a ton of useful information on healthy cooking. Till then, I had only a very blurred idea about what "Healthy cooking" was about, and considered health food stores as the reign of people wearing Birkenstock sandals throughout the year (WITH socks, if the weather conditions should require it) and feeding their children sugar-free dusty muesli for breakfast. After reading Super Natural Cooking, the things have changed. I'm no more afraid of buying whole grains and flours, trying different kinds of browns sugars (and yes, they ARE all different!) and turn to the book and to the blog anytime I need inspiration or am in doubt about some "healthy" stuff.
The following recipe for Gingery Shortbread is from Heidi's book, though there are variations to it on her blog, too. I changed the original recipe a bit, using buckwheat flour instead of the amaranth one, and adjusting baking time and temperature as i was dieing to try my new shortbread pan and figured that freezing the dough inside the pan and then putting it straight into hot oven, as instructed, would do the ceramic pan no good.

Was I satisfied with the results? Well, given the fact that I've never had any shortbread before, this one was delicious, with a hot spiciness from the ginger and a tenderness from the butter that I've never met in a cookie :) I will definitively try all the variations of the recipe (rosemary and pine nuts seem so good!), hoping that a less chunky dough (due to minced candied ginger) will result in a more defined pattern.

Enjoy!



Gingery Shortbread Recipe

(adapted from "Super Natural Cooking" by Heidi Swanson - I give full dose here, though I halved the recipe to fit my pan)

1 1/2 cups white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup buckwheat flour
3/4 tsp salt
1 tbs ground ginger
1 cup unsalted butter, room temp
2/3 cup natural cane sugar (I used Demerara sugar)
1/3 cup minced crystallized ginger


Mix flours, salt and ground ginger in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, cream butter with sugar, then add the dry ingredients and the minced ginger and mix until just combined and crumbly. Gather together and wrap tightly into cling film, refrigerate for 20 min.
Preheat oven to 160 ° C. Spay the shortbread pan with non-stick spray and pat the dough into the pan. Prick entire surface with a fork and bake for about 25-30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before releasing the gingerbread from the pan. Eat.

Alternatively, you can roll the dough and cut cookies out of it. In this case, I would follow Heidi's suggestion to freeze the cut cookies for 10 minutes before baking, and reduce the baking time to about 10-15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies.

Incredible, one month has passed since the last challenge. This month the recipe chosen by Lisa Michelle was quite familiar to me - after all, living in Italy has the advantage to getting to eat fresh-made Cannolli as often as one wishes to. It was quite exciting to made them from scratch and results were very satisfying, even though frying in my small kitchen was quite a challenge in itself: I added orange water and orange-scented chocolate to the ricotta-filling and decorated the filled cannolli with candied orange peel. What do you think can i be proud of them? :) Check out what fellow bakers did here!

Inspired by Bakerella’s gorgeous mini cakes on a stick, I finally got around to making some myself for my office-leave in Rome. I adopted the recipe a bit to the things I had on hand, and was quite satisfied with the results. The mini-cakes are tasty and give a full blast of intense chocolate flavour in one perfect bite. They are lovely to look at, too :)

Recipe:
5 cups cake crumbs (I used chocolate)
½ cup fresh cream
Chocolate (I used white)
Smarties
Sprinkles
Food colourings
Skewers
Mix the cake crumbs with the cream to create an even mixture. Refrigerate until workable. Make nut-sized mushroom-shaped bites with a chunky “stem” and a rounded “cap”. Stick on skewers, dip the tops in melted chocolate (coloured to your liking if using white), and decorate to make them look like cupcakes. Store in a cool place.

Oh yes, I'm a Daring Baker and this month's challenge was making Macarons. "Macaron" is french for "Damn much work for this neat little cookie". I've been dying to try them from the first time I saw them last year on internet. Cute little cookies with different fillings and in rainbow colors - that was quite intriguing.
For the challenge we were supposed to use the french technique. I started full of enthusiasm, grinding my own nuts, letting the eggwhites age on the counter and putting high hopes into the result. Suffice to say that I failed competely at that. The macarons came out flat and brittle and I felt defeated. Fortunately after reading the comments on the forum I realized that I was not the only one. Many fellow bakers did have problems with the recipe and some have suggested trying Tartellette's recipe. It worked like a treat! For my Pesto-inspired macarons I did sub half of the almonds for pine nuts and prepared basil-infused white chocolate ganache. The macarons came out quite pefect, cute little feet and all, even though I wish I had made smaller circles. The flavors played toghether nicely and the cookies were gone whithin an hour :)
Would I make them again? Not on a day-to-day basis, but for some fancy party surely yes!