Bake baby Bake!! ...notice someone got into my squash cannelloni!!
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Chocolate fondant.
Yesterday night was St Martin's day in Germany and I had to bring some food to my children's kindergarten (or nursery). I had a bar of chocolate in my cupboard so decided to bake an easy peasy chocolate cake! I found the recipe on this fantastic French website called Marmiton where people share their recipes. Each recipe comes with a rating and comments from other people who have tried it as well as a picture (but not for every recipe).
For the chocolate fondant, all you need to do is to melt 100g butter and 200g chocolate in the microwave. When melted, add 5 egg yolks.
Add 100g caster sugar and 4 tbsp of white flour and mix well. Then beat the 5 egg whites until stiff and incorporate them to the mixture. My son did this very carefully!
Pour the mixture in a butter greased cake pan and put it in the oven at 180 degres for about 20 minutes (depending if you want the cake to be firm or gooey!). My children loved eating the leftovers of the chocolate mixture ;)
Unfortunatly, I don't have any pictures of the final cake because I completely forgot to take one! But here is the picture from Marmiton:
What to do with half of a pumpkin?
In my previous post, I mentioned that pumpkins were in season (well, at least on the stalls on the market place next to where I live!). So I bought half of an enormous pumpkin and of course I had to carve it, cut it and peel it! I used part of it in small chunks for my creamy mushroomy chicken casserole. The easiest was for me to first scoop out the stringy insides and seeds, then cut the pumpkin into medium chunks and to peel each chunk. The outer skin is so though, I think it is too difficult to peel everything at once.
With the other part of half of my pumpkin (which results to a quarter of a pumpkin!), I decided to go for a pumpkin pie without the crust, so this basically became a pumpkin flan! It was a bit flat but still very tasty! 
For the recipe, I more or less followed the guidelines from the video below, except I added a bit of ginger and vanilla essence and instead of the milk or cream, I added quark (cream cheese). You can find more details about the ingredients and how to carve a pumpkin here.
What about you? What is your favourite pumpkin recipe?
One of the Best Chocolate Cookie Recipes Ever Created
This chocolate chip cookie recipe handles the butter ingredient a little differently, you must melt it before adding to the mixture. The other main difference is the ratio of brown and white sugar.
Nectarine Upside Down Cake
I had a few ripe nectarines so I decided to bake this yummy cake for dessert.
I followed this recipe but took a shortcut: instead of melting the butter and the brown sugar in a pan, I greased a tin with the butter and sprinkled it with the brown sugar. I then layered the nectarines on top of it and finally added the batter. It was quicker and saved me on cleaning a pan!
My one year old son loved it and had a quarter of the cake! He loves his food so much!
Aubergine, tomato & Parmesan bake (Melanzane alla Parmigiana)
This dish is a typical Italian dish and is great to use aubergines
I found the recipe on the BBC Good Food website
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10033/aubergine-tomato-and-parmesan-bake-melanzane-alla-
folic acid. The colour of the skin is a result of the presence of
anthocyanins - compounds with antioxidant properties.
In Italy, aubergines are know as "la piccolo scarpetta" translated in
English as "the little shoe". They are also considered as the poor
man's meat because of their texture.
That is why I prepared this dish for my family as a main course and
everybody enjoyed it, including my 1 year old boy!
As they say in Italy, buon appetito tutti!
SHUT UP! healthier cupcakes that rock
BabyCakes (and i'm not talking about mine--though those are nice, too ;-) are a revelation! Like thousands of others in the blogosphere, I'm a cupcake person. (Okay, really, I'm a donut person... but cupcakes come in a close second.) We skipped a wedding cake and served cupcakes instead. I serve cupcakes at every birthday, mine and Mike's. And now at Isaac's birthdays, too. Well, at the one birthday party he's had so far.
I discovered BabyCakes last year while looking for 1st birthday party sweets. At a mere 12-months-old, Isaac had never had refined sugar, maple syrup, agave syrup, sucanat... none of it. I felt kinda bad serving a sugar-virgin icing slathered cakes, even small ones. On one hand, it seemed insane to introduce sweets at such a young age when he was so blissfully unaware and satisfied with his non-sweetened diet. On the other, I needed to relax--it was his birthday. What's the big deal? And restriction is much more likely to make him a sugar fiend than anything else. Plus, when I told Mike and my mom about the bakery's agave sweetened, soy-, dairy-, egg- and gluten-free treats, they laughed at me. This was my way of relaxing? Feeling a little embarrassed (was I going to be that mom?!), I gave in and got delicious cupcakes from a conventional bakery. Of course, they were a hit. And, of course, Isaac managed not to become the sugar addict I feared he would. Because we don't really eat a lot of sugar. Every once and a while wouldn't kill him.
So, it's been a year and it's cupcake time again. This year, though, I am not afraid or embarrassed. We've had a year of food experiences and now that he's an oh-so-mature eater, he's had his share of sometimes-snacks (i.e., sugary sweets). I tried making cupcakes the other day (the pineapple carrot ones mentioned in yesterday's post), but they came out only okay. A baker, I am not. (Michelle's the queen of that domain.) So I'm back to researching cupcakes to buy for Isaac's birthday play date on Sunday.
I've considered everything from these crazy tiny stuffed gems by Baked by Melissa to these bite size beauties by Kumquat Cupcakery. And, of course, there were the usual NYC suspects: Magnolia Bakery and Cupcake Cafe. I even considered a 1/2 homemade approach using mix from the infamous Los Angeles cupcake bakery Sprinkles (the mix is available for shipping). But I kept coming back to BabyCakes. I'd been shamed into old-fashioned, refined sugar bombs last year and needed to know if it was really worth it (cuz, you know, it might be!). So, this morning, I made the trek to NYC's lower east side for a cupcake taste test. I got 1 vanilla cake/lemon frosting, 1 vanilla cake/vanilla frosting, 1 chocolate cake/chocolate frosting, 1 pumpkin spice/vanilla frosting, and 1 brownie (because they use brownie batter to make cupcakes!). And, I gotta say, these cupcakes kick ass.
I wanted to like BabyCakes, so I tasted them with Mike, who I knew would be a harsher critic (especially when it came to chocolate). As it turns out, these are the genuine article--we both really liked them. The best were the brownie and pumpkin. The brownie was moist, chocolaty, and had just the barest hint of that natural-y aftertaste that often lingers after baked goods like these. It was hardly detectable--Mike agreed. The pumpkin spice was perfect. Also moist, but cakey, and full of flavor, with a nice nutty undertone. I'd NEVER in a million years guess that either flavor was an "alternative" baked good. We are definitely getting these for Isaac's birthday play date.
The vanilla and chocolate cupcakes were a little more obviously "natural", but still delicious. The vanilla cake was a little bit dense and dry/crumbly, at least compared to the brownie and pumpkin (though not unbearably so). It had a mellow vanilla flavor, which I prefer to the super-sweet ultra-vanilla that you typically get. I preferred the vanilla cake with lemon frosting to the vanilla cake with vanilla frosting--it tasted just like those yummy lemon Girl Scout cookies, but lemon was Mike's least favorite. He said that it started out strong (because he agrees that the icing is delicious), but finished in a way that he didn't like. His favorite of the chocolate and vanilla varieties was the vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting. He thought it was the most like a conventional cupcake. The chocolate cupcake was a little anemic compared to the brownie, but it was chocolaty enough for me... AND for Mike! The icing was yummy--started a little sour cream-y with a coconut undertone, and finished chocolate. It might not be strong enough for serious chocoholics.
BabyCakes delivers to the contiguous 48 states via FedEx, so you can get them no matter where you are. I think they are well worth it--and absolutely so if you or your child is a vegan or has food allergies. But more than anything, BabyCakes is proof that you can make a mean cupcake without a butt load of butter and sugar. (And speaking of butts, they have a great tag line: Saving your behind, one cupcake at a time!) This year, I will proudly buy and serve BabyCakes at our various birthday gatherings. And maybe next year, I'll make 'em myself with the help of the BabyCakes cookbook: Vegan, Gluten-Free, and (Mostly) Sugar-Free Recipes from New York's Most Talked-About Bakery.
In the meantime, for all you cupcake lovers, here is a short list of the many cupcake blogs ready for the reading:
Cupcake Blog
52 Cupcakes
Cupcakes Take the Cake
Cupcake Frenzy
Cupcake Project
I Heart Cuppy Cakes
the Kumquat Cupcakery blog
Cupcake Fetish
Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
the BabyCakes blog
-S
