Biscuit's House

Del Rey

Last Friday, I spent the day in Antwerp. Spring has finally sprung, the day was fresh, sunny and warm but not too hot, with this "new" feeling that you get at the beginning of spring. I don't have any memories of having seen Antwerp under the sun until now, and I noticed things I had never noticed before, like the zoo next to the train station, and also saw the new pagoda entrance of Antwerp's Chinatown. Speaking of the train station, it is beautiful inside and out, and I so wish I had been there to see the fabulous Sound of music flash mob that took place last year.

On the way back to the station, we made a stop at the confectioner's, Del Rey.

 

I went a little overboard in this pretty shop and bought a box of cookies, two "containers" of chocolate for the people in my team who had stayed at the office, a chocolate egg for Puni and a jar of the famous speculoos taste. The chocolate fish is an extra in this photo, it's not from Del Rey but from the local pastry shop-cum confectioner's-cum tearoom.

 

The cookie box was too pretty for me to resist, and of course, I couldn't buy just an empty box, right?

 

I'm curious about the speculoos paste, but I haven't tasted it yet. I've been too busy sampling the cookies. The box is not empty yet but I'm working on it. The diet will wait another week...

Just goodies

Made a detour by the Champs-Elysées on the way home from work.

A bit the worse for wear after a trip on the subway but still good...   

Fairy buns

I had never really thought about these cakes until we came across a recipe in one of Puni's books, but now that we've tried them I can see they must be very popular as I've seen them often on the web. Well they should be, they are really yummy!

Don't know why all the really fun girl books about fairies and princesses, with cute illustrations and lots of pop-ups and little moving gimmicks, seem to be translated from the English.

When I read the book to Puni in bed one evening, of course as we came to the recipe she immediately asked to try it. I admit I was wary about using a recipe from a children's book that is not even a cookbook, but they turned out delicious and Puni had fun decorating them. There was no food dye in the house so the glaze was just confectioner's sugar and water (didn't want to overpower the delicate vanilla aroma with lemon juice) but today we went to the supermarket and I stocked up on dyes and cake decorating stuff for next time (oh, my waistline). 

A few weeks ago I had bought these paper cups and had been planning to use them as molds to bake the cakes, but as I opened the package I noticed it said "do not put in the oven". Grrrr. In the end it was just as well since we managed to unearth long unused cute heart molds. 

Great taste!, says the chocolate-moustached wonder.

Daily bread and nightmares

For Christmas I got a bread machine.

I had one years ago in Japan, but never made anything else than basic bread with it, and didn't bring it to France (gave it to my SIL when we moved). While casting around in my head for something to ask for Christmas (not so easy because I'm rather over-indulgent with myself and when I want something, I buy it right away) I thought, why not a bread machine. Not very good for the waistline, but what the heck, you only live once, and fresh bread is so good.

By the way, it was not so easy to get rid of most of the stuff we had in the house when we moved from Japan to France. We were living in an outrageously big house, just the 3 of us, where a Japanese family of 6 could have fitted easily. And as an expat I didn't even pay the rent. Really decadent. Anyway, vacuum has a way to fill itself, and when it was time to move, there was a lot of work sorting, selling, giving away or throwing away, all the stuff in the house. We didn't bring back any furniture, just clothes, some of the books, our computers, my dolls and sewing-machine and baby stuff (Puni was 5 months old then). We sold most of the furniture and books for a song to  second-hand shops. We threw away what we couldn't sell or give to people. And even now several years after this move, I have a recurring nightmare : it's time to move overseas, the plane is tonight, we must go to the airport, but we haven't had time to empty the house completely, there's still furniture and stuff remaining, what to do, what to do? Not to mention the recurring airport nightmare (I think it must be because of missing a plane from Tokyo to Paris once, when coming back for the first time after studying in Japan for 2 years, it must have been my unconscious self at work there as I didn't want to go home), where I arrive late and go up and down staircases and escalators and down corridors and can't find the boarding gate and there's no time left... No wonder some days I'm already exhausted when I wake up! 

Well, that was quite a digression. Back to bread. The recipe book that came with the machine was really not good, so I went to see what was available on Amazon and based on the reviews got this book, which is much better :

So far I made, from the machine's recipe book :

- a tomato and basil bread, edible, but really nothing to write home about

- a nut and raisin bread, totally inedible. The recipe called for 2 teaspoons of grated nutmeg and while that seemed a lot, I'm one of those people who always stick to the recipe, labouring under the delusion that People Who Write Books Know What They Are Talking About. Well, the result was a disaster, and the unpleasant taste of too much nutmeg stayed with me for far too long. At this point I scrapped the manufacturer's recipe book.

And from the Amazon book :

- a brioche flavored with orange flower water and orange rind, nice

- a brioche made from a poolish, pictured below, nice also.

Next I'm going to try polenta bread.

A day on the sofa, with a good book, and at regular intervals large mugs of tea and slices of fresh brioche with or without jam = bliss.

It's that time of year again

A classic galette à la frangipane from my favorite cake shop. We started one day later than last year, so this year's twelfth day cake season should have less impact on our waistline, right? 

Mmmhh, a pumpkin-shaped fève...maybe a remnant from last Halloween!

Sacher

  After the half-baked marble cake and the leaning brownies, I decided to live dangerously and try another recipe from my Kitchenaid book. And, bingo! Which goes to show that one should never give up.

I don't think it's a real Sacher torte as I seem to remember there should be a layer of apricot jam inside the cake. But as Puni isn't fond of apricot jam, I decided to stick to the Kitchenaid recipe and spread jam only on the top and sides.

Puni "helped" me which means it took quite a long time (she spent a long while "smoothing" the flour in its glass bowl) but the result is good, moist, enhanced with the apricot flavor, encased in silky chocolate icing.

Talking of chocolate, a few months ago, I found a really good chocolate book in, of all places, a highway gas station shop.

Edit : I just found out that this book exists in English as well, it's called "The chocolate bible". I can't recommend it strongly enough, it reads just like a novel!

 

It includes everything about the culture of cocoa, chocolate production and its history, as well as the history of chocolate cakes and confections...

 

lots of recipes and technical instructions concerning chocolate decorations, baking...

 

how to make chocolate cookies and truffles and lots of other things. it was originally published in German, so maybe an English version exists as well. One day maybe I'll have the courage to try one of the recipes...

   

Puni choc and a winner

For Puni's birthday party I had bought a small chocolate fondue set, to amuse and occupy the girls; it didn't have much success - after the candles had been blown and the cake cut and eaten, they were more interested in playing with the little play-doh sets I had used as table favors, than in dipping fruit and cake into molten chocolate. The fondue apparatus came with a set of plastic molds, so in order to get some mileage out of it, I decided to try and make some of the various shapes with Puni.

I did the stars and Puni did the other shapes...at first I was trying to clean the spilled chocolate between the hollows but I soon gave up.

After a night in the fridge the shapes came out very easily and have a very shiny surface.

Texture and taste are Puni-approved!

And the MCI winner is...Hanna! Please e-mail your address to biscuitbear at yahoo dot com! 

Banana and bacon

I think I have strep throat and I'm still feeling very comatose. I have to go to Italy next Wednesday for work and I only hope I'll feel better by then.

Today most of my time was spent sleeping and reading. Last week-end had not been so enjoyable on the reading front, because I had run out of new books and was reading a book that I had bought a while ago, read about a third of, peeked at the end and laid aside when a more exciting read came along. This makes the book lose a lot of its appeal and not such a pleasure to read to the end anymore even if it's a good book (and it was, a romanced biography of Empress Cixi). So this week I thought it was high time to renew the inventory and ordered several books from Amazon, which arrived yesterday.

Faced with the pleasurable problem of choosing which one to begin with, I selected Anthony Trollope's Vicar of Bullhampton. Just my kind of book. It's funny because while looking for the link on the American Amazon, I rapidly glanced over the reader reviews and noticed this sentence : "The title of the book might lead you to refrain, since it implies that the story is about a country vicar". In my case, on the contrary, this assumption makes me jump on the book! English literature of the late 18th and 19th century is my favorite (along with English mysteries) and I particularly like Trollope.

I still found a little bit of strength to bake with Puni. Earlier this week I had received this book (cake in the French sense of the term meaning loaf). I figured that I would have better success with a French cookbook and all the world and their cousin own this one. I wasn't surprised to see a sticker on the cover gushing "already over a million copies sold!", everyone at work seems to have it. The other day I looked through it with Puni to select this week-end's recipe, and managed to convince her that we woudn't try the fruit paste cake this time. I wanted something unusual though so we settled on a bacon and banana loaf.

Here's the mixture that we added to the batter : bacon cut in small bits and fried in the pan, sliced banana, peanuts and ginger. There was also grated emmental that was added separately.

Puni found that this recipe was taking a long time (she wasn't involved in the frying stage of course) and occupied herself by making faces in the mixer's bowl.

The loaf ended up lower than expected ; maybe I didn't use the right kind of baking powder. But it's not bad and has hubby's seal of approval. I had strong doubts about the compatibility of banana and bacon, but they don't clash at all. I can't even tell there is banana in there, just some sweetness. It's better warm than cold though.

This evening I will try to finish one of my WIP's so that I can take photos tomorrow. The other one will take some more weeks to be finished it seems.

The Leaning Brownie

Why is it that all my cooking attempts end up in failure? After the Undercooked Giant Marble Cake and the Tomato-less Olive & Tomato loaf, meet the Leaning Brownie of Pisa.

We used flour and baking powder, sugar, dark and white chocolate, eggs, butter and chopped hazelnuts, and scrupulously followed the recipe. Even bought a new square baking tin for the occasion. 

The result : a cake that was high on the perimeter and low in the center, crumbled out of the mold, stuck to the knife and doesn't remotely look like the stuff brownies are made of. Taste was fine but appearance gets an E minus. If we go on like this Puni will never be a pâtissière.

I guess I should give up the Kitchenaid book and its translated American recipes and buy French books such as this one.

Tomato woe

So last week-end I decided to make the olive and tomato loaf from the MCI kitchen issue. By the way here we call these "cakes" whether sweet or savory ; I mean we use the English word. Probably it comes from the world-famous English fruitcake which has this shape.

Anyway, the recipe called for "tomates confites" (candied tomatoes?) which I had never heard of. I had put this on the shopping list but at 8 pm on Saturday it was becoming clear that they wouldn't be forthcoming. Hubby had been napping all afternoon, I went to check on him, he said he had a headache and wouldn't go foodshopping. Now I drive only with a gun held to my head, so I walked to the little shop downtown and found of course only fresh tomatoes. I dimly remembered oven-dried tomatoes from an old issue of MSL and thought that would probably do just as well.

I went to the MS site and sure enough, found the instructions. Slice, season and dry at 250°F for 1.5 to 4 hours, I can manage that (I thought). After an hour and a half the tomato slices were shriveled but still a but juicy so I went to the living-room to knit and watch a DVD and left them for a while longer. After 20 more minutes, there was a nice tomato smell permeating the house, which reminded me of their existence, so I sent Puni to check on their appearance. She came back running to say they were black and she thought they were burning and I should go see.

I didn't really believe her but I put down my knitting and went to check ; to my horror the tomatoes were really mostly black and couldn't be salvaged. Too late of course to buy more ; I threw a tantrum and Puni tried to console me by drawing me a nice fish and lending me one of her stuffed animals. Why do these disasters always happen to me?

So I made an olive and ham loaf. Exactly the same except that I replaced the tomatoes by the same weight of ham.

Flour, sugar, baking powder, eggs, olive oil, ham, olives, milk, salt, pepper, and thyme (every time I think of the word thyme in English I have these ethereal voices in my head singing parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme...).

Puni was happy because there were many ingredients to mix. And yes, we spent Sunday in our pajamas.

The loaf was OK but not earth-shattering. Next week-end, maybe brownies.

When she was a bit smaller Puni wanted to be a dancer-singer when she grows up. Now she wants to work at the factory like mommy (she has no idea what I actually do, but to her a stay-at-home dad and mom working at the factory are the standard). But last week-end she started to say she wants to be a pâtissière and that she wants to bake something for practice every week-end until high school - what a program! She said if I live in the same town where she has her pâtisserie I can come and she'll let me choose the best cakes for myself - I told her I'll come even if I live in a different town.

Tomorrow all day long I have a training session on crisis management - starting at 8 am, yay - maybe they'll teach me what to do when the tomatoes burn.