cookalcoholic

Wednesday 24th of march was my B-day!
And I had a little celebration of it yesterday with my father in law his girlfriend and some friends. I made a  delicious banana hazelnut cake. It was soft on the inside mmmmmm.
I think it will come at it best if the cake was lukewarm with two vanilla ice-cream scopes  mjamie!



Preparing the cake with bananas and nuts







The batter is ready





I sprinkled some sugar on the cake





mmmmm banana hazelnut cake  delicious






My son Miguel LOVED the cake




My hubby gave me 35 of my favorite white roses for my B-day.

After reading a blog ( http://creampuffsinvenice.ca/2007/11/) on the internet about the Dimpled Sugar Cake from Carole Walter I decided to try it too.



Dimpled sugar cake


In her book she explains to dimple the dough with your finger tops.  I used the back of a wooden spoon to make the dimples (I dusted the end of the spoon with a little bit of flour before dimpling)

The taste was  delicious but not WAUW. I would make this cake again but with a few adaptations.

A while ago I purchased the "Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More book " from Carole Walter on Amazon.com. I decided to buy this book after reading the blog of  Bakeorbreak --> http://www.bakeorbreak.com/2008/09/23/sour-cream-coffee-cake-with-chocolate-and-nuts/#more-287

Finely I had some spare time this morning and I made the chocolate chunk muffin from the book.
The muffins turned out GREAT! No too sweet and the chocolate chunk in the muffin was chunkie and guwie.

My boyfriend liked it a lot and so did Miguel.

                  
Out of the oven 

    
                                                           Making the muffins





mmmmmmm delicioso!



 

On the 27th of december we welcomed our second son Rafael Sebastiano in our lives. After 4 (painful) hours in labor he was born!
I'm now very busy with two kids. As soon as everything is settled i will post some new entry's on this blog.
Stay tuned!


Rafael Sebastiano

It's been a while!
I'm due in 4 weeks and most of the time I feel tired and no energy to bake something, not even diner hahahaha.

But it's St.Klaas time here in Holland! (more info:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas)

So I decided to try to make some pepernoten. There are many recipes on the internet. Just google "recipe pepernoten" or "recipe speculaas" en you can find a recipe.
You can make your own speculaasspices   :http://www.trifles.nl/2007/11/25/quest-for-the-best-speculaas/

The pepernoten were good! And we ate a few with some hot coco.


The douhg before making little balls



Miguel making little balls of pepernoten


They were too large in size but the taste was good.

Tomorrow is the last party (finely hahaha) of my son. I made a simple vanilla cupcake and decorated it with yellow icing, colored puffed rice and some candles.
I love the result! And the cakes taste very very good.



I bought a great cupcake book: Hello, cupcake!
I love the book, so many useful tips how to make simple decorations on your cupcakes.

The party was great, everybody had a great time. The food was very good so was the wine hahaha.
Miguel received a lot of presents and there is still another party next weekend.
Tomorrow we are going to make the school treats for Monday. We are making the sponge bob cookies!
Here are some random pictures of the party.



The presents



Table with food

My son Miguel will turn 3 years this Monday. So i decided to make cupcakes for his birthday-party's. He LOVES spongebob. I didn't want to make to much work of the cupcakes. I was tired and my back hurts terrible because of the pregnancy due in December.
I made chocolate cupcakes, yellow icing and selfmade spongebob cake toppers.


I will post some more pictures after the party!

Many thanks to Beverly for her custard cake recipe
I went to one of my favorite stores for a quick visit and I bought  Halloween cupcake pans.
I saw the custard recipe of Beverly's blog and i decided to try it out.

It was indeed very easy to make.
I was surprised that the batter didn't rise as much as I expectid. The taste was ok. But what I realy liked was the goewie custard pudding taste in the center. It was a  delicious surprise!
I will give this recipe a 7 out of 10.


The ingredients



A few seconds away to go into the oven


Done after 20 minutes


Cupcakes cooling down


I put an easy icing on the cupcakes

Thank you Beverly!!!


PS
not everybody can view the Blog of Beverly, so here is the recipe:

• Heat up 1.5cups milk and add 2 tbsp custard powder and 2 tbsp caster sugar
• Stir constantly until it thickens, then add 2tsp butter and 4tsp vanilla essence. Cool to room temperature
• Cream 250g softened butter with 0.5cup caster sugar until fluffy. Add 2 eggs, beat again.
• Sift in 1.5cup self-raising flower and 0.5cup custard powder
• Spread half of the cake batter into a pan
• Add custard
• Spread the remaining cake batter over the top.
• Bake at 180 celcius for 20mins (for mini pans) to 30mins (for larger pans)

This morning I was hungry for homemade bread.
I wanted to try "pan sera". This bread brings me special child memories. As a child we went almost every sunday to the beach. it was a 45 min to 1 hour drive to the westpoint of the island Curacao (Where I was born)
After a whole day swimming and playing on the beach with my brother and other kids it was time to drive back home.
On the way back my father always stopped by and old lady house who makes these flat breads. Most of the time around 16.00 pm the breads were out of this typical old oven ( http://members.lycos.nl/brondershoekje/hpbimg/de%20oven.jpg)

mmmmmm so delicous. This bread doesn't rise much. The taste of it is so tipical I can not describe it.
So I tried to make some bread in my modern oven :-)
Ofcourse it didn't taste like from the old lady but I liked the taste. We ate the bread with good Gouda cheese.



The dough after rising


The pan sera before going in to the oven


Out of the oven