lemon coconut cupcakes

It's cupcake season! Yes you heard me. Having a sore back which doesn't allow me sit for long periods of time = many many cupcakes.

This time it's lemon cupcakes topped with vanilla butter cream dipped in coconut. Yum.



Ingredients

1 large egg
3/4 cups sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
50 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoons lime or lemon peel
1/4 cup milk

Directions

Preheat oven to 185 degrees C and lightly butter or line 9 muffin cups with paper liners.

Separate the egg.
In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.
In another bowl, cream the butter. Add a little bit more than half the sugar, and beat until light and fluffy.
Add egg yolk, and mix through.
Add vanilla and lime peel, and mix.

Then, with the mixer on low, alternately add the dry ingredients and the milk, in three additions.

In another bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the rest of the sugar gradually, and keep beating until it's all dissolved in the egg whites.
Fold the egg whites carefully into the batter, do not over mix or the batter will deflate.

Evenly fill the muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18 -20 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely. With a knife or offset spatula, spread regular buttercream frosting on each cupcake, and then dip it into a bowl of dried coconut shavings.

Enjoy!

vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling and milk chocolate glaze

Yesterday was cupcake day, and I wanted to try out my first filled cupcake ever. I got the recipe here http://mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/ (see cupcake 29) , and tried to follow it but somehow it just didn't work out as expected...

The result was good, but no matter how hard I tried I just could not follow the instructions. The first and biggest problem was this:

The recipe asks for you to beat room temperature butter straight into the flour. As you can imagine, all this produced was a big mess. So, I ended up doing all kinds of crazy things to get the butter into the flour, and in the end I will say this: just put all the ingredients into the bowl at the same time and mix the heck out of them :) Problem solved.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
110 grams butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup raspberry jam

Directions
Preheat oven to 200 celsius
Sift the flour baking powder and salt into a big bowl. Add everything else and beat on high until everything is nicely mixed.
Grease your cupcake tin and fill the liners 1/3 full of batter.
Drop a small spoonful of jam into each cupcake.
Cover with batter.
Bake for 15 minutes or until browned on top and kitchen smells delicious :)

Frosting
50 grams of butter, melted
3 tbsp cocoa
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk

Directions
Mix the cocoa and sugar in a bowl.
Pour over the melted butter and remaining ingredients.
Beat on low until well mixed.
Dip cupcake into the glaze and top with sprinkles.
Enjoy!

pumpkin muffins

I made these muffins for Dalila's going away party, and they were such a hit that I decided to make them again last week and post them to Robbie in Barcelona! Surprisingly he said they were still delicious after spending 5 days in the post, and were mostly crumbs by the time he got them :)

I tried for the first time to make some decent photos of the cooking process, and realised how hard this actually is. I'll be definitely be working on my food photography skills... Anyway this recipe is fantastic, so I thought I would post it, bad photos and all. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Muffins
(This is half of the original recipe, it made about 10 small muffins)


Ingredients
3/4 cups all-purpose flour (half of which is whole wheat if desired)
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1/6 cup vegetable oil

1 large egg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
½ cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts plus some for decoration

Directions
Preheat oven to 185 c. Grease your muffin tins with butter.
In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and spices.

In a larger bowl, whisk pumpkin puree, oil, eggs and sugar until smooth.
Using a spatula, fold in the flour mixture until just combined, making sure to not over-mix the batter. Fold in walnuts.
Add the batter to the greased/floured muffin tins, decorate each one with a walnut, and place in oven. Bake for 15 minutes or until tops are brown, they smell good, and a stick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

the lesson of the moth

"the lesson of the moth," by Don Marquis.

the lesson of the moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself


-archy



the story goes, that Don Marquis arrived home one evening and found a cockroach jumping on the keys of his typewriter. the product of this interesting achievement was the poem, written by archy the cockroach. this fact explains the poem´s lack of caps. it does not however, explain mine.

De Kas greenhouse

I just realized that my photo links are broken. The only thing that's really safe is text. So from now on I'll stick to just that: text.

Last night we went for dinner to the De Kas greenhouse restaurant in Amsterdam. And this is what I could like to dedicate this post to.

The place is basically a giant greenhouse. You sit inside and can look out into the gardens and sky through the many glass panes that encase you. They grow all their own organic vegetables and herbs either on the grounds, or in a small piece of land that they have 15 minutes outside of Amsterdam.

There is no menu. Every day the chef prepares a 5 course set menu based on what is fresh from the garden. I like this. A lot. Anything that reduces the amount of decisions I have to make, in any given situation, is a very good thing.

The only thing the waiter asked was if there is anything in particular any one of us didn't want to eat, and I said that I don't eat meat. He then proceeded to say "very well, for everyone the main dish will be lamb and for you it will be fish". Last time I checked fish IS meat, mate. He saved himself being talked down to though because I am actually a hypocritical vegetarian, and do eat fish. (Fish don't have dreams.)

The first course was a fresh salad served in a rounded sort of whiskey glass. I'll just say now that the presentation for each of the dishes was wonderful and artistic. The food would always be perfectly arranged on the plate and somehow (edible) flowers were included which added a very special touch.

Back to the salad. It was my faveourite part of the meal I think. It was tomato balsamic compote on top of caramelized onions and under fresh leaves and flowers of some sort. It tasted like tomato ice cream. Icy, very refreshing, an absolutely unexpected.

Next we had a dish of broccoli cooked al dente covered in thinly sliced almonds and oil dressing. And after that some green beans with seafood and creme fraiche dressing. Both dishes were very flavourful with hints of fresh herbs. Yum!

The main course for me was poached white fish, zeewolf, and was absolutely delicious. Alongside the fish was a slice of grilled polenta under a yellow zucchini, a quarter of a cabbage, and a red and white beetroot salad. To bring the whole dish together a light white sauce was the perfect touch.

The others had the same as me, except that they had lamb which judging by how much relish they took to eating it was delicious, and their zucchini was wrapped in Serrano ham.

For desert we were given a puff pastry nest filled with thick vanilla sauce topped with strawberries and gooseberries next to smooth violet sorbet ice cream. This light desert was just right and very fitting to the hot summers day we had. I can still remember the taste of the vanilla and the crunchiness of the pastry, wonderful.

After dinner we stepped outside to catch a bus, and found ourselves in our first "tropical" rainstorm of the year and got completely soaking wet in our fancy dinner wear. I can recommend this to anyone :)

the anti-flu episode in Amsterdam

I don't understand why it's so hard to find medicine, of ANY kind, in Holland. I mean seriously, they seem to go out of their way to make it very easy for you to buy commodities such as weed, magic mushrooms of all sizes colours and flavours, you can even get peyote over the counter. But a simple anti-flu fizzy tablet drink? Forget about it.

I just walked in the blistering cold, to the biggest supermarket, naively thinking that I may find some kind of anti-flu thing or maybe even a Panadol. Think again amy. I inspected every single thing on the shelf that might have slightly resembled what I was looking for, but they have absolutely no type of medicine.

Ok fine so the supermarket is weird. But so how the heck am I supposed to find some simple medicine at 10 pm? The only other thing open was the night shop of the petrol station. Ok so feeling very confident for some reason I decided to try it.

After asking the man working there if he spoke English, given his affirmative reply, I proceeded to explain that I was looking for an anti-flu medicine. A what? He looked at me as though I was asking him if he would like to pick my nose. You know... something you take when you feel a cold coming on? A high power mix of honey lemon pain killers and who knows what else. A freaking anti-flu tablet damnit! No, there doesn't exist any kind of medicine for flu. What! Yes there is! And he said: Yeah there is.. but it doesn't work anyway. Don't you know that research has shown that the best thing for a flu is just a little bit of water and salt? And sleeping.

Oh. Man.

haiku: this winter's day

ice on the water
breaking glass floating beauty
unsuspecting bird