Virtual Cookie Exchange

Mari of A Bookworm with a View is organising a Virtual Cookie Exchange. A confession: I’m a cookie exchange virgin: I’ve never baked cookies and then given them away to friends or family. I’ve baked cookies and shared them with others, or brought some along to a family visit or a book group meeting, but I’ve never baked cookies with the express goal of gifting them.

The whole cookie exchange thing is new to me. In fact, I only found out last Christmas, my first Christmas as a blogger, that there is this thing in the US where people bake amazing amounts of cookies for and with each other. What a great tradition. (Secretly, I do wonder, if everyone is baking so many cookies, isn’t there going to be a incredible surplus of cookies? I guess the answer is that it looks like everyone is baking cookies, but in reality it’s only a few people that can find the time. Am I right?).

So, on to my favorite recipe that my book group usually welcomes with “Yay, Judith made those peanut butter cookies again!” Yes, they are delicious!

I got the recipe from Tes of Tes at Home who has a blog full of recipes, mainly Thai and Indian. I’ve made several of them, such as these peanut butter cookies. Here blog post about them is HERE.

Here is the recipe (i.e., taken from Tes’ blog):

Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients: (makes about 40 cookies)

1 1/2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup smooth peanut butter
75 gm butter- cut into tiny cubes
1 egg
1 1/4 cup white sugar

How to make:

Whisk butter and sugar until coarsely combined. Add eggs and beat well.
Add peanut butter and mix well. Sift in flour and baking soda. Gently stir until the ingredients form a sticky dough.
Refrigerate for 1 hour. Preheat the oven at 180 degree C (350 F).
Scoop the dough in a greased baking tray and press it down with a fork. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Go ahead and indulge! These are super-easy to make, and if you like peanuts or peanut butter, you will love these.

Now go to Mari’s Virtual Cookie Exchange and discover many more great cookie recipes. Add your own favorite, too.

So, what cookies are you baking for Christmas?

Weekend Cooking: Plum Flan and a Diet

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

The Farm and the Flan

This week I finally made it to the nearby farm that sells home-grown produce. I’d been there before, but it must have been a year or so ago. It’s only a 30 minute cycle ride away from our house, so I can’t really say why I don’t go more often.

I do love going there as it’s such a rustic place with a dog greeting you as you arrive, and a ginger cat curled up on the drive. And they have a good selection of foods on display in their barn. Since it’s apple and pear season, they had several crates full of the fruits, and they even had a choice of varieties of apples.

I came away with: pears, red plums, strawberries, beetroot, cream cheese and a bottle of apple/pear juice.

I had already a use in mind for the plums: the Each Peach Pear Plum Flan from Kirsten at Peace, Love and Muesli. When I saw the recipe on her blog, I knew I wanted to make it with the first bag of pears I got my hands on. So this week I made it (with just the plums).

Now, the black on top isn’t really black, it’s caramelized brown caster sugar. A bit less of it would have done just fine, but as it was, the flan was really, really good.

I mean: really good!

And the only ingredient I don’t normally have in the larder were the plums. Sometimes, I buy a food (like the plums in this case), then at home I look up a recipe and find that I need to buy several other food items before I can make it. Not this time. Very easy and very tasty. Here’s the recipe.

A Diet

Flans and diets obviously don’t really go together, although they can do. As I decided a few pounds fewer would look really nice on my figure I looked for a diet that I could keep to without too much trouble. So I found this diet that isn’t really a diet, but a way of keeping track of the calories you consume and the exercise you take.

It knows lots of foods and their calorific value already (users can enter new items themselves) and I was happily surprised to see that the Dutch dessert I had eaten as well as the British cereal were already in the system (the exact brands that I used). It had loads of American foodstuffs as well (I think it’s originally American).

It works like this: at the very start of your new diet plan, you do tell it how much weight you want to lose and it suggests a maximum number of calories per day. In my case, it’s 1550, so that allows for some decent meals. You fill out for each meal what you ate and this is taken off your allowance for that day. The only thing you have to worry about is that you don’t consume more than your allowance.

And when you do some exercise, the calories you burn are added to your daily allowance! I love that kind of diet because it allows you to eat whatever you like, as long as you don’t overdo it.

Those diets where you can’t eat chocolate? I can do them until my chocolate craving gets out of hand and I eat a month’s worth of chocolates.

With this new diet, I can go on a long cycle ride and then have my cake and ate it. Or my chocolate, or indeed a plum flan.

The programme is called My Fitness Pal, it’s online (there’s also a mobile version) and it’s free. I’m Leeswammes, if you would like to join and link up with me. Please do! I need some support.

Weekend Cooking: Rice Cookies

Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Yesterday I accidentally put a whole pack of rice in a pan, although I didn’t need that much for our evening meal. So, I decided to cook it anyway, and keep some for today and make some rice cookies.

I’ve never made them before but I knew they “existed”, so I looked up the recipe and found one (in Dutch) on smulweb.nl.  I would almost call them small pancakes. But whatever they’re called, they are very nice, especially with a drizzle of golden syrup on top. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

50 grams of raisins

200 grams cooked rice

2-3 tablespoons of milk

2 eggs (beaten lightly)

50 grams of plain flour

2 tablespoons white caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder

4 tabelspoons sun flower oil

golden syrup or powder sugar

Method

Let the raisins soak for about 2-3 minutes in hot water and pat them dry with a clean tea towel.

Mix the rice with the milk, eggs, raisins, flour, sugar and cinnamon powder.

Heat a tablespoon full of oil in a frying pan and spoon three heaps of the rice mix into the pan.

Bake the cookies for about 5-7 minutes until they are golden brown, turning them over once. My pan is rather large and I was able to bake them in fours.

Eat as they are or drip some syrup on them or add some powdered sugar before eating.

This is also my entry for the Whip Up Something New Challenge in which we are asked to try a recipe that we have not made before.

Potato Quiche

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Potato Quiche with Broccoli

From the first time we made this, it was a favorite with the children. It’s easy to make and delicious!

The recipe I’ve got comes from a supermarket magazine (AH Allerhande 12, 2009). We make it with vegetarian bacon strands rather than real bacon, so substitute if you prefer real.

What you need:

• 5 big-ish potatoes, that stay firm when cooked
• 6 slices of puff pastry from the freezer. Ours are about 15 x 15 cm or 6 x 6 inches. Just use enough puff pastry to line a 24 cm / 10 inch oven dish.
• 125 gram / 4.5 ounces of bacon or vegetarian bacon
• 3 eggs
• 125 milliliters / 0.5 cup of double cream (dutch: slagroom)
• 125 gram / 4.5 ounces of chives (optional, dried or fresh)
• 100 grams / 3.5 ounces of mature cheese

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 220 C / 430 F.
2. Peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices. Cook them for about 5 minutes in salted water. Drain and let cool down.
3. Cover the quiche dish with the puff pastry slices. Cover the pastry with aluminum foil and put dried beans, lentils or baking beads on top. Put this in the centre of the oven for 8 minutes.
   
   

   Preparing oven dish

4. Meanwhile fry the (vegetarian) bacon for 5 minutes until crisp.
5. Take the quiche dish out of the oven, remove the beans and foil, and bake for another 4 minutes. Then take out of the oven again and distribute the potato slices over the dish.
6. In a bowl, mix the eggs, cream and chives. Pour half of the mix over the potato slices, then add the bacon followed by the rest of the egg and cream mix.
7. Add the grated cheese and bake in the centre of the oven for about 20 minutes.

The result looks like this:

Quiche

You can prepare the quiche one day in advance. Just warm up the finished product, covered with aluminum foil for 20 minutes at 200 C / 400F.

Enjoy!

Spicy Oven Potatoes

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

I’m not a great cook. I have very few cooking skills, limited experience (because I cook the same things all the time) and a rather small kitchen. Still, I like to eat nice things. And sometimes I even make them myself!

Here’s a very, very, easy recipe for spicy oven-fried potatoes that is very popular with NumberOneSon. Doesn’t take a minute to make, and is just delicious.

For two people, use one large sweet potato, about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and about 1 tablespoon of Thai curry paste. I used red curry paste, but green will do just as well, just be careful, green is more spicy!

Pour the olive oil in a bowl with the curry paste and mix with a spoon.

Peel the potato.

Cut the potato in half, then stand up each part on the side that you cut, and cut from top to bottom to get two parts, cut again to make four, then cut each piece into two or three pieces, so you get some long, triangular wedges.

Put the potato wedges in the bowl and mix thoroughly with a spoon, so that each potato wedge is covered with some of the mixture.

Now take an oven tray and cover with aluminium foil. Place the wedges on the foil in such a way that they are not on top of each other.

Bake for some time on about 200 Celsius/ 400F/ Gas 6. I’m not saying how long, because it depends on what you like. After about 20-30 minutes, they will be soft and a little bit burned (black) on the outer edges. Try one! Leave it longer if you like and they get drier and and tougher. But you may prefer that. So, try a wedge during baking to check how you like them.

ENJOY

Soup with a Difference (recipe)

Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Soto Ajam with Quorn

This soup is a bit different. It doesn’t simmer on the stove for a while. And no, it’s not a cold soup either! It’s a soup where you first prepare the ingredients and then you assemble it all when it’s time to eat.

It’s an Indonesian soup called Soto Ajam. In the restaurant at my previous job, an Indonesian cook would make this soup every now and then. It was popular: rumor would spread through the building in the morning: she’s making the soup! And, sweet as she is, she always made sure to have a vegetarian version as well¹.

This soup is made by adding together the following in a bowl (the amounts are for 4 people, so divide over four bowls):

- A boiled egg, in slices (the original recipe says half an egg per person, I’m happy to use one per person)

- Chicken filet (1 per person), in pieces, fried OR Quorn pieces, about 50 gr/2 oz per person, also fried.

- Vegetables, such as carrot, celery, leek, onion, bean sprouts: cut in small pieces and add 1 teaspoon of ginger powder. Then fry in a frying pan for about 5 minutes. Use about 300 gr/10 oz of vegetables for 4 people. I prefer to boil harder vegetables (carrot, celery) for a short while first, whereas bean sprouts, I only add at the very last minute to fry for about 1-2 minutes.

- Potatoes (about 250 gr/ 1 lbs for 4), diced, fried with 1 tablespoon kurkuma (curcumin) and some salt and pepper. I tend to boil the potatoes first, for a short while, to soften them.

- Then the only other thing you need is some stock, for instance vegetable stock made the lazy way (from a cube). Use about 750 ml/ 26 fl.oz. for 4 people. Bring this to the boil and add 1 teaspoon sambal and 2 tablespoons ketjap. If you can’t get sambal (it’s a chilli paste), use some chilli peppers or anything to make it spicy (but not curry). Ketjap is an Indonesian soy sauce. It’s quite sweet, but if you can’t get it, use a different soy sauce.

Add the stock to the bowl and you’re ready to eat. You can have this as a starter for dinner. Or maybe have some crusty bread with it and use it for your lunch – I can eat half the (4 persons) amount for lunch (and save the rest for the next day – in different containers).

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¹The recipe that you see here is not from her, it’s from a Dutch magazine called Lekker Leven.

A Fruit Crumble for Your Fading Fruit (recipe)

Weekend Cooking

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. It is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Fruit Crumble with custard

Bananas gone spotty? Apples gone wrinkly? Or you picked too many raspberries at the pick-your-self farm? Just make a quick crumble to be rid of them. Quick, and yummy too!

You can use just about any fruit that isn’t too soft. Don’t know about strawberries, but it works with apples, pears, bananas, raspberries, blackberries, fruit cocktail from a tin, and pineapple.

Time to make: less than 10 minutes. Time in the oven: about 30 minutes.

Recipe for 4 (and a bit leftover):

Grease an deep oven dish. Oh, and turn the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

Now, use 2 sorts of fruits to make it more interesting. What about 2 bananas, 2 or 3 apples, a layer of berries, or a tin of fruit cocktail¹? (Watch out with raspberries, they can be a bit tangy when mixed with fruits that are not so sweet.)

I used bananas and fruit cocktail because the bananas were turning spotty and fruit cocktail is nice and sweet.

Slice the bananas in slices of about 0.5 cm/ 1/5 inch. Put them in the oven dish and add the fruit cocktail, without the syrup. But add a little bit of syrup to make things more juicy if you like.

In a separate bowl, add together 50 gr/2 oz of butter or margarine, the same amount of brown sugar (or normal sugar) and double the amount of plain flour (i.e., 100 gr/4 oz). Rub these together (with your fingers) until you get a crumbly texture. Now add 25 gr/1 oz of dessicated coconut (flakes) and mix.

Add the crumble mixture to the fruit in the oven dish. Don’t stir! Make sure the crumble covers all of the fruit.

Put this in the oven for about 20-30 mins, until the topping is turning light brown.

This is what it looks like when it’s ready:

Fruit Crumble

That’s it.

Not!!!!

Now you need to sort out an accompaniment. Yes, you can eat the crumble as it is, nice and warm. But maybe you’d like to add something cool, for a great contrast. Think about ice cream, just a simple flavor like vanilla. Or maybe custard, but then cold. Yes, cold custard! We have something like that in the Netherlands, which you can buy in liter packs, and it’s called vla. You keep it in the fridge and it’s absolutely ideal with crumble. So try custard that you’ve left to cool in the fridge².

Enjoy this simple but delicious dessert! And if you make it, do let me know which fruits you used and what you had with your crumble: the ice cream? the custard? Or something else altogether?

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¹ They’re called fruit cocktail where I live. I mean tins with mixed fruit in syrup. Usually there are bits of pear, cherries, apples, grapes, peaches, etc., quite soft and sweet.

² If you insist on using warm custard, then I suggest you let the crumble cool down in the fridge for a while!