Belgium-The Home of Chocolate!

Okay so first of all, Hello I am fat! And its all Belgium's fault! Ha! Seen as I took a trip to the home of chocolate, mussels, waffles, chips and of course beer! I thought I would make a little post about some of the great chocolatier's and other traditional Belgian food that I encountered on a trip to Brussels and Bruges.

Food Market-Including Donkey sausage, Deer pate  and  lots of cheese

Marzipan Easter Sweets 

Food Market-Markt, Wednesdays.

Belgian Chocolate Sea Shells 

Waffles and of course, Nutella 

The Belfry, A must see. 

How true...

Bruges Zot Beer

Owl Chocolates

Mussels-T'oud Kanthuys Restaurant 

Begijnof 

This trip was a Christmas present to my boyfriend and also we love travelling and were over due a holiday. If you are thinking of taking a weekend break, Bruges was a fantastic place to visit, plenty to see and do and very romantic. Also the Eurostar is so quick and cheap that it makes a holiday very doable. If you do go make sure you don't miss the fantastic food market in the Markt on Wednesday and go for a tour of De Halve Maan Brewery  (the only one still producing beer in Bruges) you get beer at the end! Also a good tip is too make sure you visit some of the chocolatiers that make the chocolate in shop, as there are 50 chocolate shops but only a few make the chocolate in store.

Whilst I was away I made a little purchase from a Chocolate tea-room we visited called The Old Chocolate House that boasts the best Hot Chocolate in Bruges... it really was amazing and massive! Made with real chocolate and in a huge mug/bowl that you assemble your self complete with afternoon tea-esque cakes and chocolates to go with it. In the Chocolatier shop in the tea-rooms you could buy your own mug and chocolate to make your own Belgian Hot Chocolate at home! So I thought I would make mine with an extra twist! I mixed my Belgian Chocolate with warmed milk and added a drop of peppermint extract that I drank in my huge bowl-mug!!

If you did want to make your own hot chocolate at home then try this great Laduree recipe in the absence of a Belgian at home kit, which I found on the fantastic The Extraordinary Art of Cake blog. Hope this will warm you up a bit in this cold weather! 

Cupcake challenge!

In a previous entry I mentioned that I was going to do something stupid and exciting? Well I have entered the Emerald Street Cupcake Challenge  that is in association with the Hummingbird Bakery. Mostly because it will be fun and a fantastic opportunity to make some sweet American style cupcakes with masses of sugary frosting! Plus its a great excuse to practise making my own recipes and trying out some ideas. Also I am terrible at decorating cakes, so maybe aiming for the competition will help so my cakes look pretty...and edible! Also the prizes are awesome... so its worth a try!

The basic rules to enter include baking a cupcake that fits with the Hummingbird style, to be an original recipe with frosting and that the ingredients be available. So I came up with a couple of ideas and although some of the entries are amazing and my kitchen in my miniature studio flat is too small for the stand mixer prize I am going to enter for fun anyway! I was going to make three and ask anyone who reads my blog to help decide which one, but I had no time to make all three last week and had to go with what I thought and entered the competition before it was too late. I may make the other cupcakes anyway soon as I have the ingredients and I really enjoyed making something that was my own recipe. This is what I made.

New York Cupcake

Makes 12 Cakes

Ingredients:

160g Golden Caster Sugar
160g Unsalted Butter
2 Eggs
1 Tspn Vanilla Extract
160g Self Raising Flour
1 Vanilla pod

Frosting:
100g Full Fat Philadelphia
50g Unsalted Butter
500g Icing Sugar
1 tspn Vanilla Extract

Plain Digestive biscuits crumbled to decorate. Or if being true to the American cheese cake then use Graham Crackers.

The idea behind these New York Cupcakes was to be the flavours of a New York cheese cake but in a dainty, fun cupcake form. I tried to make the recipe appeal to the Hummingbirds American style. I baked  them in white cases and applied the frosting using a palette knife to fit with the look of their cupcakes. They are a vanilla sponge with a cream cheese vanilla frosting and sprinkled with biscuit. This is the first bake that is my own and I hope you like it! And if anyone tries this recipe let me know how it went! Also if anyone else entered this competition then good luck!

Happy Valentines Day! Here's some weird...pink..jelly...stuff.

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentines Day and got all sorts of flowers, cards and goodies from their admirers! On Valentines day morning my very sweet but very skint boyfriend made me breakfast in bed and my scrambled eggs were .. PINK! Ya know, in the spirit of Valentines Day...but as were were eating them although they tasted the same, they kinda looked like brains! But its the thought that counts! And I loved my weird breakfast! Even more so after what I made for Tom (the boyfriend in question) didn't turn out so great and was equally weird and pink!!

I was set on making some lovely cupcakes but as I have been making loads lately I thought he would be fed up of cake! So I decided to make marshmallow! I found a simple recipe online and went ahead with it. It seemed to be going so well until I realised I didn't own an electric whisk... So after both my arms were about to fall off I thought I would try setting it anyway! ... It.Was.Not.Good.

Weird Jelly

So its a little jiggly and more like jelly but it tasted nice, and just as it was with the brain-eggs, its the thought that counts and Tom was happy! Ha! If you do want to make some actual marshmallow and not this disgusting mess then try this recipe from Best Recipes and if done correctly I am sure it works very well. Also if you want to try your hand at some more complicated and fancy marshmallow then try this recipe from Katie's Cakes. This ladies blog is amazing and I just love going through her archive of recipes, there's so many I want to try! And maybe I will give marshmallow another go and do it properly next time! Good Luck! And hope you all had a great Valentines Day and haven't given up cakes for lent! ; )

Baking in Pyjamas

Just a small post today, I know everyone's blogging Valentines Day treats and heart shaped, giant, pink cakes, but I haven't got to that yet, although I am hoping to make something sickly for St Val Day soon. But this evening I have been concentrating on economy bakes! I take great joy in using up stuff in my kitchen that just isn't getting eating by making something nice with it, this week, its porridge oats...

This recipe would be good for you if, like me you are always trying to find ways of making your lunch box a bit less boring! 

This is a recipe taken from another Marks and Spencer cookbook (I think I went in to get a cake tin and came out with a cake tin, loaf tin and two cookbooks...) called Baking Day. I adapted the recipe a little as I was out of demerara sugar so I used golden caster sugar and also added some sultanas, five a day and all that...

Oatmeal Cookies 

Ingredients

• 175g Butter
• 275g Demerara sugar
• 1 Egg
• 4 Tbsp Water
• 1 Tsp Vanilla extract
• 375g Rolled oats
• 140g Plain flour
• 1 Tsp Salt
• 1/2 Tsp Bicarbe

Makes 30 biscuits.

Method

• Preheat oven to 180c and grease two baking sheets. 
• Mix together butter and sugar until creamy. Beat in egg, vanilla and water until smooth.
• Mix together the flour, oats, salt and bicarbonate of soda and add to the mixture. Stir until combined.
• Place tablespoons of the mixture onto the trays spaced apart and bake for 25 minutes and cool on rack. 

Oatmeal  Cookies

Also if you are in London and looking for something to do this Valentines day then why not try a macaroon making workshop at Valentines at Boxpark or eat some cakes and jam at Muswell Hill Market.