My kids don’t need any prodding when it comes to eating fruit. They LOVE it! But when I made up these little apple cars after school yesterday, they went absolutely crazy for them. After gobbling them up, they insisted they make their own… so it ended up being a fun activity which took up a large portion of the afternoon. My kids were so impressed when they realised the cars actually go — the wheels (grapes) actually turn! Fun!

(This was another idea I spotted on Pinterest. I’m telling you — that site is soooo great!)

x Courtney

I posted this photo on Instagram a few weeks ago… and then got some requests to share the recipe. So here it is! These fluffy ricotta pancakes are sooooo yummy. We make them nearly every weekend these days… (*Update! The recipe comes from Bill Granger’s restaurant in Sydney where apparently his ricotta hotcakes are more famous than the Australian sunshine itself!)

Ricotta Pancakes with Honey Butter:

• 1 1/3 cups of ricotta
• 3/4 cup of milk
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 50 g of butter

Place ricotta, milk and egg yolks in a mixing bowl and mix to combine. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a separate bowl and then add to the ricotta mixture and mix until just combined.  Place egg whites in a clean dry bowl and beat until stiff peaks form (usually around 3-5 minutes). Fold egg whites through the batter in two batches with a large metal spoon. Make pancakes! Top the pancakes with sliced banana and honeybutter (honey and butter mixed together to form a syrupy-like butter). Sprinkle icing sugar on top… for a little bit of extra yum!

xxx Esther

Here’s the recipe:

• 150 g (2/3 cup) butter
• 135 g (3/4 cup) brown sugar
• 10 g (2 teaspoons) ’speculaas spices’ (if you can’t buy them ready-made see recipe below)
• 250 g (1 1/4 cup) self raising flour
• a pinch of salt
• 4 tbsp milk

For the speculaas spices, mix:

• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground aniseed
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat oven to 160 °C (320 °F). Cut cold butter in little chunks and knead through sugar, speculaas spices, salt and self raising flour. Add the milk bit by bit until the dough is smooth and supple. Start making little balls (a bit smaller than a marble). Your kids can help with this: if you give them little pieces of the dough, they will love making the little balls! Line the little balls up on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and flatten them slightly with your thumb (I make two batches). Bake for about 15 minutes until light brown.

Bon appetit!

xxx Esther

PS If you want to read more on Sinterklaas, please read this post I wrote a few years ago!

Now, no-one seems to be able to explain to me exactly how to make this pumpkin pie, so I have come up with my own version. Basically this pie is as Italian as Deep Pan Pizza, but if I may say so myself, it does taste delicious. I think the biggest difference is the dough, as I find French Puff Pastry too buttery for this dish and I cannot figure out how the Italians make their pastry (I think it is olive oil based and flakey, if anyone has any suggestions, please do let me know). So I am using normal short crust pastry for this pie, which is delicious too!

Here is the recipe:

• 1 kg of Pumpkin
• 2 eggs
• 125 g of ricotta cheese
• 3 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese
• 1 cup of boiled Arborio rice
• 1 onion/ 2 cloves of garlic
• salt and pepper to taste.

For the crust:

• 200 g of flour
• 100 g of butter
• cold water
• salt

First make the pie crust by mixing together the flour and the butter with a bit of salt until you have crumbs. Add enough water for the mixture to turn into a ball and put it in the fridge to rest for 1 hour. Heat up the oven to 200°C. Peel and cube the pumpkin and put it in a roasting tin, together with an onion and 2 cloves of garlic. Roast until soft. Put the roasted pumpkin into a sieve and let all the excess water drain. Now mix together the eggs, the ricotta and the pumpkin in a food processor until almost smooth. Add it the rice and add salt and pepper to taste. The pie filling is ready!

Roll out the pie crust and line a 24 cm pie tin. Pour in the filling and bake for 40 mins.

We eat this pie with a simple great salad for lunch! You can download the recipe here.

Pumpkin pie is not a traditional dish here in the Netherlands — neither is carrot cake or zucchini bread or the like. I think baking with vegetables was simply not in our system before! Thankfully with all of this internationalism going on you will now find more than just apple pie in Amsterdam (although, I have to say, there’s nothing wrong with a good piece of traditional Dutch apple pie). I personally love pumpkin pie, and since the canned pumpkin puree is not available here I have to create the whole thing from scratch. Which might, arguably, be even better.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my favourite pumpkin pie recipe here. It sounds more complex than it really is, so do give it a try and let me know what you think… I think it’s really, really good!

Crust:

Note: I use a 30cm (14″) porcelain quiche pan because I don’t have a traditional pie pan, and when I double the below amounts I have enough for three crusts. I always freeze two batches for later use.

Mix water, egg and vinegar together until well blended. Cube cold butter into a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl combine flour and salt. Add some flour mixture to the butter bowl and mush together with your hands, add the water, egg and vinegar mixture. Continue to add the flour mix until well combined. Lightly flour your working surface, roll out crust and insert in your buttered pie pan. I always pierce the dough with a fork at this point, no clue why really.
Cover the bottom with parchment paper and insert pie weights (or dry beans) and par bake for about 15 to 20 minutes on 175°C / 350°F.

Filling:

Note: I prepare my own pumpkin puree: cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, roast in oven on 175°C / 350°F for half an hour, peel and puree. I tend to make loads and freeze left-overs in batches of 450 g together with the crust dough for later easy-to-make pies!

Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices, and flour in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water, and vanilla; mix well. Pour into par-baked crust in pie pan. Bake at 200°C / 400°F for 15 minutes; reduce heat to 175°C / 350°F and bake about 35 minutes longer, or until center is set.

Bon appétit!

xxx Esther

I am a huge fan of homemade muesli. I make tray loads of muesli every few weeks as it’s super popular in my house — the kids love it with greek yoghurt, but I like mine with milk.  The best thing about muesli is it’s really filling, so you don’t get hungry again until lunchtime. Also, you can add what you want to it and you know exactly what you are eating, there is no hidden sugar in homemade muesli!  I’m not a fan of raisins but love chopped up apricots and I love big chunks of toasted almonds. Yummy! (Can you tell I really love muesli?!)

This is how I make it but you can take out and add as you please.  Just keep a close eye on it when you are baking it so it doesn’t burn.

• 500g oats
• half cup ground linseeds
• half cup seseme seeds
• half cup sunflower seeds
• half cup chopped almonds

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Then melt half a cup of honey and mix it with half a cup of olive oil — mix through the dry ingredients.  Cover a shallow oven tray with baking paper and spread out the mixture.  Bake it at 150 degrees for about 15 – 20 minutes, taking the tray out every 5 minutes or so to stir so it all gets evenly toasted.
When it’s toasted take it out of the oven and sprinkle dried apricots or cranberries or whatever fruit you like. I also sprinkle over a large handful of shredded coconut.

It’s the perfect way to start your day!

Steph xo

School in France finishes 4.30 PM, and if you add on an after school activity, kids only get home around 6 PM. The deadline of getting children fed, the home work done, kids bathed and off to bed at a decent hour is TIGHT! Try to throw in a bit of down time to wind down their day and it turns into a military operation!

To have dinner made as quickly as possible, I have been focusing on fast recipes and wanted to share some of my favourites with you. (Here in France kids eat a 3-course lunch at school (my 5-year-old source tell me it is DELICIOUS) which takes a little of the pressure off!) Here are a few of my staples:

• I love Courtney’s tuna pasta, as the whole dish only takes as long as cooking pasta.
• Another favourite is Croque Monsieur with a salad on the side.
• We often eat a frittata filled with whatever veggies we find in the fridge.
• A yummy vegetable soup or this lentil soup with nice bread to dip
• An English breakfast for dinner — baked beans, toast , scrambled eggs and a simple tomato salad. In fact, breakfast served at dinner time often works
• When I was a kid in Germany we sometimes had waffles and apple sauce for dinner. Now, I have no idea if this is a German thing, but we loved it, so I have done this before to put exhausted kids in a good mood.

What about you, do you have any easy, quick dishes? I would love to hear!

-Emilie

This smoked mackerel recipe is super simple to make, and our kids (and we!) LOVE it:

• 100 g smoked mackerel fillets (skin removed)
• 100 g cream cheese (Philidelphia or the like)
• 75 g sour cream
• A squeeze of lemon
• Fresh ground pepper
• Some dill if you have it (optional)

Puree everything in a blender and serve on toast or yummy bread!

xxx Esther

A few years ago our really good Canadian friends moved back to Canada from Amsterdam leaving with us their waffle iron and amazing waffle recipe.  Now every Sunday for brunch without fail we have waffles. There is nothing better than fresh waffles, fruit, bacon and gallons of maple syrup.  The other month I upgraded our waffle iron to this beauty from Amazon (UK or US) to keep up with the demand at our table.

Here is the recipe for the best waffles ever:

• 250 grams of flour
• 1 Tablespoon sugar
• ¼ teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 450 ml of karnemelk (buttermilk)
• 75 ml of oil ( I use rice bran oil but olive oil works just as well)
• 2 beaten egg yolks
• 2 well beaten egg whites

Take all the dry ingredients and sift together, make a well in the centre. Measure out the milk and oil and mix together with the egg yolks.  Then, pour the liquid ingredients into the dry and mix until just combined. Then fold in your egg whites until just combined. My favourite topping is bacon, sliced bananas and maple syrup. Delicious!

Stephxo

I stumbled upon this post on the Little Brown Pen blog the other day and seconds later I was literally drooling onto my keyboard and within an hour I was baking them with my kids! Chocolate cookies with a peanut butter filling. Need I say more? And my kids always love when baking cookies involves rolling the dough in sugar, so even the baking part was a hit.  You can find the recipe here.

-Courtney

It is so quick and easy! Here is the recipe:

• 4 to 5 ripe big juicy tomatos (chopped)
• 2 shallots
• a handful of chopped parsley and a bit of garlic if you feel like it
• salt and pepper
• goats cheese
• 200 g of flour
• 130 g of cold butter
• 100 g of grated hard cheese (cheddar, comté)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Sauté shallots and chopped parsley in a frying pan and add in the chopped tomatos, add salt and pepper to taste. Let the tomatos cook until they start falling apart, but are still chunky. While the tomatos are cooking, make the crumble. Cut up the butter and mix with the flour to make crumbles (if you like fine crumbles, add a bit more flour). With your fingers mix the cheese into the crumble mix. Season with salt and pepper. Spread the tomato mix into an oiled dish and lay on a few slices of goats cheese. Crumble the crumbles on top. Put into the oven until golden brown.

It’s good warm and cold and is lovely to eat with a nice salad as an equivalent of a vegetable tart. I think I might start experimenting next time and maybe add in some courgettes into the tomato mixture…

Here is the recipe to download!

xxx Esther

The last bag I got had three massive aubergines (eggplants in the USA, I believe) in it, so one night I did a bit of surfing to find a nice summery dish to prepare with them. One of the things I found was an Aubergine and Tomato salad (I think originally Armenian) and I appropriated it to our tastes. It is so easy to make that it almost does not need a recipe and tastes absolutely delicious.

Here is the recipe!

• 1 large aubergine
• 2 tomatos (or more depending on size)
• salt and pepper to taste
• half a clove of garlic and herbs (I used parsley, but coriander was in the original recipe)
• olive oil
• lemon juice

Prick the aubergine a few times and stick it under the grill for at least 20 minutes, turning it occasionally (the pricking prevents it from exploding, which is no fun to clean up. Trust me, I have been there). Once it is charred on the outside and completely soft on the inside take it out and let it cool off. In the meantime, chop the tomatos and sprinkle them with salt and pepper. Mix in a few swigs of olive oil, juice of half a lemon and garlic to taste.

When the aubergine has cooled down, peel of the charred skin and chop up the flesh. Mix in with the tomatoes. I prefer to let the flavours mix for a few hours. When you are ready to eat, mix in a handful of chopped herbs.

Perfect to eat as a mezze with flatbread and humous. You can print out the recipe here.

Don’t forget the wonders of beetroot! They’re in season, and so delicious both in taste and colour!
We have posted some recipes and ideas before (yummy red beet salad, and roasted red beet and beetroot houmous!). Do you have some red beet recipes to share? We would love to hear!

xxx Esther

Until recently, I had never made brownies myself, but since little Violette has an ultimate obsession with chocolate, I decided it was time to learn how to bake these famous gourmandises. Turns out, it is really easy! Also, it turns out that the brownie is a very close relative of its glamorous French cousin the moelleux au chocolat, which must be the most popular dessert on any Parisian bistro menu. Almost the same ingredients, just baked in a different receptacle!

Now, I tried loads of different brownie recipes (what did people do without the internet?) and got inspired by them all!  Hopefully I have come up with a recipe that is super easy and deliciously tasty. Here is the recipe (you can also download it here):

BROWNIES

300 g of sugar
250 g of butter
250 g of chocolate (70% chocolate minimum)
4 eggs
60 g of flour
½ tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of natural vanilla extract

Preheat the over to 180°C.
Melt the butter in a saucepan together with 200 g of the chocolate. Once it has become a thick brown sauce, turn off the heat and let the mixture cool of slightly. Beat in the sugar, the vanilla extract, the eggs, and finally, mix the flour and baking powder. At the very end mix in the last 50 g of chocolate, roughly chopped.

Pour the batter into a paper lined baking tray, roughly 23×23 cm large. Bake for 20 min and check. Pierce with a knife, if it comes out sticky the brownies are ready!

I discovered this recipe in The Guardian last winter and it has since become a favourite go-to recipe, both because it’s delicious and because it’s dead simple to make. I think I have forwarded it on to everyone in my family (many of whom are vegetarians) and have made it for several dinner parties (easiest meal ever!). My favourite thing about it is that it requires only pantry ingredients (apart from fresh Thyme), so you can make it even if you have nothing in your fridge! I usually make it the day before a big grocery shop when I have nothing else to make… and my husband always says that it’s his favourite meal of the week! Here’s the recipe:

For the soup:

100g red lentils
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 tbsp tomato purée
1 litre vegetable stock
50g bulgur wheat
1½ tsp sweet smoked paprika
1-2 tbsp thick yoghurt

For the flavoured oil:

3 tbsp olive oil
20g butter
1 tsp dried mint
½ tsp sweet smoked paprika

Pick over the lentils, tip into a sieve and rinse well. Warm the olive oil in a large saucepan over a medium-low heat and sauté the onion with the thyme and a good pinch of salt until softened and just beginning to turn golden. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Add the tomato purée, stir, then tip in the stock, bulgur, lentils and paprika. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for 15-20 minutes, until the lentils and bulgur are very soft. You can purée the soup in a food processor or with a stick blender if you prefer a smooth and creamy soup, or leave it as it is (I prefer it this way), adding a little more stock or water if it’s too thick. Season to taste.

While the soup is cooking make the flavoured oil. Warm the olive oil in a pan with the butter until the butter has melted and the foaming subsides. Remove from heat and stir in the dried mint and paprika. (If you’re in a rush, you can skip this part entirely and just top with yoghurt and sprinkle some dried or fresh mint on top.)

Serve the soup in warmed bowls with yoghurt and the flavoured oil trickled over the top, and sprinkled with a pinch or two of dried mint.

(Image is by Colin Campbell for the Guardian)

Here’s the recipe:

• 3 cucumbers with skin, washed, cut into big pieces
• 3 large onions
• 1 1/2 vegetable stock cubes
• about a cup of milk
• s&p

Sauté the onion in olive oil until transparent. Add the cucumber and sweat (cook on very low temperature) for about ten minutes. Then, add just enough water to cover and throw in the vegetable stock cubes. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for another 10 minutes. Add the milk, and puree the solids. Add salt and pepper to taste, and if you have it, some fresh parsley to serve. Bon appetite!

xxx Esther

Up until last week, I had no idea what a gooseberry was (are you familiar with them?). They look a bit like a green grape but they’re much more sour. They’re in season right now in England and easy to find at your local fruit stand… so last week my husband and I decided to make Nigel Slater’s Gooseberry Fool (I think Gooseberries are a bit like rhubarb in that you don’t eat them plain — they’re better if they’re cooked in sugar!) Gooseberry Fool is incredibly easy to make and it turned out to be delicious! The tangy taste of the gooseberries is so yummy in the cream, a perfect summer dessert. Here is the recipe. Enjoy!

-Courtney

]]> http://babyccinokids.com/blog/2011/07/06/gooseberry-fool/feed/ 9 http://babyccinokids.com/blog/2011/07/01/hummingbird-cupcakes/ http://babyccinokids.com/blog/2011/07/01/hummingbird-cupcakes/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:00:54 +0000 Emilie in Paris http://babyccinokids.com/blog/?p=23335

If there is medically such a thing as a cupcake addiction — my kids and I might need to be treated for it! Please picture the following scene:  We had visitors from London last weekend who very nicely brought over some cupcakes from the amazing London bakery Hummingbird (Thank you, Debbie!). I woke up in the morning at 7 am and walked into the children’s room and their beds were empty. I then went into the kitchen and found two very quiet little girls at the kitchen table, each eating a huge butter frosted cupcake with a big, sheepish smile on their face. They had snuck in and helped themselves…. seriously not the balanced breakfast I had planned for them!

Now, we cannot get Hummingbird cupcakes over here in Paris, but to feed our addiction, I did get the cookbook. I know mine might not look as nice as the professional ones but if they are going to be devoured for breakfast, who cares!