by Marcela M. | Dec 30, 2011 | Blog, Pies, Recipe Box, Recipes, Sweets, Uncategorized
Good morning friends! How are you? Are you ready to say goodbye to 2011? I know I am.
It is funny how the simple act of changing one tiny little number can make us feel like the days ahead are full of possibilities, that new beginnings are possible and that wonderful things await us. I embrace that feeling every year, even if it may be just an illusion for some. I like making time for pausing and reflecting and planning and hoping.
We also have a small tradition for New Year’s eve: we try a new recipe each year. We search old cookbooks, trusted blogs and the internet in look for yumminess and we prepare that. Alas, we still haven’t decided what to prepare this year! Mole Poblano is a strong contender…I’ll let you know next year whether we made it or not! And iIf you would like to give it a try, check Amanda’s blog.
When we started looking for recipes for New Year’s eve, I also started thinking about new recipes to share with you. And I remembered that this recipe, which appeared in Whole Kitchen Magazine back in September, could not be read by those of you who do not speak Spanish and that I had received several requests to share it in English. The problem was that the recipes were exclusively for Whole Kitchen, so I couldn’t publish them here without authorization (and, being a lawyer, everything related to authorizations, copyright, etc, etc is pretty much sacred to me!).
I contacted Silvia, one of the lovely editors of Whole Kitchen, and asked her whether I could publish it or if they would be interested in publishing the recipe in English in their blog. And she, very kindly, made an exception to the general rule due to the fact that my blog is not in Spanish, and authorized its publication here. So, my friends, here is the recipe for Chocolate and pear mousse pie that I submitted to Whole Kitchen Magazine (and remember that if you want it in Spanish, you can read it here)
Ingredients
For the crust:
100 grs de butter
100 grs icing sugar
180 grs self-raising flour
60 grs cocoa
1 egg yolk
1 egg
For the filling:
4 medium-sized pears
100 grs sugar
50 grs melted butter
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon natural lemon juice
1 envelope of unflavoured gelatin, diluted in 1/2 cup warm water and 1/4 cup cold water
2 egg whites, beaten until stiff
200 cm3 whipped cream
For the chocolate ganache:
200 grs dark chocolate (if you don’t like the bitterness of dark chocolate, you can use half dark chocolate, half semi-sweet chocolate)
200 cm3 cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Preparation:
1) Prepare the crust: In a bowl, mix flour, cocoa and sugar. Make a whole in the middle and add butter, incorporating everything with your fingers until it reaches an sand-like consistency. Add the egg and the egg yolk and integrate until you have a dough that you can form into a ball. Cover the dough with cling film and let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes.
Grease and flour a 30 cms pie pan and preheat the oven to 150C/300F. Remove the dough from the fridge, roll it and cover the pan with it. Bake it in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the dough separates from the borders of the pan. Remove from the oven and let it cool down while you prepare the filling.
2) Prepare the filling: Peal the pears and cut them into medium-sized squares. Place them in a saucepan together with butter, sugar and lemon juice. Cook on low heat for about 15 minutes or until the pears become soft.
Once the pears are soft, remove from the heat an let them cool down for about 10 minutes. Place the preparation in a food processor or blender and pulse until having a purée. Add the vanilla and let it cool completely (you may place the purée in the fridge to accelerate the process if you so desire).
Dissolve the unflavored gelatin and add it to the pear purée. Let it rest for 5 minutes so that the gelatin starts to add consistency to the purée.
Whip the cream until firm, being careful not to over do it (we don’t want to make butter!), and add it to the purée once it is ready.
Whip the egg whites until stiff and add them to the purée. Your pear mousse is now ready!
3) Add the pear mousse to the chocolate crust and place the pie in the fridge until the filling is solid (about 4 hours)
4) Prepare the ganache. Chop the chocolate into small pieces and place it in a heat-resistant bowl. Put the cream in a saucepan and put it on the stove, on low heat. Once the cream starts to boil, remove it from the heat and pour it on top of the chocolate. Once the chocolate starts to melt, start beating until it reaches a creamy consistency and until firm enough to cover the pie with it.
5) Pour the ganache over the pie, making swirls with the back of a spoon. You may also put the ganache on a piping bag and decorate the pie with it.
6) Let the pie rest until the ganache is firm and serve.
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If you don’t want your pie to be too chocolatey, you can omit the ganache and serve it uncovered (just crust and filling). It is delicious either way.
Also, if you want to start the New Year with a traditional Cypriot flavour, you can make Vassilopita, a traditional cake with a coin inside, to be eaten on the 1st of January, the day of Saint Basil.
I hope you like the pie and, most of all, I hope you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve celebration and a fantastic start of 2012. May all your dreams come true next year, and may you always have illusions to create new dreams!
See you in 2012!
by Marcela M. | Dec 27, 2011 | Blog, Europe, Travel, Uncategorized
Good morning dear friends!
I hope you had a very happy holiday celebration! We had a quiet, relaxing long weekend at home, which was great.
I prepared a small dessert table for the occasion but I didn’t finish editing the pictures yet, so I thought that, in the meantime, I could show you a few pictures of how Nicosia (my city) was decorated for the holidays. Earlier this year, in November, I took a Christmas photography course with Montréal-based photographer Jackie Rueda and it inspired me to register some of the beauty of the holiday season with my camera- or, at least, to try!
Here are some of the pictures I took.
I will be back before the end of the year with a yummy chocolatey recipe. Have a wonderful week!
by Marcela M. | Dec 25, 2011 | Blog, cookies, Europe, Holidays, Recipe Box, Recipes, Sweets, Travel, Uncategorized
Hello my dear friends!
It is almost evening time here in Nicosia and we are getting ready to start cooking our Christmas dinner. Since we are expats, with no nearby family, this is generally a very quiet moment for us, far from the running, shopping and cooking craze that December generally brings. Family is always missed, but there is comfort and joy in knowing that we are together is our hearts.
One of the advantages that I see in this way of living, is that we get to choose the traditions we love and we want to incorporate into our own celebrations as a little family, and to change them and adopt new ones as it pleases us. So, when it came to choosing how to spend our Christmases, we opted for a quiet dinner at home on the eve, and a bigger, yet intimate, celebration on the actual day of the holiday. Our kids are still rather small, and they haven’t started school yet, so they don’t have many expectations about these dates…so they are doubly surprised and overjoyed when they discovered their presents and special treats on the 25th!
One of the treats that I make since we live in Cyprus are some special Greek cookies called Kourambiedes. They were the first sweet I had when I arrived in Nicosia and I loved them immediately. They are eaten on Christmas day, and at other celebrations, such as weddings. They have cinnamon, almonds and rose water, and they melt in your mouth!
So, if you feel like baking something different these days, do try them! They are very easy, and fun for baking with kids!
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
{for the filling}
30grs almonds
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon sugar
{for the dough}
1 egg
1 teaspoon brandy/cognac
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100grs butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 cups all purpose flour
{for dusting}
rose water (1/4 cup, approximately)
icing sugar (approximately 3 tablespoons)
1)Preheat the oven at 150C/300F
2) Process the almonds, sugar and cinnamon until the almonds are coarsely ground (do not over do it, you don’t want them to turn into powder)
3) Beat slightly the egg, vanilla and brandy. Cream butter and sugar with a wooden spoon and add it to the egg mixture. Once they are integrated, start adding flour 1 tablespoon at a time, until you have a workable dough (see picture 2)
4) Shape a piece of dough into an oval. Make a hole in the middle, put 1/4 teaspoon of the almond and cinnamon mixture in it and close it, as shown in picture 3
4)Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake for about 45 minutes or until barely golden (Keyword: barely! Do not let them brown!)
5) Put the rose water on a glass and get a brush ready. As soon as you remove the cookies from the oven, paint them with rose water. (The difference in temperature will allow the rose water to be absorbed by the cookies, so do not let them cool down).
6)Let the cookies rest for about 3 to 4 hours. After they are dry, dust icing sugar over them and they are ready!
They taste delicious with a cup of tea and they last for a couple of weeks if you keep them in an airtight container.
May you have a wonderful Christmas, full of love, peace and joy.
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Este post está dedicado a mi amiga invisible, y compañera de andanzas fotográficas, María. Feliz navidad!!!!!!
by Marcela M. | Dec 22, 2011 | Blog, cookies, Europe, Holidays, Recipe Box, Recipes, Sweets, Travel, Uncategorized
Good afternoon dear friends!
I apologize for my silence over the past few weeks. I had originally intended to write a few posts before but, as it turns out, coming back home after a 7 week trip with twin toddlers required to readjust them to the old routine, to Nicosia’s weather and time zone (there is a 5 hours difference between Argentina and Cyprus) and to our normal life, in general. So these days we have been juggling regular work and study schedules with middle-of-the-night wake-up episodes, piles and piles of clothes for washing, folding, ironing and putting away, and a sort of “pre-spring”clean (always due after such long trips).
In spite of all these adjustments, it is wonderful to be back home, and coming back in the middle of the Holiday Season makes it extra special. We arrived to a beautifully-decorated Nicosia, with the streets full of lights and Christmas markets, and people singing carols in the streets of downtown. And this, for a Christmas Elf such as myself, is enough reason to be happy.
On Christmas’ eve it will actually be 4 years since I arrived to Cyprus (my husband had been here for 6 months already), so this time of the year is always one of memories of years past, a time to reflect on how much our life has changed since that day. Back in 2007 there was just the two of us, and an almost-empty apartment with a bed, a sofa, an outdoor table with 4 chairs for the balcony, and a Christmas Tree that my husband had arranged for me, to make me feel at home. In the year that followed we furnished our house, we had twins, we met new people, we adapted, and Cyprus started becoming our home.
Making a place one’s home involves incorporating new habits and letting go of some others. We change, sometimes imperceptibly, with every new country we live in and those mutations are only perceived when contrasted with people and places that we have met before. As Nelson Mandela said in “A long walk to Freedom”: There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered”.
One of the ways in which we have changed is in the food we eat, particularly during holidays and other celebrations. We approach new places also through their food and, in the process of adapting, we incorporate new flavours, we make them our own, and they travel with us wherever we go. This is the case with the cookies I will share with you today, which have come to mean Christmas to me, as much as Panettone or Turrones (which are some of Argentina’s traditional holiday sweets ).
Melomakarona are, in fact, the cookies of advent. Greek Cypriots fast during this period (they adopt a vegan diet, eliminating all animal products) and, during that fast, they snack on these cookies, which are highly caloric. Everything in their flavour speaks of this season: they take cinnamon, clove, orange, honey and walnuts, and they are dipped in syrup for extra sweetness. If you are looking for a different cookie to bake these days, I highly recommend these ones. They will fill your home with true holiday cheer!
Here is the recipe I use, as was given to me by my neighbour (and adapted by her from the book “Cyprus cooking for friends“, by Sandra Lysandrou)
Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1 cup orange juice
3 cups vegetable oil (canola)
1/2 cup brandy
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt
8 1/2 cups self raising flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
{For the syrup}
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup honey
1 1/2 cup water
{For topping}
1 cup finely ground walnuts mixed with 1 tablespoon of cinnamon (I like to mix walnuts and almonds)
Preparation:
a-Preheat the oven at 140 C/ 284F
b- In a large bowl, mix sugar, oil, juice, brandy, spices, 7 cups of flour, baking powder and salt. Work the dough, adding the extra flour as needed, until it becomes fluffy. The dough must be oily, not dry, so stop adding flour when it becomes just workable.
b- Form the melomakaronas by taking small pieces of dough and shaping them into ovals with your hands. Note that this is a dough made with self-raising flour and a fair amount of baking powder as well, so the cookies will expand in the oven. It is consequently better to make them rather small, and to place them in an ungreased baking tray separated from each other, to give them place for growth. Bake them until the bottom is golden brown (approximately 30 minutes).
c- Allow the cookies to cool down completely and prepare the syrup by mixing sugar, water and honey and bringing them to the boil. Once the syrup boils, remove it from the heat and dip the cookies in it, soaking them for a few seconds. Note that it is very important that the cookies are completely cool when you do this, otherwise they will not absorb the syrup! For the same reason, you will need to reheat the syrup if it cools down before you are finished dipping the cookies.
d- Place the cookies on a wire rack to drain the excess syrup and sprinkle the crushed nuts mixture over them.
I hope you will like them !
by Marcela M. | Nov 22, 2011 | Blog, Children, Parties, Uncategorized
Good morning dear friends! I hope you had a lovely weekend and that this week started in the best possible way. We are still in Córdoba, Argentina, having a great time. It really is wonderful to meet with friends and family and feel that time has passed by and, at the same time, it has not, to know that we have so much to tell each other but that, when we get together, it feels that we are actually picking up a conversation that we left unfinished only the day before. I suppose true love, true friendship is what makes this miracle possible. This was the spirit of Luka and Zoe’s birthday party, what made it a most happy, most memorable occasion.
As I mentioned before, I had planned this birthday celebration as an art party, not only because my children love doing art, but also because I thought it could integrate kids of different ages. Finding activities that could suit children from 18 months to 7 years old was, however, challenging. I didn’t want younger kids to get frustrated, nor older ones to get bored. I wanted an art area where children of all ages would be safe and which they could reach without the assistance of an adult, so we set a piece of wood as a low table (it was held by a bucket of 20 litres of paint and a window frame). I also wanted children to feel relaxed, not rushed, and to take as much time as they wanted with each activity, so I only planned three tasks for a 3 hour period.
The first activity was the painting of small cotton souvenir bags, which we placed in the art table at the beginning of the party. We had already warned parents that children had to come “dressed to get messy”, but I wanted to minimize damage nonetheless, so ,instead of fabric paint, we gave children an assortment of fabric markers in different colors. To our delight, they all loved the activity and were really happy to know they would be able to take the bags home…and that they could be used to fill with candy from the piñata at the end of the party!
We also provided them with cardboard paper and lots of art supplies, such as stamps with different shapes and ink colors, colored pencils…
…different types of chalks…
…crayons in diverse colors and sizes, markers….
and even an assortment of gibré glitter.
After painting their bags, children started experiencing with the different art supplies, mixing them in their art work, completely focused and immersed in the activities. They would come and go from the dessert table to the art station, grabbing a bite while working on their creations, and then rush to their parents to show them what they had done. It was a real pleasure to see them all mingle and laugh, and enjoy their time together, despite having met at the party for the first time.
The third artisctic activity involved food and was shown in this previous post: children were able to decorate their own cupcakes with sprinkles in different shapes and colors (moons and stars, bears, dolphins and dogs, non-pareils and little hearts).
And, finally, the piñata, which was not an activity in itself, but it was definitely a highly awaited moment!
It was funny that, after decorating their treat bags and discussing for hours how much candy they were going to put in them, when piñata time finally arrived all children forgot about them and just gathered candy in their laps, until someone reminded them about their bags.
So that was it: three simple art activities and a piñata, a few home-made sweets and tons of love. The best of it all is that time flew and children left happy with their bags, their art-work and their souvenir-cookies. Whatever had gone wrong before, didn’t matter because we were left full of happy memories!
Have a great week!
