Category: Veggie cooking

Halloween party

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HalloweenParty_Fotor

As we’ve mentioned in our last post, we have celebrated Halloween for the first time this year and have invited some of our friend families with children with the same age of Gabriel to a Halloween party.

We have made some scary (funny) food inspired by a lot of things we have found on the internet like a vegetables skeleton, spider pizzas or ghost cupcakes. We have also made bat cookies with this recipe which we’ll probably use a lot in the future because it’s sooooo easy and also quite good. We have also cooked a Jack o’Lantern pumpkin pie with a recipe we’ll share in a future post (we have made its eyes, mouth and nose out of chocolat cookies, as we did for the mouth of the ghost cupcakes. The eyes of the ghost cupcakes were bought on Amazon).

To decorate the living room we have made several paper garlands with Halloween motives. Our inspiration came from the black napkins and paper glasses that we bought at Amazon and which had spiders in violet, orange and green. To fit this color scheme, we made pumpkins and bats and cut paper circles with a circle puncher. We made garlands with only pumpkins and circles, a second one with only bats and circles and a third one with both motives. To put the paper garland together we have positioned the motives and circles alternatively on a surface in order to realize the effect before actually sewing it with the machine. We have also bought ballon with the same colors which were all over the place!

We have also organized a few handcraft activities for the kids. We have asked Gabriel to make models so that the children could see what they were supposed to do, so he was quite proud to do it for them! We found inspiration for this mummy on No time for flash cards where we always find such amazing ideas: such a great site! All kids took their mummy home which we hope will be a souvenir of the good time they have spent with us.

 

 

Apple and bilberry puree

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AppleAndBilberryPuree

Already two months since we started feeding solids to André! And we are enjoying a lot rediscovering or trying new tasteful recipes of baby purees. One of the newly discovered is an apple and bilberry puree. We like it so much we make it for ourselves. As all the purees we make, it is quite easy to prepare: we start by steaming the cut apples, with no water just in a closed pan over a gentle heat. Once the apples are slightly cooked (this can take more or less time depending on the type of apples you choose), we add the bilberries and wait until they are cooked (most of the berries will have “burst”). We then use a blender to grind it. Three apples and around 200 g of bilberries will give 3 doses of puree. Delicious!

Apples and bilberries
Cut apples
Cooked apples and added bilberries
Cooked apples and bilberries
Puree

Souvenir de Bretagne (recipe included!)

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SouvenirDeBretagne

We have brought a souvenir for our friends from our last holidays in Bretagne, the local “caramel au beurre salé”, a caramel sauce with salted butter. I must say I really like this sweet treat, to spread on the bread or to eat a spoon of it (just one!)… The jars of caramel looked really sad, with their golden cover, so we decided to personalized them a bit. For each of the jars we made a tag  with Bretagne’s flag on one side and a personalized message saying we’ve thought about our friends when we were out there on the other one (we used Inkscape to make them with Jenna Sue and fzm Embossed Label fonts to write). We cut both sides of the tag with a scalloped circle puncher, glued them together and made a hole with a hole puncher. We used a black and white dotted fabric for the cover which we cut in a circle and held with a white elastic band. To cover the elastic band we used a thin black ribbon which we passed through the tag hole.

materials
printed tag
cutting the tag
finished jars

It wasn’t a lot of work and we really like the personalized result!

before and after

before and after

This has also inspired us to look for a good caramel recipe (we like a quite viscous consistency and the one we had was too liquid). Here’s a recipe we have tested and like a lot, for a small glas of caramel (to make a bigger volume simply multiply the ingredients, but be aware that bigger amounts are harder to make, it’s preferable to make it several times…):

Ingredients:

  • 180 g of sugar
  • 100 mL of cream
  • 80 g of butter
  • pinch of salt (if you used salted butter, you’ll probably not need the salt)

Start by making the caramel by slowly melting the sugar (no water needed, just make it really slowly). Once you have the caramel done (more or less brown, depending on your taste), slowly add the cream you have previously made warm (if you add it directly from the fridge it will strongly boil!). Add the pinch of salt. Once all the cream is well mixed with the caramel take it out of the heat and pour it into a bowl. Now add the butter in pieces and mix well until you obtain a homogeneous mixture. Pour it into a jar and let it cool. Enjoy!

Breakfast scones

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DSC03379They actually could be called “anytime of the day” scones but we mostly bake them for breakfast because they are super fast to make and delicious to eat when they are warm (you can put a bit of butter or jam)! Here’s what you need to make ~20 scones:

 

 

  • 500 g of flour
  • 300 mL of milk (or rice milk)
  • 100 g of butter (or margarine)
  • 3 table spoons of sugar
  • 3 tea spoons of baking powder
  • Pinch of salt
  1. Preheat the oven at 220 °C (convection oven).
  2. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
  3. Cut the butter in cubes and incorporate it with the dry ingredients until you get an homogeneous mixture.
  4. Add the milk and mix until you have an homogeneous dough.
  5. Make  ~20 flat balls 3-4 cm wide and ~1,5 cm thick.
  6. Bake in the oven until they become brownish (~15 minutes)
  7. Enjoy!