Appelbes confituur Chokeberry Jam

Gisteren maakte Madam Confituur op haar Facebook page mij attent op deze bes. Het is de appelbes . Hij heet officieel Aronia en laat ik nu toch wel al een tiental jaar, vier struiken van deze bes in m'n tuin staan hebben. Ik wist wel dat hij eetbaar was maar heb er nooit wat mee gedaan ook al omdat de vogels me altijd voor zijn.

 

Yesterday Madam Confituur, made me aware, on her Facebook page, that I know this berry. It's the Aronia or Chokeberry. For at least a decade I have 4 of these bushes in my garden but although I knew that it was edible I never made anything with it. It's  loved by the birds so if you want to harvest some you need to be quick.

Na een beetje gegoogled te hebben bleek dat dit een uiterst gezond besje was. Ik ben dan gaan zoeken of de vogels mij nog wat overgelaten hadden en na door de netels en spinnewebben gekropen te zijn bleek ik nog 230 gram bessen te hebben!! Genoeg dus voor een potteke confituur!
Hier is het recept
230 gram appelbessen
460 gram gepelde muskaatdruiven
50 ml limoensap = ongeveer 2 limoenen
375 gram confituursuiker ( 1000 gram fruit + 500 gram suiker varieteit)
Kook de bessen en het sap 5 minuutjes onder deksel en stamp het fruit een beetje plat met de pureestamper.De bessen vallen nl niet snel uit elkaar.
Voeg de suiker bij en laat 3 minuten koken. Ik vulde hier 5 bokaaltjes van 210 ml mee.
Jam gemaakt met deze suiker kan ongeveer 6 maanden bewaard worden.

After googling I came to the conclusion that is a rather healthy berry. It's even sold in healthstores. So I went out to the garden and after crawling trough the nettles and the spiderwebs the birds had left me 230 grams of berry's!
This is the recipi
230 grams of chokeberry's
460 grams of peeled and desede muscatel grapes
50 ml of lime juice =about 2 limes
350 grams of jam sugar 1000 grams of fruit/500 grams of sugar variety
Cook the fruit and the juice for a few minutes and crush the fruit with a masher.Add the sugar and cook for 3 minutes. Fill the sterilized jars. I filled 5 jars of 210 ml with this amount
Jam's made with this kind of sugar can be stored for up to 6 months.

 

Dit is het resultaat. Merci Madam Confituur, voor het idee!!

 

This is my result, thanks Madam Confituur for the idea!

Appel overvloed Apple galore

Voor de 45 ste verjaardag van m'n man kocht ik indertijd een hoogstam appelboom. Ik koos voor het Jonathan ras omdat dat een erg lekkere krokante zure en toch aromatische appel is waarmee je een boel dingen kan doen. Inmiddels is de boom dit jaar 20 jaar oud en hij geeft ons nog steeds dan genoeg appels. Zelfs in z'n minder goede jaren hebben we meestal nog appels teveel. Ik vind het moeilijk die lekkere appels te laten liggen en probeer ze zoveel mogelijk te verwerken. Helaas heb ik op die manier nog appelmoes van drie jaar geleden in de diepvries steken.....

We have a big apple tree in the garden. Twenty years agoo it was a birthday gift for my husband who wanted a big appletree for the garden. The variety is Jonathan wich is a crips tart aromatic apple that has lots of uses. Even in the years he has not a lot of apples I still have to many apples to use. I try to use as much as possible.

My daughter asked for some apple sauce but there had to  raisins and cinnamon in it. That gave me  the idea to make another batch with apples and fresh cranberry's and last but not least I made my own apple and raspberry apple sauce. The apple raspberry apple sauce makes a beautiful pink applesauce with a very delicate raspberry flavour. I think it's delicious. I also tryed a variety with apples and fresh pinapple but the fresh pinapple taste disappeared so I won't make that again. But you can also mix the apples with apricots, plums and rubarb. Mixing it with a few quinzes gives a peach coloured applesauce that is very good with game.

Mijn dochter wilde graag een aantal potjes appelmoes met rozijnen en kaneel eronder en dat bracht me op het idee om de verse veenbessen die ik nog in de diepvries had om die ook te mengen met wat appels en er een appel-veenbessen moes mee te maken en als tenslotte plukte ik in de tuin de laatste frambozen en maakte nog een frambozen appelmoes.Dat laatste geeft een hele mooie roze appelmoes met een delicate frambozensmaak. Erg lekker. Ik probeerde ook nog om appels met verse ananas Elf potjes appelmoes gingen de diepvries in. De dag nadien probeerde ik ook nog appelmoes te maken met verse ananas in maar helaas ging daarbij de frisse ananas smaak verloren dus ik denk niet dat ik dat nog maak.Wel kan je appels nog mengen met abrikoos, pruimen of rabarber. Moes gemaakt van appels met een paar  kweeperen geeft een hele zacht oranje appelmoes die heel lekker is met wild.

 

Samen met de kleindochter werd er dan ook nog een lekkere appelcake gemaakt.

Het recept

4 grote zure appelen, 2 dl zure room, 160 gram zachte boter, 200 gram suiker, 250 gram bloem, 4 eitjes, kaneel en 1 koffielepel bakpoeder en 1 koffielepel bicarbonaat.
Schil de appelen en snij drie ervan in vrij grote blokjes, de vierde appel snij je dikke partjes van.

Meng de boter met de suiker,voeg dan de zure room toe en dan één voor één de ganse eitjes. Meng de bicarbonaat en het bakpoeder met de bloem en meng onder het mengsel. Bebloem de appelblokjes en meng ze ook onder het deeg. Doe in een ingevet en bebloemd bakblik.
Leg vanboven op de cake de partjes appel. Bestrooi de bovenkant met kaneel en grove suiker. Bak ongeveer 40 minuten op 160 graden.

My granddaughter and I also baked an apple cake. 

 

Recipie

4 big sour apples, 160 grams of soft butter, 200 grams of caster sugar, 250 grams of plain flour, 200 grams of sour cream, 4 eggs, 1 teaspoon of baking powder and one teaspoon of bicarb. For dusting the top some cinnamon powder and a bit of extra sugar.
Cut 3 of the apples in chunks, 1 in thick slices. Mix the soft butter with the sugar, then add the sour cream and the whole eggs. Mix the bicarb and bakingpowder with the flour and mix in with the other ingredients. Dust the chunks of apples with a bit of flour and mix in. Put in a baking tin that is oiled  and floured and put the slices of apple on top of the batter. Dust with cinnamon and sugar. Bake for about 40 minutes in an oven that is about 160 degrees.

Het mooie cake blik en de commetjes komen uit de collectie van Emma Bridgewater.
Tin and bowls are from the Emma Bridgewater collection.

De lekkerste koekjes Best cookies ever

Ik ben geen echte koekjes bakker. Normaal gezien vind ik het allemaal nogal snel te zoet. Tot ik dit receptje vond. Dit is voor mij echt het perfecte koekje en je kan er alle kanten uit.

 

I'm not really a cookie baker. Usually I find them to sweet. Until I found this one.I love it. It's light and crumbly, not to sweet en very versitile.

 

Dit is het receptje:

125 gram echte boter

125 gram fijne witte suiker

165 gram gewone bloem

100 gram maizena

2 eidooiers

rasp van 1 citroen

1 eetlepel citroen sap

Je zal zeggen wat zijn die rode spikkels in het deeg, wel dat zijn de fijngehakte blaadjes van een dikke rode roos uit de tuin. Dat proef je niet echt met de citroen maar je zou de citroen eruit kunnen laten en dan het citroensap vervangen door wat rozenwater. Je kan gecombineerd met de citroen ook 1/2 koffielepel fijngesneden lavendel gebruiken.

Meng de suiker met de zachte boter, roer er de eidooiers door en dan de bloem en de maizena, de citroenrasp en het citroensap. Je kan het deeg onmiddelijk gebruiken maar ook even ingepakt in de koelkast leggen.

This is the recipie

125 gram real unsalted butter

125 gram of fine white caster sugar

165 grams of flour

100 grams of patato starch

2 egg yolks

zest of one lemon finally grated

1 spoon of lemon juice.
The red specks in the dough are finelly chopped red rose petals. You can ommit those or  you can loose the lemon zest and juice and add some rosewater.
Mix the soft butter with the sugar.Add the eggs, then flour and patato starch and the lemon and the lemon zest. You can roll out the dough straight away or refridgerate it for a while.

 

Rol het deeg zo'n 6 mm dik uit, zeker niet te dun. Steek er koekjes uit en bak op bakpapier op ongeveer 160 graden gedurende ongeveer 15 minuten. Het koekje mag nauwelijks kleur hebben.

 

Roll the dough out until its about 1/4 inch thick is and cut some shapes and bake at about 320°F. Bake for about 15 minutes. Cookies should hardly have color.

Je kan deze koekjes heel goed zo eten maar je kan ze ook vullen. Ik vulde de bloemvormpjes met vanille boteroom die ik mengde met lemoncurd.Zeer lekker!

De koekjes kan je zeer goed bewaren in een koekjes doos, als je er tenminste kan afblijven!!

 

You can eat this cookies plain but this time I filled the flower cookies with buttercream that I mixed with lemoncurd. Delicious!You can keep these cookies for a long time if you can keep out of the cookie tin of course!!!

Foody friday 's Saint Nicolas Speculoos

Sunday the children of Belgium and Holland celebrate Saint Nicolas. He is the patron saint of the Children. Children put their shoe out with a carrot for the horse of Saint Nicolas and hope that in the morning the carrot will be gone and there will be presents instead.
One of the presents we got every year was a plate full of candy.
The staples where, speculoos, oranges of clementines, golden chocolate coins, nicnac's ( a very small cokie in the shape of letters) and guimove( a sort of sweet) and of corse some chocolade figurines.
My hometown is famous for its very special speculoos.
What is it exactly. Well it is a big cookie, a bit soft and the main ingrediances are, real butter, cinnamon and almonds.On the picture above you see two different kind. The small cookies are the commercially made one. These are very sweet and hard and thin and you can get them in every shape.
The big ones are the ones where my hometown of Hasselt is famous for.
These ones contain almons (the commercial ones don't have that) and are thick and a bit soft.
The Dutch also have a sort of filled speculoos.

Here is the recipie that I got from my great grandmother, Anneke.
Cream 2,5 cups or 500 grams of sweet real butter.
Please do not subsitute the butter for crisco of margerine or something.I is a very big part of the flavour.

Then add 3 1/4 cups or 650 grams of dark brown sugar

Work in 4 XL or 5 L eggs

Then add 2 heaped theaspoons of cinnamon

Then it is time to add 6 cups or 1 kilo of plain four and the right amount of baking powder

Another vital part of speculoos of Hasselt and unique to that is 1 cup or 100 grams of almond powder and 1cup or 100 grams of slivered almond. This time my shop had no slivered almonds so I used all almond powder.

You need to work the dow by hand by now since it is a very heavy dow.

Don't work it to long. Just enough to combine everything. Then put it in the fridge for a few hours or even overnight. Cover it with clingfilm.

Next day you preheat your oven at 325°F or 175 °C.
Take a piece of the dow and make a roll out of it about 2,5 inch or 6 to 7cm diameter

Slice fingerthick slices and put on a baking tray.

The baking tray should be coverded with some baking paper. Just flatten the slices ever so slightly. Leave room between the slices since they will spread.

Bake for 15 minutes.
The cookies should have only a lightly brown rim on the outside. The will be hard after cooling down but when you store them in a tin they should get softer.

You could keep them for weeks but I bet they won't have the time to get bad!
I know they are heavy on the calories but I only bake them for Saint Nicolas and for Christmas.
These cookies are for Belgium and Holland what Shortbread is for Scotland and Chocolade chip cookies are for the USA. Please try them, I know you will love them.

These days speculoos is so popular in Belgium that in the last two years they intruduced a speculoos paste that you can put on bread. It was the winning thing in a tv contest to invent something new and it is a huge succes.
Since this years there is also chocolate with pieces of crisp speculoos in it and there is even Speculoos ice cream.

I also use the paste to mix with buttercream and spread that on apple cupcakes. Yummy!

Foody Friday Pasta dish

It's tomato time again in the garden and like every year we have some heirloom tomatoes too.

Here you can see a selection of them. Dark, old Mennonite tomatoes, white Coeur de boeuf, meaty pink old Belgian tomatoes and tiny marble size tomatoes.
So it is time to toss them is a friday leftovers pasta dish.

I brown some mince meat and spice it up with black pepper, salt, sweet paprika and then I add all kind of diced tomatoes. Ad a bit of tomato paste and let it stew for a few minutes. Then add a few torn fresh basil leaves.

Add some small pieces of zucchine and put the whole in a baking dish.
Top with some breadcrumbs and some grated parmezan cheese and bake until golden.

Serve with some garlic bread or some crackers or french baguette.

Enjoy!

Xmas in July and Foody Friday

in July!

What a fun idea it this.Whilest it was raining today I got in the Xmas spirit and looked at all my old Xmas pictures.
In Belgium we have not a lot of Xmas traditions since up to a decenia or so agoo, Xmas was mainly a Christian holiday. We had a tree with some ornaments and a festive meal and that was it. Now a days with all the influences trought TV and internet and so, Xmas trees and all the decorations are becoming more and more popular.

So I am just going to show you a lot of pictures of my trees and tablescapes. I don't do a lot of other decorations since this is difficult to manage when you have like me a lot of cats. No family pictures either I'm afraid. Since I am cook and host I don't take pictures at that moment.

Because it is also Foody Friday I am putting a recipie for Chocolate Truffles at the end of the blog.
Since Belgium is know worldwide for its very good chocolates I thought this was appropriate. Sadly there are now pictures of them but believe me these truffles are devine.

My first nativity set. I still love it after all those years.People think I am crazy to have a mouse and a cat nativity set but what the heck...I like them!

Xmas trees of the last 4 years

2008

The Bird tree

In 2008 I wanted a non traditional tree with dry branches witch I adorned with 70 white glass birds, some clear glass balls and some pampilles. There where also a lot of tiny snowballs on nylon threads and of course some white lights.

2007

The Snowflake Tree

I was very, very pleased with this tree and it is still one of my all time favorites. On Ebay I bought from a Canadian lady about 170 handmade snowflakes and it made a fabulous Xmas tree. Some clear glass ball and about 600 white lights finished it off beautifully. In the top stood my little Steiff snowman!2007
The Red Roses and Cardinal tree

Sadly I have no really good pictures of this tree. It was fabulous but very hard to take good pictures of. One of those trees I truly was proud of. For the first time ever I bought all new things. The ball I bought on sale. The birds I bought on Ebay and the rest, like the red glass hearts and the velvet balls I bought localy.

2006
The White Tree

Full of white balls and all my mainly white glass figurative ornaments and once again all white lights.

Some of my tablescapes from some years back

2008
2007

This was certainly 6 years back
Of my very best tablescapes, I sadly have no good pictures

Christmas and the cats

When you have cats and love them, Christmas with cats is fun to experience. We have laughts a lot with the fun things they do once the Xmas tree is up. I only have glass ornaments and never, ever will buy plastic ones, just because I have 11 cats in the house. Only kittens will try to climb the tree. My big Maine Coons love to sleep under the tree since I always put a fleece as a tree skirt under it.
I must admid, I am at home all the time and at night the cats don't sleep in the livingroom. So that helps a lot. On the other hand I put unbreakeble things and bells at the bottem of the tree. So I can hear when they are in the vicinity of the tree. Here is an impression of a Xmas with the cats!

BlumaBlue admires the White Xmas tree

Gulara, 12 weeks old is the one and only cat ever to climb the tree!!

The cat Xmas tree. Not meant for the cats but it a tree and decorations with cats.

I collect glass cat ornaments. The old fashioned kind.

In 2008 I designed this Cattery Chrismas tree with wood ornaments I bought at Ebay.I painted them in a greyish/blue color and made some shading on them. Later I gave the ornaments to my daughter since she said that she could not have a Xmas tree because of her 4 cats. This tree is fun for the cats since they can play with the ornaments, sleep under it and if somethings fall out, nothing gets broken.


Koko half asleep under the Cattery tree.



Biggles and Caitlin are garding my Snowbabies collection

Pregnant Poppy sleeping under the Red Roses Xmas tree.

Chocolate Truffles Recipie

This is for a lot of truffles but I assure you, you will need them becauste they are delicious.
Put them in a nice box and you have a perfect gift.
One again my recipie is in metric so please trow it trough a converter program.
You need:
200 grams of real unsalted butter

1500 grams of very good (at least 50% cacaofat) dark cooking chocolate

1 liter of single cream.

real Dutch cacoa powder

Put a pan on the heath and poor the cream in it and let it come to the boil.
Chop the chocolade in small pieces and let it melt aux bain marie and then stirr the chocolade in the cream away from the stove. Chocolade may never cook or become to hot!
Put away in the fridge until the next day. The next day you heat the mixture gently and add the soft butter.
Put in the fridge again until the chocolade mix is hardened.
Then,with a small spoon, you scoop out little balls and quickly roll them in to long our round chapes and dust them with real Dutch cacao powder.

You can also roll them in chopped pistachio nuts, slivered almonds or coconut. You can also give them something extra by adding a small amount of cherry of raspberry liqueur.

While forming them, your hand will get messy real quick. Dust your hands with cacao powder or powdered sugar to prevent the chocolade clinging to them. When your hands gets to dirty wash them and then cool them in cold water before starting again. Or you could do it with plastic gloves.The forming of the truffles is a big job so let your bigger kids help.

Put in a nice box and give them to friends and family.
Enjoy!!!