Oproep aan alle pistache-liefhebbers: deze pistache boterkoekjes zijn zo lekker! Ze zijn boterachtig, zacht en bomvol smaak door de heerlijke vulling! Oh echt wel, de lekkerste koeken maak je zelf!

A blog about Decorating, fashion, gardens, the beach, gardening, cooking, photography, all influenced by my Italian and Argentine roots.

Italian photographer and blogger Valeria Necchio brings Yotam Ottolenghi's Chocolate Krantz Cake to life with her mouth-watering imagery. Enjoy!

Mid-Autumn Festival fell on 12th Sept this year, sadly it's Monday. So we had a pre-celebration on the day before. I attempted to make mooncakes last year but it wasn't very successful, so I didn't think of taking that challenge. Instead I decided to make a mousse cake with lychee & white wine. I love lychee so when I came across the idea of using lychee & white wine, I was thrilled not the try it. Even though I like to use wines & spirits in baking, I don't like the bitterness of alcohols. So I decided to create my own recipe. I would say lychee & white wine are a perfect couple after I tried mixing white wine & lychee syrup. With osmanthus, they are a striking trio. Recipe (6" square): Cake base 1 egg, separated 18 g sugar 20 g plain flour 7 g vegetable oil 9 g milk Line a 8" square baking pan with a parchment paper. In a mixing bowl, beat the egg yolk with 5 g of sugar until thick & pale, then fold in the oil. Sieve in the flour & mix until smooth. In another mixing bowl, whisk up the egg white & fold gently with the batter until smooth. Pour into the prepared pan & bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 10-15 min. Remove from the oven & cool on rack. Osmanthus, Lychee & White Wine Jelly 90 g white wine 30 g boiling water 6 g sheet gelatine 1 tbsp dried sweet osmanthus 80 g canned lychees, drained & chopped 30 g sugar Soak sheet gelatine in cold water. In a small glass, combine dried osmanthus, sugar & boiling water, leave it brewing for 5 min. Squeeze out excess water of bloomed gelatine & add to the tea, stir to dissolve. Add chopped lychees & white wine into the tea. Pour into a 5" square mould & refrigerate to set. Lychee Mousse 150 g canned lychee, drained & blended into puree 180 g whipping cream 6 g sheet gelatine Bloom sheet gelatine in cold water, squeeze excess water & add to lychee puree. Heat the lychee puree & stir to dissolve the gelatine. Whisk the whipping cream to soft peaks. Blend in the lychee puree. Yogurt Mousse 120 g plain natural yogurt 190 g whipping cream 35 g sugar 6 g gelatine leaves Soften the gelatine in cold water for a few minutes, then squeeze out the excess water. Whisk the whipping cream with sugar to soft peaks, fold in the yogurt. Mix 2 tbsp of whipped cream with the soften gelatine & melt it using the microwave (20－30 sec). Combine with remaining mousse & fold until smooth. Topping Jelly 50 g white wine 100 g lychee syrup 4 g sheet gelatine 1 tsp dried sweet osmanthus Soak sheet gelatine in cold water, squeeze out excess water. Combine all ingredients & heat to dissolve the gelatine. Assembling Cut the cake into 6" square then put it into a 6" square loose base cake pan. Spread the lychee mousse on top, refrigerate to set. Top with the osmanthus, lychee & white wine jelly. Spread the yogurt mousse & refrigerate to set. Pour in the topping jelly & refrigerate to set.

Ciambella is a delicious classic Italian cake that's traditionally eaten for breakfast, and it's incredibly simple and easy to make. Light, fluffy, tender, and with a great aromatic flavor of lemon and olive oil - it really is perfect with espresso in the morning!

Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares - layers of streudel with a creamy lemon filling. This dessert comes together so quickly!

From creamy chocolate to lemony layers, the perfect ending to any fabulous meal is right here.

This cake is a long-time family favorite. My mother made it for my siblings and me when we were young, and every time I pull it out of the oven, clichè as it sounds, I am reminded of summer mornings in my childhood kitchen. It's simple, adaptable, and make aheadable :) Over the years, many questions have been asked, which I've answered as best as I can in the comments. I've answered a few FAQs in the notes below the recipe as well. Also, if you're new here, welcome! You've landed on one of the two most popular recipes on Alexandra's Kitchen, the other being My Mother's Peasant Bread, which led to the creation of my cookbook, Bread Toast Crumbs, which includes 40 simple bread recipes and 70+ recipes for eating them up. (If you love baking, you'll love this no-knead bread.)

The Chardonnay will be available just in time for the show's February 14 premiere.

Explore alfielou's 147 photos on Flickr!

Grated courgette gives this cake a lovely moist texture - a great way to use up a glut from your garden

This elegant red wine chocolate cake is made up of three layers of moist red wine-infused chocolate cake layers. The layers are divided by raspberry buttercream, frosted with chocolate buttercream, and decorated with a gorgeous chocolate drizzle.

It's been tradition for me to make a little something to celebrate Australia day, which is coming up this weekend. Although I don't actua...

What is Doberge, you say? You look it up in a french dictionary and the word is not there. How do you pronounce it? (I say dough-bearj; some say dough-bosh or dough-boj.) Doberge cake is an iconic staple of living in New Orleans. It is a yummy multi-layered cake with pastry cream inside and a poured glaze on the outside. You can order one for yourself here: Traditional flavors are chocolate, lemon and caramel. But how did this deliciously delicate delight come to be? I did a little research and learned a few things myself. Back in the 1930's there was a New Orleans woman named Beulah Ledner, who came from a baking family in Germany. She started baking during the Depression to supplement the income from her husband's furniture business. Experimenting in her kitchen, she came up with a variation on the famed Hungarian-Austrian dobos torta, which was thin layers of sponge cake filled with butter cream. She changed that to thin layers of butter cake with a custard filling, either chocolate or lemon. This was a cake that was subtly rich and lighter than the original, and better suited to the New Orleans climate. But its inventor recognized that "dobos" wouldn't fly in New Orleans. She thought it should be "Frenchified" to fit the city's style. And so the name "doberge" was born. The business was first known as Mrs. Charles Ledner Bakery and was based in her home. Eventually she moved to a store front. A heart attack caused Beulah Ledner to sell the bakery, the name and the recipes to the Joe Gambino family in 1946. The agreement forbade her from operating another bakery in Orleans Parish for five years. But she could not stay away, and 2 years later opened another business in a neighboring parish (ie county) called Beulah Ledner Bakery. Beulah Ledner worked until she was 87 and sold Beulah Ledner Bakery in 1981. She died at 93, her culinary legacy intact. Gambino's Bakery is another icon of New Orleans, more famous for the doberge cake than Beulah. Many think that it originated there, but now we know better! No one knows the original recipe except for Gambino's , but here is a recipe we found on the Internet that my best friend Heather has made with good success. The only difference is that an authentic doberge cake has a poured glaze icing, not a spread on one: CHOCOLATE DOBERGE CAKE CAKE: 2 cups cake flour sifted 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 10 tablespoons butter 1-1/2 cups sugar 3 eggs separated whites beaten until stiff 1 cup buttermilk 2 squares unsweetened chocolate melted 1-1/4 teaspoons vanilla 1 teaspoon almond extract FILLING: 2-1/2 cups evaporated milk 2 squares semisweet chocolate 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar 5 tablespoons flour 4 egg yolks 2 tablespoons butter 1-1/4 teaspoon vanilla 1/4 teaspoon almond extract FROSTING: 3 cups sugar 1 cup evaporated milk 2 ounces bittersweet or unsweetened chocolate 4 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon vanilla DIRECTIONS: Preheat oven to 300. Grease and flour 2 round cake pans. In a medium bowl sift flour, soda and salt 3 times. Cream margarine and sugar in a large mixing bowl then add egg yolks one at a time. Gradually alternate adding the flour mixture and buttermilk then add chocolate and mix well by beating about 3 minutes. Fold in the three beaten egg whites, vanilla and almond extract. Bake 45 minutes. Allow cake to completely cool then split each layer into thirds to make six thin layers. Put milk and chocolate in a saucepan and heat until chocolate is melted. In a bowl combine sugar and flour. Make a paste by adding hot milk chocolate by tablespoons to the sugar and flour and then return to saucepan. Stir over medium heat until thick. Add 4 egg yolks all at once and stir rapidly to completely blend. Cook 3 minutes longer. Remove from heat then and add butter, vanilla and almond extract. Cool and spread on cake layering as you go. Do not spread on top layer. Combine sugar and milk in a heavy saucepan and bring to a boil stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer 6 minutes without stirring. Remove from heat and blend in chocolate. Add butter and vanilla and return to medium low heat cooking 2 minutes. Place in refrigerator to cool. Beat well and then spread on top and sides of the cake. ------------------------------------------------------- Now, we all know I am a fan of short cuts. Don't get me wrong, taste is critically important to me, but if I can find a way to get excellent results with a little less work, I am all over that. So in my laziness, um, I mean, thriftiness, I have created a "doctored" version that Heather teasingly calls my Faux-berge cake. Sharon's Fauxberge Chocolate Cake 2 layers of your favorite doctored cake recipe in white or yellow Jello pudding cups premade chocolate pudding Chocolate buttercream icing Chocolate ganache Torte each cake layer into 3 thinner layers. Spread a thin layer of pudding in between each layer. (Premade cups have a better consistency than making the pudding in the box.) And it's easier!! MWAHAHAHA. Here are the 6 layers of cake on a 1/2 inch fomecore board. You will need to cover the fomecore with something appropriate to make it food safe. This was for family so I threw caution to the wind. Ice to the edge of the fomecore with a layer of chocolate buttercream and chill in fridge until firm. Now this next step is NOT necessary and I usually do not do it. However, this puppy was a huge 15 inch cake and rather unstable. So I gave it a coating of thick ganache (made with a 2:1 ratio of chocolate to cream.) You let the ganache thicken to a paste consistency and ice the cake with your spatula and bench scraper just like you do for buttercream. It sets up nice and firm to give you a stable chocolate "shell" encasing the layers. That top ledge of chocolate you can see in the picture was removed with my palette knife after the cake was fully chilled, but before I poured the thinner ganache layer on top. Wanna see something scary?......................... Here is my ganache pouring set up. (Pretend you don't see that pile of laundry on the chair, kay?) From bottom to top: cookie sheet lined with foil, fondant bucket wrapped in plastic wrap for food safety, piece of non skid stuff, cooling rack, piece of non-skid, and chilled cake on its fomecore board. When the iced cake is fully chilled, then you pour the final ganache coating on. That's a LOT of ganache for this huge a$$ cake! My friend Jacque has a great tutorial on how to pour ganache on her fabulous blog Daisy Lane Cakes. Thanks Jacque, you rock! OK, wanna see something even more scary?...................... Moving that huge cake with wet ganache into the lowest shelf of my fridge where it barely fits without messing it up! Stress! I need a drink. I let that ganache firm up overnight. Next day I took it out the fridge (fairly easy now that it is firm) and placed it on the display board, piped a border and placed the edible photo on top. This was for my sister in law's dad's 85th birthday bash. Everyone went nuts over this cake, in both looks and taste. I was even told it was better than Gambino's! Shhh, don't tell I cheated. And here is a picture of the cake after serving. This photo was taken with D's cell phone. Don't think we'll be getting any blog awards with this one! LOL So there you have it, class. Your lesson on the New Orleans Doberge cake. Your assignment is to go make one of these beauties and tell me how you like it! Enjoy! Sharon http://www.sugaredproductions.com/

Layers of crepe. How can it taste bad?

Soft and chewy cookies with a rich molasses flavor made with unrefined muscovado sugar.

You can't beat a classic pavlova with crunchy white clouds of meringue and cream, or can you? How about a chocolate pavlova? With Nutella? Now we're talking! I made this a double decker pavlova purely to have an excuse to fit more Nutella, strawberries and cream between the layers :) Here we have the first layer

My husband has a sterling pedigree, and claims that his family landed in America sometime before the Mohegans. I am a bit dubious, of course, and the truth is, I would’ve married him if he had been a plumber named Manny, because I’m crazy about him (and plumbers are so expensive), but that’s another story. Despite his Mayflower lineage, some of Dicky’s tastes can only be described as, well, low. VERY low. On one of our first dates, for example, he stopped at a newsstand to get some Chuckles after dinner. Chuckles??? Who knew they even made those squashed gumdrops anymore, for Pete’s sake?? I tried to convince myself that they were really just commercially-made pates des fruits, but, deep-down, I knew better. And then there’s his unapologetic, misty-eyed nostalgia for Swanson’s turkey T.V. dinners. What would the pilgrims say? They feed those to prisoners, don’t they? But nothing is more alarming than his occasional penchant for late-night trips to buy Hostess Orange Cupcakes. You, know, those chemically enhanced yellow-orange numbers topped with neon-orange plaster and a squiggle of something that looks very suspiciously like Elmer’s Glue. It’s all quite shocking, particularly given my chosen occupation as a dessert and baking expert. But “in for a penny, in for a pound,” as they say, so I embrace all of Dicky’s low-brow preferences (Salisbury steak, anyone?). So, here’s my homage to that icon of the chemically-enhanced dessert snack world, the Hostess Orange Cupcake, made with real ingredients. It’s an American classic, after all. Just like Dicky. Note: I used Cara Cara orange zest and juice in this recipe. The Cara Cara is a sweet, low-acid navel orange which has the appearance of a common orange on the outside, but has a pinkish colored pulp as seen in the photo above. For the chocolate version of these cupcakes, click here. Homemade “Hostess” Orange Cupcakes Makes 12 cupcakes Orange Cupcakes: 1 1/2 cups (6 oz/171 g) cake flour 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup (1 stick/4 oz/113 g) unsalted butter, softened 1 cup (7 oz/200 g) granulated sugar 2 large eggs 2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest 3 tablespoons (1 ½ ounces/45 ml) freshly squeezed strained orange juice 1/3 cup (80 ml) whole milk Cream Filling: 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 3/4 cup 85 g) confectioners’ sugar 1/4 cup (58 g) heavy cream 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract Orange Glaze: 2 cups (113 g) confectioners' sugar 3 tablespoons strained fresh orange juice 1 tablespoon orange-flavored liqueur Orange food coloring Royal Icing Squiggle: 2 ½ cups (284 g) confectioners' sugar 3 tablespoons liquid pasteurized egg whites 1 tablespoon warm water Make the cupcakes: 1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin pan with cupcake liners. 2. In a medium bowl, sift together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt. Whisk to combine and set aside. 3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy, about 30 seconds. Gradually add the sugar and beat at high speed for 3 minutes, until well blended and light. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, reduce the speed to medium, and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and mixing until blended. Beat in the orange zest and the orange juice until blended (the mixture will look curdled at this point). Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating it with the milk in two additions. Mix just until blended. Scrape the batter into the prepared muffin cups, dividing it evenly. Bake the cupcakes for 18 to 22 minutes, until they are a light golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Cool the cupcakes in the pan, set on a wire rack, for 5 minutes. Transfer the cupcakes to the wire rack and cool completely. Make the filling: 4. In an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and beat at high speed until, about 3 minutes. Add the cream and beat for another minute. Scrape the filling into a pastry bag fitted with a 1/4-inch plain or star tip. Fill the cupcakes: 5. Use a paring knife to cut a small X in the center of the bottom of each cupcake. Hold a cupcake upside-down, letting your fingers rest on the top of the cupcake (which is now the bottom). Poke the pastry tip three-quarters of the way into the cupcake and squeeze in some filling, stopping when you feel a slight pressure on the top of the cupcake. Repeat with the remaining cupcakes. Set the filled cupcakes aside while you make the glaze. Make the glaze and glaze the cupcakes: 6. Sift confectioners' sugar into a small saucepan and stir in orange juice and liqueur to make a smooth paste. Heat glaze over moderately high heat until just warm to the touch. Remove from heat and stir in some orange food coloring. 7. Leave the glaze in the saucepan on low heat. Dip each cupcake top in the glaze, letting the excess drip off. You may need to stir the glaze in between glazing each cupcake to ensure that it’s smooth. Make the Royal Icing Squiggle: 8. Combine all the Royal Icing ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high for 5 minutes, scraping down the bowl occasionally (the icing should be fairly thick—if it seems too thin, add more confectioners’ sugar and beat until smooth). Scrape some Royal Icing it into a small parchment cone or a pastry bag fitting with a writing tip. Pipe a row of curlicues horizontally across the center of each cupcake. Serve the cupcakes at room temperature or slightly chilled. They can be stored, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Makes 1 (10-inch) cake

Sopapilla Cuppies with Honey Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting Mexican Food is my FAVORITE! Maybe that comes from growing up in San Antonio. There's nothing like a crispy, delicious Sopapilla to top off a yummy mexican dinner. These are the 2nd cupcakes I've made for my darling hubby's Birthday Fiesta. And they are DE-LISH! If I do say so, myself. or DELICIOSO (as Shelby says...when she imitates Dora the Explorer) :) I always top my Sopapillas with honey and these cuppies are no different. I topped them with cinnamon sugar... drizzled them with honey... and finished with a piece of crispy Sopapilla. Click HERE for the recipe. Blessings to you, Kim

As the last days of summer roll by and autumn is upon us, it’s the perfect time to make this wonderful Strawberry and Custard Pie. Filled with a creamy, smooth custard and fresh strawberries, it’s guaranteed to be a hit.

I just absolutely love Nutella! Just ask my husband. I eat at least 2 spoonfuls every day after I get home from work... just because. I eat...

What's the magic part? The cake batter gets poured into the pan first, and then the flan mixture is poured on top of the batter. During baking the two switch places- pretty neat! My favorite part is how the flan infuses the cake batter with creamy goodness, so the whole thing is a glorious custard/pudding/cake masterpiece.

I believe most of us in Singapore are not exactly familiar with the Bundt cake. I myself, have only recently started to become a lit...

A recipe blog about cultural food, cooking, baking, and travel! I'll share recipes, photos, and tips.

When I visited Amai Tea House in New York, one of their treats I sampled besides their tea cookies was a moist lychee brownie. The brownie was pleasantly thick and fudgy, but it didn’t have quite enough lychee flavor for my taste – I am quite fond of the fruit, so perhaps I hoping for […]

Our closed giveaway for the KitchenAid Professional Stand Mixer proved to be a real success. So keep yourself updated with our giveaways!

Before I begin writing about these pretty lil' cupcakes.... In this post, you will notice that I provide links to some of the products I ...

I have grown up always loving German Chocolate cake! My Auntie used to make a homemade recipe from scratch that was so good, I would look forward to it every time I visited her! While I love almost any chocolate cake, the best part of a German...