xc and what to do with leftovers

What do you do with leftover knackis and puff pastry?
Why, Pigs in a Blanket of course!!

This is also great as party finger food and everyone loves them.


What you need:

- Sausages, cut into small pieces
- 1 roll of puff pastry cut into strips

You don't need a wizard to assemble these. Roll sausages in the strips of puff pastry. Put them on a baking sheet. Brush them with an egg yolk-milk mixture if you want the tops to be nice and golden. But they're good plain anyway.

Serve hot and with a bit of mustard on the side.

Yummy!!!

xc and the lime pound cake semi-fail

I've been on a baking spree lately. First the scones, then the brownies, and now a stab at pound cakes.
It doesn't look as yummy as the scones but it didn't look utterly disgusting either. So I guess I should be happy about it. But I'm not.

We didn't have lemons and I was too laze to go out and buy 1 single lemon so I used lime instead. Then the top part got burnt a bit. Then it didn't come out light and fluffy as I expected it to be. Well, we don't have a hand mixer so I creamed the butter by hand using a wooden spoon and a wire whisk and I think that's the reason why it's not as light as I wanted it to be. And I'm still getting used to the oven settings and which rack should I put stuff on and such. G said I put the rack too high that's why it got burnt. But if I put in 1 spot lower then the bottom will be the one that'll burn. I found the lime taste weird but G said it was still good.

But my customer was one happy camper anyway. He got a cake without doing anything, although he did ask for scones at the beginning but I wanted to try out this recipe instead. Next time maybe I'll just add vanilla extract instead of lemon zest and juice. And I'll definitely get me a hand mixer soon!

So there, I'll chalk this one up as a semi-fail. G finished everything last night so it's not a major fail and I wasn't super happy about the outcome so neither is it a major success.

I also promised G that I'll be making something special every weekend. Ha! As if. But I'll try my best anyway. And for next week, I feel like making Tiramisu. We'll see what happens.

For now, I have to think of what to do during the week...and that is...w-o-r-k. Ugh!



peace & luc,
xc

xc and the scones

I have been itching to cook and/or bake ever since we got our oven last December. A few months ago I bought a recipe book and for a few months now I've only been looking through the pages, drooling at the pictures and imagining myself buying the ingredients and cooking up a storm in our super tiny kitchen. Every time my colleague glances at my office monitor he always asks me what I was going to make for dinner as I'm always on recipe sites.

But since we do not plan ahead whenever we go grocery shopping, we end up buying the usual stuff we eat (read: pasta) and I never get the occasion to make anything from the recipes I've collected. Maybe once or twice but not as much as I want to.

So when I saw the recipe for scones, I got so excited. It was super easy! Plus we have all the ingredients needed at home. And it goes well with tea and I have to say that G loves his tea!!! So after meeting up with Lex this morning and going on a shopping spree at Conforama I got all excited when G asked me if I wanted to have gouter. Gouter is the french version of merienda. Parents usually give gouter to their kids at 4 o'clock after school is out. It was almost 6pm but the sun was still up and it still felt like it was still 4 o'clock.

Then off I went to the kitchen!!! With an empty wine bottle as a rolling pin and a small glass as a cutter, I was cutting up little scones in no time.

I'm so glad it turned out great. Not burnt at all! And it was perfectly browned on top. I love it! G loved it too. We ate them with black cherry jam (mine) and some strawberry-rhubarb jam (G's) and G brewed some spiced tea to go with them.

A perfect way to end a lazy Saturday afternoon.

xc's first batch of scones!

peace, luv, and happy weekend,
xc