Sweet Disposition

I don't know what happened, but I felt like abusing the kitchen today.

First up, The Best Chocolate Ice Cream You'll Ever Have, and, ja, that stuff is so good that I just want to tap myself a bathtub full of it and live in chocolate heaven for-----ever.

Image via A Cup of Jo

Below is what mine looked like before freezing. Joh joh joh. It is rather rich, but worth making. And you don't need an ice-cream maker.

After that came beskuit, which is Afrikaans for rusks, the dough looks a bit dodge. I sort of combined whatever I felt like putting in them, so they contain All Bran flakes, coconut, sunflower seeds, oats and packets with the words 'wheat' on them. Normally my mom or sister bake the beskuit, or my grandmother brings us some, but for a first try they turned out well. I don't have a recipe, but this one looks pretty similar.

Then there was a special at the grocery store, R 20 for three packs of asparagus, so I made leek, asparagus and bacon quiche. I think after the road trip and eating only burgers + chips, today was the day I needed to eat food that didn't taste like it could be a year old. Again, no recipe, I pre-browned the leeks and bacon, used some instant shortcrust pastry, put the raw asparagus on top, then poured over a mix of 1/2 cup cream + 3/4 cup milk+ 4 eggs, and then grated some pecorino over it. Nom nom nom. 

And in between I baked these World Peace Cookies, because yesterday we went to this baking store and I got three different kinds of choc chips (white normal caramel) and instead of baking choc chip cookies, these had to be tried out. They are ok, but I don't think they are as fantastic as smittenkitchen writes they are. They're tasty, but not revolutionarily so. 

Pre-baked, the dinkbeest version

Baked, the smittenkitchen version

Also between it all, I made more cordial because we don't eat the oranges from the tree in the garden and I didn't want to waste them. Booooom! Being a housewife is exhausting.

Snickerdoodles

Just say it : Snickerdoodle. SSSSSSnickerdoooodle. It sounds like something the Moomin's would bake and have for lunch. It is just a basic cookie rolled in cinnamon: perfect for Christmas. Since I can remember, we have been baking cookies for Christmas. When we were little, my mother would make a dough, let us stencil out different shapes with cookie cutters and when they were done, we would decorate them. 

I think it is a German tradition to bake cookies for Christmas and then you distribute little cookie-plates to friends/family/neighbours and in the end you can compare whose cookies are the best. My mother bakes Vanille-Kipferl, Heidesand cookies and something with chocolate. My sister and I then contribute our own favourites or help with my mom's. I like baking different ones each year, so last year Snickerdoodles were it and since we are leaving for the coast on Monday, they were the quickest to make. 

The recipe is adapted from Martha Stewart and smittenkitchen: 

2 3/4 cups flour

2 ts cream of tartar

1 ts baking soda

salt

2 sticks ( = 230g) butter

1 3/4 cups sugar

2 ts cinnamon

2 eggs

Pre-heat your oven to 200°C

Mix the flours, cream of tartar, baking soda and a pinch of salt. 

Add the butter, 11/2 cups of sugar and the eggs. 

Leave the dough in the fridge for an hour to chill. 

Roll the dough into little balls and dip them in the cinnamon-sugar mixture ( combine the cinnamon and the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar). 

Bake the cookies for 12 min. 

My dough was a bit dry this year, so I added a swig of milk, and I forgot to turn the heat up to 200°C, so they took a bit longer. Also, mine remain quite compact and don't spread like those in the images on the different websites, but they still taste like Christmas :)

Rhubarber

I have never cooked with rhubarb.
It is strange to me that these green-pink stalks can become anything delicious.
However, the other day a bunch of rhubarb only cost R 9.99 at Fruit 'n Veg so I grabbed a bunch and headed home to find out what one could do with them.

I found a whole selection of recipes on smittenkitchen and through foodgawker, but they all appeared to take a lot of time and I prefer mixing something, throwing it in the oven and taking it out hours later to marvel at how tasty and beautiful it looks.

So ultimately, I adapted smittenkitchen's original recipe:

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble

Yields 6 to 8 servings.

For the topping:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons Demerara sugar (or turbinado sugar aka Sugar in the Raw)
Zest of one lemon
1/4 pound (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 quart strawberries plus a few extras, hulled, quartered
Juice of one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch (some commenters found the flour option a little too, well, floury so this has been updated)
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

2. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. (I used an oval dish this time, because they fit better in the bottom of a shopping bag.)

3. Remove topping from refrigerator and cover fruit thickly and evenly with topping. Place pie plate on a (foil-lined, if you really want to think ahead) baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 40 to 50 minutes.

So, instead, for the topping, I did this: 

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

150ml oats ( slightly more than half a cup)

1ts cinnamin

1ts nutmeg

 ( I wing these until it looks to be the right amount)

100g cold butter

100g chopped walnuts ( I usually just use whichever nuts I have, and am not too specific about the amount)

Place everything except the nuts together in a bowl ( it would be wise to cut the butter into small squares) and rub it all until it is crumbly. You could also do this with a food processor but I like the way your fingers have to rub everything together. 

Add the nuts and mix it well. It should be like slightly wet sand. 

For the Filling: 

I used about 6 stalks of rhubarb

one large Woolies punnet of strawberries ( think that should be round 600g)

Added 3 TB of lemon juice

3 TB of cornflour

1/4 cup sugar

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces ( about 1cm thick) and also cut the strawberries. Place the fruit in a bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Mix everything carefully and make sure everything is well coated. I would adjust the sugar depending on how sweet the strawberries are and how sweet you want your crumble to be. 

Then I placed the fruit in the bottom of an oven-proof dish and crumbled the sandy dough evenly over it. 

Bake for about 40-50 minutes, and whambam: delicious. 

Instead of rhubarb, you could also use frozen berries or apples or pears or nectarines or peaches or plums. Hmmmmm you could basically take any fruit. Imagine a cherry crumble. 

To finish the crumble of I added a scoop of frozen mixed berry yoghurt ( available at Woolworths, where else).

My sister did appreciate it.

nom nom nom