Sunny Saturday morning, with a nearly empty fridge and hunger for something sweet. I made this really easy cinnamon soy milk waffles and ate them on my sunny, little balcony while reading the new Monki Magazine I just found in my mailbox.  Hope you hade a good weekend start, too

Cinnamon Soy Waffles
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Ingredients:

Dry ingredients :
*280g flour
*1 tablespoon baking powder
*1 sachet vanilla sugar (ca 10g)+ 30g brown sugar
*1/2 teaspoon salt
*2 teaspoons ground cinnamon ( or more if you love cinnamon like me:)

Liquid ingredients:
*2 eggs, beaten
*250ml soy milk ( I used Alpro soy milk)
*45g melted butter ( or sunflower oil)

mix dry ingredients and liquid ingredients separated – then fold together.
Heat a waffle maker (no need to grease) and place 2 tablespoons dough in the center. Bake for ca 2min ( not too long, other less it gets a bit dry). Enjoy with apple sauce

great colours and pictures from Family Affairs Spring/summer 2010

finding a heart on the street

beautiful things and a lovely blog from emedemarta

craving some macaroons

discovering promising new photographers like Cedric Bihr

rediscovering this catchy song from Beirut

I went to an “I don’t want to grow up” fancy dress party yesterday with my friends who went as Mary Poppins, Pippi Langstrumpf, Minnie Mouse and Barbie. I wore an “Alice in wonderland” costume I made. Of course I had to bake some cute cupcakes to complement the outfit. Hope you like them

I found an amazing japanese pastry shop in Barcelona! The japanese confectioner Takashi Ochiai came to Barcelona in the 80’s to learn about catalan pastries and opened OCHIAI, which sells incredible traditional japanese and catalan sweet treats As I am addicted to green tea I had to give it a try and made these yummy white chocolate green tea pralines. So easy to make and a really cute gift….

Green tea pralines
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You need a silicon chocolate mold with 15 units

Ingredients:
*200g white chocolate
*2 teaspoons of Matcha green tea powder
*1 tablespoon cream

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Break 3/4 of the chocolate in pieces and warm slowly in a double pot boiler (Bain-marie) @ approx 50ºC until completely melted. Be careful not to heat too much, otherwise the white chocolate can get crumby.
Fill half of the fluid chocolate in the silicone mould.
Then stir the matcha green tea and the cream into the fluid chocolate, stir until well combined and fill in the mould on top of the white chocolate. Break the remaining 1/4 chocolate in pieces and let melt. Then fill in the silicon mould on top of the green tea chocolate. Put in the fridge and let cool for 2 hours…

Can’t believe the weekend’s over again… I’ll be busy at work next week preparing a trip to Asia and won’t have much time to try out new recipes:( So I was thinking about something delicious to last some days to help me get over the week – and remembered the sweet scent of Linzer tarts that came out the cellar of my grandma, years ago at christmas time. The tarts had been stored there for days to achieve the perfect moist texture and taste. So I went for it and I am really euphoric about the result. It tastes just as good as in my memories

Linzer Torte
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Ingredients:
*250g all purpose flour
*250g sugar
*250g butter, softened
*250g mixed ground nuts(hazelnut, walnuts and almonds)
*1 egg + 1 egg yolk(to spread on the cake)
*hint of nutmeg
*1 teaspoon cinnamon
*2 tablespoon cocoa
*hint of salt
*4 tablespoons of Kirsch liquor (alternatively 2 tablespoons of cherry juice + 2 tablespoons of Amaretto)
*1 small glass of marmalade (raspberry or red currant)
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*Grease a round cake pan
*Mix flour, sugar, mixed nuts, spices and cocoa – then add 1 egg and the Kirsch liquor and mix
*Add the butter in small pieces and knead well
*Let the mixture rest for approx. 5h in the fridge
*Roll 2/3 of the dough out and place in the pan, pushing the border ca 1cm up
*Fill in the marmalade
*With the remaining 1/3 dough cut out hearts, stars etc and place on the marmalade (traditionally you’d cut out stripes to create a grid)
*Brush the dough with egg yolk and let the tart bake for ca 35 min@170ºC
*Wait at least one night(I know it’s difficult) and store the cake in a dark, cool place

With all my thank you for all the nice calls, e-mails, text messages, facebook wall posts and comments for my birthday… Mil gracias!