All posts filed under: Baking and Cooking

Jamie Oliver’s carrot cake

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I have had a soft spot for Jamie Oliver(the cook!) ever since he ran his TV series on healthy eating. I used to watch him when he had his 30 minute-meal series, back in the day of no kids and plenty of time on my hands…Oh, those were the days… Anyway, to get back to reality, recently I have gone back to his recipes since I know they are always tasty and foolproof, especially the dessert ones, for a non-gifted baker like moi… A few weeks back we had dear friends over for dinner and I decided to go for a homemade sweet. I almost always buy my desserts as I have no confidence when it comes to presenting people with my own disasters creations but this time, I felt I could take on Jamie’s carrot cake as it looked simple enough to make and beautiful to present to guests. I actually managed to make a mess of the instructions and mix things in at the wrong time but, surprise, surprise, the cake turned out …

Christmas Baking: Melomakarona

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For me, Christmas in Greece equals two desserts: Kourabiedes, which featured on my blog last week and got me an order from as far as Greece (!!) and Melomakarona, or walnut syrupy biscuits. So this week I decided to try my hand at the latter, to the delight of my Greek hubby. I had made them before, the first year we were married but must have used the wrong recipe as I found them hard to get right and stopped making them! This time I used this recipe from taste.com. I found it pretty straight forward, once I managed to convert my cups into grams, that is :-). I did make a couple of silly mistakes, like using brown sugar instead of white and ended up with a runny mixture instead of a creamy goo but hey, all is well when it ends well, right? And it did, as you can see from the picture: Kali orexi, as the Greeks you say!

Kourabiedes(Greek Butter Cookies)

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It’s December and I have started getting the Christmas buzz! I decorated our living room on Sunday and today I decided to make some Greek cookies. I was introduced to kourabiedes as an Erasmus student in Thessaloniki and am, let’s say, slightly partial to them :-). I have used this recipe from Food Network but instead of walnuts I went for almonds, as Greek hubby recommended. Tips when using the recipe: Use icing sugar instead of confectioners’. I don’t have an electric mixer so I used my hands to rub the butter and the icing sugar together. It worked a treat. Make your cookies slightly small as the baking powder will make them puff up. Mine came out a bit chubby, I will know better for the next batch. DO convert the cup measurements into grams if you live in Europe, it helps getting things right  and your dough nice and crumbly, as it should. As soon as she sniffed them, Emma couldn’t be chased from the kitchen until she had her fill :-). This …

Romanian Apple Pie

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Pregnant women and cravings? Definitely, in my case! I had some weird cravings recently: on Saturday I was seized by an indomitable desire for…hotdogs. I had to have them and I had to have them FAST! So fast that Alex had to do a detour (fortunately, we were out) and drive me to our local Tesco’s to get baps and hotdogs which were devoured as soon as we got home. The whole pack!! Today I was in the mood for Romanian food. I had cottage cheese and polenta then for dessert chocolate milk with chunks of fresh bread in it (don’t ask why but we used to drink the stuff by the bucket when we were kids). But since my mum had been telling me about an apple pie she had made last week, I decided to make my own version tonight! Ingredients: filo pastry 12 small apples fruit and nut mix brown sugar cinnamon and/or allspice orange juice (for soaking the dried fruit) olive or coconut oil (for the filo pastry) butter (for the …

Chicken skewers and beetroot salad

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So we were in Dublin at the weekend. Greek hubby wanted to sample some home delicacies at one of the Greek restaurants we frequent when in Dublin but because he is such a fusspots food connoisseur, with high standards when it comes to food (and most other  things in life, as a matter of fact), he ended up disappointed with the food and I ended up with a couple of food orders for this week: Greek chicken skewers and lamb chops. So this evening I decided to honour his first request and made him some yummy chicken skewers. I love making them as they are one of the easiest dinners I can put together (less than half an hour), practically cooks itself and as a bonus, gets me points with hubby :-)! Basic ingredients: 600g chicken breast one courgette two small onions, cut into eights cherry tomatoes, cut into halves a couple of peppers Chop everything roughly and add them creatively on the skewers. Marinate with a mixture of olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper …