Thee met Aimée

Iets lekkers met een bite!

Thee met Aimée

Showoff post: Chocolate crinkles

Oh, what a happy birthday I had last time. One of the many awesome gifts I received, was the first cook book that stemmed from BBC’s The Great British Bake Off — which just so happens to be one of my favorite tv shows. I can not even begin to explain why this book is so great and how many amazing recipes it contains. However, here’s a little peek of the chocolate crinkles, a cookie I had never had before. It slightly resembles the more crunchy corners of a brownie, and can be considered the love child of a brownie & cookie.

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If you’d like to make these yourself, check out this recipe by Ruth Clemens, the runner up on The Bake Off. And if you just so happen to be in more of a brownie-kind-of-mood, check out my brownie recipe.

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Cashew caramel bars

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When I’m saying ‘I am baking some cookies’, it is really just an alibi to get myself a candy bar-like treat like this one. This recipe will get you the finest candy bar money can buy, so don’t just buy the pre-packed stuff: If you are going to sin, make it worth it.

Start of by baking a shortbread base (this is the ‘cookies’-part), and while it cools, make some caramel and throw it on top with some delicious crunchy nuts. Cashews, peanuts, walnuts, hazelnuts…basically, any kind you prefer. They all work terrifically with caramel. If you’re a salted caramel fan, you could use ready-salted nuts, or just throw on some sea salt yourself. Your friends will ‘hate’ you for serving these…if these little sweet devils even make it out of your kitchen.

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Ingredients:

–          150 g butter (slightly softened)

–          100 g sugar

–          250 g all-purpose flour

–          pinch of salt

For the caramel:

–          340 g sugar

–          240 ml cream

–          80 g butter

 

–          and about 200 g of nuts

 

I wouldn’t dare telling you how many portions these amounts will yield, because it largely depends on a) how much of the ingredients mysteriously disappear from your work space and b) what size you cut the portions.

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Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Line a baking pan or any kind of (deep) oven tray with foil (I used a lasagna pan of about 30×20 cm), and grease it with some melted butter.
  2. To make the shortbread base, first mix the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Then, add the flour and salt.
  3. Get the dough in the pan. To make things easier (because it will be sticky), you could use a piece of microwave wrap to press down the dough equally.
  4. Bake the shortbread base until golden brown. The timing differs greatly depending on how thick you made it and of course also on your oven. I think mine took about 20 minutes.
  5. While the shortbread cools, heat the sugar in a nonstick saucepan. Let it stand until the bottom layer of sugar begins to melt, and ONLY THEN start stirring, continuing to stir until the sugar has turned light brown in color and smooth in texture. Pour in the cream and stir constantly until the mixture is smooth again, about 5 minutes. Turn down the heat and stir in the butter. Please RESIST the urge to stick in a finger to have a sneak taste, because you will lose its skin due to the incredible heat of the caramel.
  6. Throw the nuts on the shortbread, pour the caramel over, and let it all cool for at least two hours, or until it has set. Cutting the bars may be tricky, but can be made easier by keeping the pan in the refridgerator.

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Showoff post: Thomas The Tank Engine-birthday cake

For Jake’s second birthday, his mom asked me if I could bake him a Thomas cake. I was really happy about her request, because it allowed me to get creative and use some extra bright, primal colors. As you can see in the pictures, it turned out quite alright! Jake got Thomas, and the guests got a light chocolate cake with rich chocolate and vanilla buttercream.

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Crispy, crunchy oatmeal cookies

Oatmeal cookies may be just as famous as the legendary chocolate chip, but they’re not in the Netherlands. We use oatmeal to make porridge, and that’s about it. That is why I wanted to try a little baking with oatmeal myself, and naturally I started with cookies. Like I wrote in one of my previous posts, I am almost religiously in favor of crunchy cookies: This led me to this recipe on SmittenKitchen, a deliciously inspiring baking blog. I made some minor changes, converted the volume amounts to SI units and tried & tested a few variations. I hope you like them, and that you will share your own variations in the comments below!

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Oatmeal-cookies-1Ingredients:

–          1 cup / 128 g all-purpose flour

–          1 teaspoon baking powder

–          1/4 teaspoon salt

–          1 3/4 sticks / 200 g butter (slightly softened)

–          1 cup / 200 g sugar

–          1/4 cup packed / 50 g light brown sugar

–          1 large egg

–          1 teaspoon vanilla extract

–          2 1/2 cups / 225 g old-fashioned rolled oats

 

–          6 ounces / 170 g white chocolate, chopped

–          + 1/2 cup / 70 g hazelnuts

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You can play around with the addition of chocolate and nuts. I have tried these two varieties and my friends and family loved them.

 

Variety 1:

1/2 cup / 75 g white chocolate

+ 1/2  cup / 70 g toasted hazelnuts

+ 70 g ‘kandijsuiker’ : These are very crunchy sugar crystals, I’m not sure about a non-Dutch equivalent… Basically, you could use anything sweet and crunchy

 

Variety 2:

1/2 cup / 70 g toasted almonds

+ 1/4 cup / 70 g peanut butter

+ 50 g ‘kandijsuiker’

 

These amounts will yield about 24 portions (2 tablespoons of dough each). Bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celcius for 13-16 minutes.

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Fudgy chocolate layer cake: Our wedding cake!

In January, my all-time love and I finally got married. After being over ten years together, we knew what kind of cake we wanted even before we started planning the wedding: Chocolate + chocolate and nothing frivolous, airy, fruity or flower-y. As much as I would have loved baking such a cake myself, I decided this wouldn’t be a project I’d want to take on the days before my own wedding (thank you, past-me). Some of my best-baking friends and family got the scare of the year when I asked them if they’d want to bake one of our wedding cakes. It took a lot of convincing and a very detailed, tried & tested recipe, but in the end they could not have done a better job (we’re forever thankful). So now, I would like to share this recipe, which has a special place in my heart, with all of you, the readers of my blog. I hope it may bring you as much joy as it did us!

Fudgy chocolate layer cake: Our wedding cake 2

This epic chocolate cake consists of three kind of muffin-like, fudgy cake layers, with a chocolate fudge cream in between (‘ganache’).

 

Ingredients for the cake:

–          300 ml water

–          90 g Dutch cocoa powder

–          250 g flour

–          476 g sugar

–          1 tsp salt

–          2 sachets of baking powder (=2 x 16 g)

–          3 sachets of vanilla-flavored sugar (=24 g)

–          350 ml buttermilk

–          130 g vegetable oil (peanut of sunflower)

–          3 free-range eggs

 

Ingredients for the ganache:

–          250 g (extra) dark chocolate

–          75 g butter

–          250 ml cream

 

Method:

One day/a couple of hours ahead: Cook 300 ml of water, dissolve the cocoa in the boiling water and leave to cool.

Mix together the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and vanilla-flavored sugar (if you don’t have vanilla-flavored sugar, just use 500 g sugar instead of 476 and add some fresh vanilla of vanilla flavoring). Next, add the buttermilk, oil and eggs and stir until you get a smooth batter. Then, add the water-cocoa solution, and let the batter rest for about 1 hour. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

I highly recommend you either use three baking pans or take turns in the oven to get three cake layers, because this cake is next to impossible to cut into three layers. Grease the baking pan (24 cm diameter), put some baking paper on the bottom and poor in 1/3 of the batter (which will approximately weigh 595 g). Bake the cakes for about 50 minutes and leave to cool on a wire rack.

To make the ganache, slowly melt the chocolate and butter. Let this cool for a little while, and then stir in the cream. You can now let this mixture cool until it has the consistency you like to work with. Smear the ganache on two of the cake circles, stack them up, add the third cake circle, and smear the rest of the ganache all over the resulting layered cake.

To enable easy cutting of the cake, it’s best when it is a bit cooled, but not too cold, because the ganache because difficult to work with – and it doesn’t taste nearly as good as it does at room temperature.

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Showoff post: Baby shower / child’s birthday cupcakes

Nijntje cupcakes 2Over the past months, I’ve also been making themed cupcakes. These ‘Nijntje’ cupcakes (a famous figure from children’s books) were for a boy’s third birthday, and the Mickey Mouse cupcakes were made for the guests of a babyshower. Contact me at theemetaimee [ at ] gmail.com if you would like to order your own themed cupcakes!

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Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl

If you ever feel like having cheesecake, but you don’t have enough cream cheese in stock, or you just have a package of mascarpone about to hit the expiration date, this recipe will suit your needs. It combines the best of cakes and cheesecakes, and looks great when cutting through the marbled layers. I got the recipe from Peabody’s blog Culinary Concoctions (thank you), and made some alterations plus converted the ingredients to SI measures. I experimented a bit, and concluded that if you don’t have a pumpkin or can of pumpkin puree lying around, a great alternative is to grate a large carrot and mash a ripe banana. The taste, color and mushy texture of the resulting cake are fairly similar.

Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl by Thee met Aimee [recipe at www.theemetaimee.nl]

For the cake

– 240 g unsweetened pumpkin puree (or 1 cup) OR 1 large carrot + 1 banana
– 120 ml vegetable oil (or 0.5 cup)
– 2 eggs
– 300 g sugar (or 1.5 cup)
– 256 g plain flour (or 2 cups)
– 1 tsp baking powder
– 0.5 tsp salt
– 1 tsp cinnamon – 0.5 tsp ginger – 0.5 tsp nutmeg (or 2 tsp ready-made pumpkin pie spice, or Dutch speculaas spices)
– 120 g of your favorite nuts (or 1 cup)

For the cheesecake swirl

– 252 g mascarpone (or 9 oz)
– 75 g muscovado sugar (or 0.4 cup)
– 6 tbsp maple syrup
– 1 tbsp flour
– 1 egg

Pumpkin bread with cheesecake swirl by Thee met Aimee [recipe at www.theemetaimee.nl]Method:

For the cake batter, mix together the pumpkin puree, oil and eggs, and in a separate bowl the flour, baking powder and sugar. Then gently mix these two together and fold in the nuts. For the cheesecake swirl, mix together the mascarpone, sugar, syrup, flour and egg. Now poor about 2/3 of the cake batter in a butter or oil-greased pan, poor on the cheesecake mixture, and finish with the remaining cake batter. You could go through the concoction with a skewer to create a more marbled cake. Bat it at 160 degrees Celcius (or 325 Fahrenheit) for about 60 minutes. To bake the cake in my pictures, I used a round cake pan, just because I wasn’t in a loaf-pan-kind of mood, but you could of course pick whichever way you fancy.

Showoff post: Millionaires’ shortbread

When I visited the U.K. last year, my colleagues at the University of Bristol had just planned a bake sale. Everyone would bake something at home, and everyone was buying stuff off each other (for themselves, or kids, neighbors, grandparents etc) with all the proceedings going to a good cause that the organizing team picked (the organization alternated). I loved it so much, I am still determined to introduce bake sales in the work place back here in the Netherlands. One of the guys had made millionaires’ shortbread, which is basically the same as chocolate caramel shortbread, but that doesn’t sound nearly as magnificent. He used a recipe from Waitrose, which is an upmarket chain of British supermarkets.

If you’re not baking for any sale, make sure you could stand to gain a few pounds, because millionaires’ shortbread will make you want to eat the whole batch and gain a million.

 

Oreo cheesecake

Last year I took my first trip to the US, to California to be precise. There was one thing on top of my tourist-wish list: Visiting the Cheesecake Factory. The menu totally threw me off! Back here in the Netherlands, generally, we’re only familiar with the basic New York cheesecake, so I had a very very hard time choosing which cheesecake to try. Needless to say, I went for the Oreo cheesecake, and until this day I cannot get the mind-blowing taste out of my head. It honestly was one of the best pieces of cake I have ever tasted.

It took me a few tries, but I think this recipe approaches the sublime original, without being too hard to make yourself.


Ingredients:

–   2 packs of Oreos (2x 176 grams, or 32 cookies)

–   70 g butter, melted

–   250 g mascarpone

–   200 g crème fraîche

–   200 g cream cheese

–   200 g powdered sugar

–   4 eggs, yolks and whites separated

–   2 tbsp corn starch [or ‘maizena’ in Dutch]

–   two vanilla pods (or 2 tsp of essence)


Method:

Crush half of the Oreos, including the cream in the middle, (1 pack = 4×4 cookies = 176 grams) and mix the crumbs with 70 grams of melted unsalted butter. Press them in a springform pan lined with baking paper, and let the crust harden in the fridge while you start making your filling. You could of course use more cookies, for a thicker deliciously dark crust.

This cheesecake filling can be used to make one regular-sized cake (22-24 cm diameter) or you could make party bites: this filling is enough for 45 small ones (in a muffin/cupcake tin).

Mix the egg whites until stiff. In a separate bowl, mix together the cheeses, sugar, egg yolks, corn starch and vanilla. Make sure the mixture turns out smooth. Then gently fold in the stiff egg whites, and transfer it into the crust. Next, you can break some Oreos into large chunks and spread these over the cheesecake mixture – don’t worry, they’re meant to kind of sink in. Now bake the cheesecake for 1.5 hours at 150°C (or 25 minutes at 160°C if you’re making small ones). After baking, the cake may not look too firm, but know that it will set when cooled. Leave the cheesecake in the oven after baking for about two hours so it cools slowly. Then move it to the fridge for at least another two hours. Finish the cake of with some powdered sugar and Oreos on top.

Showoff post: Red velvet cake

Red velvet has intrigued me for a couple of years now. In the Netherlands, there is no such thing, so I had no idea it was ‘just’ chocolate! Thanks to a Betty Crocker mix, and a little help from my friend Wikipedia, I figured out how to make a red velvet cake from scratch. I am not sure whether it had the authentic taste, but it tasted good nonetheless.