I stare upwards at the blue sky… The sounds in the gardens around us seem muffled and quiet. The heat has slowed everyone down. It’s simply too warm to run around like a headless chicken and even the kids next door seem to make less noise then usual. While I lay in the cool grass under the overgrown tree in our garden I ponder about the next Plate to Page assignment; taking photographs of apricots. One in raw state and one in a baked dish. A large bumblebee buzzes around my head and I am just quick enough when I turn my head to prevent it falling flat on my face… They should call them stumble bees, rather then bumble bees.. Especially the larger ones seem to fall quite often. Apparently humans are not the only ones that can be overweight. We have a bumblebee nest in our garden every year, but this year they seem to be more active then previous years. Maybe the nest is slowly getting too full. It’s build inside a birds house, one of those wooden structures you can hang on a tree or shed which is supposed to house a bird. Not bumblebees… They’re suffering from the heat too. Every time I walk to the shed I can hear one or two of them in the opening fanning their wings like mad. It’s their own ventilation-system but it must be – literally – killing them to sit there and fan air into the nest. Maybe the bumblebee that fell beside me in the grass was one of the “ventilators”. He’s still alive but too tired to fly it seems. I turn on my stomach and watch the bumblebee as it tries to climb a blade of grass but keeps falling down.

The writing assignment to go with the photography assignment is summer memories.. Ah… summers when life was good and nothing was wanted of you but to play in the sun, build sandcastles and run to mom and dad for your new sunscreen.. As kids we would always go on vacation to the beach; when we were little we went to Noordwijk, Katwijk en Egmond aan Zee. When we were in our teens, we moved those beaches to France and on occasion we would go to Austria.

Yes that would be me tucking into that bag of fries... My mum is smiling in the camera

I loved going to the ocean; no matter what the weather was. We would take long walks when it was windy and cold (and remember this was still Holland!) and huddle up in our little cabin and play silly card games. Or read.. I could read forever, ask my parents! And o, by the way; can you see how blond I used to be??

From left to right, my sister Yvonne, my younger sister Monique, mum and me on the right. O and notice the fancy shoes... with socks...

But then came the time when I turned 15 (or 16, can’t remember) and did no longer want to go on family holidays… Family holidays were for children and I was no longer that (I am sure I was still a kid in the eyes of my parents but in my mind I was very mature…)

So I went on my own with friends, but with no money that ended up being a trip around Holland by train..lol.. I honestly can’t remember when the last family holiday together was; I should probably look at my photoalbums to know how old I was when that happened.

Building sandcastles used to be my favorite passtime

In my memories too the summers always used to be warmer. These days it’s either too hot with temperatures going above 30 or it is raining. I suspect that it is really my memory playing tricks on me as I do have a lot of photos where we are huddled in raincoats on our summerholidays! But over to the present day and our assignment for apricots or other stonefruit. I have to confess that I usually am not too fond of the apricots we can find here. They are just not the best in flavor, but nectarines and peaches can be really nice. I did have the most amazing apricots when we were in France a few weeks ago and that just proofed the point that not all fruit is created equal…

For this challenge I initially set out to make apricot cupcakes. I had found some apricots that looked fairly ok so I figured making them into cupcakes would be a good idea. But my first batch of cupcakes failed miserably.. I mean seriously seriously big failure. I made a mistake by adding bakingsoda instead of baking powder but I noticed the mistake while adding it into the batter. I scooped out most of the salt and proceeded in adding the required amount of baking powder. Can you guess what went wrong there?

I thought I'd show the failed batch! lol...

It was just one of those things where I already knew it would go wrong as soon as I popped them into the oven and needless to say… I was correct. So *deep sigh* I started again with the second batch. Those were much much better (couldn’t have really been any worse!) and quite tasty too. The only thing I struggled with was finding a good angle to take a photograph of them and while I was initially not unhappy with the photos; the longer I looked at them the less appealing they became.

Apricot cupcakes

So I decided I needed to go with another stonefruit and make myself a clafoutis. As faith would have it; I made the first clafoutis and used a different recipe from my usual one. Can’t remember where I found it but it just was not the best in terms of consistency and flavor. So… again on to the second batch and this time it came out tasting and looking delicious as a clafoutis should!

Nectarine clafoutis

4.8 from 4 reviews

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Recipe type: Dessert

Author: Donna Hay

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Total time: 50 mins

Serves: 4

Delicious, easy and perfect for summer!

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 milk
• 1/2 cream
• 1/4 cup flour
• 300 gr nectarines, cleaned and stones removed. Cut into slices

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 180C/350F. Put the rack in the middle.
2. Put your nectarines or other fruit in pie forms. Make sure you buttered them before adding the fruit.
3. Wisk the eggs and honey together till smooth. Add milk, cream and flour and whisk until smooth again.
4. Slowly pour over the fruit, making sure that the fruit is not completely submerged under the batter.
5. bake in the preheated oven for 30-40 minutes.

1.2.4

Nectarine clafoutis

 

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Apple walnut clafoutis

Before I started blogging I had never heard of clafoutis, let alone tasted one. But I kept seeing gorgeous examples of this incredibly versatile and yet so easy dish around the internet quite often until I decided it was time to try it for myself. The first clafoutis I mad was of the traditional kind. I have read that “historically” clafoutis are made with cherries, so that is what I did for making my first clafoutis. And it was delicious but I thought at the time that it could be better. I think in all likelyhood that it

Clafoutis

was the cherries that were to blame here as they were not as sweet as I like my cherries to be.

So when I read about the Monthly Mingle subject for this month being “Brunch” I figured I would make another clafoutis. What better dish to serve at a brunch then a lovely clafoutis which can be eaten warm or cold? Perfect!

Given that it is apple season I wanted to make an apple version and thought that walnuts would go well as well as cinnamon. Basically apple pie flavors but without the apple pie… And delicious it was! I mean; the cherry clafoutis was nice, but this one was ten times better in terms of taste!! Now I truly love apple and cinnamon together. The smell alone of cinnamon makes me truly happy. It brings back childhood memories of mum baking apple pie (the only thing she ever baked apart from cake I think..lol ) and autumn in general. We always went to an orchard that I believe was owned by the company my dad worked for and each autumn we would receive loads of apples, so naturally they had to be put into something or eaten as is. So apple pie it was…

Ingredients:

• About 3 or 4 apples
• 2 large eggs + 1 yolk
• 1/2 cup blond cane sugar (100 gr)
• 1 oz cornstarch (16 gr)
• 1 oz all purpose flour (16 gr)
• 7/8 cup whole milk, cold (200 ml)
• 1 vanilla, seeds removed
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (120 ml)
• walnuts, chopped
• ground cinnamon

Steps:

• Preheat your oven at 180 C.
• Peel the apples and cut into cubes or slices whatever you feel is best for the oven dish you are using
• Beat the eggs and yolk with the sugar.
• Add the vanilla seeds and mix.
• Dilute the cornstarch in the cold milk.
• Add the flour and cornstarch to the previous preparation, with the cream. Mix well until homogeneous. Add ground cinnamon to your liking.
• Grease small ramekins (or a larger dish) and sprinkle with sugar. Remove the excess.
• Divide the apple and walnuts between them and pour the cream over.
• Sprinkle with ground cinnamon and place in the oven for 40 to 45 min, until golden. Remove. Eat lukewarm or cold.
• When ready to serve, you can sprinkle chopped walnuts on top.

I think this particular dish is best served while still warm. It’s good when cold, but it is even better when still warm. I sprinkled it with icing sugar for the photo but that is not really necessary as it is sweet enough as it is!

So I am officially sending this to the Monthly Mingle !

Enjoy!

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Cherry clafoutis

This morning I dropped of Tom and his brother at the airport. They are going on a fishing trip in Norway… The last two years they went to France to do some carp fishing and well, hmmm, how shall I put this; they didn’t really catch much. So I hope that this will be a little bit more successful! Fingers crossed they catch a few tasty fish… (yes, they are also going to eat them)

Cherry clafoutis

With Tom being away for 5 days I figured it was the perfect time to try out a couple of things, so I have a weekend full of fun recipes! The first one was this afternoon where I made a cherry clafoutis. Now a lot of people will say that a clafoutis is very easy but I had never made it before and I always thought the name sounded like something very difficult…. Last week at the kookstudio one of the couples made a clafoutis, but quite frankly  it tasted absolutely terrible. More like an omelet with fruit then anything resembling a proper clafoutis. I am sure that if you hear me talking you would maybe think that I have eaten many clafoutis before, but nothing is farther from the truth. Last friday was the first one, but you know how you can have an idea on how something should taste based on the general ingredients and the method of preparation? Well, that is what I had with clafoutis. Besides I think it’s a funny name (not sure why though) and I like food with funny names.

I had bought fresh cherries yesterday and traditionally it appears that clafoutis is made with cherries so I figured that would be perfect for my first clafoutis. I looked at the website of Bea to find a recipe and I did, so thanks Bea!

The making of the clafoutis was indeed very simple, just mix together the various ingredients put the cherries in their forms and pop them in the preheated oven. I had to try one ofcourse and it is delicious!! I am thinking it might even be better once cold, but the opinions vary on that. I also made one with strawberries, although I am not sure how long they will keep. I’m obviously not going to eat four today… Two I can handle… hehe..

The recipe comes from Le Tartine Gourmande. A beautiful beautiful blog and certainly worth a visit!

Ingredients:

• About 4 cups fresh black cherries
• 2 large eggs + 1 yolk
• 1/2 cup blond cane sugar (100 gr)
• 1 oz cornstarch (16 gr)
• 1 oz all purpose flour (16 gr)
• 7/8 cup whole milk, cold (200 ml)
• 1 vanilla, seeds removed
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (120 ml)
• Biscuits roses, grounded (optional)
• A few unsalted pistachios, chopped coarsely

Steps:

• Preheat your oven at 180 C.
• Wash the cherries.
• Beat the eggs and yolk with the sugar.
• Add the vanilla seeds and mix.
• Dilute the cornstarch in the cold milk.
• Add the flour and cornstarch to the previous preparation, with the cream. Mix well until homogeneous.
• Grease small ramekins (or a larger dish) and sprinkle with sugar. Remove the excess.
• Divide the cherries between them and pour the cream over.
• Sprinkle with biscuits roses powder and place in the oven for 40 to 45 min, until golden. Remove. Eat lukewarm or cold.
• When ready to serve, sprinkle chopped pistachios on top.

I had no idea what biscuits rose powder is so I left that out as well as the pistachios as I could not find any unsalted ones around here…

A little while ago I received my first award from Sophie over at Sophies Foodiesfiles. Thanks so much Sophie!  I wasn’t entirely sure how to use it, so I hope I am doing this correctly… lol…

It’s the honest scrap award and I am now supposed to tell you ten things about myself, that you ofcourse have been dying to find out. Now that is a hard thing to do ladies and gentleman! I can’t possibly think of anything you would really want to know about me, but ok here we go!!

1. I come from a family of non- cookers. My mum never really liked to cook, so she was not a great inspiration to me in the kitchen. I only started to like cooking once I was out of the house and living on my own. I was a student nurse at the time and we had a little cooking club going with two of my fellow students.

4. Tom and I love to travel. We try and visit an exotic location at least once a year if time and money allows. We’ ve been to lots of countries in Asia (love the food!!) and for this year a trip to Indonesia is planned in August. I’m already looking forward to sampling the Indonesian cuisine, which I am sure will be delicious.

Cherries

6. I have a large collection of cooking books and I cannot resist cooking magazines. In fact I have been known to buy cooking mags in languages I really do not understand. I still love to look at the pretty pictures and by looking you can actually sometimes make up the recipe that should go with it. So it’s not completely insane… I like to tell myself..

7. I’ve been  a nurse, worked in a bakery, have been an audicien, have worked at the city council for building and housing, met Tom while working for a Lease company (Leaseplan), worked for Nike, worked for two different banks and now finally I am a photographer.

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