Oat flake and chocolate chips cookies

Great and healthy cookies full of oat flakes but also with chocolate!
Let your children play and make them for you, sooooo easy :)

Nutellotti, the nutella cookies!

Who doesn't like Nutella? So, imagine a recipe full of Nutella in a form of cookies and only 3 ingredients... Nutellotti... Yummy! A popular recipe, that had to be in my blog too.
Thanks to my dear daughter, crazy in love with Nutella, we made together those marvelous cookies and ate them all in once!

Ingredients (only 3!)
180gr of Nutella
1 egg
150gr of flour for cakes

Happy Halloween!

What best to have fun ending of October than celebrating Halloween ?
Cooking, activities, decoration, colors... lots of ideas in the web! Just to keep track of what is in my blog let's recapitulate...


Have fun cooking butternut soups, halloween cookies, mini apple pies, Halloween fingers or just apple pie like this one, this one or this one.

Decorate your house entrance with jack-o-lanterns, following my son's short tutorial in the numbered photos (no1 is missing as it is about choosing your pumkin's face :)

Here's some fun finger food for Halloween: the Halloween fingers!

Or, make fake injuries with makeup and scare your friends (not my favorite though!) like this homemade one from my kids...

Whatever you prefer, just try to get with friends and/or family and have fun and enjoy life!

Jam roll

Old time classic recipe coming straight from our youth... jam rolls!
Here's a fast & easy recipe to keep track in my blog. Thanks Vilma for reminding it to me!
I use strawberry jam here, but my dear friend Vilma brought one in our place for a bbq, a tasty one filled with Nutella ... hmmmm just gorgeous!!!
The result here is a fast prototyping, as I am busy and do not have the luxury for better photos or decoration... the essential is here though :)

Feta cheese balls

Remember the recipe of feta cheese pies (tyropitakia)?
It's one of our favorite salty starters and if you have never tried it before this is the moment to do it!

I am giving you an alternative that is pretty simple, much simpler than the original recipe.

Gravity cake

Happy birthday! 

My son just turned 10 and here's the best birthday cake that I decided to make that makes the buzz on the web and makes heads turn on it's sight... The GRAVITY cake!!!
My kids loved it, hubby thinks I'm a genius, friends were amazed and there were even people that took photos of it :))))
Special thanks to both of my children that helped me doing it, and my apologies to my daughter that I underestimated her capabilities as she has proved that often she is much better than me ! Kiss to hubby for the support, as always, to my crazy ideas.
So, let's get back to the cake. Procedure goes like this...

Halloween shortbread biscuits ("sablés" in french :)

 Halloween is approaching and I just found some really spooky biscuit stamps that I knew that would drive crazy my kids, especially my son, who is fond of Frankestein :)

I found it as a good excuse to test a recipe on shortbread biscuits that in french they call them "sablés". 

I cannot describe enough the excitement at home when they discovered the stamps! 

I can only tell you that we ended baking late at night, on top of a really busy day.... 
I was not in my best of mood, knowing that they will be tired for school the next day, but my... they had so much fun that eventually I thought, what the hell! I could make an exception :)))) 
Here it goes... and hope that you will have as fun as we had making them!

Chocolate cake with mascarpone & nutella filling

[Update: Check the gourmet version too here: Mascarpone nutella cake]

Recently, I went to an italian restaurant and tried a cake that had some kind of nutella filling and I just loved it! Who can resist to Nutella anyway? If I add that it had also mascarpone, the same cheese that we use for my favorite Tiramisu, then you can imagine the rest ;)
Useless to say, that I searched immediately to find such a recipe and reproduce it at home :)
You know me, I cannot resist to deserts...
I dedicate this recipe, that I chose from all the stuff that I have found on the web, to my son's class and their teacher who is fan of my blog (I am honored) as I imagine that they would like it a lot and it's easy to prepare. Here it goes:

Kmix cookies

My first chocolate cookies with my brand new Kmix are a pure success! Just try them... *yummy*

I have used first the "K" tool to beat the butter with sugar and eggs and then changed to the kneader tool as you can see in the photo to finish the final dough with flour and chocolate chunks.
I made about 30 delicious cookies.
Just play with baking time as depending on your flour it might vary slightly.
And if you want something exceptional in taste, just try my daughter's idea to make a cookie sandwich with ice-cream!!!

Brownies

Here's a classic recipe that was missing from my blog, so here it is the recipe for ...
... BROWNIES! or at least something similar to it :)
In France, that I live, they call it "pave au chocolat", btw.
Anyway, it is delicious and kids love it, so get ready for baking and let's start!

Happy Halloween!

Mosaic, recipe reminder!

Remember the recipe for mosaic? I have done it this weekend for my daughter that it's her favorite summer cake and I cannot describe you how much we love this classic recipe...
You have definitely to try it!

Improvement this time is that I have used a cute silicone mold that is great for this cake. No doubt I will continue to make in this one from now on :) 

Aperitif (or cocktail hour) flower!

Living in France, I became keen with the idea of an "aperitif" that is a cocktail hour in between meals that might include a simple drink or a small buffet with some finger food.
Have a glimpse of the latest trend that I did in a hurry with whatever I had in my fridge and that was still delicious despite all odds :)
I had only 1 pastry dough so I made half the flower but it's enough to get the idea still...

Recipe reminder (muffins)

I am currently reading an interesting book about consuming sugar. So, I was resisting in making a sweet treat, but I admit that I am addicted and I cannot avoid it :)
Have a look in my chocolate-banana muffins to see why I could not resist...
Try NOT to do them! :P

Chocolate chip cookies

What to do in a rainy day? Make chocolate chip cookies and boost your moral and the one of your dear ones to the maximum :)
Classic recipe, that similar you can find all around the web, but I like to keep good recipes once found, so here it is the one that I prefer...

The muffins of the day!

These are the muffins of the day according to my recipe Vanilla muffins that is so easy to make and tasty too.
The inspiration of the day was to add some sliced almonds on top and decorated with a lollipop as they are going to be sold in my kids' school to finance a field trip....
If you read this post on time, come and buy one before it is too late :)

Grissinis

Hubby loves Grissinis, so here's a reason to try to make them :) I have to admit that he likes the Greek version but I will try today the original ones from Torino...  that I like sooo much :) And with the remaining dough, I will make some nice small rounded breads, what do you say?
Who does not like those crunchy delicate fluffy delicious thinny bread sticks? No excuses of not trying, as it is pretty easy...

Pancakes from Cyprus or "Pites tis Satziis"

When I was a child, my grand mother used to make a kind of greek pancakes that I just couldn't resist :)
She was making a huuuuge dish and she was offering them to all the clients of my father's shop... Lucky guys, yes I know!
Unfortunately, I have lost my grand-mother very early at an age that I did not appreciate cooking so much, thus I lost also almost all of her precious recipes (I still have great memories from her though, which is what counts most...). Why am I telling you all this now? Simply because I have seen recently a recipe that looked very similar to my grandma's pancakes and you guessed well... I tried it immediately and I have fallen in love with it. All kids in my neighbor too btw :))) 
The recipe that I am going to give you here is from Cyprus and they call it "Pites tis Siatziis" (Google it).

Desert roses or "roses de sable"

These chocolate treats with corn flakes have the looks of  "desert roses" and despite the fact that they are not "gourmet cuisine" (you do not even need to bake!) they will definitely charm your children :)
My son likes them a lot and it's thanks to him that I tried them today with his help of course ...

Cake pops!

I was resisting in falling into cake pops mania until ... one day I opened my door and dear John and his girlfriend came holding a bunch of cake pops in their hands ! And you can imagine the rest :)
Kids were crazy, and they kept asking me when I will do them again. So, we went and bought a silicone mold and sticks and here we are making them again and again. I continue to think that it's too much hassle but what the hell :) Let's share this mania with you, dear readers...

Ingredients (check also my cupcake recipes)
113gr of butter
113gr of sugar
113gr of self-raising flour
3 eggs
some cocoa powder (optionally, if you want a chocolate flavor)
Topping: 100gr of chocolate, some colorful decoration