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Friday, June 27, 2014

Triple Chocolate Muffins

Hello everyone!

Ever since I started baking, to make muffins has been something difficult for me. I could follow the recipe word by word but my muffins never ended up being as good as the bakery's ones. 



I've come to discover that the secret of muffins is in the batter. You do not want to over-beat it, in fact, the batter needs to be slightly lumpy.


It would have been great to know that before baking dozens and dozens of muffins that ended up being hard as stone...

Today's recipe is, again, from the book "The Hummingbird Bakery Cupcakes and Muffins", by Tarek Malouf. However, I have slightly modified it and the muffins ended up being Triple Chocolate Muffins. 


Friday, June 20, 2014

Summer Pies: Strawberry and Blueberry

Hello everyone!

Today I want to start something new. During this summer, along with the traditional recipes, I will do a series of Summer Pies.




Seasonal fruit pies, perfect for a mid-afternoon snack or for dessert, coupled with a dollop of vanilla ice cream...



The difficult part will be letting them cool down!



I got the recipe from the blog Lorie's Mississippi Kitchen with some variations.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Banana Bread

Hello everyone!

Some years ago, while visiting London with my sister, I encountered the lovely Hummingbird Bakery on Portobello Road. 



I instantly fell in love with this place. The lined up cupcakes, sorted by color; the simple but elegant packaging and, of course, the amazingly good-looking cakes and sweets.



You have possibly heard about them. They have published various recipe books and the cause of this post is that my wonderful friends gave one of them to me as a birthday gift!


I obviously needed to make something. So, when browsing through its pages I found this Banana Bread recipe, I couldn't resist.


Delicious.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

A Pirate Ship Cake for Marc!

Hello everyone!

Today's recipe was an improvised one. My little cousin Marc was turning five and, not having much time and all I was thinking of making some dinosaur cookies for his party and a normal chocolate cake. But it all changed with a phone call. My uncle (Marc's daddy) was preparing a Pirate-themed party and I quickly realized that my dinosaur cookies would be very out of place. 

But then I began thinking and browsing Pinterest. I could do some pirate and starfish cookies. 

And I did them.


I'm not exactly proud of the pirate ones but I absolutely loved the starfishes. Aren't they adorable? And very easy too, I just used a normal star cookie cutter and then I modified them myself, making them more starfish-like.

However I was not satisfied. A normal cake would simply not do and I started browsing Pinterest again taking advantage of my insomnia for once. And then I found it. A Pirate Ship, of course! Here you have the pins I got my ideas from: Pirate Ship Cake and Pirate cookies.



And this was the result. I bought a couple of gummy dolphins and some chocolate coins and that's it! It was a little bit rushed and if I had had more time I would have added more details but I did the cake in one morning and it was everything I could have hoped for.

Here it is the recipe and following up, a step-by-step of the ship construction!