Cream cheese frosting, made easy

Recipe of the week

Cream cheese frosting 
enough to top a small pie

Ingredients:

75 grams of cream cheese
50 grams margarine, room temperature
80 grams powdered sugar

Make sure the margarine is really at room temp otherwise you'll get lumps. Margarine tends to be a lot more solid at room temp than butter which is why I use it for this frosting. Something needs to hold it up with all the mushy cream cheese!

Put the margarine in a bowl and mix until it's light and fluffy.
Put the cream cheese in and add the sugar too. Mix another 5 minutes.
Keep the frosting in the fridge until needed.

You can top your cake or cupcakes by using a piping bag or just dollop it on with a spoon as I did in the picture.


Easy right!

Enjoy :)

My grandmother's pancake pie - easy and delicious

So last Friday I delivered my very first wedding cake. It was amazing if I do say so myself. Four tiers, carrot cake, champagne butter cream and fondant decoration. Luckily the bride and groom thought it was gorgeous and delicious too which is what matters in the end. Lots of the guest gave great comments also, check out the picture below to form your own opinion :)

I did find out that making wedding cakes takes a lot of time and a lot of material. I ended up charging way too little but as it was the first ever, that was ok.

Anyway, with all that work comes little time for other things so my dad baked me a pancake pie using my grandmothers recipe. He figured that I would have something to blog about without the work! Do I have an awesome dad or what?

This recipe refers to a Dutch Pancake Pie which to Americans and many other people probably, will look more like a crepe pie. The pancakes are thin and a little different so I'm just going to give the recipe for those as well. I'll blog it separately so check it HERE.

Grandma's Pancake Pie

Materials
- Pancakes (see recipe here)
- Jam, your favorite flavor(s)
- Instant custard and the ingredients you need to make it
- OR just use ready to use custard if they sell that where you live
- OR make your own custard if you feel up to it

You need to make the pancakes first. After that, go ahead and make your custard. It has to be a pudding. I'm not sure if instant custard is the same everywhere so you'll have to check the package to see how to make it.
It's easiest if you use your custard while it is still runny.

Now comes the super easy part:

Take a pancake and put it on a large plate with an edge. Pour some custard on it, or if using ready made just smear on there. Take another pancake and put it on top. Smear jam on that one and cover with another pancake. Now repeat until you have enough custard left to pour over your entire cake. (skip this part if using ready made custard) Pour the last bit over the top when it has congealed a little.

Let the cake stand until it has cooled and then pop it in the fridge.When it's cool dust some sugar over it and you're good to go :)

The wedding cake :)

 Make it beautiful!

Dutch pancake recipe

Dutch pancakes

(makes about a dozen)

These pancakes are typically eaten as dinner or made into a dessert. Or use it to make my grandmother's pancake pie!

Ingredients:

- 200 grams of self-raising flour
- pinch of salt
- 2 eggs
- 250 ml milk
- 250 ml buttermilk
- butter or oil

Sift the flour and salt in a bowl. Make a hole in the middle and break the eggs in it. Pour the milk in and mix with a hand mixer into a smooth paste. Keep mixing on low speed and add the buttermilk.

Leave the batter to sit for 30 minutes.

Heat a bit of butter or oil in a frying pan. Use a soup spoon to pour batter into the center of the pan. Pour until 3/4 of the pan is covered and swirl the pan to cover the rest.

Bake the pancake on medium heat until the top is almost dry and the bottom is lightly browned.
Flip the pancake and bake until the bottom is lightly brown too about 2 minutes.

Put the pancake on a plate.

Repeat until you used all the batter and have a nice stack of pancakes.

Eat the pancakes, rolled up with molasses, powdered sugar or regular sugar if you want them really Dutch. Or use butter, maple syrup etc.

OPTIONS
In The Netherlands the above is the classic pancake but they are also regularly made with all sorts of additional ingredients. Just a few really yummy ideas:

Apple: Thinly slice an apple, put a few slices in the pan and pour the batter over it. Bake as stated above.

Cheese: After pouring the batter in the pan, put a few slices of cheese on top and bake as stated above.

Bacon: Add bacon to the pan, pour batter over it and bake as stated above.

Raisins: Soak raisins in hot water for 10 minutes, squeeze the excess water out and sprinkle them on the batter after you poured it in the pan. Bake as stated above.

Banana: Add slices of banana to the pan and pour batter over them. Bake as stated above.

Also think about combo's like apple and bacon, my absolute favorite pancake!

You can basically add whatever you like to Dutch pancakes :) Then smother it in molasses syrup and you're good to go.

DESSERT
These pancakes make awesome desserts too. Just like crepes actually. Smear some nutella on a pancake, roll it up, microwave it for 30 sec on high and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Easy and super yummy!   

Recipe of the week: Healthy chocolate mousse, no added sugar, vegan and super easy!

Recipe of the week

I've spend the last two days working on a 4 tier wedding cake and a cake for my dad's woodworking class. At first I thought the wedding cake would take up all of my time, but when my Dad agreed to the same base cake as the wedding cake I figured it would be fine. After baking, filling and coating 5 cakes in two days I found that it is fine to make an extra cake. I could easily fit it into the wedding cake schedule and I found it takes less time than making them back to back. I hope I'll stay stress free....

Anyhoo... there are recipes that are way simpler than making a 4 tier 70 people carrot cake filled with champagne buttercream, coated with white chocolate ganache and decorated with fondant (gosh that sounds awesome :)

So Healthy Chocolate Mousse. Normal chocolate mousse is generally ok but this is really healthy. It only contains 3 ingredients and no sugar!

Healthy Chocolate Mousse, no sugar and really easy
(2 servings minimal)

Ingredients and supplies:

2 bananas, really ripe but not brown
2 avocado, ripe
6 tablespoons of Dutch cocoa
Bowl
Mixer

The avocado has to be really ripe otherwise this recipe will not work. Pick a dark green, heavy, firm avocado without bruises or soft spots. Then do this:

It should be a yellowish green, then it's perfect.

Recipe:

Cut the avocado in half, like the picture above. You should be able to pull the seed right out, and peel it by hand easy. If not your avocado is not ripe enough and you will probably have some lumps in your mousse.

Put the avocado in the bowl and mix until there are no more lumps and it's a light fluffy green stuff. Mash the bananas into the avocado and mix well again until you have a mousse like substance. Add the cocoa and mix another three minutes at high speed.

Divide the mousse into bowls and put them in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Or put the entire bowl in the fridge and eat it all yourself :)

Make it beautiful!