make life sweeter!

While I was baking these cookies (Weesper moppen) I realized that they were gluten-free. This in turn made me think about the Gluten Free blog event Seamaiden of Book of Yum is organizing in memory of Bette Hagman. Even though I don't have Celiac Disease and none of my friends or family has, I do have a formal training as a dietician so I know about the condition and what impact it has on a persons diet and therefor life.
This cookie recipe is not from one of Bette Hagman cookbooks but I would still like to dedicate it to Bette Hagman for all the work she has done for people with a gluten intolerance.



Weesper moppen (from Koekje by Jonah Freud)

makes about 50

250 g (8 ¾ oz) blanched almonds
275 (9 ¾ oz) granulated sugar
1 egg
grated peel of ½ lemon
granulated sugar

Process all the ingredients in a food processor. Make sure not to over-process but the nuts should be finely ground. Allow the dough to rest overnight in the fridge.
Preheat the oven to 200°C (390°F). Sprinkle a layer of granulated sugar on your working surface and roll the dough into 2 logs of 3.5 cm (1 ¼ in) in diameter. Cut the logs in 1 cm (0.4 in) slices.
Bake the cookies on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment for 10 minutes until they are lightly coloured and still soft on the inside.

The Passionate Cook is hosting the 34th edition of Sugar High Friday. Local or regional speciality is what she is asking for. I already blogged about one specialty of The Hague, 'Haagse Bluf' here. Another well known speciality is 'Haagse Hopjes'. They are hard caramels with coffee taste. Besides being a local speciality it has become a Dutch national candy.
There is a story behind their creation at the end of the 18th century. Baron Hendrik Hop wasn't allowed to drink coffee by his doctor but still wanted to get his coffee somehow. The caramel was especially developped for him by the baker Theoodorus van Haaren.The caramels became very popular and were named after the Baron: Hopjes (little Hops). Later Haagse (from The Hague) was added because they originated from The Hague.

I had problems finding a recipe for the hopjes. None of my cookbooks had the recipe. On the internet I found one but its origins were from a Time-life book which by my knowledge are translated from English. I had the feeling that the recipe couldn't be authentic. After searching the internet some more, I came across a Dutch needlework blog were one of the postings referred to a book called 'Verzameling van waardevolle vakrecepten' from 1935. It had different kinds of recipes for Haagse Hopjes. I was so bold as to ask Marcella of Nuttig en fraai' if she would be so kind as to email the recipe which she did (thanks again Marcella). She actually emailed me 3 different recipes for Haagse Hopjes from the book. I chose the recipe of the ones that resembled the now known commercial ones, Haagse Hopjes from Rademakers. The recipe was for about 20 kg of the stuff and besides that, the recipe itself was rather basic (in old-fashioned Dutch):

20 kg (44 lb) sugar, 2 kg (4.4 lb) glucose syrup, 3 l (2.1 pints) coffee cream, ½ kg (1.1 lb) butter, ½ kg (1.1 lb) coffee-extract

Cook till soft ball. Add syrup, cook till hard crack, pour in tin, make into hopjes.

So when do you add the cream, butter and coffee-extract? And what about the coffee-extract? I thought the coffee-extract should be liquid so I mixed instant coffee with hot water (1:1 in volume measurements). I didn't really know what to do about the moment of adding cream, butter and coffee-extract because I have little to no experience in making caramel. I added water to the sugar until just covered and cooked this till soft ball (110-115°C / 234-240°F). Then I added the syrup and the rest and cooked it till hard crack (150-155°C / 300-310°F). It looked and smelt like it was a bit to hot. When I tasted it the taste did resemble hopjes a lot but they were caramelized a little too much (they tasted great but it made them taste a little less like commercial hopjes). Maybe cooking them till soft crack (130-145°C / 270-290°F) would have been better? Or maybe they wouldn't have been brittle enough that way...

I had a hard time finding glucose syrup, I went to about 12 different shops, from drugstores to farmacists, from cooking shops to organic shops but it was nowhere to be found. I could have gotten it via the internet but I didn't have enough time to wait for the delivery. Instead of the glucose syrup I added corn syrup which is a kind of glucose syrup but has less glucose than the glucose syrup. It worked out fine.

PS in case your wondering, I didn't make them using the above measurements ;)

At YumSugar they want us to show our cookbooks this summer. My favorite cookbook is Modern Classics 2 by Donna Hay. All about the sweet things in life :) It has lots of yummy and well-written recipes but most of all I looove the pictures in the book. Here, here, and here you can find recipes I tried from Modern Classics 2.

Donna Hay is one of my favorite food writer so I couldn't resist making a gnocchi dish for HHDD#14, this time round being hosted by Cafe Lynnylu.
As my blog is about all things sweet I wanted to create a sweet gnocchi dish. I started out by using a regular potato gnocchi recipe by Claudia Roden, adding powdered sugar and cacao powder. However, the dough became very sticky and I couldn't work with it. But after adding more flour it become ok enough to make gnocchi out of. They looked pretty decent but tasted pretty horrible :( I decided to move away from traditional recipes and make something that looked like gnocchi but were far from it ingredient-wise.
My first thoughts were to make white chocolate truffle gnocchi but I was afraid the mixture would be a bit too soft to make good looking gnocchi from. After paging through my baking books I come across a recipe for white modeling chocolate in Colette Peters Cakes to dream on, the perfect recipe for making gnocchi. Made some strawberry sauce to serve with the gnocchi and finished the dish by adding some grated white chocolate. The combo white chocolate and strawberries is a great one but I don't recommend eating a complete portion of the gnocchi and sauce ;)

White chocolate gnocchi (from Cakes to dream on by Colette Peters)

makes 1 plate

140 g (5 oz) white chocolate
3 tbs light corn syrup

Melt the chocolate. Add the corn syrup and stir until everything is combined well. The mixture will thicken. Wrap in plastic wrap and leave at room temperature overnight.
Knead the dough before using it. Roll into 2 sausages of about 2 cm (¾ in) diameter. Cut into 2 cm (¾ in) pieces. Roll into balls and flatten them with your thumb. Press onto a fork and roll the dough back to form the gnocchi.

Strawberry sauce

makes 1 portion

100 g (3 ½ oz) strawberries, hulled
powdered sugar, to taste

Puree the strawberries and pass puree through a sieve. Add sugar to taste.

Trying to do something else than taking care of the boys, I've decided to make more sweet stuff and blog about it (still not doing as much as I used to do in Tel Aviv....by far). We'll see how long I will keep it up when university starts in September ;)
Started out by making balsamic vinegar tomato paste chocolates which didn't work out because son no. 2 started crying during an essential part of making them. As a consequence I had to reheat the mixture I made and found out the hard way that it was too hot when I mixed in the chocolate....fat separated from the mixture (yes...again) and it looked kind of crumbly. Couldn't be rescued. Did taste it and it didn't really work for me anyway so I won't bother making these chocolates again.
Next recipe has less exciting ingredients but turned out wonderful despite it ;) My first upside-down cake. Have seen quite a few in foodblogs but as it isn't in the Dutch baking repertoire, I never made it before. I found the recipe in Donna Hay's Modern Classics Book 2. Had to change the recipe a bit cause it called for a round 24 cm (9 ½ in) cake tin. I do have round cake tins but they are all springform tins and that doesn't work well with a liquid. Instead I used a square tin of 21 x 21 cm (8 x 8 in). I kept the measurements for the topping the same, used nectarines instead of apricots and halved the ingredients for the cake layer as my tin isn't very high.
The fun thing I thought about this cake was that you don't know if it will look good until you turn it over....doing so made me very happy cause it turned out very well....even better than I expected. Good thing it tasted very good as well ;) The topping together with the nectarine juice made the cake caramely and moist.



Nectarine upside-down cake

serves 9

95 g (¾ cup) flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
115 g (½ cup) caster sugar
½ tsp ground vanilla beans
65 g (2 oz) butter, melted and cooled down somewhat
topping
225 g (1 cup) sugar
125 ml (½ cup / 4 fl oz) water
75 g (2 ½ oz) butter
3 nectarines, cut into 16 wedges each

Preheat the oven to 160°C (325°F). For the topping, combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Let the sugar dissolve over low heat while stirring. Increase the heat and allow to boil until the syrup is golden brown. Remove from heat and stir tthrough the butter. Pour the caramel into a well greased square 21 x 21 cm (8 x 8 in) cake tin. Place the nectarine wedges snugly in the caramel. (I already did so the evening before I made the rest of the cake)
Sift the flour with the baking powder twice.
Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla for 10 minutes until thick and pale. Fold through the flour and baking powder mixture. Fold through the melted butter.
Spoon the cake mixture over the apricots and bake for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Allow the cake to stand for 5 minutes before inverting it onto a plate. Serve warm.