make life sweeter!

Thought I'd try out another recipe with my new favorite combination of ginger and orange. Last time I combined blood orange with ginger syrup. This time I used fresh ginger as well as ginger syrup and orange zest as well as orange juice. I let some grated ginger and orange zest steep in a mixture of milk and cream for about 15 minutes. The idea was to let it steep, in practice it was boiling for 15 minutes because I had to attend to my youngest son who woke up crying. When I returned the mixture was nearly boiling over the pot and it had separated :( No way was I going to make it again so it was either using it or not making the pudding. So with the coffee buttercream from the Daring Bakers December Challenge in mind I thought that I would fix the problem. While thinking this I had to laugh because how do you save a milk and cream mixture that has separated? The best idea that came to mind was to vigourously whisk it. And to my surprise it actually worked! Ok, I must admit it didn't return to its original state but it looked good enough. Had to strain the mixture anyway because of the orange zest and ginger so the remaining coagulated milk solids were strained as well. I filled it up till the amount I started with and continued making the pudding. I think that the combination of acidity of (I think) mainly the ginger and the heat during a long time made the proteins coagulate. But I'm not a chemist so I don't know for sure. Well the important thing was that I saved it and didn't have to make it again ;)
The dish is actually a twist on a Dutch classic that I made for Sugar High Friday. In Dutch it's called Griesmeelpudding met bessensapsaus...try saying that without twisting your tongue he he! What it is is semolina pudding with red currant sauce.
Ok, about the taste...I already blogged about the combination of ginger and orange and how the two tastes are so good together. Now that I made this dish I've come to the conclusion that besides being very good together somehow the two tastes seem to merge. It is very difficult to tell where one taste starts and the other ends.
I made my blood orange sauce a little tangier by adding some lemon juice. And to sweeten it a little I added stem ginger syrup. In retrospect I'm not sure if I would make it the same way again. Maybe it would have been slightly better if I wouldn't have used both ginger and orange in both pudding and sauce. If I would make it another time I'd try making a ginger semolina pudding (with fresh ginger and ginger syrup) and a blood orange sauce (with some added orange zest for extra taste). Maybe that way the two tastes don't merge as much.
The servings are quiet small but that's just my personal preference. Because I don't own small pudding moulds I used a non-stick muffin pan to make the puddings. This worked very well except for one small detail...getting them out. It took me forever to figure out a way to get them out without destroying them. I knew that the trick is to get some air to the bottom of the cup in order for the pudding to go out. So in the beginning I tried pulling the pudding away from the sides but this wasn't enough to get air to the bottom. After trying this for a while I thought I'd stick a knife up till the bottom and wiggle it a little bit to get air to the bottom. This method worked, unfortunately it worked only once.
In the end I massaged the puddings out. What you do is you turn the muffin pan upside down and massage each pudding in a circular motion until you feel it coming out. Just let it slide onto your hand and place it on a soup plate (the pudding is stiff enough to do this without damaging it). Make sure the plate is a tiny bit wet, that way you can slide the pudding to the middle of the plate without it sticking.



As you can see on the little black logo my blog received an award! The very sweet and talented Ovenhaven from Epicurean Escapism gave me the E for Excellent award. Thanks so much for that, you made me very happy :)
These are the blogs I think need an E for Excellent award:

Jen of use real butter
Helen of Tartelette
Susan of Food Blogga (not the first she receives it but still I want her to have it again)



Ginger and orange semolina pudding

serves 6

400 ml (1 ⅔ cup) milk
100 ml (3 ⅓ fl oz) whipping cream
1 tbs grated fresh ginger
1 tbs (blood) orange zest
50 g (1 ¾ oz) semolina
40 g (1 ⅓ oz) sugar + extra
6 cut out blood orange segments

Heat the milk, cream, ginger and orange zest until nearly boiling. Turn off the heat and let it steep for 15 minutes. Strain the milk and cream mixture and fill it up with milk until you have 500 ml in total.
Mix the semolina and sugar. Add the mixture to the hot milk whilst stirring. Bring to a boil and allow to cook. Cook and stir for 3-5 minutes. Rinse a non-stick muffin pan with cold water and pour the mixture in 6 of the cups. Sprinkle with sugar to prevent the forming of a crust. Allow to cool to room temperature. Chill in the fridge for a few hours.
Unmold each pudding by turning the pan upside down and massaging it in a circular motion. Let the pudding slide onto your hand and place it on a slighty wet soup plate. Correct the position if necessary. Place an orange segment on top. Pour blood orange sauce around it.

Blood orange sauce

225 ml (1 cup) blood orange juice
25 ml (1 tbs + 2 ts) lemon juice
1 tbs ginger syrup
5-10 g (¼ oz) potato starch

Bring the blood orange juice, lemon juice and ginger syrup to a boil. Mix the potato starch with a little bit of water until lump free.
Add the potato starch water mix to the juice whilst stirring. Allow to cook for 1 minute. Allow the sauce to cool down completely, stirring occasionally.

(Blood)orange and ginger is my new favorite combination! Never knew how good they tasted together until I 'accidentally' tried this combination. I had two blood oranges lying around waiting to finally be used. My idea was to cut out the orange segments and drizzle them with a tasty syrup, a syrup I planned on making myself. But being the lazy person I am from time to time I didn't feel like making any syrup. My first idea was to drizzle with some honey instead but felt that would be a little too boring. The only other syrup I had that was up for the job was the ginger syrup in my jar of stem ginger. So ginger syrup it was. To spice it up a little more I added some freshly ground black pepper.
I wasn't really sure which way it was going to go when it was time to taste....
The first thing I tasted was the gingery sweetness of the ginger syrup. That taste faded quickly to make place for the fresh, tart and fragrant taste of the blood orange. It was absolutely delicious! A real winner combination.
I took another bite, and another and another and then I realised that I didn't taste the pepper. So I tried eating a bit slower and trying to taste pepper. Turned out I had to wait a tiny bit between two bites to let the pepper bite kick in. So...sweet ginger, tart orange, pauze for a moment...hot pepper!
Besides being a winner combination there are other great things about this dish: it's very easy to make, very good for you and it looks good too. It would work well as a refreshing dessert after a heavy meal or you could serve it between courses as a palate cleanser.
If you can't get a hold of blood oranges, regular ones work too but you won't have as much 'kachow'.



Blood orange with ginger syrup and black pepper

serves one

1 blood orange
½ tbs ginger syrup (the syrup from a jar of stem ginger)
black pepper

Cut the skin off the blood orange so you don't have any white left. Cut out the orange segments with a sharp knife.
Arrange the segments on a plate. Drizzle with the ginger syrup and give a few twists with the pepper mill.

I made this Miffy cookie (in Dutch she's called Nijntje) when I made the Christmas tree cookies. I don't have a Miffy cookie cutter but my son has Miffy molds for sand that I used :) I just pressed the outlines in the dough and cut it with a sharp knife. I let my 2 ½ year old son eat it which he loved as you can imagine...

The lovely and talented Susan from Foodblogga is hosting the Eat Christmas Cookies event. She is gathering cookie recipes from all over the world. Check out all the cookies that are already posted....



I have a lot of baking equipment but nothing specificly for Christmas and with all the lovely Christmas cut-out cookies that have been popping up in many foodblogs I couldn't resist buying some Christmas cookie cutters myself :) I'm now the proud owner of a Christmas tree, a snowman, Santa's boot, a bear, a bell and an angel cookie cutter for only € 1.29! For this price you get plastic cutters, also the angel cookie cutter is not very pretty but hey, who's complaining for € 1.29?
I like the Christmas tree the best so that's what I used for my entry to Susan's Foodblogga event.
I still have to practice the whole icing thing which means that I'm still not sure what consistency you need to do what. Also it would have been better had I rolled up my sleeves and not smudge my freshly piped lines (this happened twice! before I finally rolled them up).
The icing I used this time was 'the real stuff': royal icing. I managed to find some meringue powder so I didn't have to use raw eggs whites in my icing. What I liked about royal icing is the fact that it's whiter and more opaque than the icing I used last time. Downsides of royal icing are that it crusts very quickly and that its morphability isn't as good as the other icing. With morphability I mean the way beginnings and ends of lines morph together. I'm still undecided which icing I like best. Next time I'll try combining the two by adding corn syrup to the royal icing, see if that will heighten the morphability and lessen the crusting.
Astrid at La Cerise has made great video of how to do roll out cookies. One of her great tips is to roll out the cookie dough before you chill it and chill after rolling. This makes rolling so much easier, provided you roll between baking paper that is. Another one of Astrid's tip is to put a corner of the baking paper between your belly and the table top to prevent the paper from sliding all over your working surface. Alternatively she advises to dampen your working surface before putting the baking paper on it. What I did was to put my silicon mat under the baking paper, that works like a charm too.
The gingerbread recipe I used had to be adjusted quite a bit because it was too dry after just following the recipe (maybe my egg was a bit too small?). I added a second egg which of course made it too wet again so I added more flour. This increased the workability a lot. I wasn't too thrilled about their look once the cookies were baked though. You can see small holes in the cookies and the surface is less smooth than I thought it would be (I think it's just me being difficult here because I saw cookies with a similar appearance pictured in my baking books). Also I thought the cookies puffed up too much. Next batch I'm making I will use a recipe with less baking powder. The taste was very good though. Because I added more egg and flour but didn't increase the sugar they were not too sweet. Just sweet enough to eat without icing and even better with a bit of icing.
I kept the decoration pretty simple because I didn't have a lot of time to make them. I didn't want to ice the whole cookie and wait until the next day to add more details. My favourite ones are the the one with the coloured small balls and the one with the bigger silver balls. The one with the pearls I like the least, it would have been prettier with a garland too.



Gingerbread cookies (adapted from Decorated Biscuits by Joanna Farrow)

400 g (14 oz / 3 ½ cups) flour
2 ts baking powder
1 ½ ts ground ginger
½ ts cardamom
100 g (3 ½ oz / scant ½ cup) butter, chilled and diced
185 g (6 oz / 1 cup) light muscovado sugar
3 tbs corn syrup (or schenkstroop)
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 180°C (355°F). Grease 2 baking sheets.
Put the flour, baking powder, ginger and cardamom in a food processor. Mix briefly until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, corn syrup and egg and blend to a dough. Briefly knead the dough through. Roll the dough out between two sheets of baking paper until about 4 mm thickness. Chill the dough between the baking paper for 30 minutes or until firm. Carefully peel off the baking paper. Turn the firm dough with the help of a big chopping board and peel off the other baking paper. Cut out the cookies and transfer them to the baking sheets. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the cookies turn golden around the edges. Leave them to cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Royal icing (from Cakes to dream on by Colette Peters)

2 tbs meringue powder
2 tbs water
200 g (7 oz) confectioners sugar
½ ts almond extract

Put everything in a mixing bowl. Whisk until stiff peaks.

Ginger…not everybody’s favourite but I for one love it! No matter in what form or shape. So when this months SHF hosted by Ruth of Once upon a feast had ginger as its theme I was really excited. One of the first things that crossed my mind was making ginger granita. But on its own that wouldn’t be enough, I needed more….chocolate and ginger go well together…so I made my liquid truffle dessert (once again) to accompany the granita. And to add a crunch to this dessert I baked simple butter cookies to which I added powdered ginger and stem ginger. The crunchy butter cookies were tasty in their simplicity, and great for dipping in the truffle dessert.
For the granita I used fresh ginger to flavour and a combination of honey and sugar syrup to sweeten it. The ginger and honey go together remarkably well. I tried to distinguish the two flavours while tasting but they seem to blend perfectly, complementing one and other.

serves 6



adapted from The Ultimate Cookie Book by Catherine Atkinson

45 g (1.6 oz) butter
25 g (0.9 oz) golden sugar
60 g (2.1 oz) flour
¾ ts ground ginger
2 tbs stem ginger, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar together. Mix the flour and the ground ginger. Add the flour /ginger mix to the butter and sugar. Using your hands combine until you get a smooth dough. Roll into a sausage shape with a 3 ¼ cm (1 ¼ in) diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 160ºC (325ºF). Unwrap the dough and cut into 18 slices of about 7 mm (¼ in) thick. Place on a non-stick baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown. Cool on a wire rack.



650 ml (2 ¾ cup) water
160 g (¾ cup / 5 ⅔ oz) sugar
2 ½ tbs fresh ginger, minced
2 ½ tbs lemon juice
120 ml (½ cup) honey

Heat the water and sugar on low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Increase the heat and allow to boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add the ginger. Allow to steep for 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice.
Pour the honey in a bowl. Pour the sugar syrup with ginger through a fine sieve into the bowl with honey. Stir until combined. Allow to cool down to room temperature. Put in the fridge until cold.
Pour the fluid into a large (metal) tin and put it in the freezer. Stir every 20 minutes with a fork during about 2 hours. Make sure to scrape the sides. Don’t over-stir because the end result should look like granita, not sorbet.
Serve in 6 miniature ramekins of about 50 ml (1 ⅔ fl oz).



150 g (5 ⅓ oz) bittersweet chocolate (70% cocoa), chopped
150 ml (5 fl oz) whipping cream
1 tbs liqueur, brandy or whiskey
6 pieces of crystallized ginger

Put the chocolate in a bowl. Bring the cream to a boil. Add the hot cream to the chocolate. Allow to stand for a few minutes. Stir to combine. Add the liqueur, brandy or whiskey and stir once more to combine. Pour into 6 miniature ramekins of about 50 ml (1 ⅔ fl oz). Allow to set for about 2 hours.
Decorate with a piece of crystallized ginger.

1 serving – 395 kcal
100 g ginger butter cookies – 450 kcal
100 g ginger honey granita – 110 kcal
100 g liquid truffle dessert – 420 kcal

carbohydrate 34 g – protein 2 g – fat 18 g (saturated fat 11 g) – fibre 0 g