Mississippi Mud Pie

As I mentioned before one week before my birthday I pre-celebrated it with my friends from college. I invited them over thinking we could all enjoy the good weather in my garden and that I could make something very Spanish like paella. My first paella. For 12. 

Not surprisingly things did not go as I had planned in my head. It was actually cold outside and my paella... well... we ate it but it wasn't like a real paella, it was more like a lot of overly cooked rice with vegetables on it.

Given the fiasco in the main dish we were all entirely relaying on the cake. You see… I seem to have a problem repeating recipes and thus, I tend to try something new almost every time I bake so I had no idea how this would turn out.

And...

I completely fell in love.

I have no words.

Well... I do have words, I always do but this was seriously too good to be true.

I had never tried a Mississippi mud pie before so I have no idea if it turned out like it should have but it was amazing! It has a layer of chocolate cake, another one of chocolate pudding and all of that hold by an Oreo crust and, to top it all up, whipped cream.

TO.DIE.FOR.

The pictures don’t really make justice and you can’t see the pudding but it was there!

I did change something though: I didn’t add the coffee powder as I hate, really hate coffee. What I did was that I substituted the amounts with cocoa powder, yes, more chocolate is always a great option.

Here's the recipe, despite the amount of work it has I think it's totally worth it and something that I will (and that's for sure) make again, and again, and again.

Daring Baker's March challenge: Dutch Crunch bread

Sara and Erica of Baking JDs were our March 2012 Daring Baker hostesses! Sara & Erica challenged us to make Dutch Crunch bread, a delicious sandwich bread with a unique, crunchy topping. Sara and Erica also challenged us to create a one of a kind sandwich with our bread!

.... I didn't create a sandwhich, I have to admit that, the bread was way too good and I kind of forgot about the sandwich part and just ate the whole thing with some oil on top.

Now, down to business... this bread is AMAZING! Seriously, it's really addictive. It's a bit sweet because of the topping. It's crusty outside but very moist inside so just perfect, the way I like bread!

I thought this would be a hard recipe but it wasn't, you just have to make sure the dough raises, sometimes I just want to put the bread in the oven and I don't have the patience to wait, that's my biggest mistake, but not this time.

Try this, it's really really good! You can find the recipe here.


Oh, and I also got my camera back, I know I have a long way to go before my pictures are good but I'm just so happy that now I can at least make decent pictures!!

Pancakes, chocolate syrup, gifts and my birthday!!!

My birthday was yesterday, and it was my boyfriend's too. Yeah, I know, we were born the same year, month and day... Weird! We must be meant for each other or something!

I am proud to say that I'm usually good when it comes to buying presents but this year I just had way too many things in my mind and I just couldn't even think about something to buy for him.

So about 5 days ago I thought that, since he loves pancakes and I love cooking I would just have to make him breakfast. But when I got to his place with all my stuff ready he was already awake. Luckily he hadn't started having breakfast so we cooked together. Actually, he ended up doing the pancakes (he's really good at that!) but I had brought an amazing homemade syrup that I got from this blog (amazing, seriously) and some strawberries and cookies. 

I got those cutters because I pre-celebrated my birthday with some friends from college a week ago and they got me a lot of amazing gifts and one of them was this set of cookie cutters so of course I used them to make cookies for breakfast and they looked great! I also got him a sweater so I think he was happy with his presents.

But what he got me, I wasn't just happy...OH.MY.GOD, The art of French Baking, I can't wait to try all those amazing recipes, I'm actually thinking about starting sort of a TWD with this book, I just think it's SOOOOOOO great!!!

Besides that and many (way too many) other great gifts that my friends and family got me, I got another very special gift for me: my grandparents have a great tradition which is sending me a bunch of carnations every year with as many flowers as years I have, and it's just something that makes me always smile.

Overall we had an amazing birthday (both of us) breakfast together, lunch with our families and dinner with our friends and I got so many great giftst to bake, I can't wait to use them all!

Anyway, this is just a preview, I will upload pictures of the cakes I baked for our birthday as soon as I get them as I took the pictures with my friend's camera!

I found the chocolate syrup's recipe here, it's really simple to make, cheaper than store-brought syrup and so much better!

Not-so-red velvet cupcakes

I absolutely love having an excuse to bake; I think I could actually find a reason for every single moment of my life... Baking and then eating what I bake just makes the world seem like a much better (and sweeter) place.

The best part, what makes me even happier than baking and eating it’s actually seeing others enjoy what I do. That’s why I was inmediately in when I heard there was a bake sale at my college and that the money went to charity. I made quite a few cupcakes and I would have done more if it weren’t for the risk of people looking me like I am crazy (which they did anyway) or because my parents would kill me (they still don’t get why they should actually pay for the ingredients and not even get a bite, which is understandable too).

Anyway I took there some vanilla cupcakes and some not-so-red velvet cupcakes. I say not so red because they just weren’t red at all, I didn’t have the colorant and I thought they would have the same flavor after all (and they did) so why not?

I’ve talked before about the website joy of baking, all the recipes I’ve ever tried were fantastic so I went there and used the only red velvet cake recipe I had ever made before. And it’s SO.DAMN.GOOD, seriously: how do people come up with such great ideas?

I did make a mistake though; I actually used the cake recipe and not the cupcake recipe. It’s exactly the same but without baking powder, I realized that after the first batch was baked so the first ones weren’t that fluffy but still yummy.

You can find the recipe here, they are really good, trust me!

TWD/BWJ: Irish Soda Bread

As I mentioned before I lived in Ireland during my first two years of college. The first bread I ever baked was there and it was, obviosuly, Irish soda bread.

My friend Katha gave me the recipe and I've used it lots of times. It's a bit different than Baking with Julia's recipe, basically because it's sweeter and it has yogurt instead of milk but both are delicious!

I love the simplicity of Irish soda bread and how it's almost impossible to get it wrong. The best way to eat it is toasted with some oil or butter on top. JUST.SO.GOOD!

Oh and I also made a small version of the bread!

Again, I'm sorry for the quality of the pictures, I'll have my camera back soon!!

You can see the recipe in this month's hosts: Cathy of MyCulinaryMission and Carla of Chocolate Moosey

Guinness Chocolate Pudding

My first two years of college were in Dublin and I had an amazing time there so you can guess that St. Patricks brings back a lot of memories.

I wanted to do something quick and yet yummy for dessert and then I found  this Guinness Chocolate  Pudding. Of course if it's about choocolate I'm in, that's no doubt!

The result was a very chocolately dessert, it was very good but not the absolutely best chocolate pudding ever (still great though). You can find the recipe here

Now let me say that I can't express enough how much I hate not having my camera with me... I don't have an amazing camera but I know how to use it and I think I'm usually able to get decent pictures. But this week I don't have it with me and thus, I have to take pictures with a not great camera that I don't know how to use either so this is the result... Sorry for the quality of the pictures, over the week I may actually get better!

Happy St. Patricks!

Sex and the city cupcakes

Even though I lived for 10 months in the states I never had the opportunity to go to NYC. What I did do was to fall in love with Sex and the City and thus, when I saw this month’s challenge for Desafío Cupcake (Cupcake challenge) I got very excited. Besides, the gift is the Magnolia Bakery book so… even better!

Of course the first thing a fan would think about when talking about Sex and the city is the cocktail the four girls always drink: Cosmopolitan. So I had to do an alcoholic cupcake, I just had to!

I had a great time thinking about this challenge, making the cupcakes and of course eating them! Probably this challenge should have come in a few months because then I will be better at this whole decorating cupcakes thing and will have a better chance of winning but I just had to try it!

You can find the recipe I used here

Normandy Apple Tart

For last Saturday's calçotada I made three tarts (yes, I have a problem) and some cookies, all the recipes from Baking from my home to yours (obviously!). But you know how these events always go, people tend to bring wine or dessert with them, and so a couple brought a cake. WOW! To bring a store-bought cake to my house... well, that's just crazy.

But obviously I had to put it in the table and I couldn't bring the three tarts out as well so I had to leave one out. It was my first time baking all these tarts and thus, I wasn't sure which one to leave out.

Finally I went for this Normandy Apple Tart, I just wasn't sure it would be that good so I left it in the refrigerator. BIG MISTAKE. The following day I took it to my friend's place and I discovered it was the best one I had baked! That's good luck...

Now seriously, any apple fan would fall immediately in love with this tart, and it's quite healthy too (except for the crust and a couple of tablespoons of sugar that I added to make the apple sauce sweeter the tart was all about apples)

The picture isn't the best one I could have taken, I know, but I had way too many things to do that day and I just wasn't feeling inspired.

You can find the recipe in Tracey's blog

TWD/BWJ: rugelach

I had never eaten, seen or even heard of Rugelach before so when I saw we had to make them I decided to do a little research. Well... that's what I thought I would do but I didn’t do it in the end. Seriously, I had had the rugelach on my mind since TWD published that it was the first recipe for this month but I didn’t find the time. Then it was Sunday morning, I knew I couldn’t spend Monday baking so I had to do the recipe quickly and with not all the ingredients. So I ended up substituting the walnuts for the prunes lekuak with almonds and I only did one fourth of the recipe, after baking way too much last week I just couldn't eat 4 douzen rugelach (and I had no idea how they would turn out so I wasn't sure if I would want others to try something bad)

Now, this is why I love Tuesdays with Dorie (or any other online cooking group, really): you get to do things you wouldn’t even think of trying otherwise. And boy did I love this recipe. Raisin lovers this is your recipe!!! Soooo good, but you do need time as the dough has to rest.

I have no idea if the end result is like a Rugelach should be but I loved it!!, Seriously, try this. You can see the recipe in the book: Baking with Julia, in fact you should join the group! Also, you can find the recipe in the blog of this month's hosts: Margaret and Jessica

By the way, I joined pinterest, a great site! You can see my pins in here, it's perfect for keeping all the recipes you want to try at some stage!!!

Calçotada

Today isn’t about baking, or even about me cooking. Today is about great traditions; today’s post is about “la calçotada”. Now… how do I explain this?

I don’t know if there is an actual word in English for calçot but it is kind of like an onion only that it is milder and long. They’re usually eaten in January, February and March. What you do is that you roast them over a wood fire and once they black, cover them with a newspaper so that they don't get cold. You always get an adult bib so that you don't get your clothes dirty (which you end up doing anyway). Once everything is ready you take off the skin of the calçots (this is where you get your hands all black) and you dip them into an amazing sauce called romesco (which is actually the best part of the whole thing).

The tradition is to get together with friends and family, at my place we actually make one once a year and my parents invite all their friends. After the calçots we eat meat, sausages, potatoes… everything from the barbecue. We always end up eating way too much and having tons of left overs but it's great.

Obviosuly I made dessert, but that's a story for another day...

Now, seriously, if you ever get the chance to participate or host a calçotada do it, you won't regret it!

Breakfast at Tiffany's cupcake

There is this great contest in Spain that just started on February it's called Desafío Cupcake, for this month we had to design a cupcake based on the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's but I found out only a couple of days before the deadline and so I knew I didn't have the time or the material to make a perfect cupcake (not that I had never made one either!) and thus, I knew I wasn't going to win. However, since Breakfast at Tiffany's is one of my favorite movies I had to at least participate. The result was an amazingly tasty cupcake but pretty simple on the outside. 

It was all inspired in the movie: vanilla cupcake (I think Holly was quite a sweet girl, even if sometimes she tried to show exactly the opposite), champagne blue buttercream (blue for the color of Tiffany's boxes and champagne because that's what Holly liked drinking). The cupcake paper around it reminded me of the black dress she wears. Yes, I had fun!

End result? I didn't win, no surprises there, there were many adorable cupcakes that I would have voted for before mine!

Next challenge: Sex and the City's cupcake