Food week - Wednesday: Home-made yogurt

No more need to buy natural yogurt from the supermarket once you try this recipe. All you need is one litre milk and two tablespoons of natural yogurt to start with. Use low fat milk with low fat yogurt and normal milk with normal yogurt.
Heat up the milk until it starts to form bubbles. Then fill the milk into a plastic bowl and let it cool down to 45 degrees (if you don't have a thermometer just test with your index finger, if you can keep it in the milk for more than 20 seconds it's OK). Now mix a bit of milk and the starter yogurt in a smaller bowl and blend very well. Add the mixture to the rest of the milk. That's your yogurt mixture. All you need to do now is to keep it warm. I use a thermo bottle for that purpose (make sure that the opening is big enough so that you can get the yogurt out later on). But you can also use a thick towel and put it around the covered bowl. Leave the mixture in the warmth over night so that the yogurt cultures can do their job.
In the morning you can check the texture. It should be creamy and thick. Then it's ready for eating. Store the rest in the fridge. You can now use the new yogurt as starter for the next batch. So in the end you will get a very pure product, mainly consisting of milk and yogurt bacterias, no colourings, no artifical flavours or preservatives.

Food week - Tuesday: Mango sherbet

One thing I really got to love in Asia are mangoes. Whether it's black sticky rice with mango, mango lassie or mango sherbet I love them all.
And mango sherbet is quite easy to make and once stored in your freezer it can be served whenever you need a cool impressive dessert. And the bonus is, it's fatfree.

Ingredients:
3 mangoes
1/4 cup of creamy honey

Peel and cut the mangoes into pieces. Then use your blender to make a nice puree. Add the honey and blend everything together. The honey makes the whole thing really nice and creamy. Freeze the mixture for about two hours and then blend it again. This will avoid larger ice crystals. Then freeze again for at least two more hours.

Food week - Monday: Cantuccini cookies

This week is dedicated to food. I will cook and bake all my most loved dishes. Monday starts with the famous Italian cantuccini cookies. Which is absolutely gorgeous stuff and quick and easy to make.

Ingredients:

3 eggs
150 g sugar
vanilla flavoured essence (or the real stuff)
250 g plain flour
1.5 Tsp baking soda
120 g whole almonds

Beat the eggs with the sugar and the vanilla essence. Then add the baking soda to the flour and mix it under the eggs. In the end add the almonds. If the dough is too creamy add a bit more flour.

Then form two rolls out of the dough and place them on a baking tray with baking paper. Bake them for 30 minutes at 160 degrees in a preheated oven.

Take the rolls out of the oven and let them cool down. Then cut them into 1 cm thick slices. Put the slices on the baking tray again and bake them again for 5-10 minutes from each side.

Easter projects - 7. Easter paper bunny

This little fellow was made from a sheet of paper in the same way as the cootie catcher. Just glue the upper and bottom part together. Then cut two nice bunny ears from another piece of paper. Use pink paper for the inner ears, nose, cheeks and the tongue and glue them onto the bunny. For the last bit of decoration, namely the eyes and the moustache, use a black felt pen. It's quick and easy and your toddler might enjoy helping with this project as well.
Here is the link to the cootie catcher folding instructions again:
http://www.kikisweb.de/crafting/paper/origami/cootiecatcher.htm

Easter projects - 6. Cootie catcher

This is a cootie catcher. You can play little fun games with it or just use it as a nice Easter deco. The folding instructions can be found under this link:
http://www.kikisweb.de/crafting/paper/origami/cootiecatcher.htm

The eggs were dyed with beet root juice but it doesn't work very well. Those eggs were left in the hot juice (with half a cup of vinegar added) for nearly 2 hours and still the result is very uneven. But if you like the marble effect you can try it.

Easter projects - 5. Easter garland

This garland was made from origami paper. If you can't find it you can also use any other nice patterned paper. Just cut out some Easter shapes like eggs, rabbits and hens and then sew all the pieces together so they will make a nice garland.

Easter projects - 4. Quail egg deco

I finally found a bunny figurine. I had been looking for one for a long time. So now my quail eggs are in good company and the whole bunch turns into a lovely Easter decoration!

Easter projects - 3. Lamb cutlets

Lamb is a tradinational Easter meat. And lamb cutlets are just perfect as they don't need a lot of time for preparing and cooking. Just rub the lamb cutlets with some olive oil and then season them with salt, pepper, chopped garlic and fresh rosemary branches. Sear them in a preheated pan for about 2-4 min from each side (depends on whether you prefer it to be more rare or rather well done). Allow them to rest for another minute or two and then serve with mash and green peas or a nice green salad.

Easter Projects - 2. Breakfast Rolls

The second Easter project is for the Easter Brunch. These self baked breakfast rolls in shape of rabbits and hens will make for a lovely deco as well.

Basic dough:
500 g plain white flour
250 g whole wheat flour (or plain white if you don't like whole wheat)
3 Tbsp dried yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 Tsp salt
300 ml handwarm water

Mix the plain white flour with the yeast, sugar and salt. Then stirr in the water. This will give a very liquid dough. Knead  the dough until it's smooth. Then add the rest of the flour gradually and always knead in between each step. Add as much flour until the dough is still moist but doesn't stick to your hands anylonger.

Now you can divide the dough and add different flavours e.g. walnuts, dried fruits (raisins, blueberries, cranberries etc.) or olives if you like.
Shape the dough into little rabbits, hens, pretzels, bagels etc. and place on a tray covered with baking paper. Place a clean damp kitchen towel over the pieces and let it prove for at least one hour. You can also leave it to prove over night. Make sure that it doubles in size. Then bake the pieces at 180 degrees for around 20 minutes. Larger pieces will need more time (for a loaf around 40-50 min). The bread is cooked if it sounds hollow when tapping it's bottom.

Easter Deco - 1. Feltbunnies

This week is all about Easter projects. With two weeks left to go your Easter decoration will be smoothly ready in time if you start now. The first project are these cute Easter bunnies made from felt. Take the last image for the pattern (enlarge to at least A5 size) and cut it four times from felt. Then cut a little heart from a different coloured felt square. Sew two pieces together along the straight line. Unfold and stitch the heart onto it. Then sew the other two pieces together in the same way. To finish off put both new pieces together and stitch around the edges. Leave a little gap at the bottom so you can shove a little branch (or chop stick) into it. You could also sew a small piece of ribbon or thread onto the top so that it can be hung.