Monster E-cookies

Emma (8) is not only a talented Artist with her hilarious trans-media installation but she will also go down in history as fantastic cookie maker.
The amazing thing is that she made the cookies without recipe...
Cookie Monster eat your heart out :-)

Since you will need the recipe, here it is:
preheat the oven at about 180-200°c

melt 150 g butter
take a measure cup look up the flour measurements and measure with that cup
150 g flour
150 g oats
150 g sugar
add to melted butter
add 1 egg and a pinch of salt
some chocolate chips
mix well, spoon the mixture in heaps on a baking sheet coated oven plate (not too big because they will melt together) , stick in warm oven for 10 minutes
Then the hard part: yo have to wait till they cool down!



Non seulement Emma (8) est connue pour ses installation artistique Trans-Media délirantes mais à partir de hier elle est connue comme pâtissière fantastique!
Elle a fait les cookies délicieux sans recette, comme ça au pif!

Puisque vous ne pouvez faire sans, voici la recette secrete
pré-chauffer le four vers 180-200°c

fondre 150 g beurre (beukre dans langage Emma vers 3 ans)
prenez un bol mesureur et repérez la marque 150 g (farine)
puis mesurez
150 g farine
150 g avoine
150 g sucre
ajoutez au beurre fondu
ajoutez un oeuf et un pincé de sel
et des pépites de chocolat
mélangez bien, avec une cuillère faites des petits tas sur un plaque de four couvert avec papier sulfurisé.
Mettez dans le four chaud pendant 10 minutes seulement.
Et maintenant le plus dur... attendez que les E-cookies sont refroidis.
bon courage!

Sinterklaas, St Nicolas, Saintnic, Santa

You probably know already vaguely, but are not aware of it all the time that Santa is just an American made, though not entirely, impostor.
The real deal is St Nicolas or Sinterklaas, as the Dutch say.
He arrives by boat by half November, shown on national tv as the event of the year. Then you get to eat all these treats, sweets, backed specialties. The high light is the evening of December 5th when the Holy man visits mysteriously your home and brings gifts. Most of the time it's a knock on the door and you find a bag of gifts. Sometimes you get lucky and the man himself pays you a visit.
Please note the generous way to celebrate his own birthday of december 6, giving presents the evening before.
Then in the night he goes back to Spain (which is a sort of Florida for the elderly Europeans). His departure is not covered on national TV.
Although the man is a Saint this is not a religious holiday. That's what's so good about it. It's fast and sweet and rarely reason for family disputes like Christmas...
Since I'm Sinterklaas's biggest fan in France (where they do some sort of celebration in the east and north or North-East, but not as elaborated and perfected as in Holland) I take this occasion to write some foody stuff and share some recipes to promote Sinterklaas and get him out of the shadow of his big incorporated rival.

If you can only do one recipe then this is the one you want to try:
Pepernoten or Péfénock as Emma used to call them, are like spicy mini cookies. Peper in Dutch means pepper. Pepper is not in the spice mix aka Speculas spice. But there is cinnamon, nutmeg (i think that's what gave it the name Peper), coriander, ginger, cardamon and cloves. And i think i have had another brand of this spice mix which contained some pepper.

Here's what you need:
250 gr flour + 3gr backing powder or 250gr self-raising flour
mix with 10 gr of ready made spicemix you can buy in Holland, or your own spicemix: 5 gr cinnamon, 2 gr clove, 2 gr cardamon, 1 gr ginger powder, (optional about 1 gr nutmeg and or coriander)

melt 125 gr butter with
125 gr dark sugar (if you can't find the dark brown sugar you can use the raw unrefined sugar from the organic store)
50 gr of syrup or melasse

add the melted butter-sugar mix to the flour mix and knead it to a ball. It will have a brown color from sugar and spices.

Now the fun part starts for the kids you want to involve in this work. They have to roll little balls at the size of a marble. the challenge is to get the equal sized so they will back evenly, and you won't end up with the big ones raw inside and the small ones burned!
Put them on sheet of backing paper. you might have to work in batches.
Preheat the oven to 150°C and back the Pepernoten for 15-20 minutes. Let them cool so they will have their crunch.
Serve with hot chocolate et voilà! you have a nice treat on any winter's day and/or Sint Nic's season

The pictures here are of what you can buy in Holland, but it's full of E-numbers additives crap!

Emma's Recipes: Sunshine

One day Emma came to see me because she wanted to cook for us, she had seen the recipe somewhere and now she wanted to reproduce it. She knew it all by heart. It's called "Sunshine" or "Rayon de Soleil".
But now she can't remember where she has seen it and assures she has invented it...

What you need is:
a slice of bread (the weng-weng kind sliced factory bread, not the crunchy crust variation) per person
1 egg per person
pinch of salt
some butter and or oil
a glass

With the glass stick out a circle in the middle of the bread
heat a pan with some butter and/or oil
put the slice of bread with the hole in the heated pan
break the egg in the glass and drop it in the circle
cook one side then turn over
don't forget to salt it or use other herbs to make it tasty
serve and bon appétit!

You'll see it's so good after eating this you smile as if you just caught a sunray on a rainy day!