Rainy afternoons are for Cake making

 It was one of those days again, when the rain does not stop and the girls get fed up with being cooped up inside all day.  Its moments like those that are perfected for cake making. There is plenty of time to make, eat, enjoy the cake and of course clean up the mess.  So the girls and I made cup cakes.   

I used one of Nigella's cupcake recipes but I didn't have enough sugar so I used some Stevia as well. Stevia is a natural sweetener extract from a plant called Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni. It is a little bush that grows in Brazil and has been used as a sweetener for the past 400 years.  It is much healthier then Sugar and all other food sweeteners, but for some reason it was illegal in Europe until 1 month ago and still is in the USA. Now it is available to buy in most health food shops.  The only problem with stevia is that it is about 300% sweeter then sugar and only a very small amount is needed.  This means that when using it for cake making it is hard to work out the corrected proportions.  So using stevia is a little bit experimental for now.  
Nigella's recipe says to use 125g of sugar but I only had 50g so I added 10 drops of liquid stevia and added more flour to make up the bulk.  The cakes were not very sweet but I like that.  Here is the recipe I came up with.

Winter

 I have been waiting for winter for the past two months now, but it just doesn't seen to come.  Although the past week has been a bit colder, there is just no sign of snow. I love snow so much, hoping for it and enjoying it gets me through the winter.   

This is our little winter table, its a bit bleak this year but I hope and if we ask king winter nicely he will bring us some snow soon.

  Let it snow, let it snow, 

Let it snow.  

Home made Eclairs

 We went to a party on the weekend and we were asked to bring with us something to nibble. So we made eclairs.  When my boyfriend was 15 years old he worked every Saturday night in a bakery making all the delicious dreads and pastries that bakeries sell. One of the pastries being my favourite handmade eclairs.  Every now and then he feels inspired to make them and this time I asked him for the recipe. 

-The Dough.
Ingredients: 
¼ lt. Water, 
100gr butter, 
150gr 00 Flour, 
3 1/2 Eggs, 
½ tbs. Icing sugar.