Spring

  The last few days have been really warm and lovely and spring is in the air.  The birds have been waking us up at 6am, one of the down sides to living in a yurt is, that it is not very sound or light proof. So we have all turned in to early birds.  But it is not so bad, this time of year always fills me with energy. 
I unexpectedly found myself home alone yesterday which meant I had some time to make some little spring things for the seasonal table.  
After that I sowed some salad and lots of other yummy things in the green house. This was the high light of my day, the sun was shining and its was so hot in the green house it felt like summer and it made me very excited for all the lovely warm sunny days to come.  

Winter in a Yurt

A lot of people have been asking me what it is like to live in a yurt in winter and especially when the weather is as cold as it is now.  This past week the temperature has been below 0°C during the day, and last night it was -15°C. Yesterday it snowed and everything has been covered with a beautiful white blanket.

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.

Baby Alpaca

Here is a little baby alpaca I have crocheted using baby alpaca yarn. I made it for my sister and her husben because they are both mad about alpacas. Alpaca yarn is really soft and very nice to work with, making this little alpaca has made me mad about alpaca too.  I found the patten on Etsy from a really lovely shop where you can buy lots of very clever pattens for little animals.  Here is a link to the shop.  PlanetJune's Esty shop

Mince Pie Pastry

Over the past week I have made three batches of mince pies and I used three different recipes for the pastry, some of which can be found in Nigella's Christmas.  Like the mincemeat I have combined some of the recipes together to make the best one.  

Mince meat for mince Pies

Christmas is coming and for me the best things about christmas is eating yummy food.  I love the smells and warming tastes that christmas treats have to offer, like mince pies and hulled wine. Christmas is the only time of year I start to miss home and the English christmas, especially mince pies. 
Mince pies were traditionally made using a combination of minced meats, fruits and spices, the recipe was thought to be brought over from the middle east in the 13th century. New the minced meat is no longer used and they are made using dried fruit and spices however the name minced meat is still used. 
 I haven't be able to find them in Belgium so my desperation has led me to making them.  I found a few different recipes some from Nigella Lawson's Christmas cookbook.  but I couldn't find all the ingredients here, so I combined some of the recipes and added other thing where needed. Here is the recipe I ended up using for the mince meat.