Mevrouw Cupcake

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Happy Days in Amsterdam!
2008-03-21 23:15:00
 I just had to take a break from baking to tell you all about Amsterdam 's newest (and only) French bakery, Le Fournil de Sébastien!!!! OMIGOD, you can't imagine how happy I am to be typing these words! Before I offend any Dutch (professional) bakers, let it be said that the quality of the bread in the Netherlands has improved by leaps and bounds since I came here ten years ago. I think that Compagnons Fine Food Productions who have a stand at the weekly biologische boerenmarkt (oragnic farmer's market) on the Noordermarkt makes some of the finest croissants that I've had in the NL; and Geertje's Ambachtelijk Brood, also on the Noordermarkt, make the only bread that I really think is worth toasting (up until now). This may seem like a strange statement, as bread should be able to stand on its own, without toasting, but for me its all about toast. Crappy, fluffy, processed, press it between two fingers and roll it into a ball bread doesn't make good toast. Dense, ch...
More About: Happy , Days , Happy Days

TWD - Cherry Brioche Snails
2008-03-18 00:32:00
  For those of you who might be a bit late to the party, Tuesdays with Dorie is fabulous weekly food blog baking event started by Laurie of quirky cupcake, that has the participants baking our way through Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. This is my fourth round with TWD, having got my start last month with TWD's recipe attempt #9: Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits. Committing to baking one recipe a week, seemed daunting, but as I was looking to bake more often and with more variety in 2008,  TWD seemed like a great way achieve my goal. Not only is everyone baking the same recipe, but we're adding our own touches ("playing around" as Dorie calls it), pushing the boundaries of our baking comfort zones, and most importantly, we're supporting each other in the process. Troubleshooting is so much easier when you've got your very own forum to voice our insecurities (this week's hot topic of insecurity: flambéing raisins), our dislikes (substit...
More About: Cherry , Snails

Food for Our Ladies of TVTu
2008-03-17 07:57:00
  I gotta stop taking a bite out of my dinner before photgraphing it...  While my Tuesdays are reserved for Tuesdays with Dorie, my Mondays are all about TV Tuesday; a weekly girlfriend get-together, where we watch trashy TV (Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, of late), drink cocktails and talk a mile a minute.
More About: Food , Ladies

Mevrouw Cupcake Goes Meme
2008-03-12 18:53:00
  I've watched the steady proliferation of memes across the blogging world, but have never been tagged nor voluntarily joined in on the fun, until now that is. Lucy over at Nourish Me got tagged for this meme, and left it open for volunteers to play along. So I'm playing along.
More About: Meme

TWD - Russian Grandmothers' Apple Pie-Cake
2008-03-11 07:30:00
 When I read the recipe for this week's TWD (chosen by Natalie of Burned Bits), I have to admit that I contemplated opting-out, as I'm not really a baked apple fan.  I don't hate it, but if there's an apple dessert on the menu, then I'm most likely going to choose something else. I'm not sure what changed my mind, but as we were having a friend round for dinner on Saturday night, I decided that it'd go nicely with my menu. Of course, nothing went as planned; I came home from work on Friday night with a scratchy throat and slightly swollen glands and ended up begging our guest for a rain check. In spite of feeling a bit poo, I decided that I would give the recipe a go, and I'm glad that I did.
More About: Russian , Apple , Cake

Cake + Ice Cream = 1 Happy Lady
2008-03-10 23:30:00
 A week ago last Friday, Deb of Smitten Kitchen posted about coffee cake, and not just any coffee cake, 'Big Crumb' Coffee cake with Rhubarb. I drooled over the lush images of red skinned rhubarb floating in vanilla cake batter and sent a psychic message out into the food universe with the hope that some rhubarb would cross my path in the very near future. Fast forward to last Saturday, I'm at the market shopping for apples for tomorrow's TWD recipe and what should I see but some beautiful rose red stalks of rhubarb!E is a big fan of rhubarb and encouraged me to pick some up, not that I needed any encouragement. I paired it with David Lebovitz's crème fraîche ice cream (page 59 in The Perfect Scoop). Not at all necessary, but so good.I love cake and ice cream, you can wake me up at any hour for cake and ice cream.
More About: Ice Cream , Cake , Lady , Happy , Cream

Still loving...
2008-03-07 23:48:00
And I don't care if my boyfriend thinks they taste like dirt.  Maybe they do, but maybe that's why I like them...  
More About: Loving

TWD - Snickery Squares (and an introduction to Dulce de Leche)
2008-03-04 23:21:00
 This week's Tuesdays with Dorie bake-off was a true challenge for me. This is absolutely not the sort of thing that I bake, nor is it the sort of baked good that I like to eat, but this is exactly my reasoning behind joining TWD. Baking is more then just cakes, it's pies, cookies, quick breads, and then some; and taking part in TWD helps me to move outside my comfort zone, expanding my experience and skills as a baker.
More About: Introduction , Dulce

Master Baker #1 - Sweet Potato Cinnamon Crumb Muffins
2008-03-02 22:24:00
  I'm really loving all the blog events that focus on baking at the moment, as it gives me the opportunity to bake things I normally wouldn't choose to bake, and thus broaden my baking horizons. This month Nikki over at Crazy Delicious, a self-proclaimed foodie blog event junkie, decided to start up her very own foodie blog event and Master Baker was born. Each month the hostess of Master Baker chooses an ingredient to bake with, and then the participants bake can whatever their heart desires. I particularly like this aspect, as it allows for some creativity, and an incentive to dig around in my cookbook collection for recipes and inspiration.
More About: Sweet , Muffins , Potato , Cinnamon

Chocolate & Raspberry Pudding Parfait
2008-03-01 17:24:00
When trying to come up with a dessert to go with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, plus accompanying sides, there is really no need to get fancy. I wanted to have something sweet and something chocolate (as per my guest's request), and as I had one successful go at an easy vanilla pudding recipe earlier in the week, I thought I'd have a go at the chocolate version and dress it up a little for a little dinner party that I was hosting. The result was a glass full of rich layers, silky chocolate pudding, billowing vanilla-specked whipped cream, and a sweet-tart raspberry sauce. The glass may have made it look fancy, but the ingredients were simple and combination worthy of finger-licking.Chocolate Pudding 1¼ cups (300 ml) whole milk1¼ cups (300 ml) whipping cream½ cup (100 gr) sugar¼ tsp salt¼ tsp vanilla extract 3 tbsp cornstarch2 oz (57 gr) bittersweet chocolate, chopped 2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened Combine 1 cup each of whole milk and...
More About: Raspberry , Parfait

A Cause for Celebration
2008-02-27 23:41:00
 (Do you see that I'd already cheekily taken a bite of my chicken before snapping the picture? It happens more often.)Two Sundays ago, my darling girlfriend D called me up and imparted some rather exciting news, of the impending baby variety! I was so thrilled to hear to hear that this beautiful woman is going to bring an undoubtedly beautiful baby into to this world, that I thought a celebration was definitely in order. When D told me that she was hungry all the time, I knew then and there that I needed to pamper her with a home cooked meal.
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(My First) TWD: Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits
2008-02-26 07:14:00
 I am sooooo glad that I joined Tuesdays with Dorie, if only because it was the perfect excuse to purchase my very own copy of Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours. I wasn't expecting such gorgeous tome to arrive in the post, but I was hardly disappointed. I also consider myself a "home baker," and it's wonderful to have a cookbook that is balances the unpretentious style of a home baker with the craft and skill of a professional baker. I am pretty confident that Baking will have become a favorite of mine, by time we've baked our way through the entire book!
More About: Biscuits , Cream

Nigella, what's not to love?
2008-02-22 22:24:00
  One way to make sure that I get stuff done is to set a goals for myself, and even then sometimes my laxidasical nature wins out. One of the main reasons that I joined the baking bloggers group, Tuesdays with Dorie this week, and why I am posting for this month's installment of Weekend Cookbook Challenge, is to get me blogging more frequently. From November last year, up until this month, I haven't been a very prolific blogger, and for the most part I avoided the kitchen. When I did enter the kitchen pre-holiday season 2007, I tried to make the tastiest, but least fat filled dish possible, i.e. salad. All in preperation for my three week eat-a-thon in the good ol' US of A, and Christmas with my big food loving family. When we returned in January, there was jet-lag to contend with, and work to return to, not to mention the gym to hit, in an attempt to drop the holiday paunch. But all that is a thing of the past, because lets face it, I LOVE to be in the kitchen. Making ...
More About: Love , Nigella

Me, You and 2 Loving Spoonfuls
2008-02-22 19:44:00
  I love the cyclic world of food (blogging), and how now more then ever, it influences what I decide to cook (or bake) and eat, what I read and research. It's my connection with my place of birth (America), as well as food-loving folks like me on the other side of the globe and below the equator. Case in point, about three weeks back I received my daily e-edition of the New York Times and as usual I skipped the news of the day, and scrolled down in search of the Dining & Wine section.  Lucky me, cause on this particular day the feature article was Sara Dickerman's Lovin' Spoonfuls, an ode the lost art of homemade puddings.A week or so later, I'm cleaning out my feed reader and I come across the post Pudding for Lazy People from Nosheteria, and that was all it took, to get me on the pudding bandwagon! I thought my weekly girlie TV get-together would be just the place to test out a new taste discovery, and just as I thought the girls (and my boyfriend) thought ...
More About: Loving

Inspiration & Motivation
2008-02-20 19:01:00
 Breakfast                                           Dinner As I slowly pick up the thread of blogging again, a bit of inspiration definitely helps to motivate me back into the kitchen. I've been clearing out my unloved feed reader (507 posts to go, as I type this), catching up on what's happening in the world of food bloggers, and stumbling across inspiration galore! So many recipes, so little time! This past week though, two recipes in particular caught my eye, so I printed out both recipes immediately and added the necessary ingredients to my shopping list. There would be no "clipping" them for future reference, no notations in my "future meals" notebook; nope, these recipes were going to become a reality this very weekend.So which recipes got me in the kitchen?My Mom used to make granola from scratch and I have fond memories of seemingly endle...
More About: Inspiration , Motivation

On Love and Food
2008-02-17 21:19:00
I read a really interesting article this week in the NY Times on dietary differences in relationships. Some of the stories really made me appreciate the fact that although E. doesn't like anything in the Brassica family, in general we're compatible enough when it comes to food. They say (and I surely believe) that way to the heart is through the stomach, and if that's the case, it's important to speak the same language of food.I also realize that we're pretty lucky, we're both gainfully employed, can afford to buy organic produce and meats, and as we don't yet have children, we're pretty flexible, about everything from what time we dine to what we dine on. We make an concerted effort to eat all our meals together and this makes up a fundamental part of our relationship. That may not always be the case, as this fabulous short film from Faye Hess over at FayeFood illustrates, but that doesn't mean that you can't find your way back to one another, and the dinner table. 
More About: Love

Red Velvet Valentine's Day
2008-02-14 10:34:00
We'll just ignore the fact that I haven't posted a darn thing in months and concentrate on today's "holiday."  Personally, I think such a title should only be given to days when one actually doesn't have to go into work; but hey, what do I know?), and a perfect excuse to get back on the baking/cupcake and share some love with my colleagues and E's colleagues.Epicurious.com recently featured a series of videos featuring Bobbie Lloyd, CBO ("chief baking officer") at Magnolia Bakery in NYC, making the bakery's signature red velvet cupcakes with a creamy vanilla frosting for Valentine's Day. I happen to have a steller recipe for red velvet cake, which I think is so fabulously tasty that I'm unlikely to try another (please feel free to send samples though, I could change my mind); however the recipe for the vanilla frosting really caught my attention. The recipe uses a cooled paste of cooked milk and flour as a base, which is then incorpated into the butt...
More About: Velvet

Spaghetti Cravings
2007-12-18 19:26:00
I haven't been cooking much, I haven't even baked a single holiday goodie, but I still have time. When I arrive at my parent's in Kansas this coming Sunday, the holiday food bonanza of preparing and partaking of food will commence. Until then I'm counting every second of my dwindeling work days and making lists (the what to shop for in America list, the family and friends gift list, the Christmas card list, the which clothes I'm taking with me list), and checking them twice.In the midst of work Christmas parties, last minute get-togethers, and vacation preperation, I got a craving for spaghetti. So when a friend canceled our dinner plans tonite due to illness, I knew exactly what I'd be making for dinner. I've had this recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter on my radar ever since Molly over at Orangette posted it back September. I know why she waxed lyrical about it, and I'm sure it won't be the last time I make this particular recipe. I just have to pretend that it ...
More About: Spaghetti , Ravin

Dinner Salads
2007-11-19 19:38:00
As I'm trying to keep it light during the week, dinner-wise, I've been crafting some mighty tasty dinner salads. I want to share my two favorites for this week, along with my favorite vinegarette recipe.Salad #1:Raapstelen*, watercress and mesculen greens with shaved fennel, beet root, manderine segments, fresh goat's cheese and toasted pine nuts Salad #2:Raapstelen*, watercress and mesculen greens with organic smoked chicken breast, dried cranberries, apple chunks, goat's cheese, and toasted pecans.This vinegarette recipe was inspired by a November 2005 article in Saveur magazine, titled: An American Cooks in Paris. The article showcased the talents of David Tanis, currently head chef at Chez Panisse (downstairs), who is blessed enough to live six months out of the year in Paris. This is a fabulously simple recipe, but don't be fooled by it's simplicity, it's great on it's own or as a building block for a more complex vinegarette. This recipe is very easy to double or tripl...
More About: Dinner , Salads

Mevrouw Cupcake Wants to Lose the Cupcake (Weight)
2007-11-15 18:07:00
I've been AWOL, dear readers....my feed reader has 1,068 entries in it, I can't remember the last meal of any significance that I actually made, and the last time I baked was October 26th, when I produced a 14-inch, 4-layer wedding cake for my sweet friends Maya and Hein.What have I been doing for these past 5 weeks (to the day)? Well I've swum laps for a total of 4 and half hours, I've worked out for a total of 13.5 hours during a total of 18 trips to the gym. My head is in fitness land, as I purposefully try to rectify the damage that two years worth of baking trials, honeymoon period Sunday brunches, and general laziness and gluttony have wrecked on my body. And oh, have I got a ways to go! The first three kilos were easy enough to lose, but it's going to take some serious dediction if I want to lose another 15-20 kilos without dieting. So while the food has been an ever important part of my new process, taking pictures of it and writing about it hasn't. Hopefully, this pos...
More About: Weight , Weigh

Globetrotting...
2007-10-11 23:02:00
  I've returned to my old haunt Chicago this week, for a work-related conference. I landed yesterday and will be around through the weekend. At the moment, I've mostly seen the inside of the Hilton Chicago (Which is deserving of a good rant, as they charge extra for just about every normal 5-star hotel service imaginable --- SHOCKING!), but on the bright side I've already enjoyed two great meals out in the real world, as well as had an opportunity to peruse a Whole Foods (HEAVEN!). Stay tuned for the highlights of my eating experiences once I'm back across the pond, if not sooner!  Source: Polonia in Chicago - PolskiInternet.com (http://www.polskiinternet.com/polski/inf o/chic/chicago.html)

Sexing Up the Competition
2007-10-03 19:53:00
  I'm pleased as punch to help support the important (and delicious) cause that Rachel over at R khooks is advocating with her Stop the Traffik Chocolate Competition . I happen to be one of those oddbods (Rachel's words) who isn't a true chocolate lover; although I have been known to eat a good quality chocolate bar one square at a time, over the course of a couple of weeks. This fact does not, however, stop me from caring about the quality of the chocolate or the means by which the cocoa was cultivated. No child should be sold into servitude in this day and age, and I commend those companies who share this view and offer fair-trade alternatives to products that we love to love, like chocolate and coffee.
More About: Sexing

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together
2007-10-01 23:19:00
 I don’t know if I have properly conveyed how excited I was at the prospect making barbecued ribs, but let me tell you folks, I was VERY EXCITED. If you’d ask E, he would tell you that most of the conversations we had last week, revolved around ribs, or the barbecuing thereof. Bless him for putting up with my food obsessions and going along on the wild ride that they sometimes entail. This weekend he cycled with me and all our groceries to the other side of town, so that I could visit Frank’s Smoke House in search of Hickory wood chips, because Duikelman only had Alder wood chips; and consoled me in the rain when I left Frank’s empty handed as they only carry Hickory sawdust.
More About: Love , Love it , Plan

Come Rain or Come Shine
2007-09-28 23:10:00
  As I sit here typing my house is filled with the spicy vinegary smell of heavenly homemade barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce you say? Isn’t barbecue season officially over with the passing of Labor Day in America? Well, let me tell you something, the season never even got off the ground here in the Netherlands. I would go and buy a gigantic Weber charcoal grill for what turned out to be the crummiest summer ever! Regardless, we got more than a few good meals out of my black enameled beauty, refusing to be deterred by a little (or sometimes a lot) of rain. At the end of August I made a date with my dear friend and fellow lekkerbek (literal translation “tasty mouth” and meaning someone who likes to eat well) Chris, to come together and barbecue at the end of September. We laughingly prayed for good weather, and I promised that come hell or high water, we’d be eating food off the grill. Fast forward to last weekend, two days of dreamy warmish fall weath...
More About: Rain , Shine

What Do These Ingredients Have in Common?
2007-09-27 22:12:00
 Not a thing admittedly, but they are four of the ingredients that I will be using this weekend when I cook a belated birthday dinner for my friend Chris and his girlfriend Maya. Anyone care to take a guess at what I might be making?  
More About: Ingredients , Common , Ingredient

Win a chocolate goodie bag!
2007-09-27 17:27:00
  I want to give this competition that Rachel over at R khooks has come up with. I think this is a fantastic and thought provoking initiative, as well as a good excuse to make something chocolatey and delicious. I felt really honored to get a personal mail from Rachel asking if I'd like to participate, and I plan on making an extra effort on behalf of her cause. There is still one week left to get your best chocolate recipe to Rachel, so rustle up some "traffik free" chocolate, your favorite recipe and get cracking in the kitchen!
More About: Chocolate , Choco

In the Flesh
2007-09-25 19:04:00
So how did it turn out that I had the pleasure of meeting, not one, but two fellow food bloggers in the flesh, in the very same week? It was a complete coincidence. I’ve been remiss in mentioning the two (actually three) very special people that I had the opportunity of meeting two weeks back, and I don’t want to let anymore time slip by without giving these ladies honorable mention here at Mevrouw Cupcake. I stumbled onto Everybody Likes Sandwiches via a comment that Jeannette had left at another blog, somewhere at the beginning of the summer. I immediately fell in love with her sweet and sassy blog, as well as her design skillz, and added her blog to my feed. Not long thereafter Jeannette mentioned that she’d be visiting Europe with her husband and would be coming through Amsterdam, so I suggested a meeting of the bloggers in Amsterdam. The rest, as they say, is history. After lots of Wall-to-Wall notes and email exchanges, we arranged to meet on a Tuesday night...

Weekend Warmer
2007-09-24 22:27:00
 Trading in my traditional Sunday breakfast of blueberry buttermilk pancakes, for something with a lower calorie count, does not mean that I need to give up on flavor (although E is not quite convinced). Luckily for me, I've been a life-long fan of oatmeal; and with autumn at our door and winter just around the corner, oatmeal is a perfect breakfast option, if only for its countless health benefits. Inspired by a recipe by Haalo over Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once and Heidi’s recipe for steel-cut oatmeal featured in her lovely cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, I got a taste for some oatmealy-goodness. Be sure and use a good quality mix of dried fruits; the lovely organic packet that I pick up at my local farmer’s market has sweet little snow-white blocks of shredded coconut, crisp banana chips, cranberries, raisins, pineapple, papaya and more, turning my oatmeal a treasure hunt experience! Bring two cups of milk to a boil in a small saucepan. Add one cup of oa...
More About: Weekend

Loving Your Scale and Other Such Myths...
2007-09-21 21:01:00
 Two weeks ago, I left work at lunchtime, climbed on my bike and rode over to a nearby gym, went in and asked if I could have a tour. I've been riding past this particularly gym on a daily basis since starting my new(ish) job back in November of last year. It's basically situated right in the middle of my bicycle route to and from work, which is a whopping 10 whole minutes door-to-door (I know, it's not fair). It's important to know that this was a completely unplanned event; I'd had lunch and still had a half hour to kill, and I somewhere in the back of my head my alter ego, Hot Girl, was crying out, "Get thee to a cross-trainer, ASAP!!"Which leads me to ask the question, is food blogging is detrimental to your waistline, or is it just mine that's suffering? Unfortunately I can't blame it all on my blog, but the combination of meeting and falling in love with my beloved E and starting a food blog in the same year, just meant more excuses to cook and bake (like...
More About: Myths , Loving , Scale , Myth

Marriage au Cirque
2007-09-20 17:44:00
 Four and half weeks ago, my beautiful and talented friend Lotta married her longtime boyfriend Milan, in a fabulous and festive celebration of love. The bride wore blue, the groom wore white and the ceremony was held in a circus tent under strings of fairy lights and colorful piñatas. I had the pleasure and honor of baking 12 dozen wedding cupcakes for the wedding party, a gig that put my nerves and oven to the test! Red velvet cupcakes with white chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and yellow cake cupcakes with hemelsblauw vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, made up the tasty trinity of the cupcake menu. This was my sophomore effort in the world of wedding (cup)cakes, but I was so excited to be working with the creative tour de force that is Lotta, I never doubted from the moment she asked me that this project wouldn't be something special.Of course there were hiccups during production; I slept badly as I always do whe...
More About: Marriage