A few days ago, I bought a big basket of blueberries directly to the producer. Fresh, incredibly sweet and large as grapes. Most of them were eaten just like that, but I kept some in the freezer to make this blueberry ice cream.
Sweet
I’m a little ashamed, sharing this recipe with you. In fact, this is not a real recipe but simply a combination of two ingredients that takes less than 5 minutes to put together. No fuss, no cooking required – except if you’re making your own coffee ice cream, which is totally fine – just the pleasure of enjoying your caffeine fix on a hot summer day. So, I took these photographs mostly for practice and experiment with different angles and directions of light, but then occur to me that maybe, just maybe, one of the blog readers could not know…
This lemon poppy seed cake falls in the category of simple cakes, of the “mix everything together and bake in the oven” kind, which are my favorites. The lemon scent is however intense and the poppy seeds give texture and look beautiful, small bluish spots dotted on the pale batter.
This Easter bread is a slightly sweet bread with a very soft crumb, very different from the purchased ones, that I simply flavored with orange and fennel. If you want to add other aromas (cinnamon, lemon, just to give some examples) you can do it. It is also a sweet bread that you can make at any other time of the year. Skip the boiled eggs on top, completely optional, and accompany with a cup of tea or coffee. It is delicious slightly toasted and spread with a little butter, so, if there is any left, here’s a suggestion for…
You may think that a marble cake is not a major innovation, but I like very simple cakes, with no fillings or frostings. The kind of cake you make at home on a Sunday afternoon for your kids and friends. This version of a marble cake adds a few layers of flavor without departing from its natural simplicity. Roasted ground hazelnuts and dark chocolate (not chocolate powder) make the interior moistier, and the coffee combined with the chocolate adds its aroma in a subtle tone. In addition, I must confess that this was my first marble where the marbled pattern…
When I saw this saffron star bread I knew right away that I wanted to do something similar to share with you this Christmas. In this recipe, only the dough is similar. I kept the saffron, because it gives the most beautiful golden color to the dough, but I changed the filling and used the spices of the season: ginger, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. The aroma of this sweet bread baking in the oven is unbelievable, trust me. If you like this combination of spices, which reminds me of Christmas, warm blankets and burning fireplaces, you should also try a…
Quinces are a fruit that can rarely be eaten raw because it is hard and rough. But boiled or baked they completely transform and become sweet and soft. Baked in a Port wine and spices syrup it’s a dessert that celebrates the delights of autumn.
To welcome the season that starts today, I suggest you turn on the oven and make some apple muffins, sprinkled with almond streusel. Apples slightly cooked in a syrup of sugar and spices leave the interior moist, while the almond streusel gives a crunchy texture on the outside. Cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla, as well as Brown sugar, bring the warm aroma of spices that bind so well with fall. Enjoy!
With the end of summer quickly approaching it’s time to save its aromas and memories in a jar to remember later, while huddled between warm blankets and steaming mugs of tea. Thyme adds a very pleasant herbaceous aroma and makes this compote ideal for savoring, for example, with cheese. In fact, cheese and jam is one of those combinations that seem strange at first but, after experiencing, makes perfect sense. Feel free to double or triple the recipe. I never make jams in large quantities, because I like to vary. A few more months and it’s time to make quince…
A popsicle is a summer classic. I remember being a girl and my mother giving me some money to go to and buy a popsicle from the pastry shop on the street. It was a special moment that marked some of the days of my childhood endless summer vacations. Today, buying an ice cream is something banal and the singularity comes in making it ourselves.
In a spring that so quickly gives us a beach day as, in the next one, puts us back looking for socks again, I took advantage of one of the good days to make a fresher dessert, a tiramisu ice cream cake, with layers of cream and mascarpone cheese ice cream interspersed with Ladyfingers soaked in coffee. Light and dark, like the keys of a piano. I used the same basic recipe that I use when I want to make an ice cream without using a machine, cream and condensed milk, and I added the tiramisu’s own flavors: mascarpone cheese,…
This week I should be publishing another recipe, something savory in which fava beans would be the star. But a relatively serious episode of allergic rhinitis, I suspect related to the fact that I live on a street lined with jacaranda trees in early spring, has led to the fava beans still standing on the kitchen counter waiting for inspiration and respiration, because without the sense of smell there is no cooking. I therefore anticipated next week’s recipe which, by a strange fortuity, was already made, photographed and written; and quietly waiting for her turn in the blog’s server.
Among the many Easter bread traditions that are found all over Portugal, I especially like three: one from the northeast region of Trás-os-Montes, savory and proudly displaying the good sausages from that region; the one from the southern city of Olhão, rolled and stuffed with a lot of cinnamon and sugar; and this one, from the city of Portalegre in the southeast, which is the one that brings me the sweetest memories.
Cheesecake is a dessert in which the main layer consists of a mixture of soft cheese (usually cream cheese or ricotta), eggs and sugar. It can have a bottom layer, made from crushed cookies or biscuits, and can even be topped with fruit, whipped cream, jam, chocolate or whatever the imagination dictates. It is common to find cheesecake made with gelatin, but I’m not very fond of that version. The more traditional version should be cooked in a bain-marie in the oven, just like this lemon ricotta baked cheesecake topped with little purple blueberries that I bring to you today.
Another simple cake, a banana cake with raw chocolate, a useful recipe for using those bananas that remain in the fruit bowl and that nobody wants because they’re too ripe. And it’s really important to use those poor forgotten bananas because they are sweeter and that is why this banana cake takes a relatively smaller amount of sugar. Speaking of sugar, I use brown sugar because it’s not refined and because I think that its caramel flavor goes particularly well in chocolate cakes. The last package I bought is a dark brown sugar and it has an absolutely incredible molasses…
Today I leave you a recipe, poached pears with spices and hot chocolate sauce, and also a couple of thoughts on the passage of time. I love my birthday, in this matter I’m like a child. Not because of the gifts, although I take them with pleasure and gratitude, but for everything that the passage of time means. For the most melancholic, time that has elapsed is like a treasure, ours to keep in contrast to the uncertainty of the time that is to come. I prefer to think of time like a kind of conveyor belt, which brings me…
If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed that I’ve been in Turkey for a few days, almost a whole week, divided between work and tourism, with a great weather and some amazing food. As soon as possible, I promise to share with you some of the photographs I took during the trip. The only downside is that it takes only one week away to ruin domestic organization. I need to refill the fridge, bring the dogs home from the hotel, put up with a cat in a bad mood (he goes on meowing around the house whenever…
When I was little pastry cakes were the exception. Chocolate, yogurt or marble cake were lovingly made at home and, on special days, decorated with egg white frosting and sprinkled with little colored confettis. And, for me, these continue to be the best cakes in the world.
Pavlova is a dessert shaped like a cake with a meringue base, invented after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova trip to Australia and New Zealand, and today both countries still argue about which of them invented such a delicacy. The meringue basis is crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, and is usually decorated with fresh fruit and some kind of syrup or jam.
Today I will write about simple things. Three mills recovered on the Ovil river. The silence is only interrupted by the crackling of the wood on the fireplace or by the sound of the river that runs under the porch, magnified by the rain that continues to fall after some days. Having a kind of a brunch for dinner, enjoy the nightfall, turning on the oven in the morning to make fresh bread for breakfast, reading, listening to music. Today, how many times can we be quiet, without distractions, places to go or things to do, just talking and enjoying…
We are entering the bustle of preparations for Christmas. Bolo-rei (literally “King Cake” in English) is a traditional Portuguese cake that is a staple dessert in any home between Christmas and January 6 (Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day). The base for the recipe came from France during the 19th century when a bakery, named Confeitaria Nacional, first introduced the recipe in the country. In fact, Confeitaria Nacional is still a reference in Lisbon concerning this cake.
This dessert is a good way to brighten your afternoon on a rainy day like today. It’s easy to do, combines the season apples and nuts and it tastes intensely like chocolate, not being, overall, a very sweet dessert. You can serve it after cooling, if you manage to wait, but I advise to serve it while still warm, accompanied by a vanilla ice cream scoop, just because all this together – apples, chocolate, nuts, vanilla, warm and cold – seems to make sense.
