Like my cookies?

Pour les meilleurs hamburgers (le ched...yum!) avec les meilleurs cookies (les miens), va voir Pauline et Valentine. Now serving Becca's Cookies (Lille). Yum!

Ice Cream Birthday Cake / Gateau à la glace

My little boy turned 4 while we were on vacation. An August birthday could be sad with no friends around to celebrate. I wanted it to be special and there's nothing more special in the summer than ice cream and nothing better for a birthday than a cake. So we made ice cream birthday cake.

I've made it a couple of time before using chocolate and vanilla ice cream along with oreo cookies. This time, we decided to go chocolate free since one of the two children who could come to the party doesn't like chocolate. 

Ice cream cake entails 3 main steps, but takes a bit of time due to the freezing process between steps. 

But it's really easy and you can make it with any flavor ice cream you want and with any cookies.

For Max's birthday cake, he chose strawberry ice cream, blueberry ice cream and speculoos cookies.

All of the ice creams were store bought, but you can use homemade. 

Ingredients : 

1 liter blueberry ice cream

1 liter strawberry ice cream

1 package speculoos cookies, crumbled

1 container whipping cream (crème fleurette)

candies, sprinkles, extra cookies for decorating

prepare a round silicon pie mould; line it with plastic wrap, with enough hanging over the edges to be able to wrap the ice cream layers once they are in place.

in a bowl, crush the cookies

Using a wooden spoon, crush the ice cream enough to make it spreadable. Spread it in the pie mould and cover with cookie crumbs. 

Place in the freezer for about 2 hours (or longer) until it is frozen. 

When the first layer is set, soften the second ice cream. Carefully spread it on top of the first ice cream layer. Cover it and put it back in the freezer. 

When the second layer is set, prepare your whipped cream (with sugar and vanilla to taste). Make sure the whip cream is fairly stiff. 

Take the ice cream layers out of the pie mould and put them on a plate that can go into the freezer (I made a plate out of cardboard covered in plastic wrap). Spread it evenly all over the ice cream cake and decorate. 

Put back in the freezer until ready to serve ! To cut, dip the knife in a glass of hot water. 

braderie de Lille : cookies!!!!

The traditional Braderie food is moules-frites. But who cares? Come eat cookies anyway! Becca's cookies will be sold at Café Colorié, on rue des Ponts de Comines and on rue Gambetta, next to Les Chopes, a store specializing in regional beers. And while you're at it, sit down and have a cold beer at les Chopes to wash down the Becca's American cookies made in Lille. There will be salted butter-chocolate, M&M, and speculoos-oatmeal cookies for sale ! 

Peu importe que la nourriture traditionnelle de la braderie c'est des moules frites. 

Venez manger des cookies! Becca's cookies seront vendus au Café Colorié, rue Ponts de Comines, et rue Gambetta, à côté de Les Chopes, magasin spécialisé dans les bières régionales. Et pendant que vous y êtes, restez prendre une bière fraiches à les Chopes pour accompagner Becca's cookies made in Lille. Nous aurons à vendre des cookies: beurre salé-chocolat, m&m, et speculoos-avoine! 

Cranberry-maple granola bars

One of things I really miss is granola bars. There are tons of cereals bars in French stores but none of them quite add up to the nature valley green bars I loved so much as a kid. They always seem too crumbly or not chewy enough or too...artificial (all white sugar and corn syrup...). i wanted something filling and healthy that we could all eat.

So I went on a quest to make my own granola bars. I looked on the Internet using the key words: oatmeal, cranberry and maple syrup. In the end, i didint find anything perefct so I combined two recipes to make my own granola bars that have turned my non breakfast eating husband into a Breakfast eater. As with the original recipe, These bars are very versatile and can be easily adapted to what you have on hand. If you are a peanut butter fan, you can increase the quantity to get moister  bars.  My kids didn't like the peanut butter...not very American of them! 

No-bake oatmeal-maple granola bars (adapted from this recipe) for the lazy mom who wants as few steps as possible in her homemade food. 

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups rolled oats (230 g)

1/2 cup (80 g) almond powder(or chopped almond but who has the patience to do that? )

1/3 cup (115 ml) maple syrup

1/4 cup (56g) butter

1/4 cup (50g) sucre vergeoise ( or light brown sugar or cassonade or raw sugar or whatever you have)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp big sea salt

1/2 cup (60g) dried cranberries or other dried fruit

1/4 cup  (65g) chocolate chips or chunks

1 tablespoon peanut butter or almond butter

A handful of Rice Krispies or crumbled corn flakes

How
melt the butter, sugar, maple syrup, vanilla and salt in a pan on medium low heat. Stir it until everything's dissolved and you have a kind of caramel.

In the meantime, put the oats, coconut, and almond powder in a roasting pan and toast it for a few minutes, until its not burnt. About 10 minutes in a 350 f (175c) oven. Put it in a big bowl.

Pour the melted butter mixture over the oats and stir well, add the cranberries And chocolate.

Pour into an aluminum foil lined pan. Pat the mixture down as much as you can, using a flat spatula or your hands (my preferred method). 

Put in the fridge overnight. To cut, I prefer Not to remove it from the pan. Cut n squares and keep in an air tight container. You'll probably have to adjust the quantity of dry to wet ingredients depending n the weather. And if the bars crumble, just put it in a bowl and pour milk on it. It makes delicious crunchy musli. 

For chewier bars, use corn syrup or golden syrup instead of brown sugar 

Stuffed pumpkin flower fritters/ fleur de citrouille farcie et frite

Since I cannot find jack-o-lanterns in France, I've been planting my own for the past 3 years. Note that my garden is only a few square meters big. A few years ago, the biggest pumping weighed 7 kilos and grew 3 meters up attached to the garden wall.

This year's harvest is looking small...with only a few babies so far....but what to do with the blossoms?  So I turned to frying....
 

I gently cleaned the blossoms and then chopped some fresh mint from my deck.

I mixed some ricotta, chopped mint, salt And pepper and a bit of nutmeg.

I made a batter as suggested in the above link, gently closed the stuffed blossoms with a gentle twist. I then dipped them in the batter and put them in the frying pan where the olive oil was ready to fry up these babies.

To be honest, I didn't expect much. I always thought edible flowers were sort of bs betas they were frying, they let off a lovely flowery smell (I was surprised! ). Ad when I bit in to them, they left a sweet flowery aftertaste I my mouth. My daughter liked the batter and the flower, but not the cheese; my son liked the cheese but not the rest.

La fromagerie du pic: Penne

Every time we come to the south, I look forward to the market for a single thing: cabecou goat cheese. 

On our way back from some friends' the other day, I spotted the place they make this lovely goaty cheese and we had to stop. I was in cheesy heaven. The cheese makers were o n their cigarette break so the boss watched over me as I selected from a dozen different goat cheeses. In the end, he actually went into the back room to being me some frais because they are my favorite: creamy and nutty and delicious. 

If you are ever find yourself close to penne, stop by and pick up a cabecou or three. Their round ash coatd cheese is also divine.

Spéculoos-plum pie/ tarte spéculoos prune

The last thing you want to do in a hot summer day is bake a complicated dessert so there is nothing better than an easy and delicious summer pie to go with your cold ice cream. The sweet Speculoos cookies absorb the sour juice of the plums creating  a delicious balance of sweet and sour

Ingredients 

about 1 pound (500 grams) of plums - any kind but preferably sour ones sliced in half and pitted (I used a mix of mirabelles, reine claude and sour purple plums) 

a pack of speculoos cookies

1 pie crust, homemade or store bought

10 pats of butter

3-4 tablespoons of sugar (I used raw sugar) 

 

prepare the pie crust in a pie plate; blind bake is desired. 

cover the crust with a layer of speculoos cookies

place the plums on the speculoos layer,  skin side up so the juices soak into the cookies, 

cover the entire pie with fruit

sprinkle sugar evenly on top of the fruit 

place pats of butter on top of the pie

 

bake on 375°F (180°C) about 30 minutes until the fruit starts to caramelize. 

 

Ingrédients

environ 500 grammes de prunes - toutes sortes: mirabelle, reine claude, président - coupées en moitiés et dénoyautées

un paquet de spéculos 

1 pâte à tarte 

10 noisettes de beurre

3-4 cuilieres à soupe de sucre roux

Étaler la pâte a tarte dans une moule à tarte

Y mettre une couche de spéculos 

Poser les prunes sur les spéculos, peau vers le haut pour que les speculoos absorbe les jus

Parsemer le tout de sucre

Mettre les noisettes de beurre

Enfourner pour 30 minutes environ à 180°C jusqu'à ce que les fruits commencent à se caraméliser