It does look a lot like Christmas - 2nd advent Sunday

Do you remember the post for the first advent Sunday?
The first Christmas cookies came out from my oven, yummy yummy!
Last week I shared with you the recipe for the chocolate short bread cookies, this week it´s the whole wheat short bread stars with jam.

Ingredients: 

250 gr. butter

100 gr. whole wheat flour

70 gr. brown sugar
a teaspoon of cinnamon
your favourite jam

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy. Then add the flour, the sugar, and the cinnamon. Mix until combined and then chill the dough for 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll out the dough on a flat surface (with flour) about one centimetre thick and using a cookie cutter form your stars. Half of them must have a hole in the middle. Put them on an oven dish and bake for 7-10 minutes. Let the cookies cool down, then assemble them. The stars without the hole are the basis for the jam, the ones with the hole are the "lid". Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and enjoy!

♥ Martina ♥

P.S. don´t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY! 

Only 5 days left and more surprises are yet to come. . .

And pour toi a creamy mille-feuille

A couple of weeks ago was my bf´s birthday and I just did not want to bake an ordinary birthday cake, one of those I am specialized in. So I decided to experiment with the french pastry...

Also known as the napoleon the mille feuille, is traditionally made up of 3 layers of puff pastry and 2 layers of crème pâtissière. The variant name of napoleon appears to come from napolitain, the French adjective to describe things and people from the Italian city of Naples. Although is has been altered by association with the name of Emperor Napoleon I of France, there is no evidence to connect the pastry with the emperor himself.

Anyways i just felt like trying something new and it worked out quite well! If you are not an excellent baker or simply do not want to make a mess out of your kitchen, and do not have much time I recommend you buy prepared puff pastry. You can find it in all supermarkets! Making home made puff pastry from scratch is not too difficult (I tried) but extremely time consuming, so I admit it, I also buy the prepared one. Otherwise you can try making it yourself following this recipe from Homecooking.

What I still rather do myself is the crème pâtissière, because it always tastes way better then the prepared one (which you don´t find here in Austria anyways) and because it´s very easy and quick to make.

Ingredients:

4 eggs

100 gr. sugar

75 gr. flour

1/2 liter milk

the peel of a lemon

1 spoon on cinnamon

1 vanilla bean

What to do:

Put the milk in a pan with the lemon peel, the cinnamon, and the vanilla seeds (which you extract from the bean) and cook. Remove the pan from the stove and in the meantime whisk the sugar with the egg yolks (don´t ever throw the whites away!). Add the sugar-yolks-mixture to the milk and stir quickly to prevent the eggs from cooking. Finally add the flour and keep stirring to avoid lumps. When the mixture is homogeneous put the pan on the stove at low temperature and keep stirring until the cream is thick. Let it cool for a while then you can arrange your cake: one layer of puff pastry, one of cream, one of puff pastry, one of cream, one of puff pastry. If you like you can also put some fruit such as berries; I went for raspberries inside and strawberries on top. And don´t forget to sprinkle some confectioner´s sugar.

♥ Enjoy

Martina

P.S. don´t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY!

It´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas - 1st advent Sunday

Have you noticed the snow falling whilst you are reading this? And the lovely gingerbread man following you all over the blog? Yes, it´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Today is the first Sunday of the Advent and I can finally feel the jolly atmosphere, which comes once a year. Just to get started I have made our Advent garland, decorated the Christmas tree, and baked cookies!!! Yes, lovely and tasty Christmas cookies; here´s the menu:

chocolate shortbread all shapes cookies

whole wheat shortbread stars with jam

whole wheat shortbread hearts dipped in chocolate

gingerbread snow flakes

Since there are 4 different types of cookies, I decided to post one recipe each Advent Sunday until Christmas. So here is the first one: chocolate shortbread all shapes cookies.

Ingredients: 

250 gr. butter

100 gr. flour

70 gr. sugar

3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy. Then add the flour, the sugar, and the cocoa powder. Mix until combined and then chill the dough for 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll out the dough on a flat surface (with flour) about one centimetre thick and using a cookie cutter form your cookies. Put them on an oven dish and bake for 7-10 minutes. Let the cookies cool down, then sprinkle with powdered sugar, and enjoy!

♥ Martina ♥

P.S. don´t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY!