Caramel goodness

This weekend I was recovering from being sick last week. But guess what the best cure is for any illness? Sugar. Mary Poppins already told us: a spoon full of sugar helps the medicin go down. So I decided to make myself some delicious caramel with chopped nuts, covered in chocolate. Cause let’s face it: chocolate simply makes everything in life a little bit better.

My initial idea was to make fudge. I am not the biggest fudge fan, but when I was in England this summer, I found out that you can make fudge in most every flavor! Malibu, lemon-meringue, triple chocolate… Now doesn’t that sound good? So I found some recipes on the internet that sounded good and was ready to give it a whirl. But guess what? Turns out that for making fudge, you need a sugar thermometer. And I don’t have one. Shame on me… So, after spending an hour trying to find a recipe that didn’t require one, I gave up and I just went for a simple caramel recipe.

Now I must admit that making the caramel wasn’t as much of a breeze as I thought it’d be. I’ve done it before, but I couldn’t remember exactly how to do it. Turns out there’s two ways to do it: with or without water. After a few failed attempts, I figured out that I like the water method better(;

Anyways, here’s what you do:
Grab 300 grams of sugar and 100 ml water. Cover a baking sheet or pan with parchment paper.
Put the sugar and water in a pan on a low fire, and stir till the sugar dissolves. After that your turn the fire up, and let it get to a boil. But beware: don’t stir!! This might cause the caramel to crystallize. While it’s boiling, dip a brush in water to dissolve the crystals on the side so they don’t burn. Let it boil until the water has evaporated and it has a nice golden color. Immediately poor it onto your prepared baking sheet/pan, and wait for it to harden out. Be careful, cause it’s very, very, very hot!

Ofcourse you could change it up a little bit like I did. I added 200 grams of assorted nuts, chopped and roasted, and poured the caramel over that. After that I broke the caramel into pieces(with a hammer!) and dipped them in chocolate.

And then… Indulge!

My very first Pecan pie!

What do you do when you have a whole bag of pecans, just lying around in your kitchen? First, let someone crack them for you. Second, bake a pecan pie. Now, I must honoustly admit that I had never tried a pecan pie in my life, before I made this one. Pretty sad, huh? So, in order to change this, I thought I'd try a recipe that I had seen on Bakerella's blog - she is my big example. As soon as I started on the recipe, I could tell that this wasn't going to be healthy - you wouldn't believe the amounts of sugar that this pie requires! But when I took it out of the oven, it smelled absolutely delicious. And it was! And if you want it even better, put some nice vanilla icecream on the side... A great fall treat!

Snickerdoodle cookies

I hadn't heard about snickerdoodle cookies until I came to America. And boy, are they good! And when I find something new, I always have to try to make it myself... So this Sunday I started on my very own snickerdoodle cookies. I went with a Martha Stewart recipe(you can't go wrong with Martha Stewart!), and they seemed so easy! I made them with a friend, and they were just great. The funny thing is that you roll the dough in cinnamon and sugar, and this cracks when you put them in the oven. The cookies are nice and crunchy around the edges, and soft in the middle. And they were absolutely delicious too.

Gingerbread cupcakes!

This week I decided to maken something from the Betty Crocker Fall Baking magazine. It was hard to choose what I would be making first(seriously, how do you choose from 100 delicious-looking recipes?), but the magazine kept falling open on the same page: Gingerbread cupcakes with cinnamon-creamcheese frosting. They looked delicious and sophisticated, so I decided to give them a try! And with success; these cupcakes were delicious! They were gone before I knew it(guess I'm not the only one at home who enjoys eating cupcakes), so I'll definitely make these again!