Sweet

This week's word in Our Beautiful World  is

sweet

and was chosen by sweet  Wendy of WenSylvestre Mixed Media Art.
I have recently had a lot of people at home for dinners, lunches, brunches and coffee to celebrate our wedding and my birthday so I decided to give you the recipes of some sweets/pastries I made.
Key Lime Pie

I tried this first time in the States at Dede's,a friend's house and it was amazing!
I found Martha Stewart's recipe here.
But I am making it a little bit different!
So here is my recipe for a 40cm x 30cm pan.
2 packets of digestive biscuits
a big cup of melted butter
3 tablespoons of brown sugar
6 egg yolks
3 cans of sweetened condensed milk.
the zest of 6 limes
the juice of 6 limes
Turn the oven on at 200 degrees.
Put the digestives in the mixer and make them powder.
Melt the butter and add it to the biscuits along with the sugar, mix well and lay in the tray.
Mix the sweetend milk, the egg yolks, the juice of the limes and the zest of the 5 limes in a bowl and lay over the biscuits.
Put in the oven for 15 minutes. It shouldn't get burned or look wrinkled. It should stay even and soft looking.
Take out of the oven immediately,sprinkle with the zest from the 6th lime.
Let it cool and put in the fridge.
You can make it a day before the party.
I don't bake the biscuit as Martha says and I don't add cream on top.It is too much for me. You can also make it with lemons instead of limes but I love limes.

Puff Pastry with chocolate

This is so very easy.
You need two puff pastry pieces and some chocolate spread.
You put one pastry piece on the oven tray. Spread chocolate on top.Put the other pastry sheet on top. Cut any design you like and twist each piece twice. Spread some egg on top and bake for 10 minutes in 200 degrees. I made one as a Christmas tree for Christmas.

Red berry blue berry chocolate chip muffins

Copying my recipe based on my friend Marabeth's recipe from the States.

Materials
2 cups flour
Half a cup of sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
Half a teaspoon of salt
¾ cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil (or olive oil)
1 egg (or 2)

Extra materials
Chocolate drops, blueberries and redberries deep frozen.
Preheat the oven at the top and bottom up to two hundred degrees. Put a little vegetable oil in each muffin tray or a piece of paper.
Mix in a bowl all dry ingredients, in another all liquid materials. Add the dry materials in liquids. Mix well with a fork.
Add any other material that you want as chocolate drops or pieces of fruit.
Put a large table spoonful into each compartment of the muffin tray.
Bake for about 20 minutes.
It makes twelve cupcakes.

I have also made pavlova recently with meringues, cherries and whipped cream, so very easy also.

Now if you don't feel like baking you can still go to the pastry shop and buy some sweets. We tried Konstandinidis the other day and they were delicious although rather expensive.

Or you can even have some cupcakes from Terkenlis, like the ones Kikitsa brought me or petit four from Gatidis like the ones Evangelia brought me, or carioca from Papaparaskevas from Xanthi like those Elsa brought me, or chocolate biscuits in the shape of a heart like Lina's. They are perfect for a

sweet

Saint Valentine's morning.

 Or you can simply have some strawberries with whipped cream

and some sweet bubbly Araldica Moscato d'asti wine like this one that Christina brought us!It was so

sweet

and delicious!

We really enjoyed it!
Enough with all those

  sweet 

things . I think I need a diet!
Why don't you link something sweet in Our Beautiful World too?

Cooking

I am not as fond of cooking as of eating!But at times I make things. Simple recipes. Fast and with few ingredients. Whatever I may have at home.

1. Boiled vegetables gratin!

Put boiled potatoes, carrots and broccoli (left over from a salad) in a pan.

Add grated cheeses and some creme fresh and put in the oven for a little while.Delicious!

2. Potato soup.(Similar recipe here.)

Boil potatoes and some carrots. Puree and add some bacon on top! Excellent!

I love making muffins though and some call me the Muffin Queen.

3.These are cocoa muffins. Add two table spoons cocoa powder in the mixture.

4.That was my son's request. Home made twix. Ok don't try them. They cost too much to buy the ingredients, they are messy and it took us a whole week to eat all that and we shouldn't have. I bought a twix bar to compare the taste. Ok homemade were different but the cost makes them not worthwhile.

Ingredients(milk, butter,caramel candy,biscuits,chocolate)

Cover a pan with film.

Add melted chocolate.

 Add biscuits in tiny pieces with butter.

 Pay attention that the dog does not it that!

 Add melted caramels with milk.

Cover with melted chocolate. (That was messy!) Here is the recipe.

5. Homemade potato chips. 

We avoid buying potato chips.Hubby bought this cheap useful kitchen tool to cut cabbage and it is great to cut very thin potato chips and fry in olive oil.Add some salt. Great, one of a kind snack!

 That everyone wants to eat!

6. After general demand I made my Christmas muffins once again and offered them to the KEPKA workshop.

They are with much less sugar, added grated cheeses, feta cheese, dill and fresh sweet red peppers

(Florina peppers).

I am happy because....

... I ate some pomegranate...

...hubby made this shadow puppet of this ...."person"....

....I used this lovely gift from a dear islander...

....bought some handmade natural olive oil soap....

....I have this collection of Nicholas Sparks books for my summer reading, gifts of dear Dawn when she visited here.....

.....I read these books from the school library some time ago.....

(I might have shown some of these already)
....I used these lovely muffins accessories from Tigerstores...

...I prepared my shop for its first Black Friday to Cyber Monday sales....Go here to see....Free Shipping to all orders. Add coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2012...

...I managed to take a close up photo of an insect...

 ...every morning when I enter my school I see this lovely painting on the wall...and because I still have a job of course unlike too many others around here at present....

....I finally framed these lovely paintings I was given last year by a great painter teacher we had at school...

...because I bought a new glue gun and some other little things to use at my etsy shop....

....the bench at a nearby bus stop was painted in this lovely colour by volunteers....

...and finally I am happy because I managed to write this blogpost in half the time I usually do after being persuaded to use Google Chrome!LOL!

Muffins and more

I am not a very good cook. Inspite the fact that both my parents were excellent cooks and pastry makers and I come from a tradition of great cuisine, the cuisine of Constantinople, I am unfortunately not a very good cook. I am bored with cooking! I am not excited to cook!Or to make sweets unless there is a special reason.
But the last couple of years I have become the muffin maker!
I make all kinds of muffins. After my friend Marabeth gave me the recipe for muffins I make them all the time.
The good thing is that I can put anything I want inside.
chocolate chips....

 caramel syrup...

 cooked vegies

 I also made these tiny ones with Marabeth's new gift the mini muffins pan. I also used the trick or treat paper cups she sent me and presented them to my second graders for Halloween!They were excited!
The good thing is that with the same amount of batter I made 48 tiny chocolate chip muffins and did not even have to clean the muffin tray!

 I then made some carrot muffins following Frieda's carrot cake recipe

 They have some Philadelphia cheese and confectioner's sugar frosting on top!Yummie!

But I also cook sometimes with success.I have learnt this traditional Scottish recipe for shepherd's pie from a book Juliana and John, my sea glass friends had sent me and I make it often.
Boil potatoes and turn them into puree adding some fresh parsley.

Cook minced meat with onion and carrot(I put red pepper instead).

Put the cooked meat underneath with the pureed potatoes on top and cook for half an hour.

My mum made recently this jello from the quince my dear friend Gia gave us. It took her too long to make but it was amazing!

I just returned from a etwinning seminar and am down with a bad flu and blogger is so slow today. So I will see you tomorrow hoping to be feeling better!