When we moved to our new allotment we had to leave many fruit bushes behind, because our current allotment is quite a bit smaller. Therefore we only moved 2 out of our six gooseberry bushes, the two we like most:…
Gooseberry clafoutis
Categorie: Desserts
Roasted strawberry cake
To end what turned into a week of strawberry recipes, I bring you a variation on the cherry bubble cake, where cherries were substituted with roasted strawberries. The roasting, an easy extra step that is less work than pitting cherries…
Strawberry basil ice cream
You know how many ice cream recipes have so far been published on this site? Zero. That is not because we don’t like ice cream. We do. A lot. But we don’t have a freezer and that is a fairly…
Strawberry galette with basil cream
Summer solstice, the longest day of the year, is an important date in the garden calendar. Besides some vegetables that are especially sensitive to day length, being better sown past this date (fennel, Oriental brassica’s), it also marks the end…
Rhubarb cornflour cake
Last week one of my best friends came for a visit. She lives 900 km away and this was the first time she and her family visited us here in the Netherlands. She’s one of my oldest friends and one…
Rhubarb cream cheese tart
Last time I went to the allotment, our neighbor, a gardening veteran, kindly asked whether I would like some rhubarb. I couldn’t help laughing because the 15 odd plants in our garden are enough even for me and my passion…
Poached rhubarb with yogurt cream
I have complained at length about our new allotment: it’s smaller, there’s too much shade, the soil is in a much worse state. But there’s actually one very good thing about it: the rhubarb plantation. Probably because a good part…
Gingerbread Guinness Cake with Poached Pears and Cream Cheese Icing
When I was little, we used to spend a good chunk of every summer vacation at my mother’s friend’s house in a very small village in the western part of what was then the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. There were always…
Mexican brownies
On Saturday we invited friends over for dinner. I decided to make a vegetarian chili with cornbread topping, because: a) we love chili b) it could be made in advance, assembled at dinner time and ready baked in 25 minutes…
Chocolate kranz cake
It’s been snowing in the Netherlands. You know what happens in the Netherlands when it snows? Chaos happens. On the first day of snow, the traffic jam in the country reached a record combined length of 1003 km, the railway…
Honey almond speculaas pie
Sinterklaas is to the Dutch what Santa Claus is to the Americans and 5th December here is what 24th is in America. The two saints might look somewhat similar (red cloths, white beard) but it is Sinterklaas who is the…
Cranberry sauce topped meringue
You know what the problem is with eggs? They consist of an egg yolk and an egg white and these two are often used separately. This leads to something of a vicious circle. You bake a birthday cake – it…
Elderberry compote with Greek yogurt
Why is it that when the elderberry is flowering, everybody seems to be elbow deep in making elderflower cordial, but later, when the berries are ripe, they get much less attention? It happens here, too. Perhaps it is the overwhelming…
Double berry ricotta galette
So I baked a tart and was becoming slightly more optimistic about our new allotment and the survival chances of the trees and bushes that were moved to the new plot during the weekend. But then I had a chat…
Rustic rye dough
There are mornings when I very much wish I was a coffee-drinker. This month we have been sadly wrapping up at our allotment. We have gardened there for 9 years. I have planted 9 fruit trees, many soft fruit bushes…