A cupcake

a real one this time!
It´s been so long since I shared a recipe with you that today I want to give you a cupcake recipe I learnt to make 10 year ago and it´s one of my favorites. This is a Spanish recipe I found in a cooking book which compiles some Spanish nuns´s (under the order of Santa Clara, Clarisa´s nuns) recipes and they are called magdalenas.

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup canola oil
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups + 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine grained salt

Preparation:

• Preheat the over at 350°F (180°C).
• In one bowl mix all dry ingredients: flour, baking powder and salt, and set aside.
• In another but large bowl put the egg and sugar, take your mixer and beat them together until you get a spongy-like egg mixture (you can whisk them by hand too but it´s faster with the mixer).
• Slowly beat in the oil taking care you integrate all the oil before the next step.
• At this point I switch to a hand whisk but you can continue with the mixer if you want, I take better control using my hands. Now you mix in the milk and vanilla extract. It´ll became very liquid but that´s fine.
• And finally, integrate in the egg mixture all the dry ingredients you set aside at the beginning trying not to over mix your dough.
• Line a cupcake pan with paper baking cups and fill them with dough to reach 2/3th of the cup
• Sprinkle some white sugar on top and take them to the oven for 15-20 min approx. (it´ll depend on how large your cupcake cups are) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. They will turn into a nice golden brown color. Let them cool before eating.

There are some little changes you can do to make them slightly different:
replace 1/2 cup of the all purpose flour by whole wheat flour
replace the milk by orange juice (or any other fruit juice)
replace white sugar by light brown sugar
replace canola oil by sunflower oil
do not sprinkle with sugar and frost them after they cool


I like their homemade look they get after baking so I don´t add any frosting, but I´m sure they´ll make great birthday cupcakes. Hope you try this recipe, it´s very easy and they are wonderful for breakfast or tea time. And remember you´ll improving them every time you make them!

Baby boy card and dessert

A baby boy card made for a friend who is going to be dad for the first time in a couple of months. I didn´t decided yet what to give him along with the card, something for the new born baby... something for the new parents... I don´t know yet...
The image is from Dawn Moore, she has so many cute images in her blog, you should go and check them. I colored the giraffe with colored pencils and blended them with gamsol. The papers are digital papers from Jaime Choi that I printed out on cardstock. I stamped the word BEBE (baby in spanish) with rubber stamps from Image Tree with black ink. And finaly the ribbon and button are from my stash.

For us Christians today is Holy Thursday and here in Spain it´s a holiday, as it is tomorrow (Holy Friday), so today I had MIL to share lunch with us. Besides the main meal I prepared a simple and sweet dessert. I thought I could share it with you too:

I started with a puffy pastry I bought at the supermarket, I rolled it out a bit on a flowered surface to make it thinner and larger, and I baked it for about 10 min at 400 F until it was golden brown. Meanwhile I prepared a 4 serving vainilla pudding with half the amount of milk called for and put it in the fridge to cool. Once the pastry was cooled I placed it on a serving plate and cut some fresh strawberries, canned peaches and pineaple (drain all the liquid while baking the pastry). Then I took out of the fridge the vainilla pudding and mixed in 2 greek plain yogurts until smooth and creamy. I put the cream on top of the pastry and decorated it with the fruits. Voilá! back to the fridge until dessert time. Such a simple dessert with so many good compliments, hope you can try it and if you do let me know how it was for you!  It´s a nice dessert because you can change the fruits and the flavor of the pudding as you like and a very easy one to do as well.

Kitty bookmark and the very first recipe I learnt

I wanted to make a bookmark for my daughter to go along with a book I´m sending to her. She loves to read and that is something we want to encourage in her.

And then I saw Aly´s challenge this week and right away knew what I wanted to do. This week´s challenge is to show all our Kitty cats and my DD loves cats, so it was the perfect challenge.

I found Dawn Moore blog a few days ago and when I saw her Kitty I knew I was going to use it to make something for Maria. Kitty made the perfect complement for Bee Crafty stack of books that I wanted to use for a bookmark someday. I colored the images with colored pencils as usual and applied some body shimmer dust on the pages instead of coloring them. On the back I used clear stickers for the words and the pencil.

The other day I prepared the first recipe my mom taught me: Risotto. It always brings me good memories... I remember a very young me (13 y-o) so nervous because I had to feed the family that day and it was going to be my first solo in the kitchen... but then once it was done it didn´t tasted so bad... so I remember feeling myself very pleased with the result.

And over the years it´s one of my favorites. The recipe is somehow simple and you can add whatever you fancy at the moment or whatever you have at hand. The best rice to make a good Risotto is arborio rice but here is not easy to find, so I subtitute it with a creamy like rice, use a rice that the grains look rounded like this one. The recipe follows like this: start measuring the rice (I usually have a small glass as the size for a serving) and set aside. Prepare some broth, chicken, vegetable or meet, whatever you like, bring it to boil and lower the heat to simmer but be sure to have 3 times at least in volume the amount of rice. Put some olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan to heat. Chop 2 small onions or 1 medium, put it in the pan stirring well so it doesn´t get burnt. Add to the pan 1 clove of garlic finelly chopped and keep cooking them a few more minutes. Now add the rice and fry it slightly until it gets a light brown shade and it´s very hot. At this point you have to be careful because you can burn everything, so don´t leave it alone. Add the simmering broth at least half of it, stir and when it start boiling again lower the heat and let it simmer covered about 15 minutes, or until the rice it´s almost done. You´ll have to add more broth as the rice cooks, be sure it´s always with some extra liquid so it doesn´t dry. Turn off the heat and let it stand 5 minutes. Add a tablespoon of butter and some shredded cheese (whatever cheese you like) before serving. You can be creative with this recipe, so don´t be afraid to try different kind of rices, add vegetables like mushrooms, sweetpeas... or add some meat, chicken... have fun in the kitchen also!