Recipes

Sticky buns … with an Orange and Chocolate twist

December is here.  This means I have been in Italy for over 1 month now and it is now less than 1 month till I fly home to Germany to see my family (we are not going to talk about what this means for my Christmas shopping, if there is one thing time has taught me is that I will find a present for everyone by the time the 24th of December comes round, however late or early I start the present hunting). I already posted a recipe for a French twist on the typical sticky bun / cinnamon roll recipes, so the recipe for the dough below is the same recipe, again, taken from the Pioneer Woman’s blog. Her recipe for sweet enriched dough (i.e. a basic yeasted dough which is enriched with the addition of fat, here sunflower oil, and sugar) has become my go-to recipe whenever I need a sweet yeasted dough.  Yes, the dough is not

read more Sticky buns … with an Orange and Chocolate twist

Moroccan Orange-scented Almond Macaroons

The first trip to IKEA (and hopefully the only one for a long long time) is done, the boxes are unpacked and I no longer need a map to find my way to work and home again. It would be wrong to say I already feel at home in Rome but, slowly at least, Alessandro and I are finding a rhythm for this new life we are sharing in Rome. This weekend then involved our first trip to the market in Testaccio for our weekly foodshop (and my first, rather timid, conversation with the vegetable guy over what type of onion I should be using for a Soffritto – ‘le cipolle gialle’ (the yellow onions) it turns out), and, most importantly, to buy the various ingredients I needed for Sunday’s lunch. We had invited some friends over and I was keen to finally make use of the Tagine I bought in Safi on our trip to Morocco in September and

read more Moroccan Orange-scented Almond Macaroons

Browned Butter Banana Bread with Spelt Flour

You must be thinking, what, another weekend, another banana bread recipe? And yes, shame on me for my lack of inventiveness. But, there is a point to this blog post and it has very little to do with how much I like banana bread or how we had 3 sad looking bananas lying around or how it did not occur to me that the reason why my Mapo drizzle cake did not rise the other week was that I used bicarbonate of soda (without any acid in the recipe to activate it) rather than baking powder so I wanted to stick to something familiar (although with a small twist) … The thing is though, I get excited when I try a recipe and it works, like, it really works, like it works so well that while the cake is still in the oven, Alessandro gets off the sofa and suggests we go to the gym because the toffee-like smell coming

read more Browned Butter Banana Bread with Spelt Flour

Banana Bread

This was my first weekend in Italy and I had high hopes of sharing with you something I cooked up in my new kitchen these first few days in Italy. Alas, although I did experiment with a lemon drizzle cake recipe using a local citrus fruit called Mapo (a cross between a mandarine and a grapefruit) which is not quite ready for sharing (or I simply need to get to know my new oven a bit more), I have spent very little time in the kitchen so far. As with every move (let alone one that has taken me halfway across Europe) there was a lot of unpacking, various trips to the supermarket to buy cleaning products and stock our pantry and, quite rightly, a good time spent relaxing on the sofa after the craziness of the last few weeks and the big move. Most of the photos below (well, all those other than the ones I took on our

read more Banana Bread