Unpinned: Birthday Cakes!

Our Little Man is not a pie lover. Not at all. So in preparation for Little Lady's birthday I asked him what kind of pie he would like to have. I gave him a few options I found on Pinterest.
He chose the one taste he absolutely adores. You can wake him up in the middle of the night for a sandwich covered with it.

Speculoos. Or Biscoff for those of you on the other side of the big pond.

And luckily for the Little Guy, I found a recipe of a Speculoos Pie....

And I made it:

And guess what? He did not care at all for this pie. He was as happy as he could be with a tiny cake bear! Well, more for us! This recipe is in metric, but it is not in the slightest bit lactosefree or diet-friendly.  It is also very easy to make. Beware!

The other cake I made was an old fashion Citron Pound Cake. Easy as cake.

It has such a nice citron taste. I left it a bit too long in the oven, but this cake is definately a keeper! And I made this one lactosefree so I indulged myself the last two days..

As always these recipes are on my Tried & Tested - Cooking recipes board. Have fun!

Unpinned: Molasses Crinkles

A few weeks ago it was a perfect bake-some-cookies-day. A grey Sunday afternoon is perfect for baking!
This recipe was burning in my eyes for a few weeks because I had a jar of molassas sitting in my cupboard for ages. I had to do something with it! I really like molassas, but I do not like it to sweeten my bread or coffee. It needs to be used as an ingredient. I like gingerbread cookies, but find making them time consuming, so finding the Molassas Crinkle Cookies was a win-win situation.

I kid you not. These are evil cookies. Absolutely delicious. Way to tempting. Munchy crunchy spicy. They were absolutely perfect!
The taste is something you like or not. Big Man decided he did not care for these cookies. Little Man was undecided and Little Lady also did not like them. "Unfortunately" this meant there were lots of cookies for me!

The recipe itself is perfect, the only thing I would change is the amount of sugar used for dipping the cookie balls in before you bake them. It is a lot! You can easily get away with 1/4-1/3 cup of sugar.

Molassas Crinkles (Culinary concoctions by Peabody)
(In metric)

150 grams granulated sugar, plus 100 grams for dipping (I recommend to use less, start with 50 grams)
281 grams all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
170 grams unsalted butter, softened but still cool (I use plantbased margarine)
 63 grams packed brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
155 grams light or dark molasses (available at a whole foods store)

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius

Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl until thoroughly combined; set aside.
In another bowl, beat butter and with brown and granulated sugar till light, creamy and fluffy. Add yolk and vanilla and beat till it is incorporated. Add molassas and mix till it is all incorporated (it will be a beige brown mixture). Add flour mixture slowly and mix till it is just all combined. With a spatula, check underneath the dough if all flour is incorporated. Give it a last stir. Dough is soft and a bit sticky. Take a tablespoon and make balls with tablespoons full of dough. Roll them nice and round with your hands (quickly!) and dip them in the remaining sugar. Place balls on a baking tin lined with parchment and bake them in the oven for about 11-13 minutes. I like them crunchy so I baked them for 13 minutes. Remove cookies after baking and let them cool on a wire rack.

Makes 25 cookies

Unpinned: One Pound Cake

I am pinning away most of the days on Pinterest, but recently I got the feeling: "If you are only pinning, what is the purpose of Pinterest anyway compared to bookmarking?""

Ofcourse Pinterest is more organized with the boards you can make and the sharing you can do is a plus, but if you don't unpin what is the purpose of all your pins?

So, I will start a new regular feature on the blog. I've started with it already last week with making Christmas cookies, but not in seperate blogposts. I think it would be fun to regularly unpin a pin with whatever craft featured!

Today's "Unpinned" will be Pioneer Woman's One Pound cake which can also be found along with other unpinned recipes on my "Tried & tested - Cooking Recipes" board on my Pinterest wall.

After yesterday's news I had the urge to bake something and this pound cake made with Sprite (why on Earth?) was on my list to make someday. The recipe itself is very easy!

What I will do is not give you a replica of the recipe, but I thought it would be nice to give the metric version of the ingredients list. I always cook American recipes with Google answers next to me while measuring all the ingredients!

And what was the result?

A soft, slightly crumbly, slightly moist pound cake. Absolutely divine!!! I really recommend this recipe. I did substitute some ingredients so it is probably a bit different in taste than the original pound cake.

Here's what I used:

339 grams of soft butter (plantbased)
600 grams of sugar (I used 50 grams of normal sugar, 550 grams of light brown sugar)
5 medium eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla flavour
2 big teaspoons "Baukje citroenrasp" or lemon zest in English (I hope it is the same!)
375 grams of all purpose flour
250 ml Sprite

Here is the original recipe. The oven temperature in Celsius is 165 degrees.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Cream butter. Add sugar, 1 cup at a time, mixing after each addition. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing after each addition. Add butter and lemon extracts and mix well. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add soft drink, then mix together until combined. Scrape sides of bowl, then mix briefly.
Pour into a greased Bundt pan and bake for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes, until the cake is no longer jiggly.
Remove cake from oven and invert pan until cake drops out. Slice and chow down!

Have fun with the recipe!