Myfrenchkitchen

When I think of spring and Easter, I think of Easter eggs(of course!), roasted lamb, asparagus and petits pois, daffodils, blossoms, new born animals playing on green prairies with yellow dandelions. A beautiful time of year. For this Easter, we will enjoy some oeufs cocotte, salads, some oven roasted rosemary lamb and we will probably finish our day with a mini Nantais cake. Made to stand for 2 days, its flavour just gets better and better. It can also be baked as one big cake, but a change is always good, so I made it into individual mini cakes.

(recipe from PATISSIER, le Petit Larousse)

La recette.

Preheat the oven to 180°C (gas 6, 356°F).
Grease a cake tin(20cm diameter), or mini cake molds of your choice.
Beat together 125g soft butter, 125 g castor sugar and 100g ground almonds until creamy.
Add 3 eggs, one at a time. Beat until well mixed.
Add 40g flour, 2 TBSP of apricot jam and 50ml of rum. Mix until the mixture is light and fluffy
Pour the mixture into the greased cake tin of the mini tin. Bake in oven for 40 -50 minutes for the large cake tin, or 30-40 minutes for the mini cakes. If the surface gets too dark, cover with a sheet of tin foil or brown paper. Test with a skewer which need to be dry when pulled out.
Prepare the icing: Mix together 50ml rum with 100g icing sugar. Pour over the cakes and serve.

Serve 6 people

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Bake the cake about 2 days for a more flavourful cake.
Replace the rum with lemon juice of 1 lemon if you don’t want alcohol.
Replace the rum in the icing sugar with a few drops of lemon juice.

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Spring impressions

The garden is far from finished – I walk around with a knee brace after hurting it with a fall, the days are filled with rain the ground is soaked…so working is not very apparent. At least the bulbs planted in fall have no problems showing off their splendour. So.. to accompany this Easter posting, here are some images from the garden beginning April.

..Bienvenue dans mon jardin à Pacques..

..Early morning light..

..A bed of daffodils, tulips and muscaris..

..No need to encourage the chickens to go play outside!..

..Two chicks, only 3 days old..

..daffodils waiting to flower..

..A mix of daffodils, fancy pansies, borage and the last of the Hellebores flowering..

..Have a lovely Easter time..

Ronelle

Easter is coming up pretty fast and everybody is munching on Easter chocolate. So are we. But one can’t live on chocolate alone. An egg every now and then will help. An “oeuf cocotte”. It is easy to make with many variations to suit each taste an ddesire.

La recette:

Preheat the oven to 200°C. (39°F, gas 6)
Butter 4 ramekins(with volume of 125 ml or 1/2 cup) liberally with butter. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and place some shredded spinach on the bottom.
Spoon 1 heaped TBS of créme fraîche onto the spinach and spread it evenly over the spinach.
Break open 1 egg into a little bowl and and slide onto the créme fraîche in each ramekin without breaking the egg yolk.
Drizzle a little cream over the egg yolk to protect it during cooking.
Place in a deep ovenproof dish, fill with boiling water up to half the height of the ramekins and bake at 200°C for 9 minutes for a runny yolk. The egg white should just be coagulated and don’t worry if there is still a little transparent egg white left…while standing the eggs will still continue cooking a bit.
Remove from the oven and sprinkle with salt and pepper, some fried bacon pieces and chopped chives. Serve immediately with toasted bread fingers to dip into the eggs.

Pincée de fleur de sel:

Use any nice containers for the eggs as long as they are ovenproof. Glass looks especially nice with the layers of egg and cream showing through the sides.
Place bacon pieces or asparagus tips, frozen creamed spinach, mushrooms, strips of ham… and place at the bottom before filled with créme fraîche. the list is endless.
Use small brioche buns instead of ramekins and steady them in muffin pans, fill with eggs and bake…especially popular with children.
Infuse cream with saffron, or other spices/herbs of your choice, bring cream to a boil and simmer a few minutes to reduce and use instead of créme fraîche.

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I am not one for a lot of Easter decoration. But I love having spring flowers in my house and the chickns provide me with a moutain of eggs, which I use simply in bowls to add an Easter flavor.

..Eggs from the poulaillier, rosemary and terracotta in which the eggs end up when stolen from the poullaillier…a winning combination for me..

..For a little playfulness – an empty egg carton filled with shredded wooden strips colour green, the egg shells used for the recipe filled with water and holding spring flowers and herbs, some eggs and tiny quail eggs..