Clafoutis - The French Cherry cake

Hello everyone, Today I have a very French recipe for you: Clafoutis. It is a French cake with cherries, which is very easy to bake, that is eaten a lot all over France in the summer. The recipe is very easy to make, and children love it. My husband Mr. Love  really doesn't like clafoutis, I must say, and I had to wait for my sister's visit to bake one with her. He says that Clafoutis tastes like an omelet with cherries... which is not completely wrong, but I still love this cake and its wonderful smell! Nowadays, you see a lot of clafoutis recipes with various fruits, but the real one is made with cherries - and they are really delicious at the moment. I hope you will enjoy it too! xxx Elodie

Preparation time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 30 minutes Ingredients (for 8 people):

• 600 g cherries
• 40 g salted butter  + 20 g for the baking tin
• 4 eggs
• 20 cl milk
• 100 g flour
• 60 g caster sugar
• 1 sachet of vanilla sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• icing sugar

Preparation:

Pre-heat the oven to 210°C (thermostat 7). Wash the cherries, remove the stalks and dry them. You don't remove the stones, the traditional recipe states that you leave them in, and I think it tastes much better that way. Melt 40g of butter in a small saucepan with a thick base. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt and the vanilla sugar. Add the eggs bit by bit and then the milk, also in stages whilst continuing to mix. Add the melted butter. Butter the baking tin, put the cherries in and then pour in the mixture. Place in the preheated oven for ten minutes at 210°C and then reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for a further 20 minutes. Serve the clafoutis cold or luke warm, covered with icing sugar.

crêpe de chine et macarons

Hello everyone, yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to visit the great pop-up store of the label 7 Chic Avenue. This is the gorgeous label of designers Marianne and Jutta. The pop up store is open until this Saturday in the Isestrasse 79 in Hamburg-Eppendorf. If you can't make it, you can purchase their very elegant and feminine creations online. They use some very exquisite fabric such as crêpe de chine. Another highlight of this event was the catering, made by Aurelie Gourmet. Aurélie is well-known in Hamburg for her macarons. You can find them every Saturday at the Marktzeit in Altona (currently on summer break). Yesterday, we didn't just have macarons but also chouquettes - a small choux pastry sprinkled with sugar and cannelés (the sweet speciality from Bordeaux) - and it was delicious - It felt like home for an hour or so. Thank you Aurélie!

Have a nice Friday evening. Talk to you soon

xoxo Elodie

Mimosa - lighting up the winter like in the south of France

Dear readers, I hope you had a nice Sunday. It's all christmassy around us -  but today, I want to bring a little sun into the middle of the winter with the beautiful mimosa I found in a flower shop yesterday. I combined them with some beautiful dark blue anemones. The colour combination is my mum's favorite and I also love it. Mimosa is a neon yellow flower that you find at this time of the year in the south of France and reminds me of the wonderful time I had living in Aix-en-Provence. Apart from being so beautiful and delicate, this is a very scented flower. It is a shame I can't do a scented post yet. I decided to do a musical post instead with a song from the French singer Barbara, talking about the death of her mum and wishing that she rests in peace in heaven with the scent of a mimosa flower.

I wish a nice penultimate week of 2012! xxx Elodie

Que vos étés se fleurissent Dans votre pays, là-bas Aux senteurs odorantes D'une fleur de mimosa, Que votre hiver se réchauffe Au coin d'une cheminée, Que les saisons vous soient douces. Vous avez tant mérité.

Rémusat (Barbara)

the Speculoos stars - Post aus meiner Küche

Good morning dear readers, This week I took part for the third time in the German food swapping project, Post aus meiner Küche (mail from my kitchen) initiated by my fellow bloggers Clara, Jeanny and Rike. The theme this time was Christmas, and I must say it was a bit tricky for me. The concept of Post aus meiner Küche is that you cook or bake something in your kitchen, and send it by mail to your randomly picked swapping-partner.

In France, we don't have this tradition of baking small biscuits (Plätzchen) before Christmas, so I hope my wonderful partner in crime, the lovely Sabine from the blog azurweiss will forgive me for having only sent some simple home-made speculoos. I received on Wednesday an incredible delivery from the south of Germany: what was in the box can be seen here. I hope the star-shaped biscuits tasted good. I had the idea of making them after our trip to Belgium in October. They don't really look the same as the ones you find in France and Belgium because you have to use "Vergeoise" which is a very dark brown sugar that you find in the north of France and in Belgium, and it gives the biscuits a very dark golden colour.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Receipe for the Speculoos dough:

for 40 to 50 pieces - preparation : 10 minutes

500g flour 180 g salted butter 300 g brown sugar (Vergoise) 1 egg 1 teaspoon yeast 2 g of salt 8 cl milk 2 soup spoons of speculoos spices

Preparation:

Mix the flour, brown sugar, spices, yeast and salt in a bowl. Add the egg and the (not cold) butter cut into small pieces. Mix the ingredients together gently. Start to add, bit by bit, the milk and continue mixing until a consistent dough is formed. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for at least two hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and leave for one hour. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Flour the work surface. Use a rolling pin to achieve flat dough around 3-4 mm in height. Cut into shapes using your form of choice. Place on baking paper on a baking tray and place in the preheated oven for around 15 minutes. Ensure that the speculoos are golden before taking out of the oven.

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

I wish you a nice Sunday afternoon.

xxx

Elodie

cone pine candle-light holder from the shop Nordlys in Hamburg (I don't remember the brand) wooden candle-light holder - Frau Sieben (soon available in the online shop), black plate - Habitat, little vase from Miss étoile, from the shop Rubios in Hamburg

madame love loves: La cerise sur le gateau

La cerise sur le gâteau (Cherry on the cake) is a beautiful French brand from the talented designer Anne Hubert. Anne is pretty famous in France, and her house has been featured in various interior design magazines. Her screen printed creations such as cushions, tea towels and pretty bed linen are very fresh. She uses a lot of neon colours and animal prints.

You can find some of her stuff at my perfect sunday in Hamburg (I got a gorgeous tea towel) or via her e-shop (in English and in French)

The very talented photographer Coco Amardeil has produced this very cute video for the launch of her new autumn/winter collection: NORMAL IS BORING - and I just love it. What about you?

Normal is boring by La cerise sur le gâteau collection automne hiver 2012 from La cerise sur le gâteau on Vimeo.

toc-toc-toc! or why curiosity is wonderful sometimes.

Do you know the French magazine toc-toc-toc! ? toc-toc-toc! is the French way of saying knock knock and it also a new French magazine from Sophie Denux, exploring the interior of creative people.I received lately the 6th issue of the magazine from the online shop Line+Liv, the only retailer in Germany. Don't worry if you can't speak French: The magazine comes with a little booklet with the translated interviews in English. I love the size of the magazine (17 x 24 cm) and the beautiful photos inside. The idea is not new, I have been a fan for a long from the publications of the Japanese editor Paumes, showing the interior of creative people or family in different countries of the world. Online I also love The Selby and the German FvF. But let's have a look at toc-toc-toc! tonight!

In this issue, there is a portrait of

• the French stylist Aurélie Lécuyer and her home in the countryside next to Nantes.

• Valérie Gentil from the French online grocery shop beau et bon
• Charlotte Desmullier & Elise Durand Wallon from the French label Rockmafia
• The dutch label TAS-KA

Photography: Sophie Denux

Let's picnic

This week, I took part in the third round of "Post aus meiner Küche": The food swap project organised by Clara, Jeanny and Rike.The motto of the last edition was Very Berry, and you can read my post here. This time the motto was "Let's picnic". I find it pretty inspiring: the last picnic of the season on the biggest virtual blanket. I decided to go French and do some madeleines (sweet and savory) & meringues (for the first time in my life! - usually my mum is the meringue queen.).So here are a couple of pictures of the little picnic basket, I put together for Sophia from Munich. I am looking forward to receiving post from Munich!

THE SAVORY MADELEINES IN THE BENTO BAG: 

I thought that the madeleines wouldn't look nice in a simple tupperware, so I decided to sew them a little Japanese bento bag - a bento is a Japanese lunch box. As I used some Swedish fabric from Lotta Jansdotter and some british fabric from Liberty of London, I call it my Scandinavian - British - Japanese creation.

THE SWEET BLUEBERRY MADELEINES:

THE MERINGUES:

THE PACKAGING: