Why? Why not... it keeps me on the edge to move things around. Come to visit me here : http://labelleaurore.wordpress.com/
... and be patient, I have not unpack everything yet!
A torte is a cake made with many eggs and usually ground nuts or even bread crumbs instead of or in addition to flour. This version of mine does not have any eggs.
I do that once in a while: create a recipe out of nowhere… yap, I know, I am bad… now I have to write the ingredients and pray that I did not forget something. Talking about baking without a recipe, that is me!
No flour, no eggs but a ton of nuts in this one:
Over heat in a pan, mix together until it almost boils over and then, set aside:
One stick of butter (about ½ cup)
One cup of water
½ cup of shortening
6 tablespoons of no-sweet cocoa powder (yes, it does exist…)
In a bowl, mix together:
2 cups of grounded almond (the ones with the skin on). Now, it is very easy to ground whole almonds, just put them in a good blender and pulse them until it reaches a nice fine dusted flour like texture with little bits and pieces of nuts here and there.
2 cups of splenda
1 cup of cream
1 teaspoon of baking powder
Add to the mix the chocolate mixture and mix well
Pour the mix in a cake pan and bake at 400F for 45 minutes. It will look runny a bit, but as long as the edge of the torte is hard, it is done. Let it cold completely before doing anything with it.
I usually spread on top a mix of:
5oz of cream cheese
½ cup of spenda (or any other artificial sweetener)
¼ cup of butter
A drop of vanilla extract
A drop of lime juice (for the tang of the sweet and sour that I crave all the time…)
I freeze this torte all the time. I cut it in portion size, put them on a cookie pan in the freezer for 2 hours about, remove them and put each piece in plastic bags or else. It keeps for about 6 months frozen. To eat : take them out of the freezer and let it sit for about 30 minutes in the open. Marvelous cool piece of sweet passion!
Enjoy!
3 tablespoons of oil
Bread Baking Day #21
I could never make a pizza without my anchovy and my goat cheese. The addition of balsamic vinegar and Tabasco add an extra flavor to this marvelous pizza and the flavor of this dish gets deeper and tastier the day after. Enjoy!
2 cup of warm water
2 tablespoons of yeast
2 tablespoons of white sugar
2 tablespoons of homemade pesto or store brought (basil kind)
1 can of anchovy
Salt to taste (taste your dough before kneading it, a pizza dough needs to be a bit saltier than a regular bread recipe)
1 cup of tomato paste
½ cup of cut up black olives
1 teaspoon of dry sage
2 garlic cloves
Goat cheese to taste
Spicy cheese to taste
Red sweet pepper
Green sweet pepper
Black olive and green olive
Sun dried tomato to taste
Balsamic vinegar to taste
Tabasco to taste
In a blender, chop together the last six ingredients: red and green pepper, olives, tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and Tabasco and set aside.
Poor the warm water in a bowl, mix in the sugar and sprinkle on top of the mixture, the yeast. Put aside until the yeast starts bubbling.
In a bigger bowl, add the oil, the pesto, a pinch of salt. Add the yeast mixture and mix just to incorporate. Add flour by hand, one cup at a time and mix together until you have reached very sticky dough. Add more flour and knead well on a floured surface. When the dough is shinny and elastic to the touch, oil a bowl with your fingers, and drop the dough into it, place a very lightly wet clean dish towel over the top and let it rise until double size, about one hour. Punch the dough down with your frisk, knead a bit and take just enough dough to form a good size pizza. Put the remaining of the dough in bread pan, cover again but with a dry dish towel this time and let it rise again, about 30 minutes.
For the pizza dough, basically, I use exactly the same basic recipe than with a regular white bread recipe with the exception that I do not let it raised a second time. Take a pizza pan or whatever you have on hand to form a pizza. Cover the pizza pan with your pizza dough, stretching it to the edge and a bit over it. Brush the dough with a bit of oil and pesto.
Cover the pizza with tomato paste. Take the blend of the six ingredients at the beginning and spray the mix evenly over the tomato paste, and follow by anchovy, olives, garlic, sage etc (whatever you have on hand in the fridge and you would like to eat as a pizza), and finish with both the cheeses. Add a bit more of Tabasco sauce on top if desired.
Let the pizza rest for about 10 minutes and then, bake at 425F until golden and crispy on the edges, about 15 to 20 minutes. Watch it carefully, it might take less time. Eat hot and keep some for breakfast the day after.
My eBook : Notebook of a soapmaker on a budget... is done! What a project this was. I waited until the last day, today June 15, to upload it to the site of SoFoBoMo because I felt sad it was all finished and done and .... turned the last page... and say bye bye...
1 cup of oatmeal (the regular kind, not the fast cooking type) 2 teaspoons of salt Add the mixture to a bigger bowl, stir in the butter, molasses, and salt. Mix well. Add one cup at a time, altering with the three grains, the bran, the wheat flour and the all purpose flour, finishing by the all purpose flour. Turn down the mix into a well floured surface and start kneading until a very soft ball it becomes. Grease a bowl with oil and drop the dough into it, turning the ball to coat well with oil. Cover the bowl with a wet dish towel and let it double in size. After the dough has doubled in size, punch it down with your fist to remove the air inside the dough. Turn the dough on a well floured surface and shape it into two equal round forms. Deposit the round forms into a well greased pan or a cookie sheet, one form side by side the other one. Brush the tops with one egg mixed with water, sprinkle with coarse salt. Cover the dough with a dry dish towel and let it rise until double in size (about 30 minutes). Heat up your oven to 375F, uncover your bread and put the pan in the oven for 35 to 38 minutes. 
Bread baking day #20 : link to the roundup of June 2009
Bread baking day #21 : link to BBD #21, deadline July 01, 2009 : Pizza!
A light brown-orange loaf made with three wheat products: bran, whole-wheat flour, and white flour. The liquid in this recipe is orange juice with pulp. It gives an interesting sweet and sour taste to the bread, interacting with the ¾ cup of molasses used as a sweetener. One of my favorite homemade bread to eat!
2 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of bran (you can use the cereal kind here, as pure bran as possible)
2 cups of orange juice with pulp
2 tablespoons of Yeast
¾ cup of molasses
1 cup of whole wheat flour
5 to 6 cups of bread or all purpose flour
Heat up the orange juice until a very light boiling. Put aside and add to it the oatmeal. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the liquid, without moving it. Let the yeast rinse and get active on top of your liquid (forming little bubbles).
This Ginger Bread Cookies handmade soap was made last November 2008 by me, of course. It smells divine and the bubbling wave my nose gets everytime it is used under water is Heaven.
I took this picture this morning using the early sun ray in my living room as a guide. SoFoBoMo is just around the corner for me, starting May 15. Cannot wait to align all my soaps and snap them away into beautiful pictures for my e-book!
They came out by surprise this morning, around the house. Beautiful, just in time for Mothers' Day.
Dodo baby, Dodo Ok, we are tomorrow :
So basically, I followed my basic white bread recipe here, making sure that my yeast did form bubbles on top and came to me alive!
And because I did not have real sugar in the house, I replaced the liquid with 2 cups of soft drink heated in the microwave. 
Soft drinks have enough sugar in it to get the yeast moving (see picture above). Artificial sugars will not bring back the yeast alive, I did try without a good result.
To the basic white bread recipe, I added :
1 cup of cut up mango
1/4 cup of cut up dry tomato
1 tablespoon of capres
1 tablespoon of mustard dijon
1 tablespoon of basil pesto
2 tablespoons of bacon dripping (from my bacon in the morning)
I mixed it all together and voilà, I got myself beautiful golden breads. At the moment, my kitchen is empty of pots and pans so the breads were baked in whatever I could find around : corning wares pans here.
An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing or legal residence. The word comes from the Latin ex (out of) and patria (country, fatherland).
