Edinburgh

This is the 1st article about my trips. And for that I chose to show you the city I discovered last March, and the place where since then, my heart is: Edinburgh, in Scotland.
Things I would recommend you to see/visit in Edinburgh:
- Edinburgh castle
- Arthur's seat (an extinct volcano)
- the scottish parliament
- Hollyrood palace and abbey
- the Whisky  Experience museum
- Princes street (good for shopping!)
- St Giles' cathedral
- Mary King's Close (explore the underground city!)
- Greyfriars Bobby statue
- Scott Monument (very beautiful also at night)
- Rosslyn Chapel
- Museum of Scotland
- National Gallery of Scotland
- Our Dynamic Earth (the best museum there!)

and of course, don't forget to go get a pint in a pub in the evening! and eat in a pub for lunch. They have very typical scottish food, and it's delicious (and cheap!).

Here are some of my pictures:

The travel section of my blog is coming!

I told you this blog would be a cooking AND travelling blog. And yet still no travelling article around there. Well no worries, it is coming very soon!! I'll write one post at least for every trip I did during this year 2011:

- February: Stockholm - Sweden
- March: Edinburgh - Scotland
- June: New York, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia - USA
- July: France
- September: Stockholm - Sweden

I think that was all for this year. Later on I might add older trips, but there will be a lot of work to find pictures, or when it's about very old trips, I ll need to scan them. 27 years of travelling, that's not nothing!

So article and of course, most important, pictures coming soon!!

Buttercream Icing

To make cupcakes more beautiful and tastier, I recently tried to do buttercream, and it was a success!

Here is the recipe. It's very easy to do.

Ingredients (for about 20 cupcakes):

- 8 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup reduced-fat milk, at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 5 cups confectioner's sugar, sifted
- few drops of food coloring (optional)

In a large mixing bowl beat the butter, milk, vanilla extract, and half the confectioner's sugar until smooth (with electric hand mixer). Gradually add the remainder of the confectionner's sugar and beat again until smooth and creamy.

If you want to color your buttercream, start with one drop of coloring and beat. Then add drop by drop until you get the color you want.

Keep in an airtight container at room temperature (you can keep it up to 3 days). When you want to use it, always beat it a little bit before using. If you feel it's too liquid, put it a little bit in the fridge (not too long, otherwise it gets hard).

My first try with buttercream

My crepes recipe!

This is the first recipe I learned to do on my own, when I guess I was something like 5 years old, well at such a young age that I don't remember when I started to bake crepes. So here it is, with step by step pictures.

Ingredients (for approximately 5/6 crepes)


- 1 egg
- 3 spoons of sugar
- 6 spoons of flour
- vanilla sugar (one little bag or 2 tea spoons)
- 1 tea spoon of rhum
- 25 g of butter
- milk

1. Mix the egg, the sugar and the vanilla sugar

2. Add the flour and mix well, until smooth

3. Add the butter, melted, and mix well

4. Add the milk and the rhum. Pour enough milk so that the dough becomes liquid, but not too much. 

5. Preheat a pan (put first a drop of oil on it, if it may stick) and pour one ladleful of dough on the pan so that it spread all around. Let cook until you can turn it on the other side, and then let that second side cook until gold. Then do the same with the rest of the dough.

For those sweet crepes I suggest you to put on it : sugar, cinnamon, nutella, marmelade, nutella+bananas+whipped cream, chestnuts cream...

Bon appétit !!