Double coconut rice pudding

Usual Saturday morning (3pm), it's 2002, my friends and I are sitting in the ugly burger place in Grenoble central station for our traditional "party debrief", trying to drown our hangover and shame of last night in litres of frying oil and mayonnaise.
We call it the "Hangover Burger"

(Dear mum and dad, I'd be much grateful if you could forget to read my blog this week)

My student card entitles us to a second burger for free (Yeah!), we order diet cokes to wash them down (well, real coke is full of sugar, really bad for you, you know?!)

"Hangover calories don't count"
"Calories eaten out of someone else's plate only half count"
"Cakes don't count either if they are homemade"

Dishonnesty doesn't taste bad at all, you just need to cover it up with whipped cream and caramel sauce! 

Double coconut rice pudding

Rice pudding made with vegetable milk doesn't count either ;-)

Ingredients: 

1 can coconut milk, well shaken (approx 400ml)
1 small glass of pudding rice or risotto rice
4 to 5 tbsp caster sugar (I used Sweet Freedom for baking)
2 heaped tbsp shredded coconut

Make the rice pudding: 

1/ Rince your pudding rice under running cold water and drain
2/ In a medium saucepan : pour coconut milk, sugar, rice, and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes (until the rice is cooked), mixing from time to time
3/ Once cooked, add the shredded coconut, add some sugar to taste if need be, and store in a airtight container (or a jam pot) for up to a week in the fridge

Option : You can serve it with a splash of dulce de leche, or chocolate sauce, or why not a tsp of Malibu

What's on the Drinks Menu Alex?
On the wine side: 
- Beaumes de Venise, 
- Muscat de rivesaltes,
- Cabernet d'anjou rosé 

Soft drinks: 
- vanilla soja milk
- coconut water
- and for a pinacolada spirit : a pineapple juice

Thanks Alex!   

My banoffee pie

Cakes can be devided into  two categories, like girls' hair:

- Cakes that require much talent and effort, but which unfortunately still don't guarantee that the end result will be faboulous. 
ie : my damn hair, french macarons.

- Cakes which only need 10 min preparation with your eyes closed to make any boy fall in love on the spot.
ie: my best friend's hair which looks perfectly unperfect when she wakes up and has never been touched by a comb, banoffee pie.


I'll purposely omit here the third category of girls who spend 30 min everyday carefully messing their hair up and pretend "Oh, I just had time to jump into my jeans, I must look like a mess", because even if boys are naive little things, we can't be fooled Ladies.

In any cases, Mother nature is unfair, and if the banoffee pie wasn't so amazing, we would hate it for being so easy to make.

Banoffee pie

Ingredients:

1 pack of digestive biscuits (approx 12 biscuit)

50g unsalted butter

2/3 of a can of Nestle carnation caramel or dulce de leche (see below how to make dulce de leche)

2 bananas

1 pot (approx 350ml) whipping cream

Make the banoffee pie:

1/ Preheat the oven at 180°C

2/ Crush the biscuits (in a food processor – or place them in a plastic bag and crush them with beat them with a rolling pin)

3/ To make the biscuit base: Melt the butter in a bowl in the microwave, and mix with the crushed biscuits until well combined. Press firmly the biscuit mixture onto a lose-bottom cake tin, and cook for 10 min until golden. Leave to cool completely. 
At this stage, you can remove the base from the cake tin if you wish (or at least remove the sides, I wouldn't dare transfering it onto a different place because it could break)

4/ Spread the caramel on top of the biscuit base.  Refrigerate until set.

5/ Cut the bananas in 1cm thick slices and spread them evenly on top of the caramel

6/ Whip the cream with a hand whisk or an electric hand mixer until it forms soft peaks, and spread on top of the bananas. Refrigerate for at least 3hours (for the whipped cream to have time to set)

How to make Dulce de leche?

Empty the content of a can of concentrated milk in a small saucepan and cook it on medium heat until it gets a toffee colour (this will take approx 50 min). Be aware that it will become thicker and harder as it cools down. This will be perfect for millionaire shortbreads.
To keep it very soft, ideal scenario for a banofee pie, add 20g butter to the concentrated milk when you start cooking it.Again, stop the cooking when you get a golden coffee colour.

Patagonian souvenirs

- How was it?
- My holidays in Patagonia? Cold, magnificient, delicious

I saw stunning landscapes, hiked a lot, met lovely people, had my lips cracked by the cold, saw whales and pinguins, crossed a giant country by bus, took millions of pictures of my teddy bear Chocolat, and... ate delicious food!

Argentinians master the arts of producing and cooking meat, and baking.
There are completely obsessed with dulce de leche (dense caramel sauce made from condensed milk) that they feature in every single baked good. 
But they also know how to bake really good cheesecakes (ricotta tart) and brownies (with dulce de leche, of course). 
I also fell in love for their empanadas. 

"Were your holidays about sport or food?" asked my dad. At Pauline a la crème anglaise, it's always a bit of both!

I can't wait to share some of the recipes I've brought back with you. In the meantime, here are some pictures!

Homemade Ben's cookies - simply the best cookies ever

She was 12, she had decided to take horse riding lessons just because her big sister was riding horses and at that time, she would have done just about anything to copy her sisters (Too bad she was actually afraid of horses). 

The first time she fell from a horse, she felt so scared and vexed that she left the Horse Riding Club and never went back. The next time she climbed on a horse was 15 years later (some people don't forget easily what failure tastes like …)

When she turned 27, she started baking. When her attempt at one of the easiest recipes ever (cookies) miserably ended up with dry-ass cookies, she felt like that day she had fallen from the horse. She almost promised herself she would never try and bake cookies again.

Three years later, litres of custard had run under her kitchen's bridge...she tought that maybe it was time to make peace with the Cookie God. 

With her new friend Mélodie from her new favourite blog Les Falbalas, she challenged the Kings of Cookies themselves : Ben'sCookies, the chain officially making the best cookies on Earth. 

With a friend by her side, a spatula in her hand, hot tea infusing in a pot, she felt strong and confident. 
That girl would be me and our cookies were delicious. 
There is nothing but a friend to overcome one's cookie fear!

Double chocolate cookies

Ingredients

300g caster sugar

200g unsalted butter

275g self raising flour

1 egg

75g cocoa powder

Milk, few tbsp if needed

Chocolate chunks: I used Toblerone for a giant chocolate chunk in the middle of each cookie + good quality baking chocolat and praline chocolates from Comptoir du Cacao for chunks on top (make sure the chunks are quite big so they don't get lost melting into the cookie dough)

Make the cookies

1/ Preheat your oven at 180°C

2/ Cream the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon (or an electric mixer) until light and fluffy (this will take about 10 min)

3/ Add the egg and beat again

4/ Add the flour and cocoa powder and mix until combined (try not to over beat the ingredients or your cookies will end up very dry). If the dough is too dry, add milk one tablespoon at a time

5/ Add the chocolate chunks and a big Toblerone square in the middle of each cookie

6/ Spoon 2-tablespoon sized balls of dough on a baking sheet (or silicone baking mat) spacing them out quite a lot as the cookies will spread while cooking
7/ Bake for approximately 15 or until just cooked (you want them to still be chewy in the middle)

White Chocolate 

and French glacé cherries cookies

Ingrédients

250g flour

A pinch of salt

170g unsalted butter

300g sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1 egg + 1 egg yolk

Big chunks of white chocolate (as much as you wish, but plan for at least 100g) and 60g French glacé cherries (a mix of wholes and halves)

Make the cookies

Preheat your oven at 180°C

1/ Cream the butter and sugar together with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy (this might take about 10 min)

2/ In another bowl, beat the eggs and vanilla extract until light and fluffy too

3/ Mix the egg mixture with the butter mixture and add the flour and salt (again, try not to overbeat the dough).

5/ Add the chocolate chunks and French glacé cherries (try not to brake the cherries by incorporating them into the dough)

6/ Spoon 2-tablespoon sized balls of dough on a baking sheet (or silicone baking mat), spacing them out quite a lot as the cookies will spread while cooking
7/ Bake for approximately 15 or until just cooked.

What's on the Drinks Menu Alex?

"I made cookies." Just to hear these words, the first thing that comes to mind is "I hope there will be enough cookies for everyone". 

But we rarely think about the drinks to pair them with. 
What do you think about a traditional glass of milk? For the greediest ones you can also enjoy these cookies with : 

- a vanilla or cherry milkshake, 

- nature or mango sweet lassi 

- or a smoothie with vanilla.

Thanks Alex! (Alex from www.mets-vins.fr)

Last but not least, big big thanks to the lovely people at Comptoir du Cacao (www.comptoircacao.fr) and to the French glacé cherries producers (Aptunion and Maison Leopold Marliagues) for giving me the opportunity to bake with their amazing products. 
Remember these celebrity chefs who keep repeting on telly that you need the best raw materials to make the best dishes? Well, they are right! 
Don't take my word for it, try it yourself.

My British take on French Tarte Tatin

Travelling is all about opening your mind and taste buds to other cultures and foods. Discovering new things, getting out of your comfort zone, that’s what makes a traveller happy.

Well, living abroad is a little like travelling, but every day of your life. You eat food you might have never heard of before, cab drivers call you “honey” even if they don’t know you, it can take you an hour to explain your bathroom floods problems to your landlord because you don’t know any of the plumber/bathroom specific vocabulary….
As an expat, you’d better be open to experiencing new things on a regular basis, or you’re in for lots of frustration and most likely a single ticket back home.

My name is Pauline, I’m French and I’m passionate about food. Three years ago, I came to live in London, I ate cheesecake for the first time and it changed my life.
My mouth full of the smooth sweet cream cheese filling, my mind somewhere over a rainbow, I decided I would start baking and, to fully embrace this new country of mine, I would learn how to make British cakes. 
Since then, I’ve filled my shelves with books on traditional British cakes and bake a new cake every week. Chewy cookies, Sticky toffee puddings, Flapjacks, Whoopie pies, Pavlovas,…all these wonders I had never seen or tasted before have become my playground.

I was thrilled when Paul (from the wonderful travelling blog The Bald Hiker) offered me to feature a French recipe on his blog. As my baking is all about mixing French and British cultures, I thought a French Tarte Tatin with a British twist would be a perfect pick.

French tarts usually have the pastry underneath the fruits, but the Tarte Tatin is cooked with the pastry on top of the fruits, like a British apple pie… Why is that? Intriguing mystery indeed!

Come closer, listen carefully, I am about to tell you a delicious story:
Once upon a time, the Tatin sisters who were cooking a traditional apple tart somewhere in France Profonde, burnt the pastry by over cooking the tart.
Going in for the kill, the two sisters decided to save the now caramelized apples from the burnt tart. They put them back in a dish, covered them with a new pastry layer, and cooked the whole thing again.
Once cooked, they turned the tart upside-down again to put the pastry back at the bottom and served their Tarte Tatin. That’s how The Tatin Sisters invented by mistake one of the most iconic French desserts.

Even if the Tarte Tatin’s pastry is cooked on the top of the tart as it is in a British apple pie, the end result is completely different. Tarte Tatin is about caramelized fruits, sweetness, over indulgence, comfort food pushed to the extreme.
Add to it two of the ingredients I’ve discovered in British baking and that are now amongst my favourites – ginger and sour cream – and you end up with a “mind-blowing dessert” (dixit my housemates who got to eat the Tatin below).
Even though Tarte Tatin is one of my favourite French desserts, it was the first time I baked one (I have been too busy baking British cakes for the past three years!).

Suddenly I am wondering: will it feel like an everyday adventure when, one day, I go back to live in France? This question will have to wait for an answer, because I’ve got lots of other recipes to try before I go anywhere! 

Apple and Ginger Tarte Tatin

The ginger gives a subtle kick to the tart that goes wonderfully with the sweetness of the caramelized apples, deliciously balanced by the soureness of the sour cream. I’ve obviously also used tangy British cooking apples, which are perfect for this dessert.
And the super bonus of this tart is that it’s really easy and quick to make!

Ingredients:

8 British cooking apples (I used Cox and Breaburn apples)
160g butter
160g golden caster sugar
2 balls of stem ginger in syrup very finely chopped + 3 tablespoons of the syrup
3 good pinches of ground ginger (approx. 2 tablespoons in total)
1 sweet short crust pastry

Make the tart:

1. Preheat your oven at 180°C.
2. Cover the bottom of a metallic pie dish (metal will help the fruits to caramelize) with 1/3 of the caster sugar, 1/3 of the butter cut into small pieces, 1 tablespoon of ginger syrup and a pinch of ground ginger
3. Peel the apples, remove the cores, quarter them and firmly pack a layer, rounded side down, at the bottom of the dish
4. Cover with another 1/3 of the sugar, 1/3 of the butter cut into small pieces, half of the chopped stem ginger, another tablespoon of ginger syrup and a good pinch of ground ginger
5. Stack another layer of apples (try to fill all the gaps left by the first layer), and cover with the rest of the butter pieces, the sugar, the stem ginger, the ginger syrup and ground ginger
6. Unroll your pastry to a thickness of approximately 3 millimetres and cover the apples with it. Push the edges in the dish (as you would tuck in the blankets on a bed) 
7. Cook for 35-45 min until the pastry is nicely golden. Take out of the oven and leave to cool for 15min before turning upside-down onto a plate. Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream.

What's on the drinks menu Alex?
Our New Indulgence Expert Associtate Alex gives us his drinks tips for our tarte tatin.

Being both delicious and very sweet with its caramelised fruits, tarte tatin is one of the favourite French desserts. Therefore, the wine has to match it perfectly.
I recommend five options:

• a Gewurztraminer from Alsace,
• a sweet Vouvray to be sweeter (loire valley),
• a pink champagne,
• a muscat from Spain
• a cider

If you can read French and want more tips from Alex on how to pick a perfect wine to accompany your desserts, visit his website here