Lemon Roll

I love the tangy taste that lemon adds to desserts, it cuts the sweetness well. I remembered drooling over a lemon roll that I saw on the Hairy Bikers cooking programme, so I decided to give it a go today as I had quite a few lemons in the fridge which suited me well on this occasion. I didn't have the recipes, which I could have easily obtained from the BBC website if I had wanted to but I decided to do my own. Starting with the cake base, I made a genoise. Unlike other cakes, a genoise doesn't use a leavening agent, its volume comes from the air suspended in the batter during mixing using the bain-marie method. During the week we were learning how to make genoise, "Artisan power!" could be heard in class to spur everyone on, punctuated with a deep breath out whenever someone caught a quick rest in between the whisking.

Once the genoise was baked, I got on with making the lemon butter cream, then the lemon curd (again, more whisking) and finally the lemon syrup to soak the genoise. Finally came the fun part - putting the different components together. The result was a delight! I brought a few slices to a dinner date I had with Anne-Marie and she loved it! We had a nice evening tucked in warmly in her attic apartment, listening to the rain splashing on the windows, knitting and watching Bridget Jones Diary (it was like the 20th time she'd watched this movie!!). When I came home, my editor had tasted my lemon roll. Perfect was his word :)

Home-Made Market - Prins Hendrikstraat, Den Haag

Three weeks have passed since my last post, I have not done much besides meeting friends. The rain kept coming, patchy but persistent. Nothing exciting on the weather front, but not so for sport! On the day of Manchester's triumphant win over Arsenal at Old Trafford on the 28th of August 2011, a decision was made - I was going to participate in the Home-Made Market :)

I spent the whole week planning for my inaugural sale, and still managed to slot in time to cook up a dinner for my editor's colleagues. The morning of the day before, I woke up early (not really my forte since I moved to the Hague) to get ready for a baking marathon. My editor doubled up as my assistant, running around to get stuff that I needed. My day went by pretty smoothly except for a little drama at the end - a few of the lemon tart bases crumbled, so I only had one instead of four as planned. It was not until 5am that I finished baking... I sank straight into my bed snoring away before being woken up three hours later by the alarm...

It wasn't the best weather at the start of the day, clouds were hovering above and there were rain drops. I quickly washed up and donned a dress. I still hadn't really figured out how to transport my cakes and tarts! But no time to panic, I started cutting the cakes while working out a plan. Finally, we loaded everything onto a bamboo board and in baskets, cling-wrapped it and set out to the market. We were an hour late for the scheduled opening time.

The crowd started to pour in and my cakes started to disappear one by one... I was sold out in just about 3 hours! I made a profit, a small but proud one ;) I was so tired but it was well worth the experience and fun, I'm glad I did it :) A big hug to my editor and Eva who came to help and a big thanks to all the people who bought from me :)

Egg Tart

While the West have croissant and coffee for breakfast; in the East, we have pastry too for breakfast, egg tart. It's very much like the portuguese egg tart but with a wobbly and soft egg custard centre. Oooh... it's delicious! We do not only have it for breakfast, for lunch, tea, in fact at any time of the day as your heart desires ;) It's a familiar dish during "dim sum" where you savour individual portions of food - dumplings and pastries, steamed or baked or fried served in a bamboo steamer basket or plate. Egg tart is a must for me, especially when it's fresh from the oven!

Pizza

I like to eat, and don't be fooled by my small frame, I could eat as much as my editor! I like food of all kind (almost ;)). I grew up eating fast food pizza and never liked it, but eating the real thing in Italy changed my mind :) We chanced on a pizza restaurant in Alghero, Sardinia one evening and had some amazing pizzas that it inspired me to make my own!

Brioche aux fruits

The rain finally stopped, well, for today. Went for my tennis lesson. It wasn't the most strenuous session I ever had but strangely I was panting badly after only a short rally. It's probably one of those days or maybe the rain has been keeping me away from tennis, enough to undo whatever stamina I had built up over the last week. I was really hungry and tired when I got home. As my editor had a prior engagement with his colleagues, I was left to fend for myself this evening. Not very exciting cooking for myself, so I decided to bake.