Etxeko biskotxa : the Basque pie invasion !

My etxeko biskotxa. Home-made gâteau basque. No, you’re never too rich. Particularly if you’re a cake. Or if the currency of your fortune is a delicious specialty…

Yes. I have 5 ! But they are small. And I shared. And they could have been bigger and I could have not shared and eaten them all too…

Vanilla cream. This is the classic ! There is a good recipe given by the museum dedicated to this pastry.

Framboise (raspberry) and cassis (black currants). Bought jams.

Home-made ume plum jam to fill the 4th type :

Yes, that makes 5. There were 2 vanilla ones.

Tarte alsacienne à la fraise et à la myrtille (double berry cake)

It’s a cousin from Lorraine’s tarte au sucre (here). A little more elaborated. Both are nice, that depends if you’re looking for simplicity or something more cake-like.

Strawberries (fraises) and blueberries (myrtilles) are garnishing it. Frozen fruits do the trick perfectly.

And there is some streusel on top.

Caliph’s berry crémet, a creamy luxury pause

Let’s say the crémet d’Anjou that you’ve seen before has moved into an Oriental palace…
This fresh cream is flavored like Ottoman sweets with honey, orange blossom water, cinnamon, a hint of mace.

Garnished with berries.

The strawb’ soup is pimped with créme de framboise (raspberry liquor).

Decorated with gold powder if you have. Cinnamon is cheaper and tastier otherwise.

Crêperie gourmande

La Chandeleur, crepe day is February second, in France and some other countries in Europe. That’s a very old celebration that correspond to the Day of the Marmot in America and the Setsubun in Japan. The start of “Spring”, well, maybe Spring. At least, Sun is coming back in the skies after the darkest months. So crepes look like small suns..

The French tradition is each member of the family cooks his/her crepe in flat pan. And you have to hold some money in one hand and flip the crepe with the second hand. If you succeed, you will be rich during one year. If not…you get a crepe on the floor, on the head, or whatever, and you’ll have had a good time laughing about your clumsiness.

WHEAT CREPES
crêpes de froment

Easy recipe :
1 average size egg
3 tbs of flour
1 glass of milk (1/2 US cup)
1 tbs oil or melted butter

A-whip well B-wait 2 hours C-cook the crepes

a few savory variations

Ficelles picardes (gratin crepes with ham and mushroom filling)

colorful

BUCKWHEAT CREPES
Galettes ou crêpes au sarrasin or crêpes de ble noir

Galette day

100% buckwheat crepes

egged buckwheat crepes (quick version)

Napoleon

Cheezy beanie (vegan)

herbs and beans

DESSERT :

crêpes boisettes

crêpes Suzette

pale sun thick crepe

crêpes soufflees with coconut and kumquat

Crêpes boisettes

Délice aux framboises. Raspberry delight. And there is chocolate hidden in them…

This is berry sister of the crêpes Suzette. Freshly invented.

Reheat the crepes in a little butter. Then fill the pan with raspberry juice. I have juiced frozen berries. They are not very sweet, which is perfect for me, but you may want to add sugar.
Place a crepe, garnish with chips of cocoa mass or very dark chocolate and 1/2 ts of condensed milk. Fold in 2. Cover with juice. Fold again.

Add the rest f juice, a few cut berries, a tbs of butter and a tbs of creme de framboise (raspberry liquor). Reheat all the crepes in the sauce. Then heat some more liquor to flame them.

Serve with 1/2 tbs of condensed milk on each crepe.

Wine cranberry sauce on fougasse

Chance created me this wonderful recipe. This pink creaminess was out of this world…
Whole wheat fougasse/pizza dough (left-over), covered by cream cheese + yogurt (left-over), and what topping… oh, I had that leftover of red sauce (for duck) in the freezer, since 1932 at least : Wine, shallot, butter and cranberry sauce.

And I completed with more toppings : raisins, goji berries, walnuts. A little parmesan cheese. A drizzle of olive oil.

Baked !

It’s thin, crispy and mellow. And the taste is really deep, rich, refined.

The rest of dough, with more thyme, rosemary and bits of garlic inside, painted with olive oil. That gave a delicately fragrant roll.

Bouchées doubles : two bites of dessert, fruit, pie and cream

Maybe food blog readers love desserts too much… Sweets are the most visited pages, the most “browsed” food.

You can have many dessert this week because it’s Easter. I could fill this blog with sweets mostly. That wouldn’t be honest. I don’t want them to appear more frequently here than they should on my table.
Many people want to read that it’s possible to eat decadent cakes and sweets everyday and it will be healthy. I’d want that too. That’s not really the case.

Let’s devour them for occasions.
Small bites of dessert are a lesser evil. Fruits are healthy.

It’s a small nest of home-made pie sheet, with a little cane sugar on top and a stawberry.

Very milky crème anglaise, flavored with vanilla sugar and a little grated lemon peel. It’s like as I use “concentrated” skim milk, and a little starch to add thickness (there is a small egg yolk).