Homemade Rosemary Tagliatelle

One of my favorite things to do is making homemade pasta. There`s something special about homemade version compared to the store bought pasta. I usually make some extra, dry it and keep it for other occasions. It tastes better and gives any dish another dimension. If you would like to wow people coming to dinner, you should definately give it a try. And, it isn`t so complicated ih you have a pasta machine (I would never do it without it because rolling the dough with a rolling pin is pretty damn difficult).

The recipe is very simple: with 1 egg use 100g plain flour. This time, I wanted to make my homemade pasta extra special so I added a twig of rosemary which I chopped and bruised in a mortar and little bit extra virgin olive oil. Can you imagine the smell that was going around my house while rolling it?

Ingredients:

2 eggs

200g flour

pinch of salt

few drops extra virgin olive oil

1 twig rosemary

Preparation:

Sift the flour on a clean wooden surface. Make a well in the flour, break the eggs into the well and add salt. Use a fork to whisk your eggs a bit and than start to incorporate flour into the eggs. When it becomes too difficult to mix with a fork use your hands to form a dough. Knead for several minutes in order to get an elastic and smooth dough.

Wrap your dough into plastic foil and leave it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Cut it into smaller strips. Flatten each strip so that you make the job easier for your pasta machine. Begin running the strips through the widest setting of your pasta maschine (usually 1). Fold it in half and run it again on the same setting. Repeat several times and than start to reduce the setting. Each time dust the strips with a little bit of flour. I always make my strips as thin as possible (7). Let the strips rest on a clean table cloth for 10 to 15 minutes. It is crucuial that the strips are not too dry or not dry enough. In the first case, you won`t be able to cut them and in the second case the pasta would stick to each other.

Start cutting your pasta with cutting setting on your machine. Catch the pasta with your fingers and put it on the table cloth to dry. This time, I made tagliatelle. Dry at least 24 hours and store in an airtight container.

This pasta truly deserves the best sauce you can make.

Printable version

Strawberry Flavored Marble Bundt Cake

I have a confession to make. Lately, I`ve been neglecting my blog and I feel awful about it. This weekend I decided to make up for it so I had a baking session. I made this bundt cake and a beautiful focaccia which I`ll write about later on. We all have a recipe for a traditional marble cake either from our mother or grandmother but I wanted to make something a little bit different so I added a few drops of strawberry extract and baked it in a bundt pan. My little niece thought it was wonderful so we had to forbid her from eating the whole thing because we didn`t want her to get a stomach ache. :) At least, now I know that she`s a huge fan of good old-fashioned cakes.

 Ingredients:

4 eggs

4 cups sugar (I used smaller coffee cup - 1 cup is about 80 g)

4 cups flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tbsp vanilin sugar

1 dl oil

1 dl milk

few drops strawberry extract

2 tbsp cocoa powder

Preparation

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C or 350 F. Butter and dust with flour a 10 inch bundt or tube pan. With a mixer beat eggs with sugar until pale and fluffy. Gradually add flour, baking powder, vanilin sugar, oil and milk and combine well. Pour 1/3 of the batter in another bowl and add cocoa. Mix well. In the yellow part add strawberry extract and mix. Pour the pink batter into the bundt pan. Now, you can start marbling your cake by pouring tha cocoa batter over the pink batter. With the end of a wooden spoon, draw swirls through the batter but don`t over do it. Bake for about 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

When the cake is baked, leave it to cool down in the pan, than remove the cake from the pan.

 

Keep it at room temperature. I like to serve it with tea or warm milk.

 

UPDATE!

I just learnt that November 15th is National Bundt Day in the USA! What a coincidence to publish this bundt cake recipe on its own day. So, happy Bundt Day everyone!

Printable version

Halloween Squash Cupcakes With Chocolate Ganache

Halloween is over but I wanted to show you my Halloween cupcakes. You have already seen Halloween toothpicks which I made a few days ago. In the meantime, I made Halloween cupcake wrappers which were inspired by Judy`s cute cupcake wrappers. You can check them out here and here. 

 The cupcakes were made according to Jamie Oliver`s recipe for Butternut Squash muffins and then frosted with chocolate ganache (pour 500 ml hot cream over 200 g chopped chocolate, stir the mixture until smooth and silky on low heat, cool it in the fridge for about half an hour and then stir it well with a mixer until you get ganache of wanted consistency).

 Aren`t they spooktacular? :) The kids loved them!

In the end, this was my pumpkin: