2013 TILL NOW #2 #Food

Making 2013 a healthy and wealthy year:

 Trying the Macarons All-in-one kit (€1,39) from Action

looked better then I expected! (never made "macarons" before) 

Looking good! Also tasted good but not so special..

Trying the Cupcake All-in-one kit from Action (€1,59):

The cupcakes were very easy to make and were also looking very good, but I prefer the taste of fresh made cupcakes more! (no rebuy for me! but maybe perfect for a first cupcake-bake ever)

Fresh made chocolate dough!  

Time for some healthy cooking!

I'm totally into making fresh salads lately! Thanks to Heather!

Sleep-overs = Healthy evening-treats!

Another salad, with shrimps! 

Tuesday, the 1st of January

Happy New Year to all of you!

It has been a long time ago but I found a little time and an awesome subject to write about!

The last few weeks of the year I've been struggling a lot with my health.. I still keep on trying several medicines to get my body fit again.. but I guess I've already found the best medicine a few years ago:

One of the presents I gave my "little" niece Ellen for Christmas was a cupcake-kit.

A few days ago she e-mailed me some photo's of her experiment:

 the chocolate cupcake-kit from Action

 the dough

 before baking

 after baking -> they look so delicious!!!

 The kit also includes chocolate topping!

 exactly twelve cupcakes

And the inside looks so yummy!

Ellen also told me the cupcakes were really delicious but I couldn't taste them because they were all gone.. that says enough to me: save me one next time!

Good job Ellen and thanks for the awesome pictures!

CupcakeNele

x

Tuesday, 13th of November

We went on teambuilding-weekend (for work) together with Team L&L Zottegem!

And well, "zot" (from ZOTtegem) means "crazy (and funny!)" in Dutch.. And it was a crazy (read awesome) weekend for sure!

The first pictures are all about the food:

Food Food Food!

GOOD FOOD!

Saturday, 10th of November.

My first personnel party.

We were invited to the Chess Café in Gent 

I got a Mojito as aperitif.

Not really "wow, delicious!", but not bad either..

As appetizer you could choose between something with shrimps or dim sum..

I chose the shrimps.. but that was a little disappointing:

They were good, but not special..

and it looked very simple!

Up to the main course!

You could choose your own ingredients and let it get done for you..

I chose shrimps again.. and combined it with chicken meat, little potatoes and pieces of pineapple.

And for preparing my food I chose garlic butter!

I liked it a lot! It tasted really good!

What I didn't liked about it was the fact that it was very greasy food!

At the end of the course there was a lot of sauce left in my plate and I don't like it when my food is swimming in butter.. even though I adore garlic butter..

Maybe another hint for the owners: It would me more practical if it was more clear what every ingredient was.. I chose save but I was quite curious about some ingredients and nobody could tell me what it was and nobody was there to explain it.. Anyway, I quite enjoyed it!

As dessert: banana split!

quite simple though very tasty!

- Chess Café? good but not awesome! -

Sunday, 11th of November.

The first day of our awesome teambuilding weekend is coming to an end, time to end the day with good food! With recommendations of the owner of the place we were staying for the night we went to Den Amandus.

Starting with a glass of Cava as aperitif!

We decided to go for a dessert in stead of an appetizer.

We got a little appetizer from the house while waiting for our main course!

Very nice presentation and VERY tasty food!

Making me very curious about our other courses!

We didn't had to wait long for our main course,

 and this was what I chose:

It was absolutely AWESOME !!!

some of the other plates:

Delicious T-bone steak!

Lamb meat. 

Shrimps !

They all looked AND TASTED so delicious!

At this point, I guess, we were all sure we definitely want to come back here!

So we were already convinced of their service, their professionality, ..

Bring on the dessert, 'cause "There's ALWAYS room for dessert!" (by Lena Cossey)

Couldn't agree more on that one!

good food brings good atmosphere:

Some of them had left some room for a coffee,

so everybody got some cookies and chocolates.

- Den Amandus? Pure awesomeness! I'm already looking forward to the next visit! -

Monday, 12th of November.

Ready to go home after another day of awesomeness.

But before we each go home to our own houses: Food!

This time we went to De Groene Wandeling.

I chose the salad with shrimps (with croquettes)

which was very tasty!

and afterwards a citron tea..

( They serve their coffee and tea with a little glass of amaretto )

And an ice cream (which was homemade!) with chocolate sauce to end our weekend.

- De Groene Wandeling? Good! Quite standard. -

I'm sorry for the quality of my pictures.. I oughted it more important to enjoy all this awesome food! So it was always "quick taking a picture" because I couldn't wait to start eating!

CupcakeNele

x

Sunday, 30th of September

Washed my hair and used another Deauty-product!

Redken Full Effect 04 Nourishing Mousse.

It's a silky mousse that feels very light and it isn't sticky at all! -hooray for that!-

My hair feels lighter but I don't really see the extra volume it promises..

Maybe because my hair is quite voluminous on it's own..

What I love about the two hairproducts in the Deauty-box is the fact they make the curls in my hair a little more curlier than my natural curls. And they make my hair look healthy and shiny!

The result:

Another crappy picture. Taken by my boyfriend (with his Blackberry Playbook) on September the 29th.

And today was the last day we could visit Lannoo's yearly bookmarket!

- Lannoo is a publisher from the region where I was born -

I bought this one: Thumbs and fingers full of chocolate (for €9)

With a lot of easy chocolate recipes!

They look so delicious! I can't wait till we're moving in our own house to try to make those little treasures!

And this was really a bargain!

More than 290 pages with stunning black and white photos.

Merckx, a living legend! I though it might be a nice book to remember some moments of the last year..

CupcakeNele

x

Friday, 6th of July

Cupcake news!

and not just that regular cupcake news:

here's the most expensive cupcake in the world:

all I can say on that is:

WANTED!

Oh god that really looks so delicious.

While watching that video I could only think "nom!nom!nom!"

And I really love that spoon!

CupcakeNele

x

Monday, 21st of May

Today was the first time I made ice-cream!

We tried out two ice-creams: banana ice-cream and strawberry ice-cream!

Banana ice cream with chocolate chips!

Fixing the new ice cream machine.

Tasting! 

Actually we couldn't wait long enough to let it become solid ice cream, so it was more like ice cold yoghurt! Too impatient but more than worth it!

I guess Ben & Jerry's can come close to our awesome self-made banana (with chocolate chips!) and strawberry ice cream!


Nom Nom Nom!
Repeatable for sure!

Monday, 14th of May

Busy day again:

Osteo, working at our house, doing my sister her hair (she has an important presentation at school tomorrow!).. and on top of that I really felt the need to bake again!

A few weeks ago I had the idea to make cupcakes with those awesome honeystinger-bars!

I didn't quite knew how to do that but today I just tried it:

First I made some normal cupcakes and to the other half of the dough I added one and a half Honey Stinger "Rocket Chocolate" bar.. yep, not the bar I told you about a month ago, the Honey Stinger Peanut Butter & Honey is just too awesome to just try out a new recipe that might disappoint me..

They taste pretty good but maybe a little dry..

Too bad it's already so late (tomorrow is already another workday!) otherwise I'd try to make a buttercream with honey.. Wouldn't that be smooth and tasty?? I think it would be a perfect match for the HoneyStingercupcakes! And maybe a HoneyStingerTopping for the other basic cupcakes..

Sleep tight!

CupcakeMe

x

Saturday, 28th of April

Up to the test:

Low fat cupcakes!

Cupcakes without butter..

Sounds like no real cupcakes

But I needed to try it!

Those on the first picture are just basic low fat cupcakes, with a little more salt and lemon juice than the recipe said.. They feel a little spongy but taste pretty good.. Still it's pretty weird that their texture is quite rubber-ish..

So I added five teaspoons cacao powder to the dough that was left and so there were Low fat chocolate cupcakes:

Don't know what to think about it now.. Taste of the cupcakes is pretty good, but not the same as a normal cupcake. My mom likes those cupcakes more than normal cupcakes, but I guess that's more because of the name of the cupcakes, the idea of "no butter included" is probably the reason why she likes them so much!

hmmm.. I guess the normal (buttery) cupcakes are still my favorite! nomnomnom!

Saturday, 21st of April

A couple of weeks ago Lena, a colleague at L&L, told me she was planning to make some chocolate spread and speculaas spread as an Easter present to her family! That really sounded like such an amazing idea to me!

So today I bought some hazelnuts and started trying to make some chocolate spread!

And actually.. I found out it's quite easy!

Although I guess my recipe needs some fine-tuning! (I'll definitely add some more hazelnuts next time!) I'm happy about the result of my first try!

I know what I'll be eating tomorrow morning!

my own self-made chocolate spread!

Couldn't resist tasting it already! NomNomNom!