Pecan biscuits and Paris

Lately I haven’t been as busy with the blog as I wanted to. I have had a well earned vacation and trip to Paris though...and it has been amazing! The weather has been great: sunny and not too cold. What else could you hope for? We stayed at the cutest apartment ever, in the Quartier Latin area and around the corner of Rue Mouffetard, which is a foodies’ paradise. There were bakeries with freshly baked baguettes, butcheries with the best dried sausages and spit roasted chickens, fresh fruits and vegetables everywhere and every other day a great market....

The breakfast ensemble in the picture is bought at ‘Le Petit Atelier de Paris’. A lovely little shop with a workshop inside; it is founded by two designers who make, design and sell their products in this little shop at the Marais district. They have wonderful products for a pleasant daily-life...and the cutest dog ever!

I will post some pictures and addresses of must-visit shops and restaurants sometime soon...

When I came back from Paris I immediately felt in need of baking something sweet, since it is almost impossible to find something sweet I am able to enjoy. Especially since the French love their cream and butter.

I just love nuts, and these pecan biscuits have a really nutty-flavour and aren’t too sweet.

Pecan biscuits

220 gram margarine

150 gram pecan nuts

50 gram fine Demerara sugar, plus 1 tbsp

300 gram spelt flour

Icing sugar, to decorate

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Place the pecans on a baking tray and roast them in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.

Finely grind them with the tablespoon of sugar in a food processor. Leave them to cool completely.

Beat the margarine with the rest of the sugar until light and fluffy.

Fold in the flour, salt and ground pecans. Break of pieces of dough and shape into 3 cm balls. Place the balls onto a lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes until lightly golden.

Transfer the biscuits immediately to a wire rack and dust them with icing sugar.

Lemon poppy seedcakes

Lemon poppy seedcakes are one of my all time favourites; I just love everything that includes lemon and the poppy seed gives it such a nice texture and flavour.

I found the pastry moulds I used while cleaning the kitchen and instantly fell in love with them. They just begged me to be used for baking lemon poppy seed cakes...;-)

My normal recipe asks for yoghurt, which is lovely but makes the batter quite sticky and hard to use in a mould like this. My favourite lemon cake recipe uses ground almonds, which gives it a lovely flavour and texture, but makes it rather dense. That’s when I stumbled across this Jamie Oliver recipe, which I adjusted to fit my diet, and gives you a lovely light cake, with a moist centre and sour, slightly crunchy top. Perfect!

For the cakes (makes about 12):

115 gram margarine, softened

115 gram caster sugar

4 eggs

125 spelt flour

180 gram almond flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

Zest and juice of 2 lemons

40 gram poppy seed

For the lemon syrup:

100 ml lemon juice

100 gram caster sugar

 

For the icing:

1-3 tbsp lemon juice

150 gram icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 175°C.

Whisk butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, for about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one by one, adding the next one when the previous one is fully incorporated.

Whisk in the lemon juice and zest, flour, salt, almond flour, poppy seeds and baking powder. Be careful not to over mix.

Divide the batter in 12 baking moulds/cups and bake for about 15 minutes.

While the cakes are baking start preparing the syrup.

Pour the lemon juice and sugar into a small saucepan and heat over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat.

When the cakes are done, remove them from their cups (unless you are making cupcakes), place onto a wire rack and make some holes in the top with a skewer. Pour over each cake about 1 tsp syrup.

When the cakes are cooled down you can start icing them. For the icing you just need to combine the lemon juice with the icing sugar until you get the preferred taste and consistency.

Pour over about 1-2 tsp icing and leave to set.