This year was the second year we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. Since my husband is Dutch and I’m Czech, Thanksgiving is part of neither mine nor his cultural heritage. But there’s a lot in our lives to be thankful for,…
Our Thanksgiving feast
Categorie: Cake
Best winter squash cake + 7 variations
Dear friends, I apologize for not writing in this space in a looooong time! The reason is I’d actually been writing a lot elsewhere: my English book ‘Edible Paradise’ is finally finished and getting designed as we speak! I’ll share…
Grape almond honey cake
Back in July when my birthday was coming up, Remco asked me what I wanted as a present and I said: ‘Pergola!’. This pergola has long been planned (& dreamed about) and I must admit that in my lack of…
Rhubarb big crumb cake
Most of the time it’s just the two of us working in the garden so on the rare occasion that we get some help I’m always amazed by how much can be done in a couple of hours. About two…
Best marbled bundt cake
My mom is a great cook but she’s not much of a baker. She admits she lacks the patience required for dealing with pastry and she only bakes cookies for Christmas. As for cakes, she bakes two: her family’s birthday…
Chocolate pavlova with forest fruits
In the Netherlands, when you’re too late for school, there’s a widely (mis)used excuse: the bridge was open! There are a lot of channels here and if you have to cross one and the bridge is open to let a…
Rhubarb walnut crumble
Every year I put a considerable amount of thought into the first rhubarb dish of the season. I usually cover one of our 20+ plants (I’ve been meaning to count) with a big bucket to force and blanch it and…
Easter Lamb Cake
Even though the way we celebrate Easter and the dishes we serve for our Easter brunch vary a bit from year to year, there are two food related Easter traditions we always keep. On Saturday we will decorate eggs (with…
Pear & chocolate honey spelt cake
I baked a wedding cake. Well, no, not the wedding cake which was an amazing two story chocolate-raspberry affair, thankfully without fondant (you can’t go wrong with chocolate and raspberries!) and of which I certainly ate my share. Rather, I…
Chocolate & raspberry birthday cake
Last Monday I celebrated my 39th birthday. Remco teasingly reassured me: “You don’t look a day over 38, honey” but I’m sure I have changed in many small ways since last year and that is exactly as it should be.…
Rosemary spelt cake
Many years ago I read a historical novel where the Russian Grand Duchess Anna Pavlovna having moved to the Netherlands after marrying the future King William II was reported to complain that the wet Dutch climate was not suitable for…
Rhubarb kuchen with spiced up streusel
We were not planning to travel anywhere this month even though the kids have a two week vacation. But then one evening about ten days ago we were sitting on the couch and “we’re not going away but if we…
Plum and hazelnut brown butter cake
I once read a cookbook by a French pastry chef where he narrated how he made up new desserts in his dreams. I don’t make up new recipes in my dreams, at least as far as I know. But during…
Chocolate brownies with ganache topping
It’s always fun to see what search terms lead readers to strand on this little island in the vast sea of the internet. The most interesting recent search term was “how to grow a cook”. Though I might not really…
Hazelnut torte with berries
You know what our most valuable crop is at the moment? Blackberries. Last week I saw organic blackberries for sale, the tiniest box (150 g) going for 2,35 Euro. That same evening I picked more than a kilo, which would…