I have to confess. When it comes to sweet treats my weakness is called meringues. I have this weakness since childhood. I have struggled then so many times to make them right and all of the times I was ending up with some sticky, brown on the surface meringues. They were tasty but they were all the time sticking to my teeth.
At a certain moment I simply gave up. Then, one day I manage to make them well. Here is the recipe.
Since then, I tried the exact same recipe many times and I simply couldn't get them the same. So I gave up again.
Few days ago, a friend of mine posted some incredible meringues. I couldn't resist and asked him for some tips and tricks. He kindly exposed all meringue secrets so I decided to give them another try.
They turned out to be PERFECT from the first trial. And I know now what was my mistake before.
It is a love and hate story between meringues and me. I am crazy about their taste but it kills me how much sugar they contain. So, every time I was making them I wanted to reduce the amount of sugar, and this was my biggest mistake. The sugar gives them the structure and I was destroying this. Sugar is a very unhealthy food but good meringue without the proper amount of sugar cannot exist. So it all resume to temptation... difficult to chose: incredible taste and all the unhealthy sugar inside or ... just nothing. I tried to stay far from them, as I couldn't make them right anyway, but now that I have finally found the recipe.... it will put me under even a bigger temptation :)

By all means, if you love meringue.... this is THE recipe I have looking for more than 30 years. Thank you Rick for sharing the secrets of this recipe with me.

When my sandwich maker died, I chose to buy a more versatile snack-grill with interchangeable trays. You can cook waffles, doughnuts, biscuits, sandwiches, bread, meat or whatever you may think of. Of course this was just a caprice I did for myself but it turned to be very practical. No big trays to wash manually, just 2 small ones that can be cleaned in the dishwasher. Overall it takes a bit more time to bake them all but I get such nice shapes that you can eat the food with your eyes.
I will not advertise the brand as you do not need such an extra kitchen device if you have a conventional oven.
I have already said that I like doughnuts very much. What I do not like at them is to be fried in oil. They are more tasty if fried but baked, they are more healthy. So I go for the healthiest version.

If you like, you may add some sourcream and jam and you get the famous desert called "Papanasi". I have done them before with a different recipe in another post, here.

But lets try these ones!

Last batch of bath bombs was a bit oily and my daughter was not very into it. It was then the time to try another recipe.
Two summers ago I have been into a such an amazing trip to Province in France. I have incredibly wonderful memories from there and only thinking back puts me in a dreaming phase.
I came back from there not only with memories but with 1kg of lavender essential oil. Yes, you read it well, 1 kg. I took it from a country farm, straight from the producer. Meantime I used it for relaxing moments although not at all during my pregnancy. At that time I was not having in my mind to do soaps or any homemade cosmetics but I bought it because I was loving the smell of lavender and because I was buying it almost from the field.
Now, the time has come to use it in my homemade products. Bath bombs were on the list, so here they come...

Adding soap colorant instead of food colorant gave a lighter color to the mixture. When using it in the water, it did not color the water that much. The smell from these bath bombs is persistent and so so relaxing. And yes, they fizz. Try it for your next relaxing hot bath!

I have done homemade dishwasher tablets before but they were not 100% natural. This time, here they are.
They smell incredibly nice and they leave the dishes in a brilliant state. What can you ask more from a dishwasher tablet?

With this cold and rainy weather, as much as I like doing bread in the wood fire oven it becomes a bit difficult to make it every weekend. This is how, today I said I am going back to the conventional oven this time.
Also due to the lack of time, I chose a yeast based bread and added an extra sourdough that was meant to be discarded.

Uh... it was so quick and so easy to do it. No bannetons were needed, the loaves were put straight into the pans after the first fermentation. However with all these advantages, I find that the sourdough bread is always superior.

I went back looking for my pans as lately, I discovered that my daughter likes very much sandwiches that I make in the sandwich maker. As my bread slices coming generally from rustic breads are not having the nice squared shapes that suits best the sandwiches, preparing them in the sandwich maker was always a challenge. And you probably know, for kids is so important that the sandwiches look so much with the ones seen on commercials, photos or simply colleagues or friends.
As the problem was only about the shape, I had to adapt and make my breads more squared. This was simply achieved by using some classic cake pans. So here they are, not perfectly square but almost.

Merry Christmas !

Uhhh, another soap with adventures but what a lovely result!

With the crazy schedule that I had in the last time I simply forgot that I made this bread almost 1 month ago and I simply didn't have the time to publish it. So finally, here it is.

I have tried a lot of recipes lately but this one was outstanding. I made 2 loaves of this bread, one was eaten immediately and the second one I put it in the freezer. It is not such a big surprise to tell you that even the frozen one was eaten from a glance. And this, not because we were that hungry but because this bread is a jewelry. Its white crumb and dark crust are contrasting in a beautiful way adding to the impressive taste and texture also a pleasure to look at it first before taking any bite. Let's see the recipe...