I rarely bake bread in a Dutch oven but every time I do it I wonder why I do not do it more often. The Dutch oven has the big advantage that it preserve the humidity of the dough and this helps the bread to raise very nicely.
Of course you can simulate the humidity by adding steam into your classic oven, but the Dutch oven makes the things so simple... And the result is outstanding almost every time.

I need to mention that for this photo my daughter hold the bread and the most difficult task for her was to stop herself biting from it. Of course after the shooting, both of my kids enjoyed a freshly baked slice of this gorgeous bread.

I've got inspired 2 weeks ago to make a blood orange upside-down cake. I bought the oranges and waited 2 weeks to find the time to actually put the recipe in practice.
The cake actually turned to be exceptionally good and incredibly flavored. Also, not very time consuming and not over complicated.
Now I am again inspired to do all sort of upside-down cakes with all sorts of fruits. Let's see...

Although I repeat quite often the same soup recipe I make, sometimes I like to test something new. This pea soup was an alternative to my regular Traditional chicken soup.
Easy to do and with a particular taste given by the peas, it is for sure a good treat or aperitive.
Being of color green I was wondering if my kids would like it. It looked like the color was not a problem for them and despite my initial doubts the taste was well appreciated.
This is a healthy soup. If you are vegetarian, skip the bacon that, in my opinion gives the sparkle of this dish.

I made these waffle once but before being able to photograph any they were simply gone. This time I doubled the quantity hoping that I could save some for a photo. Anyway, I had to be quick :).
What I like about these waffles is that they are very soft. They simply melt into your mouth.
Beating the egg whites separately gives them a fluffy structure and that makes optional any addition of a raising agent like yeast or baking powder.
Try these as a snack for your kids and let me know how quickly they disappear.

I had this idea to make muffins without any diary product. I am very used to use butter as ingredients to cupcakes or sometimes even oil. But I saw once a recipe without any of these ingredients. I thought to give it the try and see what is brings. I do not recall the source of that recipe but the idea remained in my head.
No surprise that these muffins grew in the oven as any traditional muffin. The difference was instead in texture. If you combine them with a frosting that is based on butter I think that the lack of grease in the muffins is totally ignored. However for my taste, these ones were a little dry. My kids did not share the same opinion with me as they enjoyed them without any negative remark.
As for the texture, that is a wow. It is extremely soft, with very fine holes inside and they simply melt into your mouth.
The taste was just perfect. Although I expected to have quite a strong taste from the powdered green tea, it only gave a slight flavor that I really liked.
The meringues instead got a strong green tea taste. I like the taste of green tea so it didn't bothered me. Neither my kids complained, but the taste is clearly changed due to the matcha powder.
Any decoration from this recipe is totally optional. I decorated them with chocolate (as I promised my daughter some chocolate muffins, but I didn't specify if the chocolate was inside or outside), using the chocolate as a "glue" for the meringues. The matcha meringues were more for fun and to treat my kids with a homemade sweet after lunches.

I was looking for some exotic winter tart and I had in mind to make something with persimmons. I love their subtle aroma and their sweet pulp. Being enough sweet, I felt the need to add something sour in the fruit puree and instead of using the classical lemon, I opted for another exotic fruit, kumquat. They go quite well together, making a sweet-sour fine taste.
When I planned for this recipe I was heaving in mind another way to do it. I wanted a baked tart shell and just one layer of fruit crust. How I ended up with this recipe was instead quite differently.
The initial baked crust was a total failure. It shrunk in the oven and was totally unusable. It was eaten later by my kids as biscuits. I then had to start all over again, but this time I went for a very simple version as time was not allowing me to redo the previous one.
The fruit tart was exactly the one I planned for. My only comment when tasting it was.... way too much butter. If I do this recipe again, butter quantity in the fruit crust will be clearly diminished.
To the initial planned tart I added a glaze just to get a nice look on top, but in the end I thing that this top layer added much more fruit flavor as the fruit curd itself.
The resulting cake was not bad at all. A bit heavier than I wished for due to the high quantity of butter but the taste was special.

Let's see what is inside...