No-Bake Chocolate Ganache Tart

The other day I was scrolling through Instagram and Pinterest and kept coming across all these beautiful pictures of cakes and desserts. All I kept thinking was: "Maybe I should try making this" and "That looks absolutely divine". So, I decided to look back to the summer and one of my favourite recipes for Luca's birthday: a no-bake chocolate ganache tart. Sounds delicious, doesn't it?

Just look at how happy he is with his birthday cake... Or maybe it was just the idea of getting to blow another candle :-) Anyway, everyone loooooved the tart and, even better, it is super easy to make. Just try it. Now I got the original recipe (in Dutch) from this website (https://www.leukerecepten.nl/recepten/chocoladetaart-met-aardbeien-zonder-oven/). I just tweaked it to be more to my liking :-)

So here goes...

First things first, the easiest way of making the tart is in a baking pan with a removable bottom, For this blogpost I decided to make the miniature version in a earthenware pan, which is also possible, it's just a bit trickier to remove the cake from the pan without the bottom and sides crumbling in your hands...

I bought these pretty little pans at Maisons du Monde in early summer and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them :-) And I must say they worked perfectly.

Now, let's start making the chocolate ganache tart (don't worry, I've included the concise version of the recipe in English and Dutch at the bottom of this post). 

No-Bake Chocolate Ganache Tart

Ingredients:

• 250 grams (or 9 oz) of petit beurre cookies (Graham crackers works as well)
• 100 grams (or 3.5 oz) of melted butter
• 300 grams (or 10.5 oz) of dark chocolate
• 200 ml (or a little under 0,5 pt) of double cream
• Assortment of berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries) for decorating

Recipe:

We're starting with the preparations, so take your baking pan (with removable bottom) and line it with parchment paper. Make sure the bottom and sides are well-lined so it will be easy afterwards  to remove the tart from the pan.

Now let's start cooking! Take your petit beurre cookies or Graham crackers and put them in a blender. Blitz the cookies or crackers until it looks like course sand. Then put the blitzed cookies in a bowl and put it to the side. Now, melt the butter, making sure you keep an eye on the melting butter, so you don't burn it. 

Next, add the melted butter to the blitzed cookies. I always choose to pour all the butter in at once and then start stirring, but you can add it gradually as well. Just keep stirring that cookie and butter mixture until it resembles wet sand.

Since our cookie and butter mixture is finished now, we can put it in our lined baking pans. Just spread out the mixture on the bottom of the pan first and pat it down firmly and evenly with a spoon. Also make sure to create a cookie edge as well by patting down the cookie mixture on the sides. This always takes a bit longer for me because I keep trying to pat down more cookie mixture to create good, firm sides. The problem is that by doing so I always tear down parts of the sides I've already made... So try to keep your perfectionist side at bay :-)

When you have put the cookie mixture in the baking pan and you have patted it down on the bottom and the sides, you put the baking pan in the fridge for at least 1 hour. 

Time for a little break. I usually take this time to start cleaning the mess I've already made and then put on a load of laundry or read a magazine or a chapter in a book. Relaxing is important too, after all :-)

When you're nearing the end of the hour, you can start on the next stage of the tart: the easiest chocolate ganache you will ever make. All you need is dark chocolate and double cream. That's it. 

So take your double cream, pour it in a saucepan and start heating it. The double cream doesn't need to boil (it can, but it is not necessary), it just needs to be warm enough to melt the chocolate. When heating the double cream, make sure it doesn't burn or boil over. 

Next break the chocolate in pieces and put it in a bowl. When the double cream is warm enough, pour it over the chocolate and start stirring. You need to stir the chocolate and cream until all the chocolate has melted and you have a shiny, gooey chocolate mixture. This is your chocolate ganache. Easy, right?

I am Belgian, so I'm used to really delicious chocolate. My favourite is Côte d'Or, so rich and full of flavour... Yum yum :-)

 

When your chocolate ganache is ready, you take the baking pan with the cookie base out of the fridge. Just pour the ganache over the cookie bottom until almost at the top of the sides. Don't pour it over or you might end up with a chocolate, gooey mess. When the ganache is in the baking pan, put the pan back in the fridge to set for about 3 hours. 

 

Another break for you to do your housekeeping, run some errands... Or you could even make the tart up to this point the day before and then leave it in the fridge overnight. 

When the three hours are up, you can start prepping the berries and decorating the tart to your liking. Before you start putting berries on top of your tart, make sure you carefully take it out of the baking pan, remove the parchment paper and put it on the plate on which you want to serve it. Don't worry if your tart is crumbling slightly, this is perfectly normal. Then you just start putting the berries on the tart until it looks the way you want it to. When the tart is finishe, you can keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days. 

Now, stop your fidgeting and moving berries around and surprise your family and friends with this beautiful and delicious chocolate ganache tart. 

Enjoy!

Love, Ans xoxo

P.S.: You can find the concise version of the recipe right here. Enjoy!

Steak sandwich with homemade chimichurri

Hello again

As promised in my previous post and on my instagram (ansje684) I will share some recipes with you that I have tried out for Luca's third birthday party. The lucky recipe for today is... Steak sandwich with homemade chimichurri... Yum yum! But I have to admit I have always been a sucker for meals concerning steak. It's the only meat keeping me from being a vegetarian...

Now, I decided to try this one because I think fresh herb and veggie sauces or dips are always better than storebought ones. Hence my obsession to make my own chimichurri. And boy, was it easy to make... I'll be writing down the recipe for the steak sandwich with chimichurri, but I'll make sure to be very clear about the ingredients needed for the chimichurri alone. Don't worry ;-)

Why don't you try it at home as well, and let me know what you think. I, for one, love it! :-)

Lots of love

Ans x

Steak sandwich with homemade chimichurri

Ingredients:

- 1 baguette

- 2 steaks

- 1 table spoon of olive oil

- 2 table spoons of lemon mayonaise (storebought)

- 75 grams of arugula

- chimichurri:

     - 1 red pepper (Spanish or other hot kind)

     - 1 clove of garlic

     - 15 grams of coriander/cilantro (fresh)

     - 20 grams of flat leaf parsley (fresh)

     - 2 tea spoons of dried oregano

     - 15 grams of mint leaves (fresh)

     - 6 table spoons of olive oil

     - 2 table spoons of red wine vinegar

Preparation:

1) Make the chimichurri:

     a) Cut the stem off the red pepper, cut in half (lengthwise) and remove the seeds. Cut the

         pepper into pieces (they don't need to be very fine, as the ingredients will afterwards

         be blitzed to make a smooth whole)

     b) Take a high cup and add the red pepper, garlic, coriander/cilantro, flat leaf parsley,

         oregano, mint leaves, 6 table spoons of olive oil and the red wine vinegar. Blitz the 

         ingredients coarsely and season with salt.(I needed to use a bit more olive oil to get

         the right texture, so feel free to add some more until you have the texture you like).

2) Take a skillet and add the table spoon of olive oil. Put the skillet on high heat and cook

     your steak in 4 minutes (2 minutes on each side). Then, take the steak out of the skillet,

     wrap it in tin foil and let it rest for 5 minutes.

3) Cut you baguette in half (lengthwise) and put the bottom half on a wooden board or 

     serving dish. Spread the lemon mayonaise on the bottom half of the baguette and put 

     the arugula on top.

4) Cut your steaks in thin slices and put them on the arugula. Put your homemade 

     chimichurri on the steak (as little or much as you like. As you can see in the pictures, I

     like a lot of chimichurri on my steak ;-) ). Put the top of the baguette on you chimichurri 

     covered steaks. 

5) Cut the baguette in 4 pieces and serve fresh. Enjoy!

Being a mom = Being a birthday party planner

Hello everyone!

Once again, long time no see. I seem to be the world's worst blogger, my apologies. But with the summer holidays, one of the perks of being a teacher, I happen to have a lot of time right now to pick it up again. 

But whatever will I talk about???

Well, as I told you in a previous post, I am a mom of a summer baby. This means that my son's birthday is coming up quite quickly. Yes, believe it or not, little Luca is turning 3 next Sunday... They grow up so fast, don't they? Just look at him smiling, all excited about his upcoming birthday parties. 

Now this might seem a bit strange, but you heard me (or read me) correctly: I am throwing him a total of 3 birthday parties. I must admit that for his third birthday, this actually sounds really good, just as long as he doesn't expect the number of parties to rise with his age ;-) But that is not the reason behind the birthday madness. The real reason is much simpler: holidays abroad. Around the time of Luca's birthday (and mine) both my brother and his family, and my in-laws are headed in or out of the country, meaning it was absolutely impossible to find one date when everyone could come. Hence the split in family parties + 1 party for his godmother and some other close friends (lack of space in our little house and garden is the reason here). 

So, once the decision had been made to throw him three parties, we had to decide what we were going to do. Is there going to be a theme? What kind of food are we going to serve? What about the drinks? What kind of toys are we going to provide for the other kids? What are we going to buy for his birthday? And the list goes on. So where to begin?

That was quite easy for me. I decided to start with his wishlist. I think as a mom, it is not difficult to determine what your child likes and loves (and for a 3-year-old I would really recommend you still do all the choosing, they can be quite fickle, you know). Luca, for instance, is currently crazy about cars, playmobil, duplo, paw patrol and, his favourite, dinosaurs. To make the wishlist more accessible, I use an online wishlist website, www.lijstje.be (this one is only in Dutch, I'm afraid). I love how easy it is to set it up and for others to use. I just need to log in, decide on the name for the wishlist, decide whether I want a password and start adding presents. Once you have done all this, you can simply let the invitees know where they can find the list and they can choose freely and check the boxes of the things they decide to buy. In this way, the presents will still be a surprise and you won't have any awkward double present situations :-)

Once I had gotten all this done, I figured it was time to start on the menu for the 3 parties. We decided to organise barbecues for the family parties and something afternoon tea-like for his godmother and family friends. I must admit that it seemed quite daunting for me at first to get all of this organised, and I really felt that it would be useful if I wrote everything down somewhere so I could use it for future reference. That's when I created my little planning book...

I still had this little Minnie Mouse Molesking lying around and finally decided to put it to good use :-) Next, I made a table of content, so it would be easy for me to find what I'm looking for

Creating this "party planner" also gave me the opportunity to finally use my pastel markers, Yay! I started with the main title: Luca's birthday parties in 2018. Afterwards I subdivided  the chapter into the 3 parties and a 4th section on the recipes I will need for these parties. When you take a look into the actual chapter of the planner, it kind of looks like this

I'm afraid I've written it all in Dutch, so those of you who don't speak it, might have difficulty understanding what it says ;-) Basically, it comes down to this structure. I start each party with a general overview of who will be there and what the general ideas are (food, drinks, entertainment...). Then I take a closer look at appetizers, the actual main course and dessert. I also make sure to mention the expected prizes of the main course, so I won't get any unpleasant surprises afterwards. This is more difficult for the appetizers and desserts, since I will be making most of that myself. 

The only thing left for me to do at this time, is to make sure I have all the recipes in one place, hence the 4th subchapter...

For those of you who can read it, yes, it is quite an extensive list, but I live by the Dutch motto: It is better to have too much food, than too little. I wouldn't want anyone to go home hungry. And there is always the concept of 'doggy bags'. I already told some invitees to bring some tupperware so they can take extras home with them ;-)

This actually covers most of the planning for me. I also decided to let Luca whack a piñata on the days when there are other kids as well. They can just take their pick from whatever falls out:little dinosaurs, bracelets, cars, pencils... Of course I will make sure there are tons of balloons and some dino deco. He will love it! Now all that is left for me, is to test the recipes so everything will go smoothly for the parties... The recipes and results will follow...

Wish me luck...

Bye bye

Ans x

A new start...

Hi

I know it's been forever since I've posted something, but my life has changed tremendously over the past 4 years. I left the single life behind and got married, I had a little baby who is already turned into a vivacious toddler and I've actually bought a house... Who would have thought, right?

Naturally, all these changes mean that I have a lot less (sometimes no) time to use my creative skills. And when I do manage to make something, it's usually meant as a present and of course I always forget to take pictures. Silly me. So, since my creativity is at a bit of a low right now and my life has changed so much, I decided it was time to add some changes to the blog as well. You'll be seeing more of my family, the foodies I manage to put on the table, the "exotic" locations I visit when I have the time and my (often clumsy) experiments with photography (which I've always wanted to be good at). 

So, first things first, I should start by introducing the famiily. I met my husband almost 4 years ago (two guesses where a lot of the changes in my life came from) and we actually got married last summer (Yes ladies, he put a ring on it :-) ). 

Now, we did do things a bit unconventionally... We had our son first and then we got married. Since I was already 29 (I felt absolutely ancient) when I met my husband, we decided that we didn't want to wait too long to have kids. So, when he proposed to me a year later (at sunset on a beach in Greece!!! How romantic is that!?!) we decided that we should just go ahead and try to get pregnant right away. And a few months later we struck gold: I was expecting our wonderful little boy (though I have to admit, I was initially a little bit disappointed that it wasn't a girl, I wouldn't trade him for the world right now). Nine months later (to the date) we welcomed our son Luca into the world...

And I know, as his mum I'm supposed to say it, but to us he was just the most beautiful baby we had ever seen. He was just the sweetest bundle of joy: always happy and full of life. Of course, it didn't take long for him to learn to turn on his belly, crawl, stand up, walk (before his first birthday!), run and dance (I think we are at trying to jump right now). And the talking... although he isn't very vocal yet, here are some of his favourite words: mama, koe (cow), bal (ball), tut (pacifier) and koek (cookie). And of course he had to be present at the wedding (which was also his baptism) in his best little suit!

And right now, he is closing in on his second birthday... Still the happy little boy we have had since the day he was born. And still the love of my life...

Ok, this ends the little recap of what has been going on in my life. I'll make sure to post more of the events of the past years and of course some of the upcoming events in my life. 

Lots of love,

Ans

Credits for the wedding pictures + some of Luca's pictures: Kurt Vandenbosch. Great photographer who does wonders with kids (and weddings ;-) ) -->  www.kurtvandenbosch.be

I'm back...

I know, it's been ages since I've posted something... My sincerest apologies, but life has been very busy: I've moved into a new apartment (unfortunately petless, since it's no cats allowed), school work was crazy (I've still got a whole pile of exams I need to correct) and I promise I have been busy creatively, but I either forgot to take pictures or I didn't find the time to post them. Even today I'm not going to post any of my newest creations yet. Instead I'm going to show you some of the things I would like to make in the nearby future (summer holidays are coming up, after all)... So thank you pinterest for giving me these amazing ideas...

I decided to go through my many boards and pins (I think there's about a thousand by now) and show you some of the things I really love... First of all, I always seem to love Zjizjipke's work (and not just because she's my BFF ;-) ). Recently she's really into crocheting these lovely jar jackets (I actually have one in my living room right now), and I just love these...

You can find her, and her post on these jackets, right here. I'm currently actually keeping a lot of old food and drink containers so I can start making my own jackets as well... So we'll see what the future brings. I also want to make some of these coffe cup cosies...

I just need to find the perfect cups first and then I can start crocheting. And then I think my dark grey couch needs some gorgeous colours to brighten things up, so I would also like to make a few cushion covers like these...

And then a nice little tree like this to put on a small table somewhere...

Ok, I think that's enough crocheting for now... Naturally, I would also like to sew a few things (once I really get the hang of my mom's sewing machine)... Besides the little elephants I've already made, I'd also love to make this...

And this...

And a million other things...

I guess I'll just leave you with one more thing I'd love to make someday...

Now, I'll try to come back soon and give you an update of what I've actually been creating. So untill then be happy, be wonderful and be creative...

Lots of Love

Crazy Crafter xxx

The giveaway... is away...

Hi again,

I know I've been absent again for some time. I was actually telling the BFF yesterday that I should try to post at least once a week (my Easter resolution for this year ;-) ). Anyway, I finally finished correcting all of my exams and can now enjoy 2 weeks of Easter holidays as my reward, which means I have some time to add something to my blog. And I decided to go for the end result of the giveaway... The finalised presents. So here they are...

A little book on crocheting cute amigurumi...

A booklet with adorable pink crafting paper...

A lovely piece of Tilda fabric...

One of my cute home-sewn elephants... A blue one this time...

The promised ball of simply soft party yarn in the colour of Renske's choice (teal) with a matching hooking needle... (I was actually sad to let this go, because the teal was my favourite colour too... But winners keepers... I'll just order one for myself later on ;-) )...

And then I used some of my catania collection to make these beautiful and colourful coasters. The pattern of these coasters came to me via pinterest and can be found right here: http://crochet.about.com/od/vintage/ss/aa052606.htm They're actually really easy to make (once I had made 2 of them I didn't even need the pattern anymore ;-) ) and I think they're quite pretty when you have a lot of different colours... I so need to make them for myself as well :-)

So, these were all the giveaway presents... I put them in a big box, added some newspaper so the items wouldn't get damaged and sent it to Renske... 

I actually got an email from Renske earlier this week saying she had already received the package and was going to post the contents on her blog later on... So I suggest you all go and check it out as well ;-) And for now, I hope you'll enjoy a lovely weekend (hopefully a bit warmer than here since we're still experiencing some occasional snow) filled with crafty (and Easter) delights...

Happy Easter!!

Love,

Crazy Crafter xxx