Amazing candle

My parents got this amazing candle from our interior stylist/architect and we burned it with Christmas. It was rectangular, and the wick ran through it in different directions, splitting (at one point there were 7 wicks burning) and taking many different paths. I took some pictures of it.

Tiramisu

My mom and I made this amazing dessert for our Christmas dinner. Tiramisu is an Italian dessert with finger biscuits soaked in espresso and mascarpone. We used this recipe, it's really very simple to make! It will be enough for 8 quite large portions.

Ingredients
250 ml whipped cream (the one you still need to whip yourself)

75 g white castor sugar (basterdsuiker)
4 egg yolks
500 g mascarpone (Italian cream cheese)
5 tablespoons coffee liquor (or almond liquor)
200 ml espresso coffee
250 g finger biscuits
Cacoa powder

Materials
Square or rectangular bowl, approximately 1 1/4 liter

 

Preparation

In a bowl, whip the whipped cream with 1 teaspoon of  the sugar until it is nearly stiff. In another bowl, mix (using a mixer) the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar for 5 minutes until it is a creamy mixture. Carefully (using a spoon) mix parts of the mascarpone through the egg yolks, until you have done so with all the mascarpone. Now gently fold (spoon, mix, don't know what word to use) the whipped cream through the mascarpone mixture. Take a shallow, long bowl and in there mix the liquor through the (cooled down) espresso. Take half of the finger biscuits and dip them into the coffee mixture, then put them with the coffee side up in the bowl (the 1 1/4 l one). Once the bottom is covered with finger biscuits, spread half of the mascarpone mixture over them. Then repeat with the rest of the finger biscuits to form another one of these layers. Let the tiramisu stiffen in the refridgerator for at least an hour. Take it out shortly before serving and cover generously with cacoa powder (use a small siff).

Note

We started using a 1 1/4 liter bowl, but this wasn't big enough, so we used the one shown on the picture. So if you have on that is a bit bigger, use that one.

Happy New Year!

A little late, but still: I would like to wish all of you a very happy new year! =D

What did you do on New Years eve? I celebrated it with my parents and my brother. My dad made oliebollen (typical Dutch fried doughballs with raisins, we traditionally make and eat them on the 31st of december), appelflappen (pieces of apple, raisins and cinnamon in triangles of puff pastry) and appelbollen (a whole apple, with raisins and cinnamon in the place of the core, wrapped in puff pastry). In the evening we gourmetted (don't know if that's how you say it..) and we all ate too much, haha.  At midnight my dad and brother set off beautiful fireworks. Here are some pictures I took of the fireworks (it was the first time I took pictures of fireworks, so they are not really amazing):

What are your plans for the new year? What are you looking forward to?
I will be going to Morocco in March, that means I'll be on another continent for the first time in my life this year! Also, I hope to be participating in the 5 km run of the Leiden Marathon and finish it within 30 minutes and I would love to go to Pinkpop for the first time if there are some good bands coming.

H&M wishlist

I saw H&M wishlists on some other blogs, so I decided to make one too!

These are the things I like from the new spring collection:

Review: 'The Böögg'

'The Böögg' is a bath ballistic from the Christmas collection at Lush. It is shaped like the head of snowman and has colourful bits inside (mine was a bit broken at the back). I got this ballistic as a Sinterklaas present from a friend, and decided to use it last Tuesday. I had never used a bath ballistic from Lush before, so I had no idea what it would be like and would happen. When my bath was full, I got in and put The Böögg next to me. The ballistic started to fizz, and the colourful bits spread out through my bath. The white part was gone after about 3 minutes, and the colourful bits disappeared within 5 minutes. After those 5 minutes I was left with just my bath water, which I thought was a shame. But then I noticed the lovely smell that The Böögg had left not only on me, but in the entire bathroom. The next morning the bathroom still smelled of this ballistic!

So if you like bath ballistics and want your whole bathroom to smell of them, The Böögg is definitely a good choice. However, I personally like the bubble bar slices from Lush more because you can use them multiple times and they give you loads of foam, where the ballistics just leave you with an empty bath.

'The Böögg' costs € 3.95 a piece.
I don't know if it's still available, since it was a special Christmas product, but if you see it and you like bath ballistics it's worth buying!

Merry Christmas!

Picture from http://meow23.tumblr.com/

I would like to wish you, my lovely readers, a merry Christmas! Enjoy the snow (or sun, if you are on the other side of the world), food and, if you get them, presents :]

Postcards

I think I have told you about postcrossing before, but I never took the time to scan the cards I received and show them. Up to now I have received 3 cards, all of them in November.

This was the first card I received, and it came all the way from Australia! It's not my favourite one, because I don't like advertisement cards that much, but it does smell good and it has cute stamps with koalas on the back.

As you can see this one came from Dortmund, Germany. I like this one very much, because I like seeing the cities where the other postcrossers are from!

This card came from a city called Arkhangelsk, in Russia. This is my favourite of the three, because I like cities by night. It also has very nice stamps on the back, with bears on them!






I hope that I will receive some more cards soon, but I also want to send some more myself. However, I think it's hard to find nice postcards that aren't too expensive. Does anybody know a webshop with nice cards, or maybe a shop in the area of Leiden?