ENTERTAINING in the Cold but Romantic Valentine Month
Something to warm your heart and stomach, plus a very practical and ecological
mobile phone charger on the wall
By Mary Canovas
Fancy Sugar Cubes
See full video tutorial En Casa Contigo (in Spanish)
Fancy sugar cubes are so easy to make. They add a special touch to your coffee or at a tea party. They are also perfect to decorate cupcakes, castle or other special cakes. You can use cookie cutters or small chocolate silicon molds or hand cut them. Use cookie cutters to make trees or stars for Christmas or bast, ghosts or pumpkins for Halloween. The video will show you how to make a sugar heart—perfect for Valentine´s Day or weddings…
You can add food coloring, even extracts like lemon or mint, to make them even more appealing and versatile.
Ingredients
• 1/2 cup or 125 gr. white sugar
• 1-1 1/2 teaspoons water
• heart-shaped cutter
• food coloring
• Extracts (optional) – mint
Our recipe is made with food coloring and mint extract.
How To
• Place sugar in a small bowl .
• Add 1 teaspoon of water. On top of this add 2 to 3 drops of food coloring. (Start with less; you can always add more.)
• Stir with a fork until the water and coloring are thoroughly mixed . Add more coloring if necessary.
• Add one drop of extract (optional) and up to 1/2 teaspoon more of water.
• There should not be more than a total of 1 1/2 teaspoons of water. If you really need more because you are adding more coloring, do it drop by drop. Don´t let the sugar get too wet or it will dissolve.
• If you aren´t using food coloring just add 1 1/2 teaspoons of water and mix well.
• Place the 3 or 4 tablespoons of the sugar on a clean flat surface.
• Use a spatula to gently flatten sugar.
• Cut out your figures with the cookie cutter and remove excess with a brush.
• Slide the figure onto a spatula and lay it on a flat surface.
• Let it air dry from 1/2 to 4 hours, depending on the thickness, heat and humidity. Ours took only 1/2 hour.
• Click the video above (in Spanish) to follow the steps to make your fancy sugar cubes.
Pizza Hot Pocket Turnover
See full video tutorial in Spanish
How about a pizza hot pocket turnover? Sorry, they are not microwavable but are easy to make and only take 20 minutes in the oven.
Made with puff pastry for a light crispy crust and filled with all your pizza favorites. You can make them in a mini size as hot appetizer or larger for lunch or brunch. They can be reheated in a microwave—but only 10 seconds.
Ingredients:
• Puff pastry fresh or frozen and thawed
• 1 cup pizza sauce – if you don´t have tomato sauce handy just ad 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/2
teaspoon garlic powder and 1/4 teaspoon oregano to 1 cup of prepared tomato sauce.
• 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup diced hard cheese: gouda, emental, manchego etc. – Taste
• 1/2 cup chorizo or pepperoni diced
• garlic powder and oregano Salt
• Egg wash – 1 egg 2 tablespoons water beaten
Directions
• Preheat oven to 200ºC – 400ªF Beat the egg and water in a small bowl with a fork and set aside.
• Unfold pastry sheet on lightly floured surface. Flatten if necessary with a roller to about 3 mm. (depends on the type of pastry you buy – Casa Tarradellas fresh hojaldre has a perfect thickness, so no need to do this step)
• Cut into squares of 4 “- 12 cm. You can make them smaller or larger according to taste.
• Place a teaspoon pizza or tomato sauce with salt, garlic powder and oregano in the center
• Top it with some chorizo or pepperoni, 2 or 3 more pieces of hard cheese (gouda, emental, manchego etc.) and a teaspoon of grated mozzarella cheese on top. Take care with the amounts. The mix has to fit inside the sealed turnover.
• Season with a pinch of salt, garlic powder and oregano on top of mozzarella .
• Close your triangle and join the sides with a fork . Then turnover these sides to make sure none of the filling escapes. This second step is very important.
• Use a fork to prick once or twice.
• Place the turnovers on an oven tray lined with parchment paper or silicon type Silmät
• Paint the entire turnover with the egg wash.
Very important: Preheat the oven.
• Bake for 20 minutes or until crust is golden brown at 200ºC (or follow manufacturer´s directions as to temperature).
• Let them cool down a couple of minutes after removing from the oven—they come out really hot!
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Sweet and Sour Sauce – Chinese Restaurant Style – Quick and Easy
Chinese Restaurant Style
Sweet Sour Sauce ready in less than 5 minutes!
Our sweet sour sauce is so smooth and light you can use it for all your Chinese dishes or with meat, or chicken, fish, fried rice, spring rolls or wherever you want a special sweet-sour touch.
Ingredients (makes 1 1/4 cups):
Smoked bacon and Sesame Chicken in a Sweet and Sour Sauce
• 240 ml – 1 cup fresh or canned pineapple juice .
• 100 gr – 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar or rice vinegar
• 2 tablespoons ketchup
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 2 spoonfuls cornstarch (Maicena)
• 4 tablespoons water – to dissolve cornstarch
• Sal – pinch
Directions
• Dissolve the cornstarch in 4 tablespoons water; set aside
• Pour the pineapple juice, salt, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce and ketchup into a saucepan
• Heat on medium high until all the sugar dissolves
• Lower the heat and add the cornstarch, stirring constantly until it boils, becomes translucent and thickens
You can store any unused sauce in the fridge in a closed container up to 1 week
Mobile Phone Wall Charger
See full video tutorial in Spanish
We all need to recharge our cell/mobile phone. But you hate to plug them into a wall socket and leave your phone and wires on a table or, worse, on the floor. We´ll show you how to make a cell phone charger at home, free of charge, practical and it´s even ecological – made of recycled materials.
Materials
• Plastic bottle of shampoo, baby lotion etc. clean, rinsed and dry.
• Scissors
• Regular marker not indelible
• Optional: plastic paint, tape Washi type
How To
• Remove all labels
• Make sure the bottle is wide and high enough to accommodate the phone plus at least half times more height for hanging.
• Cut the the top off the bottle at least 1 1/2 times your phone´s height.
• Place the phone inside the bottle and with your marker paint a square on top (that´s where you´ll be hanging it on the plug). See video.
• Following your marker, cut out the top part.
• Clean the edges with a cotton ball dipped in water.
• If the edges are a little raw you can smooth them out with some fine sandpaper.
Optional – You can also paint your charger with acrylic paint or cover it up with Washi tape, vinyl contact paper, or glue gift wrapping paper on it.
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Images
Featured image/AnnalisseArt from Pixabay
Sweet and sour sauce/Judy Gallagher, Flickr, CC BY2.0
