Delicious no-bake date cake

Browsing through some older photos, I found pics of this delicious date cake. In case you're still in need of an Xmas success recipe, here's your no-bake ticket to fame.

The recipe is from the Dutch 'Bagels & Beans' franchise, who serve this cake and are awesome enough to share the recipe:

• 500 gr dates (without pits and cut into slices)
• 250 gr dairy butter (Dutch: roomboter)
• 150 gr brown caster sugar (Dutch: bruine basterdsuiker)
• 1 hand of walnuts, chopped into fine pieces
• 1 tube of Marie biscuits, broken in pieces of about 1 cm (Dutch: een rol maria biscuitjes)
• 1 egg
• Caramel sirup (or praline/butterscotch sirup)
• Cocos flakes for decoration (I like to use quite a bit, as you can see on the photo ;) )

1. Carefully melt the butter
2. Add sugar and stir it thoroughly so that the suger dissolves a bit
3. Beat the egg with a whisk (Dutch: ei goed loskloppen met garde) and add to butter and sugar; while stirring it thoroughly, let it boil for a short while
4. Add two shots of caramel sirup, boil for a bit longer
5. Add dates, stir well and let boil for 1 minute
6. Add biscuits and walnuts, mix everything
7. Pour everything in a greased spring cake tin (Dutch: springvorm), flatten it well with the back of a tabletspoon, and let it cool for about 1 1/2 hour. The cake should be about 1 1/2 cm thick. When it has cooled, pour the cocos over it and enjoy!

And then... there was a new post

Yes!
It's been some time. My Industrial Design master education has started and I promptly did not have time for anything else anymore. Currently I'm three and a half month in and in a semi-permanent overload-mode since roughly week three, but just one week left until the Christmas holiday weeks so I hope to recover then.

In the mean time, I received the advise that it might not be such a fantastic idea to keep thinking that I just need to hang in there until the end of the school year, since by that time I might just as well have overloaded myself so much already that I won't be able to start with my thesis and such. Good advice. Difficult to follow since I do not want to get any study delay. I want to be done with school before my thirties dammit! XD

Anyway, part of that advise was also that I really really really should pay attention to my energy level. Fighting energy leaks and making 'energy bringers' a priority. All things I used to do in the past but that I have sort of managed to give up on, going into survival mode. So yeah. It really is time to get back to taking good care of myself. And what really gives me energy? Creating of course!

So, this weekend (the very first free weekend instead of max one free day since I started, I believe...) I took my time making something for lunch and even made a picture of it.

I'm so proud of myself! ;)
Because when being away from home for 12-14+ hours a couple of sandwiches are not gonna cut it, I sometimes boil rice in the weekend to freeze it in in daily portion bags. In the morning I just need to throw one portion in a frying pan with a little water, spices and perhaps also meat and veggies, and I have a real decent lunch to take with me.

This lunch was more extended since I had the time, so I added an union, half a bell pepper (Dutch: paprika), salami, turmeric (Dutch: kurkuma/geelwortel), cajun spice mix and a little soy sauce. It tasted divine on a cold afternoon.

Another project I've done some time ago was daubing decorating my solid green dummy notebook while in the train. After completing it the marker turned out to be wearing off on my hands so I put a plastic cover over it. That made it slightly less awesome but I can live with that.

Before you start commenting on my awesome creative skillzz, the pattern was made largely from an example ;). The notebook is almost full now, so I need to find a new one to start doodling on. Hurray! More doodle space!

The mystery topping...

I found this picture of a snack I've made a long time ago:

Vaguely, I recall being very enthusiastic about it. Enthusiastic enough to take at least 20 pictures of it. A good idea, as it turns out, since most of them are blurry. And messy, but even sharp pictures can't solve that.

But what it was? Dunno. Okay, let's take a look at the topping. What exactly is that on the plate?

Looks like some mixture. Of chopped black olives and basil. And sun-dried tomatoes, or normal tomatoes. Or both. The tiny beige specs look like pine nuts. I probably threw in some olive oil, sea salt and pepper too. And garlic, it sounds like garlic makes sense in this context.

And then all of that on cracker. Sounds tasty. Not very original, but tasty. Hmmm. Maybe I should make some.

I am not a granny, I am not a granny, I am not...

...even though I made this hand-sewn and hand-embroidered lavender bag.

Because the lavender has been growing like weed.

Because I'm currently spending near all my time on nerdy/design activities. Which means I still have a few 'grandma' credits left before turning into a full-fledged 'doilies, bears and kittens' person. I'm still cool.

But mostly because it was too ridiculously hot and sunny to move and/or concentrate, while I still needed something to do on my day off. Forgive me, for I had nothing better to do. The weather report weaves tales of a continuing heatwave, so more embroidery might follow...

Guess who's back!

Yup. Yours truly. I'm baaahaack!

Since my previous post I have been über-busy with all the preparations and first steps of my web design business. But alas! The long days of working and sweating over design mockups and programming training are almost over, and the long days of working and sweating over client design mockups and debugging are almost starting. The main difference: I'll get paid. At least I hope so.

In case you were wandering "did you really need three months for that?" well, I did plan the launch to be in only half that time. However, en route my body and mind performed their united "hey you there, get back here!" routine again so I needed to take things sloooow for a while. Yeah, life and health and sanity and such. The good news is that now I'm both rested ánd well-prepared, beat that!

Since all this work left little time for other projects, I'm slightly behind on pretty much all of my plans. I hope I'll be able to pick them up slowly the next weeks. There might also appear some older creations that I had already photographed and subsequently forgotten about. I'd tell you what kind of projects if I hadn't forgotten about them.

One thing I do remember is going to the textiles market with a friend. Though the reason I still remember it might be that it happened a few days ago. Ah well. In case you are now looking at me with the stern look that says "didn't you already have waaaay to much fabric while doing pretty much nothing with it?", it wasn't my fault. I was morally obliged to tag along for mental support to my friend who needed to stash big time for her sewing plans. And the reason I came home with a big stash of cloth as well was, ehm... Well you don't need an excuse for stashing really nice €1 per meter cloth, really. I just need to find more storage space, that's all.

Among the new supplies is a piece of unbleached cotton (Dutch: kaasdoek). Which is very convenient in the kitchen as well as for drying herbs as my friend told me. Herbs. Whenever I stumble across the word 'herbs' I think of Eddy Izzard's sketch:

The man is a genius.

*Disclaimer: I am Dutch but only speak two languages, the other six have long been forgotten ;).