Joyeux Noël!

During my holidays, I've enjoyed to make some Sablés de Fête (butter cookies of holidays) to such an extent that I want to write here the recipe of these delicious biscuits! I hope you enjoy them too...

Ingredients for around 50 cookies: 500 g of flour, 200 g of salted butter, 2 eggs, 200 g of sugar, 80 g of powdered almonds, four spices mix, unsweetened cocoa powder, powered ginger, orange peels.

Preparation: 20 minutes; Cooking: 10 minutes; Settling: 3 hours.

Recipe in 3 steps:

1. Preparing the dough.

Mix the flour, the sugar and the powered almonds in a big bowl. Then, add the 2 eggs and the butter after having melted it in room temperature without cooking it. Stir the mix firstly with the help of a fork than work the pastry rapidly with your hands.

2. Flavouring the balls.

Separate the dough in 4 balls. Then mix each of these four balls with one different flavour: one with the powered ginger, one with the orange peels, one with the cocoa, and one with the four spices mix. Work quickly each ball and wrap it in a cling film. Then let the 4 balls stand during 3 hours at least.

3. Forming the Sablés.

Preheat your oven to 210°C. Spread out each ball with a rolling pin to a thickness of around 5 mm. With the help of cookie cutter, cut off the forms from the sheet of dough. Then, place all the forms you've done on a baking pan covered with greaseproof paper and cook them during around 10 minutes. Leave making cool them and, finally, eat them! (or at least, you can also offer them to your family, to your friend, or to whatever you want!!)

Bon Appétit!

Cute stuff for your petite cuisine!

During last days, I've carved a lot of rubber stamps figuring kitchen items: as you can see in these photos, I've produced a stamp for almost all stuffs you can find in your petite cuisine! There's a toaster, one Le Creuset pot, cutlery, glasses, cups, some foods etc...

I've promptly used them for decorating some placemats...

If Zakka is the art of seeing the savvy in the ordinary and mondane, these placemats are Zakka at the maximum level! Indeed, I think that it's a great idea to make cute the ordinary things, to which usually we don't pay any attention. In this way, also a placemat or a dishcloth could transform your kitchen in a pleasant and cute place where you can dedicate yourself to your yummy creations! Bon appetit!

Stamping before Christmas!

Christmas is just around the corner and, although the bitter cold, I love to let me cuddle by the gleaming atmosphere of decorated streets... these days are indeed the best ones because there's not yet the typical crowd of last-minute hunting of gifts and I was even able to take this foto at the Galeries Lafayette without having been run over by hordes of freaked out tourists... scary!!!

Everything is perfect even if a bit of snow will give the last touch of magic to this Xmas atmosphere. So, I tried to remedy this lacking with these fantastic stamps in the shape of a snowflake that will enrich my starving personal collection. And, if it's true that it's impossible to have two absolutely identical snowflakes, Muji have done 14 different geometrical forms of snowflake with which I promptly preened my gifts... these stamps give really a cute Christmas touch...

Smells like tiny puppy!

Here 's four new little friends: my softy tiny puppies! More than being a great fun to made, this is my personal tribute to all dogs, these tender and faithful pals, that I love very much. I've done the breeds that I find the most bisarre, I hope that they could find someone who wants to adopt them!

The Bull Terrier

The Chiwawa

The Pug

The Jack Russel

Le fabuleux destin de Memi The Rainbow...

"instead, she cultivates a taste for small pleasures: dipping her hand into sacks of grain, cracking crème brûlée with a teaspoon and skipping stones at the St. Martin's Canal..."

This is my favourite scene of the famous film "Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain". That's maybe because the notes of Yann Tiersen on the background is really harrowing, or because I totally share the idea about which the key of happiness is contained in little acts, in little things. The fact remains that as soon as I can, I love have a walk along the pebbly stripe that skirts the quiet waters of Canal Saint-Martin. Its magic has no equal maybe because all-we're just seeking the sound of stones thrown on the water; it's the flavour of little moments of daily life that we need, not the fiction of sadly-funny conditions.

Canal Saint-Martin by day and by night...

And during one of my walks, I ran into this new little "friend" that I want to present to you, voilà Monsieur Taterpot:

Let's have fun growing a plant in a cute potato-shapped pot!

It's a very cute pot in the shape of a potato in which to grow up a very fragrant basilic plant. Although I'm not really good at take care of plants (I'm able even to make cactus die of thirst!!!) but I assure I will get an exception for this cutest gem!

The shop in which I found it is nearby the Canal and if you're in Paris, I suggest you to pop on it because, more then Monsieur Tatepot, there are a wide range of little stuffs that could surely make you happy!

This shop is Pop Market, adress: 50, rue Bichat, 75010 Paris