[Recipe] The yummiest, juciest apple pie!

Hey guys!

Autumn is in full swing and I couldn't be happier. Finally it's sweater weather again ♥ I'm full of love and I've been listening to autumn playlists for days on end. Good times.

So a couple of days ago I really felt like having apple pie, but it was a Saturday night, the shops were about to close and there was nowhere I could get any. :(
But my brother had the best idea to just bake one. (Why didn't that cross my mind?)
Checking the pantry and fridge revealed that we indeed did have all the ingredients at hand. Rejoice!
So we whipped up this super yummy pie, and it was amazing. Also I just remembered that I saved up two slices in my fridge :D

You really need to try this. It's sooo yummy and not hard at all! Though I did realize that I need to work on my pie crusts (they're very thin on the bottom and thick at the sides, not really the way I like it.)
The orange juice and soft cooked apples in the filling is probably what makes this so juicy and delicious. Unfortunately it's not a pie you can eat warm (because I live for eating baked goods straight from the oven. Soooo good!), it does have to cool off overnight so the filling will go firm, but the waiting is SO worth it.

Without further ado, the recipe!

Fruity Apple Pie

Prep time: 1 hr
Baking time: 1 hr

Prepare a day a head

Ingredients:

For the crust:

170g flour

70g ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

70g sugar

a packet of vanilla sugar

120g butter

1 small egg

For the filling:

1kg apples

1 tbsp lemon juice

200ml water

500ml orange juice, no added sugar

2 packets custard/pudding powder, vanilla flavor

130g sugar

1 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice

shaved almonds (for the topping)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

2. Mix flour, ground almonds, baking powder and a pinch of salt in a large mixing bowl. Add sugar, vanilla sugar, butter and the egg and knead it into a smooth, not too firm dough. Wrap in cling film and let it rest in the fridge.

3. Peel and core the apples. Put about 350g away. Cut the rest into very thin slices and add them to a large pot. Add water and lemon juice and bring to a boil. Strain the pot, catching both the liquid and the apple slices. Fill the liquid back into the pot along with the orange juice.

4. Mix pudding powder, cinnamon and sugar in a smaller bowl, add some tablespoons of liquid from the pot and stir until there are no lumps left.

5. Bring the liquid in the pot to a boil again, remove it from the heat and stir in the prepared pudding. Put it back on low heat and cook it to a thick consistency, stirring continously. Remove it from the heat and add the cooked apple slices.

6. Grease and flour a springform pan (26cm diameter). Lay out the dough, making a 2cm high crust on the sides. Pour in the filling.

7. Cut the rest of the apples into slices and cover the pie. Sprinkle or cover with shaved almonds.

8. Bake for 20 minutes at 200°C. After that, reduce the heat to 180°C and bake for another 45 minutes. If the top is getting too brown, you can cover it with tin foil for the last 15 minutes of baking.

9. Take it out and let it cool overnight in the pan.

10. Serve with whipped cream and enjoy!

Happy baking!

Love, Besa

[Recipe] Nutella Chocolate Muffins

Heeeey everyone!

I should be SO stressed right now.
My first exam is on Tuesday and I stayed up studying until the A.M. yesterday and I feel like I'm not making any progress. Screw you, Statistics.
So naturally, instead of freaking out and get my nose up in my books and study more more more, I've whipped up a batch of chocolate muffins.

And instead of doing that now while munching down on them muffins, I'm blogging about it.

How I managed to pass any exams at all last semester is beyond me.

Anyway!

I made these and they are really good. The recipe is freestyled again, just used my go-to "pound muffn" base recipe (though lately I'm feeling that I should use a lot less butter since they always turn out super greasy lol).
I didn't want to leave them plain though so I checked the pantry for whatever I could use and wound up with chocolate muffins with a surprise Nutella core~!

I should've used less sugar and more cocoa powder, the chocolate taste is really subtle. But that should be okay if you use more Nutella. I didn't have a lot, so I didn't do either, but they are pretty yummy nonetheless.

And so fluffy!

Nutella Chocolate Muffins
Makes: 20-24 muffins
Prep time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 15-20 minutes

Ingredients:
200g flour
200g sugar and cocoa powder (adjust the ratio to your taste - I used 150g sugar and 50g cocoa powder)
200g butter
4 small or 3 large eggs
1 packet baking soda
Nutella for the filling

Instructions:
1. Mix the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.
2. Add the soft butter and eggs and mix well until you get a soft dough. It should slide off your spoon easily but also shouldn't be runny.
3. Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F.
4. Line a muffin tray with paper liners or grease it thoroughly.
5. Fill a spoonful of dough into every muffin liner, add a spoonful of Nutella on top and cover it with yet another spoonful dough.
6. Put in the oven and let bake 15-20 minutes. They should rise up and get nice and fluffy.

That's it! Eat while warm, that's when the Nutella heart is extra runny and delicious.

Happy baking!

Lots of love,
Besa

[2/101] I'm sending postcards all over the world!

Hello everyone!

Today I'd like to tell you about a really cool project I've recently joined called Postcrossing.

The idea is to send and recieve postcards from places all over the world and connect with a lot of people.
The way it works is that for every postcard you send to a person randomly selected, you recieve another from somewhere else.
Every postcard needs to have a code on it that the recipient then enters on the website to register it. Then you can see the profile of the sender, and the distance the postcard has travelled on the map. You can also upload a picture of the postcard and create a digital photo wall!

I love the idea and I've been following for a few months and now I'm finally in :) It's also on my bucket list - to send and recieve 50 postcards. I'd like to create an actual photo wall with all the postcards I get, or put them in an album, let's see.
So far I've recieved two post cards, one from a German expat in France (pictured above), another from a nice girl in the Czech Republic. It's really cool to think about - those are actual people somewhere in the world, that just for a moment when they look at your profile, write a message and drop it off at the post office acknowledge your own existence. You're there in their minds, in Russia, New Zealand or Argentina, and it's just surreal in a way.

I hope to send and recieve a lot more postcards. I've seen people with over 10,000 postcards on their profile - wow!

I really like it, it's a nice adaption of the penpal theme, and I think everyone should send just a few postcards to see what it's like. My day always brightens up when I find a new one in the letter box!

Lots of love,
Besa

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Aquarelle & ink pen on paper, 29.7x42cm

14/06/2014

This is the first of a series I've been planning for a long time, actually I had the sketch sitting around for a few weeks before I did the outlines in ink, and after that I didn't work on it further for another few months. My vision of how this was going to turn out changed a little during that time, but overall I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

The idea was to capture those girls that are sung about in psychedelic music - Lucy, in this case, or Alice, Hazey Jane, Julia Dream - and make a connection with a specific substance. In this case it's LSD. The song by the Beatles already gives a lot of imagery as to what one might experience on it - I wouldn't know personally, but this is how I imagine it - the river flowing in her hair, tangerine trees, marmelade skies, cellophane flowers of yellow and green and the girl with kaleidoscope eyes. The back of the drawing actually has those lyrics written out, underneath the chemical formula for LSD. I hope I can continue this series with other drugs and songs as well.

On Facebook

Also, here's a comparison between this one and the old version I drew a few years ago! I remember I was visiting my brother and went to college with him one day. In his Toxicology class the professor was introducing LSD, where it comes from and what it does and I thought that was so insanely cool (but that's probably just the professor, I'm sure should I elect any chemistry or pharmacy classes myself I'll just get the boring stuff). Anyway, I doodled this and then finished it when I got back home. I think I've come pretty far since then, no?

Self portrait with mushroom

I've been thinking about posting my art on here as well, as I think this might be a good platform to give some more insight about the motivation behind some pieces, so I'm going to start that now with my newest piece.

"Self portrait with mushroom"

Aquarelle & ink pen on paper, 21x29,7cm

08/07/2014

There's not a lot to say about this, in a way that most of it is to be kept inside my mind. I'm not good at expressing things through abstract means, I could never draw a pattern and call that a symbol of the anxiety in me. It just doesn't seem right. So I draw things as they are, more or less, I've never actually held that mushroom in my hands, haha. It's a symbol after all, but also very tangible, after something a friend told me. It's there and attainable, but not quite yet. It's quite the anticipation.

Ramadaning

Hey y'all!

I need to pass the time so instead of doing something reasonable like studying for finals, I'm blogging.
The struggle is real.

As some of you might know, Ramadan has started! If you have never heard of it, it's a month where muslims abstain from mundane human needs and turn towards God and their own spirituality every day, from dawn until dusk. So you don't eat, drink and a bunch of other things, to make time for more important things.

At least, that's the idea. In reality it's more like this.

So a typical day in Ramadan begins with getting up in the early morning hours (or staying up because like hell I'm going to get my ass out of bed after just two hours of sleeping. Not gonna happen.), still full from last night's iftar (dinner) but forcing yourself to eat some more to make it through the day. Seven minutes left until fast starts? Better down another glass of water, can't be safe enough. Repeat ad infinitum (or until the sun rises). Go back to bed and sleep until noon.

Wake up feeling groggy, already a bit hungry, and most of all (if you, like me, sleep with your mouth open) absolutely parched and try not to go into the kitchen and mechanically grab a bottle of water. Go brush your teeth, though it won't make much difference anyway, since not eating all day will make your breath stink like death and some more. Occupy yourself and try to not think of food too much.

Afternoon - Go grocery shopping. Don't let all the glorious food on display fool you. Don't make my mistakes. Don't buy seven different kinds of fruit, you won't be able to eat them until they spoil. No, you don't need that cake or four jars of peanut butter. Put them down. Grab some vegetables and meat and get out of there before something worse happens.

Early evening - This is the worst part of the day. If you're hardcore (like me), you'll spend some time scrolling through food blogs and looking at all the glorious pictures.

About an hour before iftar - only a little bit more to go! Pat yourself on the shoulder for making it this far, but not too long because it's time to get cookin'. Try not to lick your fingers as you do so. It doesn't even matter how much effort you put into it, since everything will taste like a gift from the heavens as soon as you start eating.

And finally, IFTAR TIME. Sit yourself down at the table, say your prayers and carefully watch the clock (I swear this thing keeps getting slower with every second). And when it's finally time to break your fast, dig into that marvellous food because you've earned it.

There are probably better muslims than me out there...

It's a lot more fun when you're with other people who fast as well, though. The past two or three years we've been with our extended family in Macedonia for Ramadan and it has always been really cool, so much kumbaya when everyone shares the same misery. Getting together to eat in the evening just makes for an amazing mood. And there's really good food every day, a lot of it.
But in the end, no one is forcing us and we do it for ourselves. And after a month of hard ramadaning comes a three(!)-day-long feast with so much food and desserts and family reunions and gifts and general giddy-ness. It's 400x better than Christmas, I tell you.

It might sound crazy, not eating and drinking for 18 hours a day, but it's something you have to experience to really know what it's like. And no matter how much one might complain about it, it's not half as bad in the end, really. It helps the body, too. At least, that's what I tell myself as I pat my belly after gaining yet another pound.

Any of you fasting as well? How's that going for you? I'd love to hear your stories :D

Until next time!

Lots of love,
(a very hungry) Besa

101 Things in 1001 Days

Hey everyone!

I've changed my theme around a little for summer, how do you like it? :) I think the green and pink works really great together heh~

Today I'd like to tell you about a really cool project I've started a while ago, called 101 Things in 1001 Days.
Basically you set 101 goals for yourself, things you want to do or accomplish, before those 1001 days are over. Goals like "Visit China", "Go vegetarian for a month", "Attend a film festival", "Plant a tree" or "Knit a scarf".

I think it's a really neat idea and I'm going to write about my 101 Things challenge here as I progress.
You can see my list over at Day Zero Project.

Right now I have only finished two tasks - Join a gym and Build a bonfire and toast marshmellows (which I did on a camping trip I went with some cool people - there's gonna be a post about that soon as well!) but I hope I'm going to finish many more. And even if I can't do them all in time - it's the journey that counts, right?

So if you need some inspiration or ideas what to do with your time, hop over there, pick out some cool things to try and join me! :)

Lots of love,
Besa