French Onion Soup

I absolutely love this tender onion and cheese soup with a light hint of spices and dry white wine. It is very good choice for home dinner party or romantic dinner just for you two.

You can prepare most of the steps in advance (from step 1 to step 9), then pour soup to the bowls, add bread and cheese and put them to the oven right before serving. That will save you a bit of time and ensure every meal comes fresh and warm at the right time.

My advice would be to use home prepared broth, cooked with good quality beef, carrots, onions, parsley and celery for this soup. If you need some hints on how to prepare beef broth, follow these instructions.

French Toasts with Cheese

French toasts are easy to do and very tasty. They fit perfectly for breakfast or brunch, or as a quick to prepare snack.

It is good to use not so fresh, 2 or 3 days old bread for french toasts. However it you only have fresh bread – just dry slices of it in the toster for a bit, it will make preparation easier.

French toasts can be served plain or with various topping: honey, berry jams or syrups. I prefer them topped with shredded cheese or mix of cheeses.

Madeleines

It is easy to fell in love with those little butter cakes the first time you try them: it is exactly what happened to me :), I had to find the recipe. And then I've got hooked: every time I have extra 30 mins and a mood for baking – I am preparing madeleines.

Apart of eggs, butter, flour and a few other ingredients you will also need madeleine baking pan (madeleine molds) to prepare those french sponge cakes. Internet says they exist in two sizes: bigger and smaller.

I've spend quite some time before I finally found bigger ones in Williams-Sonoma, I was also lucky they appeared to be nonstick ones. By the way if you cook in small size molds – reduce cooking time to about 6 mins.

With ingredients described in this recipe will get you about 24 madeleines, enough for 2 baking forms with molds of bigger size. If you want more just double or triple the amounts.