Easy Homemade Sweet Chili Sauce

Today I was going to buy some chili sauce at the supermarket. Then I took a look at the list of ingredients of the brand available in my grocery shop and at the price. Guess what? 2€ for a smallish bottle of something that consisted mainly of water and sugar!

I left the bottle on the shelf and decided to try to make my own chili sauce.

It was super easy - and the ingredients cost next to nothing (my estimate is around 30 cents). Another good thing is, you can regulate the amount of chili yourself!

This recipe is based on three different recipes that I found with a quick Google search for “homemade chili sauce”. There were around 13 million results, so I guess there are a lot of people doing chili sauce at home :D

This is what you need:

• 100ml sugar


• 50ml rice or white wine vinegar


• 50ml + 2 Tbsp water


• 1/3 tsp salt


• 1 espresso spoon of chili flakes


• 1 Tbsp tomato paste


• 2 garlic cloves, crushed


• 2/3 Tbsp all-purpose flour

And this is how to do it:

Combine all ingredients except for the flour and 2 Tbsp water in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and let simmer 2-3 minutes. Now mix well the flour in the remaining water, pour in the pan and whisk energetically. Let simmer over a low heat until the sauce thickens, or about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool – and voilà! Your homemade chili sauce is ready to be used!

My bet is that this stuff keeps well quite long in the fridge. And even if it doesn’t, there’s way too much chili for you to taste any difference :D

The vanishing Vanilla Biscuits

These biscuits, or Little Vanilla Crescents, are from Recipes from a Provençal Kitchen, a book I received as a gift some 15 years ago. The author claims that they are so good that one has to eat them all straight away, and that is indeed the case! This is the recipe of the vanishing Vanilla Biscuits! You will want to do two doses, one for the guests, another one for you!

You need:
- 210g butter
- 210 g flour
- 100g ground almonds
- 50g sugar
and some sugar and vanilla sugar for the topping.

Mix together all the ingredients with your fingers until a dough forms. Let the dough rest in the fridge for some 15 to 30 minutes. Then take small (about 25 grams) amounts of the dough and roll between the palms of your hands so as to form sticks about 6 cm long. Bend them slightly to form crescents, set on a baking tray covered with a baking sheet, and bake in about 200 degrees C for some 15 minutes. Be careful not to let them gain any colour - they should remain pale. When the crescents are still warm, roll them in a mixture of sugar and vanilla sugar and place on a serving plate. This is the tricky part - the biscuits crumble easily when they are warm, but the sugar won’t stick to them if you let them cool too much.

Enjoy the biscuits, they won't last long!