Quick Apple Roll – or how to welcome friends for coffee

quick apple roll I’ve been fighting this cold for almost 2 weeks now and I am terribly bored. Being home all day and not being capable of doing anything else than watching tv due to the lack of power is so annoying for me. But luckily my friend offered to come over for a cup of coffee and entertain me for some time on short notice. I wanted to pick up some bread anyway so I made my way to my favourite bakery to buy bread and some quick bite for coffee. Too bad it was Faschingsdienstag and the bakery was closed already and so was the second one I walked up. My bad, should have gone earlier but it was only half an hour to go til my coffee guests arrival. So I figured out it would be a great idea to serve some easy and fast dish perfect for coffee time. All you need are some simple ingredients you can pickup in any supermarket and love.

  • Fresh puff pastry (chilled not frozen)
  • 2 apples (preferrably Boskopp or Breaburn)
  • some raisins
  • some chopped almonds
  • 2 tbsp sugar
  • some cinnamon

Unwrap the pastry dough, roll it out, line a baking tray with baking paper and preheat the oven to 200°C (with fan). Peel and Dice the apples in small sqaures, mix with raisins, almonds, sugar and cinnamon. Cut the pastry into rectangles and fill with the apple mixture. Roll up the pastry and press the ends on both sides together with fingers or a fork. Transfer to the baking tray and put into the oven for 10-15 minutes. Serve warm with whip cream and love <3

Filled Scone Rolls – or let’s get dirty!

This is the february contribution to my new years resolution and definitely one of my new favourites. Special Thanks to my boyfriend for picking this recipe to try it!

I love scones. Everyone who has been to England or Ireland sure tried some for afternoon tea. But making perfect scones with the right consistency and taste is an art itself. I’ve learned some things about scones the hard way of trial and error. It is crucial to not overknead the dough and you should do that by hand in order to keep small butter pockets in it that make the scones soft and fluffy. I’ll pick up that point later in the description. AndYou need patience, space and your finger tips to make a good scone. So let’s get dirrrty! Continue reading »

Cupcake Class by Das Cupcake

Last weekend I took my first Cupcake Class at Genussakademie in Frankfurt. It was held by Ewa Feix who is a professional Cupcake Konditor and sells gorgeous Cupcakes in Frankfurt.

My friend sent me the link to the booking some weeks ago and asked me if I want to go. Hell yeah, why not?  Especially when it comes to Cupcakes I think I can still learn a lot! Decorating Cupcakes is an art itself and you know all these little bits and pieces of professional advice enhance your skills over time. So I booked the class and went there with my friend who discovered her love to baking just recently (I hope it was my good influence *hehe*).

After a glass of champagne and checking out the other participants, Ewa Feix welcomed us very warmly and shared some of her secrets with us. I must say I was a little dissapointed that we only made one type of cupcakes. But they were as delicious as they were pretty. Never ever made so good looking ones! Continue reading »

Pear Walnut Brownies

To follow my New Year’s resolution to try out a new recipe every month I had this recipe randomly chosen from my To-Bake-List. I’ve tried a lot of Brownie recipes and most turned out hard or too crispy for me (except for the Raspberry-Cheesecake-Brownies). So I decided that maybe Brownie recipes and I are just not made for each other. But those Pear-Walnut-Brownies made me change my mind and wanting to roll myself in them… But to make them as fluffy and good you either need a lot of patience or a stand mixer.

I have slightly changed the original recipe that I found in the Lecker Magazine due to bigger eggs and pears and they turned out totally awesome and as fluffy, light and soft as Brownies have to be in my opinion. With its consistency these Brownies also are a very good Dessert for a larger crowd. Continue reading »

Black Forest Cupcakes

This is one of the cake recipes I have from my Grandma that I adapted for Cupcakes. Makes 6 delicous Cupcakes:

For the Cupcakes:

  • 2 Egg Whites
  • 1 package of Vanilla Sugar (or 10g of homemade vanilla sugar)
  • 2 Egg Yolks
  • 2 Tbsp Hot Water
  • 50 g Sugar
  • 25 g Flour
  • 25 g Corn or Potato Starch
  • 10 g Dark Cocoa Powder

Beat egg whites and vanilla sugar until stiff. It must be so stiff that you can flip the bowl over your head without the egg white rain onto your head 😉 In another bowl beat egg yolks, hot water and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift in the flour, starch and cocoa onto the egg yolks and mix thoroughly. If it is too dry to mix add a little of the egg white. Then fold in the egg white. Transfer the mixture to a muffin tin. I have one mold that makes the cupcakes look like a birds nest or a upside down muffin with a scooped out center. It is important not to line the pan with paper cups, so grease the pan if needed. Spread the batter evenly and bake for 20 Minutes at 175°C until a inserted scewer comes out clean. Let the cakes rest in the hot pan for 5 minutes before removing from the pan and let them cool completely on a wire rack.

If you are using a normal Muffin tin, place the muffin upside down and core the cupcake to make room for the cherry filling. Use a cupcake corer or a teaspoon.

For the filling:

  • ca. 100 g Canned Cherries (not too sweet ones!)
  • 1 Tbsp Starch
  • 2 Tbsp Kirschwasser (a spirit made from cherries)

Mix Starch and Kirschwasser thoroughly so there are no chunks. Place the cherries in a pot and add the starch-kirschwasser-mixture. Cook with medium heat until the liquid starts to stiffen. Let it cool a little and fill it into the cupcakes that you cored. You can also substitute the filling with Cherry Jam with Cherry pieces and add some Kirschwasser.

For the topping:

  • 200 g Cream (chilled)
  • 1 pack cream stiffener
  • 2 Tbsp Kirschwasser
  • Shaved dark Chocolate for decoration
  • 6 glaced Cherries for decoration

Beat the cream with the stiffener until stiff (not too long, we don’t want butter and yes that happened to me more than once…). Then add the Kirschwasser and stir it in. You will see that the alcohol affects the consistency of the cream, so make sure it the cream is really stiff before adding the alcohol. If you add too much of the alcohol the topping will run off later. If you want to add more booze to the cupcakes soak the baked dough or add more to the filling AFTER cooling 😉

Spread the topping around the cupcake sleek and pipe with a star nozzle onto the top. Then scatter shaved chocolate over the cupckae (don’t forget the sides) and place the glaced cherry on top. They taste best when they had some time to infuse.

Munchstaches

Mustache pop cookies

I found these cute cookie cutters in the US and mail ordered them. I don’t know why but I am kinda into those mustaches even though I hate hair in peoples faces. I blame it on my little sister because she keeps doing mustache poses whenever I want to take a photo of her. They arrived with a bunch of other stuff just before we left for our Christmas vacation so I took the chance to make some funny treats for a friends Brunch last weekend.

I hope the Birthday Princess was happy with the cookies, even though I have to admit they looked fancier than they tasted that day. But the fresh cookies directly from the hot tray always taste best. Continue reading »

Holiday Recap

I spent my christmas holidays with friends in Goa. We were invited for a friends wedding at his wifes home. The wedding was beautiful and the family was very warm and welcoming. The best thing about it is, that we had the chance to experience some real goan family life and got to taste genuine, traditional, homemade foods and sweets. By the way: Thanks to the family for having us and welcoming us so warmly!

But let’s get to the sweets… As it was christmas, there were a lot of christmas treats and sweets to explore, all homemade.

  1. Plum Fruit Cake
  2. Dose – diamond shape (made from chana)
  3. Dodol (made of coconut rice & jaggery)
  4. Stollen
  5. Kormola (made of white flour, eggs, milk & sugar)
  6. Bebinca
  7. Banana chips
  8. Neurios ( pastry made of white flour and stuffing made of coconut diff. Dry fruit, nuts, semolina & sugar)

 

 

 

I had to try everything of course. My favourites are the Neurios, they taste like my coco macroons stuffed into pastry dough. Hopefully my new friend will teach me at least some of the stuff next winter.

Chocolate Pudding

Okay, this isn’t baking and it’s dietary but it can be easily adopted for non-dieters! Have you ever made your own pudding? Some of you may ask yourself, why make any effort, just open the bag and stir it in some boiling milk. But I say: you can make your own bag, only very little effort and no odd additives. You can also prepare the mixed powder and keep it in an airtight box or make your own bags, give them to others as a present….

Chocolate Pudding Powder

4 g carob gum (or 15 g starch)

15 g dark cacoa powder

15-20 g erythritol (0 calories sugar equivalent) or 15 g sugar

This amount is enough for 400 ml Milk and makes a creamy and very tasty pudding. And it is also suitable for the Dukan diet 🙂

I fill the pudding in 150 ml pudding dishes and serve it with 2 tablespoons of low fat joghurt mixed with 1 tablespoon of quark cheese and 1 tablespoon of erythritol. Makes a perfect combination of sour quark-joghurt and chocolatey sweet pudding! This totally made my day!

 

 

Off topic… Diets!

I twisted my ankle once too many and need to waer a splint until December. So no sports, not too much walking and I have to take it easy 🙁 So I decided to go on a diet in order to fit into my Bridesmaids dress in December.I was never ever a diet person and never cared too much about food. I made my first diet last year and only started it to help a friend as a study volunteer for his bachelor thesis. My boyfriend and I took part in his study and did 6 weeks of a hardcore low carb diet – a hell of a trip…

I wanted to do Lowcarb or Atkins again, because I survived 6 weeks  last year and it worked ok for me (except for the moodyness…). So I went to the book store and looked for a recipe book, because eating the same stuff every day really made me go nuts last year. And I found this Dukan Diet Recipe book, that kind of caught me. I’ve heard of Dukan before and knew it was also a high-protein-low-carb diet like Atkins. The book was quite appealing so I bought the recipe book and some oat bran and started my diet on October 27th. The first days were easy, because it was weekend, I had the time to cook every meal and the fridge was full. With a list of allowed foods and with the help of the recipe book I went to shop for groceries. Dukan is a little different from the diet we did last year, because you are not supposed to eat much fat but you are allowed to eat low fat dairy products. I found it a little hard to figure out what other products I am allowed to consume that are not on the list, because some of them were mentioned in the recipes but I wasn’t sure how much of them was ok etc. So I had to do a lot of research on the web… Continue reading »

Christmas Cookies Part 1

I know, I am quite early with this but… I set myself on diet for some time as I twisted my ankle once too many and suffer from a sports-ban until Christmas. So I won’t be baking much at all in the next time and thought it would be a good idea to blog some of the recipes of my repertoire.

This is the recipe that I’ve been loving all my live. When I was a kid, my Mom always prepared the dough a day in advance. The next day, every one of us got his share of the dough and was responsible for rolling it, cutting out cookies transferring them on the baking tray and decorating them. My Mom then took care of the baking and we had so much fun. Good old days 🙂

Continue reading »