Blueberry and white chocolate Macarons

My new friend & long lost soul-sister Katharina celebrated the 2nd birthday of her Wienerbroed-Blog and invited me to make something for her birthday coffee table. Katharina is one of those few people you meet in your life that you feel instantly connected with. There might be a significant number of parallels in our lives and it feels like I’ve been knowing her forever. Denmark is to her what Ireland is to me. And she has a serious thing for blueberries and also white chocolate. When she asked me to contribute I knew it had to be Macarons with blueberries and chocolate. And the cute little Hoptimist cheering for Denmark sneaked into the picture to grab one of these delicious little things. I made them just the day before the Foodblogger Camp and again posted a Codeword on Instagram and Twitter for free Macarons. It kind of went viral (yay!) and fellow foodbloggers started to yell “Smaland” at me all day. Why I chose the codeword “Smaland”…? Where else can you jump into blueberries?! All of you IKEA-visitors may now understand 🙂

You can also check out the full German post over on Katharina’s blog or read the English recipe here.

Jan 18

Red Wine Cake

I love boozy bakes! Don’t get me wrong I am no alcoholic, but even when I was a child the boozy cakes were the ones I loved the most. It was special when I was allowed to skim the foam of Dad’s beer glass or eat a piece of Black Forest Cherry Cake on a birthday, sometimes Mum even poured some advokaat over our shortly microwaved chocolate marshmallows for an extra treat. Whenever there was a bit of leftover red wine, my mother turned it into this delicious and moist cake. I now do this myself whenever we open a bottle we don’t like, so the taste of this cake varies with the wine you use, but it is always scrumtious and keeps fresh vor 3-4 days. My sister tweaked the recipe a little with more chocolate sprinkles (who could say no to more chocolate?!?) and I stole it from her so you can also start to save that wine from the drain! Continue reading »

Okt 24

Kitkat Cake with hidden message

I know, I promised German posts and I am very eager to start but there are some technical hurdles that I need to tackle first. I am on it, just you wait and see. But let’s talk cake! It was a friends 30th birthday and I offered to bring cake for her party. As I know she does not like Fondant at all and loves chocolate, I was looking for a pretty but not to posh design with chocolate, that fits a garden party with kids. I’ve seen this Kitkat cake many times before on blogs and Pinterest and thought it would make a brilliant fit. But just plain cake with decoration was not enough as a real birthday present. So I decided to lift it up a little with hiding a message in the cake. Also a thing that I have seen before, liked the idea a lot but never tried myself. I am always suspicious with trying new stuff for special occasions as I had bad luck with that in the past, so I decided to do a test cake. The test cake results were not as good as I hoped them to be but helped me figure what to do different on the real cake. I bought another set of cutters that was larger and therefore better visible in the cake slice (and to prevent floating numbers as happened in the test cake) and added more baking time for the large cake (as the test cake was slightly underdone in the center).

I must say, the hardest part was the wait. You can’t come to a party with an already cut cake, especially when it is the present. So I had to wait until the birthday girl cut the cake to find out if my plan worked out and the numbers remained in place. You can imagine how happy I was when the first 2 slices she pulled out were absolutely PERFECT with a clear number in the center. Well I jumped through the garden like a small kid on Christmas day on a sugar rush… All the guests were amazed by the filling and only 1 person guessed what kind of magic is needed to create the effect. The magic unveiled… Continue reading »

Sep 12

Strawberry Chocolate Surprise Cupcakes

This weather is seriously killing me, I was not done with summer yet. However you cannot change the seasons or the weather, but you can change your state of mind. With all the power of my mind I try to hold on to the summer feelings with these wonderful Chocolate Strawberry Surprise Cupcakes. I did them a while back with fresh strawberries from the farmer’s market but haven’t managed to put down the recipe yet ~~because I’ve lost the post it where I noted the ingredients~~. The cupcake is my favourite chocolate cupcake recipe, that you can use as a base for almost any topping. I added a little strawberry surprise inside the center of the cupcakes before adding the frosting. All eaters were totally delighted, but you better try yourself! Continue reading »

Aug 12

Salted Caramel Brownies

I love chocolate AND salted caramel. I love the combination of salty and sweet, as I’ve written about this in my Beer Batter Maple Bacon Cupcake Post before, I won’t go into more detail here. Chocolate and salted caramel is a fancy and also very popular combination yet hard to top. I remembered the delicious cookies with salt and caramel and thought to myself, that the same flavour could fit into one tray of brownies. My first impulse was to just make brownies and top it with salted caramel sauce. But that sounded too lame, so I searched for some directions online and that gave me another idea of how to realise it. These brownies are very chocolatey, not too sweet and the salted caramel completes this treat. Sorry for the basic photo, I had to take the phone to capture this beauty before the office mates ate them all up. Continue reading »

Jun 4

Best Chocolate Cake ever

I have seen this hilarious list on buzzfeed today and I find myself in this a lot. I love my family and there is a whole lot of people to love. It’s not like the Kelly family but for the average German family I have a lot of siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. Both my Grandparents insisted that we all gather at Birthdays, Easter and Christmas. Come what may, at least 20 people in one room, eating, talking, having fun. When I was a teenager I rebelled against this bourgeois traditions. I hated those get-togethers, being locked up in a room with people I had nothing in common with but the same blood line, it made no sense to me. I used to say “friends are the best family because you can choose them yourself”. Teenagers… By now it makes totally sense to me and I must confess I was completely wrong back then, I wouldn’t want to miss any minute of the family time I had. I guess losing my Grandfather last year made me change my point of view even more. As you grow older, you understand that even though they may have chosen another path, you still have a lot more in common than blood. Those folks have always been there and always will be there to help and support me without any question. Though it is very stressful and requires a lot of planning, I did not regret it any minute that I had them all over for my birthday. 23 friends and family members sitting/standing/running around, lots of chats and laughter and nice food – a perfect birthday! I am very sad that my Grandpa couldn’t be here with us, I guess he would have loved it and maybe he watched us from above.

I second #12 of the list, I was too slow so I did not get to eat a single piece of my own birthday cake that I baked the night before my birthday. Everyone I asked said it was fantastic, so I made it again to convince myself. Again this recipe comes from my favourite Book, Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery. Someday I need to get to London, go there and tell ’em how thankful I am. Continue reading »

Mai 30

TBL: Chocolate Cupcakes with Coffee Buttercream

Every time I am home alone, I make huge plans. After getting up very early I find myself writing an enormous to do list. On my list are always a lot of tasks that I procrastinate as long as possible. I even start with tasks that I detest in order to avoid something that is even worse. Then I need to trick myself and add a bonus task to my list, something I love doing, that I only allow myself to do after I completed the other skipped tasks. Sounds ridiculous but it kinda works for me. My bonus task was baking cupcakes. I have a very poor time management, once I had finished the cupcakes I had to rush to a Whisky tasting and ended up icing cupcakes at 1pm. But it was totally worth it. It was another recipe from the Primrose Bakery Cupcake book. I LOVE THIS BOOK! Continue reading »

Mai 23

TBL: Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

I must confess I couldn’t resist when I found the Primrose Bakery Cupcake Book at TK Maxx in Dublin. I had it on my amazon wishlist forever, but never ordered. I was talking myself out of buying another bake book to go into my shelf, but was made to buy it anyway. Back in the hotel I pulled it out directly, started sneaking through the pages and instantly felt the urge to lick the pages. As you might have noticed the TBL was flooded with recipes from this book ’cause they all look so appealing. After the fantastic Orange Cake from the Cake Cafe I was kind of set to oranges when asked to bake something to bring to work. A simple cake wasn’t enough, it needed to be more fancy pants, so I decided to make Chocolate Orange Cupcakes with a Chocolate Orange Buttercream. Sounds like a Chocolate-Orange-Overkill, he? I did this a while back, just before we were moving so there is no pretty picture. But they taste A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Seriously, go buy the book!

Apr 28

Chocolate Cookie Bowls

I have seen this idea on Pinterest and kind of fell for it: Small bowls made of cookie dough. All you need to do is turn your muffin pan upside down and place round cut cookie dough on there. I must confess I tried a lot of those life hacks you find on Pinterest with mixed results. Most of the things I tried did not come out as good or easy or at all. But this time it actually worked though I improvised. I was invited to a Party with a Sports theme, so I wanted to bring something cool, awesome to impress but also a little healthy. After consulting Google, this sugar cookie recipe was picked. But I was set on chocolate so I varied the recipe slightly. Continue reading »

Jan 17

TBL: Beer Batter Maple Bacon Cupcake

I came home from Handball one night and was asked if I knew that cupcake show on TV. “It’s about two broke girls that bake Cupcakes to become rich and famous. It is hilarious!”. I sat down and was on fire instantly. Okay, the show is a typical sitcom with below the belt humor, but that’s what I love about it. And in the season 1 finale they finally meet Martha Stewart in a bathroom and she tries this Beer Batter Maple Bacon Cupcake (watch scene). I can totally feel with these two girls, striving to dream and never give up on it. I don’t have the balls to start my own business now, I envy all those people who put everything at stake to follow their dream. But I am not yet ready to quit live as I know it and become rich and famous *lol*.

I do like to play around a little instead, testing my limits and the combination of savoury & sweet is very appealing to me. The idea of something salty together with sweets is inconceivable for many people. While salted caramel is already almost mainstream, the idea of adding bacon to a sweet treat send shivers of disgust through many people. I kind of understand why but you’ll never know if you don’t try as my Granny used to say. And as we had fantastic pancakes with maple syrup and crispy bacon at Avoca in Dublin, the urge to try the Beer Batter Maple Bacon Cupcakes rose within me. And then last week my fellow colleague told me about his holidays in LA, where he went a shooting day of “2 broke girls”. We both saw this as a sign, it is time to do this. Therefore my first blog post for this year is about what makes half of the people ahhhh and the others ewww. Continue reading »

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