Yummy Cookies and sideeffects

My health really gave me a hard time in this past year 2013. Also I’ve done my best to ignore it, my body refuses and partly gives up on me from time to time. This week it was my stomach who refused to let me eat painfree. Luckily there is a pill for everything but sometimes they come with unwanted side effects. Yesterday was Nap-day, I think I had as many naps as a bunny has per day, 17 to be exact. Last nigth and today was rather problematic cause as a side effect of my meds all my muscles decided to hurt like crazy today. I felt like after a constant 2 day workout with a burn in my muscles that just won’t stop. I needed distraction and found it in a note that today was national cookie day in whatever country (I guess it’s America). As I did not manage to bake something from the To Bake List in November I found it appropriate, to at least make some new cookies on the cookie day. I decided to give the Salted Caramel + Nutella Stuffed Double Chocolate Chip Cookies I have recently found on topwithcinnamon blog a shot. Izzy is a teenage girl living in London and blogging her fantastic recipes for a few years now. I’ve been following her on Twitter for a while and saw her video together with the guys from SORTED food and fell in <3 with the recipe. I have to admit I am a huge fan of stopmotion, that was one of the first things I had to do as a semester project for design class back in university and I loved it. Actually my stopmotion semester project also involved cake. We had to make a countdown for movies with stop motion and we decided to let a set of false teeth eat up our cake numbers would make a fantastic countdown. But back to Izzy and her fantastic recipes… She is very inspiring, so young and yet so talented, creative and professional. She has an eye for photos and does explain complicated recipes in an easy understandable way. And she’s always wearing funny socks in her pictures and has a great sense of style. And with all due respect I HAD to take a picture with my feet in it, just as she does a lot. (Just a quick shot with the phone as the camera is already boxed…)

I wanted to try out some of her recipes but hadn’t had the time yet. Now that I tasted thos really gorgeous cookies, I WANT MORE. The recipe is very easy and fast to do, you don’t even need a electric mixer (which my sister will appreciate). I used some Cadbury caramel chocolate that I brought from my last trip to Ireland for the center of the cookies and that worked very well. I made 15 cookies out of the recipe, not all containing caramel chocolates. if you place the salt just on the center of the cookies, above the Nutella, it makes a fantastic taste experience.

Sep 6

TBL: Chocolate Truffle Ruffles

As you might know already I was quite busy in the past month with recovering from a knee surgery and my wedding. The most annoying thing in that past month was that I was rather limited to my home, not able to stand for longer than a couple of minutes, had to walk with crutches and was completely dependent on my friends and family. Especially my best friend and Maid of Honor made an exceptional job on the wedding planning and realization of “the day”. Without her the day wouldn’t have been this perfect! I spent the last night before the Wedding at her house and brought a princess breakfast as a small “Thank you” gift. Continue reading »

Jun 18

Chocolate Cherry Cake

We travelled around last Saturday to pick some window sills for the house and ended up in a large traffic jam in the middle of nowhere. After finally getting there 2 minutes before closing time my mood was *erhm…*. But we found sills and also possible tiles for the first floor so I was quite okay when we headed back into civilization and to our architect. She lives in Frauenstein, a suburb of Wiesbaden, an area that is known for grapes, wine and cherries. On our way home I had to shop 1 kilo of cherries. I was asked with a raised eyebrow “who the hell should eat all those” and I answered “you on a cake” with a big fat grin. He was courios to so I described him this very easy choc’n’cherry cake and after dinner I started to rattle in the kitchen. Luckily the cake tasting a bit like squishy raw cookie dough topped with cherries was approved… Continue reading »

Feb 24

Donauwelle

Donau waves are a German cake classic and my Mum’s recipe earns a lot of compliments every time, because it is simply the best! The base is a vanilla cream cake, topped with chocolate cake, poked with cherries. On top comes a whipped vanilla buttercream and a dark chocolate glace with a wave-like pattern. The buttercream gives this classic tray bake a decadent touch, but a cake table without Donau-waves is simply unthinkable.

For the dough:

200 g butter (at room temperature)
200 g sugar
15 g vanilla sugar
5 eggs (size M)
2 pinches salt
300 g flour
1/2 pack baking powder
350 g cherries (drained)
2 tbsp cocoa
eventually 1 tbsp milk

Preheat the oven to 160° C (with fan). Drain the cherries and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Soften the butter, then add the sugar and vanilla sugar and mix until creamy. Mix flour, salt and baking powder and sift it in. Stir it by hand and don’t overmix. Spread half of the dough onto the baking tray. Sift the cocoa powder into the rest of the dough and mix it, add the tbsp milk if neccessary. Spread the dark dough over the blond dough evenly. Scatter the cherries over and press them in lightly. Transfer to the hot oven and bake for 35 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Let it cool completely.

For the buttercream: (this is the easy Version of buttercream with a packet mix, you can also use my secret recipe)

1 pack Vanilla cake cream (Dr Oetker Tortencreme Vanille)
300 ml milk
200g butter at room temperature

~~Place all ingredients in a bowl and mix due to instructions on the packaging.~~ Edit: Don’t follow stupid Dr. Oetker, I did last night and it ended bad – small butter pieces in my butter cream that wouldn’t go away! And then I realized that I always do it like that: Soften the butter, then add the milk slowly while mixing and the cake cream powder afterwards. When everything is blended, mix on high speed for 2 minutes. Then spread over the cooled cake.

For the icing:

200 g dark chocolate
50 g coconut fat (Palmin)

Melt the chocolate with the coconut oil and mix unitl smooth. Let it cool until lukewarm and spread over the butter cream. Some take a fork and make a wavelike pattern on top.

When cutting the cake use a hot knive, otherwise the top will crackle and fall into pieces.

Jan 22

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 »

Jan 11

Munchstaches

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 »

Nov 7

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!

Okt 25

Chocolate Deathstar

I don’t know why but I like to surprise colleagues on their last day with baked goods.

One of my favourite colleagues had his last day on Friday and as he didn’t tell anyone yet what kind of job he’s going to do afterwards, we all kept guessing. My last guess was that he’ll be running the Empire so I thought he might need a Deathstar.

I found this How-To Video on youtube and decided to make a Chocolate Fudge Cake and decorate it.

For the Chocolate Cake:

(If you want to sandwich them together like I did, you will need to make the recipe twice Continue reading »

Okt 12

Millionaire Shortbread

I truly love caramel. And I am into British and Irish treats. So this recipe is the perfect combination and to die for!

Shortbread:

115 g butter
175 g flour
55 g brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F and line a 23cm/9inch square cake tin with parchment paper. Process butter, flour and sugar to a dough. Press the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the hot oven for 20 until golden.

Meanwhile make the filling:

175 g butter
115 g brown sugar
3 tbsp golden syrup (I use agave syrup)
400 g canned condensed milk

Heat butter, sugar, golden sugar and canned condensed milk gently in a sauce pan. Stirr well while making the mixture boil and simmer for some minutes until it is very thick. Then pour over the baked shortbread base and let it cool in the fridge.

Topping

200 g dark chocolate, melted

Spread the melted chocolate over the caramel mixture and let cool completely. Cut into small stripes and share!

Okt 1

Cute OreOwls

One member of my team at work left us last week and as her farewell-gift was not here in time, I decided to bake her something cute to lessen the pain.

I stumbled over this OreOwls recipe last week and thought this would be a cute idea. So Thursday night me and my Oreo-cutting helper started to prep some owls. I was a little weirded out by the lack of egg in the recipe but this is what gives the cupcakes a yummy muddy texture that goes well with the chocolate ganache.

I spread all 12 sad’n’cute looking owls over her table before she came and they were a total hit!
But eating them is definately not for softies. Tearing those cuties apart hurts!

Schabakery

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