Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Easter basket…

This is my Easter Bunny Shark, and I absolutely love her. :)

I am not going to complain about how hard life has been because we’ve been really lucky, with our safe jobs and safe home and very few cases of illness among our friends and families. But I am at the same time going to use the pandemic as part of my excuse why I haven’t been baking. It’s just so much less fun without any people to feed around.

So, anyway, I hope you’ve had a happy Easter, as much as this is possible!

We had a massive Easter brunch yesterday, just this one household of ours, with enough food to get us into trouble if there had been police checks on the distancing rules… Who would have believed we weren’t expecting a big group of guests?

My personal highlight was the Easter Bunny Shark Cake:

After last year’s Easter Bunny Dino Cake, it should come as no surprise!

The shark is an iced biscuit with white chocolate details and a sugar eye. She lives on top of one of my most favourite cakes ever: double poppy-seed & apple.

I do love a cake without a lot of cream or frosting, and I really think this one doesn’t need it at all, but the Easter Bunny Shark needed something to swim in, and the other part of my household loves the cream cheese frosting, so there I went. :)

Speaking of going: I am going to get another slice… :)

Easter Bunny Dino Cake

For reason that need no explanation, obviously, this year’s Easter decoration theme in our house is dinosaurs dressed as Easter Bunnies.

So if I was going to make a cake, of course it would have to go with that theme as well.

Please meet:
Easter Bunny Dino!

She’s a biscuit Bunny Dino, made from one of my absolute favourites among my grandmother’s recipes.

I used a dinosaur biscuit cutter, cut the ears out with a small knife and then pinched the dough together, and it worked (almost) perfectly.

(Yes, I did make four bunny dino biscuits, and yes, only two of them survived the baking and icing process. Still: result!)

My Easter Bunny Dino lives on a yoghurt & apple cake, where she is very pleased with her Haribo Easter eggs.

And with the fact that she is an awesome green Easter Bunny Dino!

Of course.

PS: This has been so satisfying, finally baking a cake like this again, and blogging about it (even though I still find fairly little to say about my cakes than most other bloggers…) I shall try and keep it up! (Please don’t mistake this for a promise though!)

‘Tis the season … of the Walking Bread

 

Deck the halls with undead folly

Fa la la la la la la la la!

 

For this year’s advent I baked cute little gingerbread zombies. I used this recipe from bbcgoodfood.com for the dough, plus food colouring, royal icing and my beloved skulls-and-bones sprinkles.

 

     

     

     

 

 

Some of them are unhappy. I think it’s because they’re always hungry. That’s one of the things I would hate about being a zombie.

The ones who have just eaten tend to be a bit happier.

 

     

 

Also:

Black Sheep.

 

And:

zombie shark.

Because I can.

 

Don we now our slowly rotting apparel

Fa la la la la la la la la

Troll the ancient zombie carol

FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!

Special Christmas Biscuits for Judy the Dog

I wasn’t going to do much Christmas baking this year – mostly for lack of big Christmas family reunions with lots of already-overfull stomachs to fill even more…

I get the impression that Christmas biscuits aren’t such a big thing here in Northern Germany anyway. Which is a shame, really, and maybe I should confront my Barbarian friends here with more proper Christmas culture!

What’s even worse: my man’s family don’t do Christmas presents. You heard right, there are no presents by their tree. Zero.

Aaaand even worserer: just because they agreed not to do Christmas presents years ago, they think it’s okay for them to ban me from overruling this rule.

So I acquiesced.

…

Almost.

Because then I thought, why try and overrule when you can undermine?

:D

Long story short, I baked special Christmas biscuits for Judy the dog. She was not part of the family when the no-Christmas-presents rule was first introduced, so she never got to have a say in this matter! That’s not fair, is it!?

Judy’s Special Christmas Biscuits are made from oats, flour, egg, chicken broth and ham. I thought they were a bit dry and tasted a bit boring – but then I wasn’t the target group. And Judy loved them.

As did Lotte and Finn, my friends’ dogs, who also got a small box full of Judy’s biscuits. Because she likes to share. Or because I went behind her back…

Three happy dogs and one no-Christmas-presents rule successfully undermined: RESULT! :)

Rosemary Salt & Lemon Biscuits

Two of the things that happen when you’ve recently moved into a new house: people you like come to visit you (yay!) and bring presents (double-yay!) :D

The traditional present on an occasion like this is bread and salt. Wikipedia says it’s “to wish sedentary, prosperity and fertility.”* I’ll gladly just take one of these three things. Oh, and the bread and salt.

Especially when it’s fancy salt.

Like rosemary sea salt. Yum!

I just had to try it as soon as possible. So I made these rosemary salt  and lemon biscuits, taking a beautiful recipe for savoury biscuits and then “adapting” it beyond recognition. It’s what I do best! :)

The result is highly satisfactory. So now I will have to try and recreate them and also remember the recipe, so I may even be able to post it on here…

 

 

* Fancy footnote to prove I’ve used a semi-legitimate source

 

Fischbrötchen-Kuchen

I call this preemptive cultural acclimatisation:

as the leaving dos continue, I have moved on, mentally at least, to my new city, which is famous for concert halls under construction – and fish sandwiches.

So being preemptive as usual, I have baked Fischbrötchen-Kuchen, fish sandwich cakes.

They are easy to make: you simply take

 

diminutive breads (= Brötchen)

 

and fish (biscuits)

 and then add ersatz tartar sauce (i.e. white chocolate cream cheese cream) –

and you get

Fischbrötchen!

The answer to life, the universe and everything: lime & white chocolate shortbread

 

 

Last weekend, it was the most specialest (!) birthday of the year, and this year was even more specialer than usual! :D

How exciting is turning 42!?

Well, I wouldn’t know. But my partner’s 42nd birthday was pretty exciting, I can tell you!

Exciting enough to come up with a new recipe:

lime & white chocolate shortbread!

I think it’s the best summer biscuit ever. I looove the limey freshness.

 

And this is how it’s done:

Lime & White Chocolate Shortbread Biscuits

Ingredients
250 g flour
70 g sugar
125 g butter
1 egg
1 pinch salt
zest of 2 limes
200 g white chocolate

Method
Cute the butter into small pieces. Lightly beat the egg with a fork or other weapon of choice. Sift the flour with the sugar, then rub in the butter. Rub thoroughly. Add the egg, salt and zest of 1 lime and work it all into one nice dough. Cover with cling film and chill for a bit. Roll out and cut out in beautiful 4s and 2s and hearts.
Bake at 170° C for about 15 minutes. Let cool completely.
Decorate the shortbread biscuits with the chocolate and the zest of the second lime. It helps if you melt the chocolate first.

Eurovision baking: Danish Viking ships

One of the four things I am constantly thinking about is the next Eurovision party. (And you don’t want to know the other three things…)

So when we went to the Hedeby (Haithabu) Viking Musem on 2nd January, I looked at everything there with our Eurovision Viking party in mind. You cannot start preparing early enough!

Incidentally, my man found his inspiration for a Eurovision Viking party costume there. (He went dressed as a rune stone, hoping that this would mean an excuse for him not to move all night.)

And I found: a viking ship biscuit cutter!

I love the shape. And I hate the shape with a passion. Guess whether almost half the biscuits broke at the mast. Grrrrrr.

But the ones that survived my tender loving handling looked cool. And tasted nice!

The biscuits are simple butter biscuits, very buttery and lovely. (You cannot use too much butter, I have been told.)

For the flags, I used sugar icing and my dearest companion: food colouring. :)

 

In other news, I might be clairvoyant – the only non-Danish viking ship was a winner ship! :)

Or maybe they only won because I made this very biscuit? Hmm….

More gender stereotyping: his & hers biscuits

 

I admit it; I just could not resist.

On Friday, I was baking biscuits for various occasions. Actually, one main one – post to follow – and because I had troubles concentrating on one task at a time, I ended up making more biscuits for other occasions and purposes as well.

Also, I got these wonderful biscuit cutters for my birthday earlier this year.

Second also: I was invited to a His & Hers & Baby’s Birthday Party this weekend. If that’s no reason to be a bit childish, I – actually, no, I am not going to finish this sentence. I do not need a reason to be childish anyway!

Third also: food colouringies! :D

So, three alsos later, I gave my friends a biscuit heart and a biscuit fire engine for their birthdays. My feminist soul may be saved by the fact that the red food colouring still ended up looking a bit pink, so I produced a pinkish fire engine.

Yay for unintentional stereotype undermining! :D

 

I’m-Not-Impressed-With-You-You-Were-Supposed-To-Be-Brownies Cappuccino Cookies

So there was this recipe. It sounded fantastic. A beautiful soft and moist espresso brownie with a cream frosting and espresso & chocolate glazing.

The brownies looked fantastic in the pictures, too.

The recipe sounded good.

I went ahead and …

… ended up with cookies. Chocolate & espresso cookies. What the eff!?

I don’t know what went wrong. I’m guessing it was the baking temperature. Ah. I get it. I was using a man‘s oven. One should never do that. They can only cope with frozen pizzas.

Sigh.

It can’t have been my mistake, can it? So many italics!

So after his oven ruined my brownies, the man suggested I just serve them as cookies – I added the frosting and glazing, and everybody loved them. Everybody but me, that is. I am still not impressed.

Sigh.

Sigh!