Star Wars Day 2017 – Asparagus Lightsabre Tartelette

 

Happy Star Wars Day!

Happy 2017!

Happy New Year, everybody!

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions but I believe in cheese bites with poppyseed numbers on them.

This year, let’s continue to bake the world a better weirder place!

Wurst-Käs-Szenario [language warning: German]

 

Das Motto unserer Eurovision-Party 2015 war, passend zu Conchitas grandiosem Sieg letztes Jahr, WURST-KÄS-SZENARIO!

Weil warum nicht!
(Und, nein, ich wollte wirklich nicht versuchen, das ins Englische zu übersetzen oder irgendwie auf englisch zu erklären.)

Unsere Gäste haben sich wieder mal mächtig ins Zeug gelegt und kamen großartig verkleidet, und bis auf die Musik war’s ein toller Abend!

 

Aber jetzt zum wichtigsten: KUCHEN.

 

Wurst-Käs-Szenario!

 

Ich musste (irgendwie unoriginellerweise) wieder mal meinen Mohnkuchen machen. Der hat einfach echt viele Fans in meinem Freundeskreis (und offensichtlich mehr als The Makemakes und Ann-Dings zusammen, harr harr).

Drauf gab’s zweifärbigen Zuckerguss sowie Wurst und Käselöcher aus gefärbtem Marzipan.

Sieht irgendwie fast ein bisschen unappetitlich aus… Mission accomplished!

 

Außerdem habe ich auch noch pikante Torten gebacken:

 

Wurst-Käse-Torte

 

Halbe Sache: Käsetorte

 

Beide Torten – bzw. die eineinhalb Torten – bestanden aus Kuchenböden, für die ich mein Zucchinikuchen-Rezept abgewandelt habe. Unter anderem hab ich grob gehackte Walnüsse dazugefügt, was dem ganzen echt ne schöne Note verpasst hat. If I may say so myself.

Die Wurst-Käse-Torte war überraschenderweise mit Wurst und Käse gefüllt, und die halbe Sache nur mit Käse. Wer hätt’s gedacht! :D

 

Deutsche Monsterbake-Blogeinträge sind komisch. I’m going back to bed.

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

 

Brokkoli & Smoked Trout Strudel with Wild Garlic!

Let me tell you a sad, sad story with a happy ending!

Last Thursday, I received sad news indeed. Friday’s training session was cancelled. No boxing on Friday night! Don’t cry for me, though, dear reader, for I came up with an alternative. This alternative couldn’t make up for the missed boxing training but it lead to the happy ending of my wonderful story: I went cycling on Friday morning. And after about 30 minutes, I found myself in the woods and overwhelmed by the loveliest smell! Either I had died and gone to heaven (part two not being bloody likely! ;) – or it’s wild garlic* season!

* aka ramsons, buckrams, broad-leaved garlic, wood garlic, bear leek or bear’s garlic. Or so Wikipedia says.

There was wild garlic everywhere. So I got off my bike, gathered as much of the stuff as my bicycle basket would hold, and then cycled home smelling slightly garlic-y.

Great story, isn’t it? :)

And in the evening of that lovely day I made:

brokkoli & smoked trout strudel with wild garlic

Much more yummy looking (and yummy!) in real life. Sorry you missed it! :-P

I used store-bought puff pastry. The filling is really just cooked brokkoli, smoked trout, chopped-up wild garlic, some cream cheese and a handful of kalwanji seeds. The strudel was extremely easy to make, and it tasted so. Flipping. Nice.
Seriously.

The hardest part was standing my ground in the discussion with two males from Northern Germany who had never heard of savoury strudel. Barbarians! (They liked the result, though. I win!)

Oh, and 48 hours later I think I can safely say that apparently I picked little to no lily of the valley or meadow saffron leaves with the wild garlic. (Both these leaves look very much like wild garlic but are highly poisonous!) I win again! :)

By the way, I went back to the woods and gathered some more, MORE, MOOOOOOOOORE. Expect me to smell of wild garlic for the next two weeks. :)

 

Eurovision Disco Cake Balls et al

D – I – S – C – O!
:D

It’s Eurovision day, are you excited?

There’s Eurovision decoration all over the living room; there’s a lot of champagne in the fridge; my costume is ready to be put on; scorecards and drinking game rules have been printed off for all my guests; and of course there’s food. Sounds like the perfect set-up for a perfect night to me!

My main treat for my mad friends (Not the zombie film gang, though; I have more mad friends! And the boys aren’t cool enough for the Eurovision) are disco cake balls. They are strawberry and vanilla cake truffles covered in white chocolate and decorated with girlie glittery sugar sprinkles. Disco! :)

Looking slightly more grown-up – fie! – yet also rather delicious, these are orange and chocolate cake balls. Made from, you guessed it, orange and chocolate cake.

This past week, I’ve had to convince somebody that oranges and chocolate are an awesome combination, which in turn has made me fall in love with it all over again!

And finally I am feeding my friends mini strudels. I was going to make crescents (I used the same dough) but I decided to go for a slightly different shape because I am a rebel like that. :)

There are three fillings: cheese, ham and spring onion; dried tomato and chilli; and dried tomato and poppyseed.

A friend gave me a small jar of dried tomato paste a while ago, and I never knew quite what to use it for. Now I think I have found a very good use for the lovely stuff!

That’s it; I’m ready. Let’s get the party started!

Honey Beer Bread

We hosted another dinner party last night. It was so much fun – not least because it was officially this season’s first Glühwein night!

The sad thing was that I was NOT in charge of dessert, so it looked like there was no baking occasion for me. It’s not like I don’t love cooking, and I like to think that both my Middle Eastern pumpkin soup and the lamb tagine were a real success. But still. Me wants baking.

So I thought … if my friends are going to keep me from baking a cake for Friday night, I am baking bread for Saturday morning! They all stayed the night at our place anyway. (Remember I mentioned Glühwein? ;)

Never having baked bread before I was intrigued by an incredibly simple and yummy sounding recipe I found on my wanderings through various food blogs.

Honey Beer Bread

The bread is wonderful; I really like the taste. I did a trial run on Wednesday, and this second time round I have changed the recipe only a tiny little bit. Now I really want to try out different variations of it though!

Honey Beer Bread

Ingredients
300 g flour
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp honey
355 ml beer
60 g butter, melted

Method
Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt; then stir in honey and beer – you may want to microwave the honey for a few seconds because that makes it easier to stir it in. Spoon half the melted butter into a loaf tin and use some of it to lightly grease the sides of the tin. Then add the batter and finally the second half of the melted butter. Spread it on top of the batter with a brush or the backside of a spoon.
Bake at 180° C for about 55 minutes.

Wasabi and Sesame Towers

 

The other day, I found wasabi paste in a shop, which made me think of … HOT WASABI MINI MUFFINS! And as you can see from the picture and the title of this blog entry, that’s EXACTLY what I made.

I cannot give you a recipe but here’s a really useful plan:

Step 1: Make up recipe for Hot Wasabi Mini Muffins. Prepare your mini muffin tin.

Step 2: Bake a batch of Hot Wasabi Mini Muffins. Be disappointed with the result. Revoke the capitalisation and set your hot wasabi mini muffins aside.

Step 3: Add sesame to the remaining batter, spoon the mixture into a baking tray and bake it.

Step 4: Combine the leftover wasabi paste with cream cheese, a few drops of green food colouring for good measure and a few spices to make a nice and spicy topping for your Wasabi and Sesame Squares. Cut the tray bake into said squares. Try one. Be disappointed with the result. Set aside your wasabi and sesame squares, but not as far aside as the muffins.

Step 5: Ponder.

Step 6: Combine squares to make little towers, sprinkle with sesame. Be slightly less disappointed.

Step 7: Take pictures, write your blog entry, serve them to your mates as squares nevertheless (because there aren’t enough to make a nice number of towers), and never bake them again.

Enjoy!

 

PS: They weren’t that bad. Just not as exciting as I had hoped. My mates still liked them, and the mini muffins are edible, too. Again, just not that exciting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Savoury birthday cake

My third baking project this weekend was my most daring one. It was my friend’s birthday yesterday, and because she’s a really talented and passionate bakesteress ;) she made the cakes herself and had asked me to bring something savoury for the party. At first, I was  bit unhappy because I wanted to make a proper birthday cake. But then I realised that this was an awesome challenge: a savoury birthday cake. I love challenges.

Ta-dah!

The base is a rather mild courgette*, ham & nut cake, which basically tastes like a nutty bread of sorts. For the topping I used one of my favourite foods, an Austrian bread spread called Liptauer. It’s very paprika-y and rather spicy (at least in my version), which goes perfectly with the savoury courgette cake. As muffins, this would make for awesome picnic food. And as mini muffins… I’m getting carried away!

This is the recipe; the Liptauer recipe is a traditional one while the cake recipe was made up by yours truly. Note the detailed instructions!

Cake:
125 ml vegetable oil
2 eggs
220 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
200 g grated courgettes
100 g ground hazelnuts
75 g sunflower seeds, chopped
75 g ham, diced
1 tsp chives
1 dash sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together until as well combined as it gets. Spoon into a baking tin and bake at 180°C for 50 minutes.

Cream:
50 g butter
250 g fromage frais
1/2 onion
50 g gherkins
1 1/2 green chillies
1 1/2 tbsp paprika (hot)
1 tsp hot mustard
1 tsp tomate puree
1 tsp chives
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper powder
1/2 tsp ground garlic
salt and pepper to taste

Chop the onion, the gherkins and the chillies. You want to get really tiny pieces for the cake cream so it looks nicer.
Beat the soft butter and the fromage frais until well combined. Then add all the other ingredients. The mixture should have a nice orange colour. (The photo above doesn’t do it justice!)

Once the cake has cooled completely, spread the Liptauer cream all over the cake. You can use an icing bag to decorate the cake with the cream; please note that you’ll need a very big nozzle for the icing bag unless you’ve spent too much time chopping the veg. Or have used a food processor, in which case you’re cheating because I don’t own one so nobody should be allowed to use them.
I’ve sprinkled my cake with chives; alternatively you could use grated cheese, roasted onions or ham bits for example.
If you have too much Liptauer, eat it on bread. It’s lovely. And Austrian! :)

* Has anybody noticed that I really love courgettes yet? If not: I do. I truly do.