Sri Lanka Black Tea Macarons with Lemon Ganache

For the Sri Lankan New Year's Party this year, I wanted to do something different and yet typical. When I last made the macarons in Easter Egg shape, it occurred to me that the shape of the island of Sri Lanka actually looks a bit like an egg and that more precise contours couldn't be much harder to do than, say, the bear macarons, so I just tried it! Sri Lanka (Ceylon), is the home of black tea among other things, so I thought of macarons with black tea and a white lemon ganache as filling. Of course, I was not the first person to make tea macarons, so I knew that it works and even looks very nice with the small black dots :-)
I also thought it was a good idea to make the macaron filling with a custard from the remaining egg yolks and some honey, as this video describes, I'll try that next time! A dark chocolate ganache would fit well, too, but I was not sure if that wouldn't overpower the lemon...

TEXUS-50 Sponge-Roulade

So the "main attraction" for my business trip to the Arctic Circle were the planned launches of the sounding rockets TEXUS 50 and 51. TEXUS 50 was successfully launched on april 12, 2013, but TEXUS 51 unfortunately had to be postponed. So there was only a TEXUS 50 sponge roulade ;-)

Initially I had planned to bake a single roulade, but it soon became clear that this would grotesquely distort the proportions - after all, the rocket, a VSB-30, about 12 meters long with a diameter of less than half a meter!

 Image: Rainer Kirchhartz, DLR

My solution to bake four biscuit roulades and arrange them side by side came already closer to the original, but still was not really to scale. Anyway, all the project participants were able have some of it and 8 sponge roulades instead of 4 would have been just a little extreme... ;-)

The payload was painted in pretty white lettering with a golden 50.

The next picture shows the respective first and second stage for TEXUS 50 and 51. Note the differently colored fins!

Foto: Klaus Lohn, DLR

Here, the two stages already wear their "war paint" - which I didn't manage to copy on my cake due to time restrictions ;-)

Foto: Nadine Perera, DLR

That's how it looks when the two stages are already in the launcher and the payload is lifted on top of them. As with my cake, it is not easy to get the original rocket in one picture in full length!

Foto: Klaus Lohn, DLR

The fact that the payload (the red part) is thinner than the stages (the two orange parts with the fins), I solved, as I think, very practically by rolling up one roulade from the long side of the baking tray, resulting in a long, narrow roll, by rolling up two sponge roulades from the short side of the tray, which resulted in two shorter, thicker roulades. 

Image: Rainer Kirchhartz, DLR

Just as with the real rocket, I needed an engine adapter which connects the two parts, which I made by rolling up a part of the fourth roulade diagonally. The other part of the fourth roulade, I rolled and cut diagonally to form the top. The fins, the nozzle and tip are molded from marzipan.

Zuerst die Finnen, Düse und Spitze aus Marzipan herstellen, damit diese über Nacht trocknen können. 
Bei diesen kleinen Teilen funktionierte die Weinflasche als Wellholz noch ganz gut, für die große Fläche später hat eine (verschlossene) Bierdose noch besser funktioniert. Die Finnen aus dünn ausgerollten Marzipan ausschneiden, einen dünnen Streifen als Finnschuhe um die untere Kante biegen, über Nacht trocknen lassen. Die Düse und die Spitze habe ich erst am nächsten Tag geformt, die wurden auch noch einigermaßen formstabil!

Prinsesstårta (Princess Cake)

Yay! My amazing employer, the German Aerospace Center, is sending me on a business trip to Kiruna in northern Sweden, where, among other things, I get to see a rocket launch from TEXUS  :-) At the European Rocket Range, most of the residents cook for themselves, i.e., there are common kitchens -  and naturally I thought of taking a couple of baking utensils - only the bare necessities, of course ;-) 
Regarding Sweden, two cakes come to my mind: the Prinsesstårta is a very famous Swedish cake that I've wanted to bake for a while now. The Kronenkrakker is very unknown, however, because it was invented by me and baked only once - for details see here in this blog...

Australian Fish Cupcakes

For the farewell party of an Australian colleague who goes - as he put it - "back to the land of murderous animals", I spontaneously baked these fish cupcakes. Basis for the cupcakes is the orange muffin recipe I used for the Muffin Buket decorated them with butter cream, mini Smarties, and "Lachgummi" - funny enough, you can use almost every form of Lachgummi fruit somehow use as a fish-tail, even the banana ;-) I had the idea again from Pinterest, but in this picture they probably used mini-M&Ms which have much richer colors than the mini Smarties I had. And, finally, I got to use my monster eyes :-)

Easter Egg Macarons for #PamK

After my faith in my macaron arts had been restored with the Heart Macarons, I had the idea to bake Easter egg macarons for #PamK. The motto was actually "childhood memories", but my exchange partner lives in a place called "Osterhofen" and together with the date of the exchange, I absolutely had to bake one Easter-themed item! Macarons without food coloring are eggshell colored anyway and colored sugar beads had already worked well on the Snowman Macarons. This time, I were folded the batter probably not quite long enough, the macarons weren't entirely smooth on the surface ... but better like that than if they break during baking!

Heart macarons for the "Jour du Macaron"

I wasn't really happy with my last macarons, the snowmen and bears, and I also wanted to practice heart macarons - they look so pretty on wedding cakes, but require some practice! Which day to better start that practice than the "Jour du Macaron", which happens to be the Canadian beginning of spring, namely the 20th March aka TODAY?
So I did some research how it could be that the macarons au chocolat were perfect, with not a single one getting fissurs, while the snowmen and bears were so problematic. I took the the 7 egg whites recipe of  the macarons au chocolat and converted it to 3 egg whites, and I got exactly the snowmen and the teddy bear recipes, so the composition was the same. My conclusion: I had folded the batter too long and I'm holding the 10-or 30-second rule responsible:
The Snowman recipe said: "Take care not to overmix, the mixture should flow like lava and a streak of mixture spread over the surface of the rest of the mixture should disappear after about 30 seconds."
The Bears- recipe said: "Run a knife through. If the line disappears after ten seconds, stop folding." However, in the French video that helped me make the perfect chocolate macarons, it does not look at all as if anythig would flow together within 30 or 10 seconds, so this time I ignored both rules and left the dough extra thick and such that nothing happens with a cut in the batter for way more 30 seconds, and voilà, the macarons turned out great and not a single had fissures!
I filled the macarons with butter cream, which was left over from a wedding cake test (more on that later!)

Clara's Healthy Din-Cookies

My current "favorite kid" in my circle of friends is little Clara - because she loves pastry of all kinds and thus appreciates my hobby! Shortly after she had learned my name ("Din"), her mom returned home with the Christmas cookies that we had baked together. Since then, all kinds of cookies and sweets are also called "Din" by Clara, which makes me very proud!
Since Clara had been ill last week, I wanted to bake her some healty cookies for her cookie jar and that's how I made up the recipe for these cookies with spelt whole grain flour, brown sugar, and oats.
Also, I got to use the little cookie cutters wich my dad had given me for Christmas :-)
I thought that the "Dins" did taste a bit healthy, but Clara apparently likes them very much!

Bouquet of Cinnamon Buns

The Cupcate Rose Bouquet gave me the idea that my favorite Hermann cinnamon buns could also be presented in that manner - because that's much fancier than just sticking them into a basket, right?
Also, the cinnamon bun bouquet has the great advantage over the cupcake bouquet that the construction is much easier to transport! The butter cream is a bit sticky and unstable after all, unlike the cinnamon buns. This time, everything went much faster and worked like a charm, such that I even arrived at the party super punctual :-)

Sweet Condensed Milk Cake with Bear Macarons

Recently, I was visiting the "newest" baby in my circle of friends, little Luisa. I had also baked her a gingerbread heart and a cake (for stressed-out parents) because I was invited for coffee. I thought that bear macarons would be the ideal ornament for a baby's birthday cake. Unfortunately, mine were nowhere near as perfect as the original, but I keep practicing! 
The cake was a sponge cake with sweetened condensed milk I had discovered here, with the dark chocolate ganache that I fill into my chocolate macarons. I made the macarons without food coloring, only using homemade elderberry syrup to dye them purple!

Monster Eyes

This recipe is ideal for small leftovers of royal icing, for example, from decorating gingerbread hearts. Since I had baked several recent Gingerbread (some of my friends had babies again), I even had the opportunity to produce the monster eyes in two stages, so that they have a pretty edge at the back, such that they can be stuck into all sorts of cakes, muffins or creams. In the United States you can buy those monster eyes readymade, but they are really very easy to make yourself! Just take a some royal icing and black food coloring, and I think chocolate would also work!

Muffin Bouquet with Doctor-Hat

Yesterday, a colleague of mine celebrated her birthday and doctorate degree and for this occasion, I thought it a good idea to combine a cupcake rose bouquet with little doctor hats. Of course, not everything went as planned, especially in the transport department, there were a few minor hiccups. After the first two doctor hats had a tragic accident with a fallen electric mixer (onto the hats), the last doctor hat inexplicably broke on the transport by bus :-(
Luckily, we could re-assemble the hat for a few photos and since the doctorate exam had already been passed, it cannot mean any bad luck :-)

Cake of Death - Happy Valentine's Day!

After I had made death cookies for my best friend's birthday, who is a big fan of the Notfunny comics, he promptly gave me the matching "cake mold of death" for my birthday :-) Now, you cannot bake such a cake for just any occasion - you wouldn't want the recipient of the cake to take it the wrong way! So I decided spontaneously on a counter-measure to the Valentine's Day-induced ubiquitous hearts and love motives in Pinterest and everywhere, and devoted this cake to all the singles for Valentine's Day ;-) 

By the way, my colleague found this recipe on Chefkoch.de, and I wanted give it a try, because it contains neither oil nor butter.

St. Lucia's Bread Wreath Crown

When I saw these Lucia buns with saffron on Pinterest, I immediately had to think of my friend Lucy, whom I visited recently in her new house. St. Lucia Day on December 13 had certainly passed already, but I still liked the idea a lot. However, I like to give bread and salt for house warming parties, and thus I continued to search for Lucia bread and found something even better: a sweet bread in the form of a braided crown with candles on it! Lucia is derived from "lux", Latin for "light", and in Sweden they have a tradition that on Lucia Day, that the eldest daughter of the house wears a crown with lighted candles, because Holy Lucia probably wore a crown of candles, to have her hands free when she brought food to other pursued Christians. So we had Lucia bread and salt for my visit :-)

Roscon de reyes (Three Kings Wreath)

Today is Epiphany, a holy day which is celebrated much more enthusiastically in Spain and Latin America than here. There, the children have to wait for most of their Christmas presents until today! Moreover,  a popular cake named  Roscon de reyes is consumed. When I was  in Spain a few years ago was, I arrived at this particular time and could admire this ring cake in all bakery shop windows, so I thought I could bake it this year...for nice exile Spaniards, for example ; -) After reading various internet recipes, I used a normal "fine yeast dough" from my very first cookbook, because the ingredients of the different recipes varied strongly, but in the end, usually made up more or less this fine yeast dough.

Melting Snowman Cookies

I discovered these melting snowmen chocolate cookies here on Pinterest immediately wanted to make them! I had to use Ritter Sport chocolate pieces for hats and I think they have worked quite well. For the nose, I started to use pieces of orange Mamba, unfortunately, they were only a very very light orange, so I later switched to orange sprinkles. Nevertheless, not everyone immediately recognized what' is depicted on the cookies ... the most creative theory was that it is a penguin who is jobbing as a construction worker (because of the helmet!) :-)

Rednosed Reindeer Muffins

As my birthday is in December, I am lucky enough to make lots of great winter- and Christmas-themed treats for my birthday parties - including these reindeer muffins that I had discovered on Pinterest and the Melting Snowman Cookies following in the next post... the basis for these muffins are my very first chocolate muffins, but you can use any muffins you like!

Handbag and cycling shoes from velvet cake (Brown Velvet Cake)

For the birthday of my world best sister, I made a handbag this year, as a voucher for a real handbag, and matching cycling shoes as a gift voucher from her boyfriend. I had planned to make red velvet cake, but I didn't have enough red food coloring left, I thought purple would be nice - that is, I used red and blue paste color and purple powder color. Well, as you can see, all that made a pretty velvety brown... at one point, however, you can see a little purple streak ;-) I was not that happy with the used recipe and with the resulting cake falling badly in after baking, but everyone else thought that it tasted good, so all's well!

Reindeer Heart Cookies

Like so much else, I discovered this cute and easy way of decorating cookies on Pinterest. My reindeer are (intentionally) darker than thanks to cocoa in the dough, and I thought a heart shape would be nice - even if that lead some onlookers to mistake the heart-shaped ones for "Reindeer mice" and the jagged ones for "Reindeer hedgehogs"!
If you decorate as many cookies as I did, it takes time despite the simplicity ... but it was worth it, right? And you'll have many cookies to hand out, which is always good. :-) I used the same dough as for the non-lemming Funny cookies .

Bad-Ass Bat Muffins

I had a Halloween party planned for his year and a lot of ideas of what I wanted to prepare for it. After this plan had changed spontaneously, I was invited to a Halloween party at a dear colleague's house and chose these bat muffins from all my ideas as my contribution to the finger food buffet. 
Mine are not as cute as the original ones with mini muffins and huuuuge eyes , but they also look a bit halloweenig and nasty, as it should be!

Chocolate-Coconut-Muffins with Fondant-Frangipani

Last weekend, I attended a Buddhist ceremony. The food at such ceremonies is usually wonderfully varied, and since my Dad was one of the main organizers, I wanted to bake something suitable. The emblem of Buddhism is actually the lotus flower, but in all the Buddhist temples I have ever seen, Frangipani also grow (they are called Aralia in Singhalese), which are also known as "Temple Flowers", precisely because they are planted in each temple. Unlike the lotus flowers, I could imagine to make Frangipani out of gelatin fondant, and that decided the decoration question! ;-)