Quick Blueberry Tarte with Almond Sponge Cake Base

Today, the weather for plucking blueberries was perfect, so this is precisely what we did with relish under a bright blue sky... Blueberrys are much easier to pluck than strawberries, as you don't have to scoot around on the ground but have the berries in a great ergonomic height, practically falling into your basket! And they're so healthy! As we'd been invited to dinner spontaneously, I spontaneously tried once again to make a sponge cake base for fruit cakes myself - that mold is another one that the cake usually refuses to come out of! But then, it enables you to bake a cake base on a sunday, when you cannot buy one, and you can add ground almonds to make an almond sponge cake, which you cannot buy at all!

Hugo-Cubos: Mint-Elderflower-Icecubes

My beloved herb garden is in the process of growing over my head, so I'm thinking about harvesting and preserving as many herbs as possible for the winter. Some herbs can be dried, others lose their aroma and should be preserved in oil or frozen. Apart from water, you can use other fluids for freezing the herbs, such as melted butter, especially if you want to use the herbs with butter later, e.g., sage butter...
And that's how I had the idea to preserve my great crop of mints this year combined with Elderflower Syrup in frozen "Hugo-Cubos": Icecubes to which you only have to add prosecco and maybe a little lime for the trendy Italian summer aperitif Hugo- such that you can enjoy it in winter, too! :-) As an alcohol-free version, you can combine the Hugo-Cubos with Tonic Water and Soda!

Watalappam

Watalappam is my Dad's favorite dessert and is usually made once a year for his birthday. The pudding containing palm sugar and coconut milk probably originated in Malaysia, but has grown very famous all over Sri Lanka by now.
Its most exotic ingredient is "Jaggery", a very dark brown sugar made from date palms. It is sold in half sphere shaped lumps, usually only in Indian Asia Shops as opposed to Thai Shops.
Cashew nuts are a classic accompaniment to Watalappan, but sliced Mango also worked very well.  According to the Internet where I found this recipe (which I changed a bit), you can substitute Jaggery with brown sugar but I haven't tried that yet ;-)

Cinnamon Buns with Hermann Sourdough (Swedish Kanelbullar)

My clever sister has discovered something great once again: the Hermann sourdough! The English Wikipedia calls it Amish Friendship Bread. When we were kids, we used to have it, a fun combination of chain letter and Tamagotchi ("I have to go home and feed my Hermann"), but back then, we didn't know the delicious recipe for Cinnamon Buns (German) yet. I like these Cinnamon Buns better than all the other Hermann cakes - it may be due to the cardamom, which is typical for original Swedish Kanelbullar. For the Hermann base dough, there are recipes without yeast, with yeast, or a recipe for cross-breeding a different sourdough (all German).
I follow the recipe rather closely, I just take a bit more of the Hermann and use milk instead of an egg to brush the buns. I also don't sprinkle the buns on the tray with cinnamon and sugar, but I have tried to add the traditional Swedish sugar crystals with great succes!

Bits und so 300 - "Club Mate" Cake with Gelatin Fondant

My good friend Timo has a very successful German Podcast about technical gimmicks called Bits und so. Yesterday, they had a big event for Episode 300 of the podcast, which was recorded live in Munich, and I thought a matching cake for such an event shouldn't be missing!

Contrary to popular prejudices, these circles have progressed to drink Club Mate instead of Coke - that's why I found, test baked and adapted this recipe (German).

The cake doesn't taste strongly like Club Mate, but it's very tasty nevertheless and harmonizes nicely with the Ganache made with dark chocolate and the sweetness of the fondant. Matching the event logo, a pixelated 300, I could open up my green food coloring (even though pixelating a 0 was very difficult in this analog world, and with white instead of black) and make some Gelatin Fondant again, and whilst looking for the candles, I found my beloved letter stamps again! For those of you who aren't computer scientists: the candles aren't broken, but have to be read in binary format ;-)

1*256+0*128+0*64+1*32+0*16+1*8+1*4+0*2+0*1= 300 or 100101100

Gelatin Fondant

I made my first decorations with marzipan, powdered sugar and food coloring, then I discovered Marshmallow Fondant and finally this fantastic Gelatin Fondant (German recipe). Wikipedia says: "Fondant (UK: /ˈfɒndənt/, US: /ˈfɑndənt/ or /ˈfɑndɑnt/, from the French: /fɔ̃.dɑ̃/) is one of several kinds of icing-like substance used to decorate or sculpt pastries." In the comments to the recipe, they talk about a caramel syrup, but since I couldn't find it in Munich and since I tried very unsuccessfully to use "Grafschafter Rübensirup", I settled on using this easily made Glucose Syrup (German recipe). Since I am preparing a cake with gelatin fondant, I made the fondant today to use it tomorrow. Gelatin Fondant is less tough than Marshmallow Fondant, it can be kept for quite a while in the fridge or frozen and doesn't taste too sweet (for fondant, anyway). I can really recommend it!

A Recipe for Marriage - Yin-Yang Gateau with Light and Dark Chocolate Mousse

I created this gateau especially for the wedding of our friends Raphaela und Martin - my best whishes for you two! The YinYang                 symbol stands for the union of complements or opposites to harmony, for man and woman, dark and light. You can prepare this gateau perfectly as a couple - each person just chooses a color, prepares the sponge cake and the mousse and in the end, everything is combined in perfect harmony. :-) You can also combine the gateau diffently in order to exploit the opposites: since the white mousse is a bit sweeter, it also tastes very well with the dark sponge cake!

Chocolate Filled Strawberries - the other way!

Since I went to the strawberry field again yesterday, I had the chance to pick some rather big strawberries to finally try out this fantastic recipe for chocolate-filled strawberries (idea from this blog). I used 50 g white und 100 g milk chocolate. Finally -  chocolate strawberries that you can eat without getting your fingers sticky! :-)

Hollerkiachl ("Elderflower Pancakes") with Raspberry Puree

Hollerkiachl are another seasonal and very regional (typical Bavarian) dish made from elderflower umbels that are coated in a pancake batter and baked or fried in oil. You can use the convenient stems of the elderflowers as a handle. Hollerkiachl can also be made with a beer-based batter (German recipe, I'm afraid there is no English one), but I used ordinary pancake batter for the first try - also because I didn't have any beer ;-)

This time, I've found an elderflower tree which was situated in a less dangerous environment (far fewer ants!) and escaped unharmed - that makes the Kiachl taste eben better!

Potato Bread from the Tray

We had potato bread accompanying a menu of 3 courses in a fancy restaurant once and loved it, and while trying to find a recipe for that potato bread, I discovered Chefkoch.de. So this is the very first of many recipes that I got from Chefkoch.de, and a good start it was! The bread is very easy to bake and always turns out delicious for me. You can keep the ingredients on stock, such that you're always prepared for the spontaneous barbecue party on Sunday afternoon when bread is nowhere to be bought - and in addition, I think no other bread better suits a barbecue than this one! I made a little change to the Chefkoch.de recipe, so this is my variant described below.

Sophia's Quick Chocolate Muffins

For our niece's first birthday, I made chocolate muffins with toy building blocks made from edible play do. She didn't eat any of them, however, apparently she's one of these strange children who like only healthy food - no cake! Well, she's not related to me, otherwise it would be even stranger ;-) I used funny colorful paper muffin forms instead of the baking paper squares for a change. They muffin forms are also better for seeing the decorations of top of the muffins!

Bavarian "Bread and Salt"

I love "Bread and Salt" as a present for someone's housewarming party - you can always use it, even if many guests had the idea to give you bread and salt, and the symbolism (the bread stands for food, the salt for wealth) is also nice. The German saying that goes with it is "Brot und Salz, Gott erhalt's" ("bread and salt, may god keep it for you").
If you want to gift-wrap the bread and salt in a traditional way, a wooden cutting board serves nicely, and here in traditional Bavaria, everybody loves a "Royal Bavarian Snack Plate". Since I had seen one of these readymade only once (during Oktoberfest) and I thought it would be nicer still to include the host's name, I made the plate myself this time. The Bavarian coat of arms shouldn't be missing, so I decided to put it on the bread. I baked the bread in the wooden baskets from here, and I included a jar of Rhubarb-Strawberry-Chutney, as we were invited for a barbecue.

Solder-Burning - Herb Garden Markers and Bread Cutting Boards

Sometimes, the baked works of art require an adequately fancy presentation and today I want to introduce one way of creating such a presentation: I call it solder-burning, using a soldering iron to burn shapes into wooden objects. I had the idea when I wanted to make little markers for my herb garden out of wooden popsicle sticks, and some of these popsicle sticks already have this kind of burnt print on them. Since it worked very well with the popsicle sticks and I recently needed a "Royal Bavarian Snack Plate" to present the "Bread and Salt" for a friend, I thought it was a nice idea to also write his name on the board and progressed to the next and rather bigger object - check it out!

Red Wine Cake with Edible Play Do Tokens for the Step Counting Competition

At DLR, we had a step counting competition several weeks ago that was a lot of fun. The goal was for everyone to become a bit fitter, using step counters to see how far (or not far at all) we walk each day - and of course to compete against the other departments while motivating each other to be more active! The competition ran virtually through all German DLR sites from Berlin to Oberpfaffenhofen, and you could look at your progress in the form of these cute tokens. My department didn't win, but since we came first of all the space operations departments, we have definitely earned a cake :-)

Rhubarb-Strawberry-Chutney

The name Chutney comes from the Indian cuisine and refers to a family of condiments,  often involving spices and fruits. Chutneys used to be prepared fresh until the British adopted the custom of preserving chutneys using sugar and vinegar, similar to the principle of preserving jams. With strawberries that you harvest yourself, the chutney tastes especially delicious! 
All  chutneys are a great condiment for grilled meat, but also for cheese and fish or Rice&Curry dishes of the Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine!

Elderflower Syrup

Finally, the elderflower blossoms, and this year, I had to pay quite a price for the syrup. It happened that I discovered a wonderful, huge elder tree just on my way home from work, which was laden with elderflowers just in my reach. I happily started plucking the umbels and was so absorbed that I only got a strange feeling as something crawled into both my ears. 
And that was when I was already covered in black ants, from head to toe! Apparently, they had a street along the sidewalk and thought that I was an ideal bridge, or whatever. To make matter worse, they found their way under my clothes, but not back out again, which was regrettable for everyone involved! Well, after removing nearly all the ants (to the great entertainment of people passing by) I fearlessly (and very fast) plucked some more umbels and went on retreat...and I really value this year's syrup after all that I had to do to obtain it! ;-)

Mango-Mousse in Chocolate-Cups (Explosion of the Senses...and Chocolate)

What could be a better decoration for a mango mousse than a chic chocolate cup? At least that's what I thought this morning. I'd seen the great idea of making chocolate cups out of air ballons in this blog, and wanted to try it. Unfortunately, I hadn't read the comments beneath the post, these ladies had had similar problems as I experienced - we had chocolate in our faces (and splattered across the whole kitchen) instead of on the rack!

Cantuccini and Biscotti for Mother's Day

This year, my sister and I couldn't visit our parents for Mother's Day, so we sent our Mum baked italian cookies via mail: Biscotti alle Nocciole, cookies with hazelnuts, and toscan almond cookies, the famous Cantuccini.

The Biscotti are stable enough to survive the transport and our Mum was very happy! :-)

Lilac-Syrup

Since the elderflowers are still not out this year (what's in bloom right now and _looks_ like elderflowers is in fact the related snowball, which is slightly poisonous) and pink syrup is a fancy contrast, I decided to make lilac syrup. It can be enjoyed just like elderflower syrup in sparkling wine or presecco, with sparkling water or on ice cream, and it really tastes like the lilac flowers smell!

BMW M3 Bear (Rehrücken)

For his birthday, my boyfriend traditionally gets a cake (called Rehrücken, "deer's back" in German) in the shape of a teddy bear - ever since his parents got the bear mould in the US and his mother found out that one Rehrücken recipe fits exactly into the mould.

In the last years, the honour of baking the cake fell to me, however I'll still need to practice for a while as I still have big issues with getting the bear out of the mould! This year, we had M-Bear, matching the M3 that I rented for the day in the BMW World - which I can greatly recommend by the way!