October 16th, 2010

Toastbrot

ToastbrotThis bread results from a misunderstanding. My boyfriend asked if I could bake this delicious “Toastbrot” again. He was thinking about this bread that I baked already in different a Variation for last World Bread Day. I used this fast and easy recipe often in the last month because it is delicious and easy. And delicious and easy recipes were what was needed in the last busy month.

But I would never call it “Toastbrot”. It is very soft and fluffy for a whole wheat bread but typical “Toastbrot” is a white bread for me.

So I designed a recipe for a soft white sandwich bread and vanished into the kitchen. And when I just started to put the loaves into the pans my boyfrind look into the kitchen, take a look into the pans and asked me puzzled what I was baking. Well, that’s toastbrot, isn’t it? Continue reading

October 12th, 2010

Apfelstrudel

ApfelstrudelIf anyone thought we finished the topic “Apples” already, he or she was mistaken. Every time I stroll through my parents garden, I come back with a arm full apples. And when I look at these apples they are the best because they came from the branches high in the tree, out of reach for ladder and apple picker, sun-kissed and heavenly red and sweet.

And so we are still cooking and baking with apples. This weekend I did some appel strudel with homemade strudel dough as dessert for lunch on Sunday. The filling I choose is a very simple one, just apples, sugar and breadcrumbs. No nuts, cinnamon or raisin, letting the apples shine with their great taste. We served the apple strudel with some whipped cream. Continue reading

October 10th, 2010

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Kürbis-ZimtschneckeOther Blogs are already in the middle of the pumpkin weeks but in our kitchen apples are still the main actors. That is maybe due to the reason that pumpkin is not the favourite vegetable from all of us. Especially when I mention pumpkin soup I have to deal with a strong resistance.

But that was no reason for me not to try every pumpkin the pumpkin seller offers me at the harvest festival in our open-air museum. His favorite blue muscat pumpkin could not win me over but the “Australian Butternut” was my kind of squash. The green colour of its skin made me curios because it differed so much to the yellowish butternuts I know. And the flesh under the green skin was deep orange, nutty and slightly sweet. That was my kind of pumpkin without question.

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October 5th, 2010

Apfelküchle

Apfelküchle We still have plenty of apples so there will be a lot of recipes with apple in the next weeks for sure. We finished this years apple harvest. We picked all apples we could reach with ladder and apple picker, but there are still apples left on the highest branches.

Because we picked about 100kg apples this time we brought most of it to our local cider mill. There you can trade your apples for juice. For 100kg apples you get about 12 bottles apple juice.

But the most beautiful apples we place in baskets and store them in the attic. They will keep at least for a month or so, but this is a sort that can not stored for month like others. So eating and preserving apples is the order of the day. Continue reading

October 4th, 2010

Zwiebelkuchen

Zwiebelkuchen

Finally there is light at the end of the tunnel.

We nearly finished our scholarly paper and will submit it middle of this week. 🙂

I have to survive a two day long meeting and then my well-deserved vacation will start.

The last days I spent more 12 hours or more in the Lab to get the last missing data for the Paper. I shocked our cleaning lady regularly when I entered the building at 6.50 am. She does not expect somebody saying “Good Morning” to her at this time of the day.

Because I spent so much time in lab there was nearly no time for cooking or baking. But I still get delicious dinners because the boyfriend take care of cooking. One evening, when I was still in the train station on my way home, I told him what he would need for an onion tart and he prepared the dough. When I came home the dough had risen finely and we prepared the filling together.

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September 25th, 2010

Potato rolls

Kartoffelbrötchen I love bread with potatos, a love I share with Zorra form 1x umrühren bitte. Last year I baked three diffrent breads with potatos:

Kartoffel-Bagel-Stars, whole wheat potato bread and Bauernbrötchen after a recipe of Bäcker Süpke. But this year I did not bake a potato bread untill now.

The inspriation for my potato rolls are the potato rolls which one of colleagues likes to buy for breakfast or lunch break. The bakery which made this rolls closed last week because to many students like to buy their bread in the terrible self-service “bakery” next door. So I tried to recreate the rolls.

I used a mixture of whole wheat and all-purpose flour and made square rolls.

The square shape is easy to create: I flatten the dough and cut it in squares with a dough scraper.

I serve this delicious rolls like this mushroom quiche at my birthday brunch. Continue reading

September 20th, 2010

Rheinischer Apfelkuchen – Riemchenkuchen

Rheinischer Apfelkuchen (2)

This year is a good year for apples. The old apple tree in my parents garden nearly collapses under the weight of the fruits. So we started this Saturday to harvest. We stopped after we harvest everything we could reach with our hands or with the fruit picker. This yielded about 50 kg of fruits and there are still lots of apples on the higher branches (I would guess that there is still 100kg fruits on the tree).

We take about 12 Kilograms apples home and preserve them today in weck glasses, made chutney and apple sauce. Some of the apple sauce were used as filling in one of my favorite cakes: Rheinischer Apfelkuchen, often called Riemchenkuchen, too. The word Riemchen means little lace and refers to the lattice on top of the cake which is formed by dough stripes. It is a local speciality typical for cologne.

And what will we do with the remaining apples? Because the apple is perfect for cooking but can not be stored for more then some weeks, we will bring them to a local cider mill, where we are paid with apple juice for our apples.

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September 6th, 2010

Small Mushroom Quiches

PilzquicheThe theme for the sixth birthday of Zorras Blog Event is vegetables “In Hülle und Fülle”. That means vegetable either as filling or filled.

To my birthday brunch I serve cute little mushroom quiches. Filled with mushrooms that is maybe not the most creative submission but it fits to theme and the little quiches are really delicious.

As dough I choose the dough I found at Chili und Ciabatta . Petra used it for her kohlrabi quiche. Quiche dough Cafe Solo comes from Nicky of  Delicious Days.

The filling is a simple one: Mushrooms, thyme, parsley, topped with goat gouda.

Baked in Muffin tins they have a perfect size for a Brunch.

You can eat them with two or three bites.

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September 5th, 2010

Vanilla Cardamom Fans

Vanille Kardamon FächerLast Sunday we visit my sister in the new house. Because “it’s always good to have some pastry during renovation” (that’s what my sister told me early on the phone) I decided to bring something sweet.

I was longing for something fluffy yeasted pastry. So I thought first of my favourite braid filled with nuts. But then I remembered that my parents would join us, too and my mum suffers of lactose and fructose intolerance. So the braid was out of question, we need something without milk and nuts.

So I started to think: What happened when I just leave out the nuts? Then I would end up with dried breadcrumbs as filling. Hmmm. Bread crumb as filling sounded a little bit strange. But on the other hand we eat noodles with sugar and bread crumbs as children, and we liked it. So I give the idea a try and the filling worked out just fine.

Seasoned with Cardamom and Vanilla nobody missed the nuts. And its a good way to used up dried breadcrumbs. Continue reading

August 29th, 2010

Schwarzbier Bread

Schwarzbierbrot

I belived that I would have to skip this BBD #33. There was so much work in the lab and I have to use most of my creativ potential to solve all the problems with my troublesome experiments.

But then I saw Köstritzer Schwarzbier during my weekend shopping and my brain started to work immediately. Some seconds later I had a recipe for a Schwarzbier bread in mind. And that was perfect because the theme of this month BBD is “Bread with Booze”. So I placed a bottle of Schwarzbier in my shopping basket and changed all of my plans for Baking.

The bread that resulted of this flash of inspiration has a dark colour and a crispy crust because of the beer. I can taste a subtle taste of Schwarzbier but its not to strong to overpower the other flavours. The sweetness of honey complete the taste of the bread.

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