Tag Archives: Herbst

October 26th, 2016

Rosehip Jam

HagebuttenmarmeladeWhenever I snack tiny spoonful of the delicious rosehip jam, I close my eyes and remember sunlit wild rosebushes on beautiful morning in October. While around our home there are only few bushes with small fruits, in Swabia you can find a lot beautiful fruits. And so we used our saturday morning stroll to pick some fruits. With four people more then a kilogram is fast picked.

The fruits then traveled home with us and the next day I started making jam. Before I checked different methodes and decided to first cook them, puree them and then pass them through different sieves to remove the seeds and seed hairs. Cooking Rosehip Jam is a time consuming task but nevertheless rewarding. I find that adding enough water while passing the fruit pulp through the food mill is crucial to get all of the fruit puree through the

That’s why I ended with 1 kg of Fruit pulp and about 500h of seeds. The pulp I mixed then with half of the amount of sugar and cooked for 2 minutes. Then the jam was nicely thick then and very delicious. To make sure that the jam keeps well (with this low amount of sugar) I decided to sterilize the jam as do I do it for my Zwetschgenmus. And now I enjoy the jam every morning 🙂

 

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October 16th, 2016

Kürbisstuten

KürbisstutenIn this year Indian summer lasted long. But now the days are getting shorter and air is chilly when I leave the house in the morning. And when I drive through the range of the hills I can see the first sun rays turning the misty valleys below into golden lakes. It is autumn, finally.

And so a recipe, which I got from a reader some weeks ago, fits into this beginning autumn very well. It is a recipe for pumpkin “Stuten”. Literally the term “Stuten” means “Mare” and my reader was very puzzled about it when she moved to Oldenburg many years ago and the bakeries were advertising “It is Pumpkin-Stuten time again”. But in Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein the term means “sweet bread” as well as “horse”. And this pumpkin bread was a steady companion for my reader in the following years.

And when I asked for local recipes she sent a recipe from her kids kindergarten. I modified it strongly (ok, I tore it down and rebuild it from the fragments), so it contains now much less yeast but a preferment and some more liquid, too. And I kneaded the dough much longer as well. All of this together makes the bread irresistibly soft and aromatic. A great bread for autumn!

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September 19th, 2015

Cornucopia with Apple Nut Filling

Cornucopia (11) Cornucopia, the horn of plenty, is a symbol of abundance and nourishment in the classical myths and is often associated with autumn. And when I prepared my little pastries I look on the nuts and apples and that little cornucopia would be the right way to celebrate autumn plenty.

It is apple and  no other fruit that means autumn to me. And I can’t stop praising the heirloom apples which are often much more aromatic then the new breeds. And for baking cake there is no better apple then my favourite Jakob Lebel. It is a tree which gives a plenty of fruits and which is often found in old gardens and orchards. In the beginning of last century the meeting of german pomiculture society named it as one of tree apple variety they advised to grow because it is so fruitful, aromatic and robust. Continue reading

November 15th, 2014

Pumpkin seed bread with roasted Pumpkin

Kürbisbrot (3)

The nice sales girl in my parents favourite bakery gave them some slices of bread to test, mentioning that she like it very much but strangely the other costumers did not buy it. My parents tested it and agreed that it is very delicious. At the end, they bought the last loaf.

When they told me about it my brain started to work immediately and soon I had a plan for the next baking day. The basis for the recipe is my favourite wheat and rye bread to which I added roasted pumpkin and pumpkin seeds. For the form of the loaves I tried to mimic a pumpkin, too.

The bread had a good oven spring and smelled divine when I pulled it from the oven. It was hard for me to wait until the bread cooled but my patient was rewarded. The bread had a crisp crust and a regular soft crumb speckeled with orange pumpkin and green seeds.

It is a great bread and for sure not the last time I baked it.

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September 8th, 2013

Riemchenkuchen 2

RiemchenkuchenMy  birthday last friday was the last real summer day with 32°C. Already one day later the temperature dropped to 20°C and it started to rain heavily. Hello Autumn! And so it was easy to decide for a cake for the birthday get together with the family. I baked the first apple cake of this season, a cake which is called Riemchenkuchen or Rhineland Applecake. It is a  childhood favourite, a yeast dough cake filled with apple sauce.

Since some days I was thinking about using a mixture of yeast dough and short pastry as a cake base. This combined the advantage of both doughs: a fluffy dough that stays fresh for a long time and which is very easy to handle. It is very easy to prepare this yeasted shortcrust pastry. You have to make a shortcrust pastry and yeasted dough and combine both doughs after the yeast dough has risen.

This worked perfectly for this cake. It looked so good that my dad really asked if I bought the cake… No, it is homemade and it taste just great! Continue reading

October 2nd, 2012

Apple Cinnamon Rolls

Apfel-Zimt-Schnecken

In the morning the mist is already lingering in the valley I am living in, the air is getting colder and some windy and rainy days made it clear: Autumn is finally here. And so the first windfall from my parents garden is waiting in my kitchen to be used in some delicious recipes.

But what should I do with them? Appel strudel, Apple cake or Apfelküchle are all good recipes, but I was longing for something else. Something with yeast. Something like Cinnamon-rolls?

And so I started a yeast dough and bake some Apple-Cinnamon-Rolls. They are filled with a cream made of egg, butter, almonds and cookie crumbles, which I topped with finely chopped apples. Cinnamon is the main flavour in the seasoning, but a touch of allspice and cardamom add a little bit of deepness it.

A gorgeous treat, perfect for the early autumn!

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