Category Archives: Cake & Pastry

January 23rd, 2014

Spelt Poppy Seed Cookies

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Poppy seeds, Spelt, wheat free, whole grain 13 Responses

Sometimes I need a little bit of sweet in the afternoon to refill my energy reserve. Especially on long workdays I have the longing for a cookie to accompany my cup of coffee to overcome my afternoon slump. And I like it most when the little treat in my lunchbox is then a homemade sweet, preferable made with whole grain.

This week I bake cookies with whole spelt flour and grounded poppy seeds, an idea I had in my mind since I baked the Mohnkipferln. Using whole cane sugar adds a delicious caramel note to the cookies while pinch of salt make the taste nicely round. A great cookie for a little break!

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January 18th, 2014

Germknödel with sweet Starter

Category Cake & Pastry, Dessert, hand kneaded Tags: Hand kneaded, Poppy seeds, Sweet starter, Vanilla 15 Responses

I’m keep my little sweet starter which I created for baking pandoro in the fridge for nearly a month now. I feed him once a week with one part flour and half a part water and let him rise at 30°C for 3-4 hours, until its volume doubles. This keeps the starter very active, but slowly the acidity is coming back. And so I decided today to refresh him by feeding him three times every three hours (similar as described here), which removes the tangy taste.

But that left me with some very active sweet starter which I didn’t want to throw away. And so I mixed it with some flour, milk, eggyolk, butter and sugar to bake “Germknödel” . I needed some patient, because the dough took its time to rise, so I would advice to use 5g fresh yeast to speed up the process if you are a little bit in hurry! I steamed most of them, but cooked some in water as well. Both worked fine, but like always I prefer the steamed version!

The Germknödel have very good flavour with some complex notes due to the starter but without any acidic tones! A delicious dessert or (that what we do) great treat on a lazy saturday afternoon!

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December 29th, 2013

Pandoro (pure Sourdough)

Category Bread, Cake & Pastry, Christmas Cookies Tags: Butter, Egg, Sweet starter, Vanilla 28 Responses

Since I tasted Pandoro many years ago I’m madly in love with this cake/bread. I love the light crumb, the flaky crust and its taste of vanilla and butter.

Until now I baked two different recipes: The Pandoro from the sisters simili which I found on Chili und Ciabatta and the recipe from the SFBI, which Susan published on Wild Yeast. The Pandoro of the Simili-Sisters is a yeast based one, with the butter laminated into the dough, while the SFBI-Recipe uses both sourdough and yeast and the butter is kneaded into the dough.

This year I dared to create my own recipe, with laminated butter for a crumb that can divided into long strands. It is risen with the pure power of a sweet starter. Continue reading →

December 1st, 2013

Marzipan Almond Stollen

Category Cake & Pastry, Christmas Cookies Tags: almond paste, Almonds, Candid Orange peel, Cardamom, Christstollen, Cinnamon, only with yeast, Tonkabohne 21 Responses

I do not make an changes on the recipe of my Christstollen, but some members of our family do not like raisins, and so they do not like Stollen as well. So an alternative was needed! Years ago I already baked a Almondstollen for them, but Almondstollen always has the tendency to get very dry. And that is not so surprising when you take out the ingredients that keeps it moist like raisins for example! But nevertheless I take the challange once again and baked a Marzipan Almond Stollen this year.

The basis for the recipe is the proofed and true recipe of my Christstollen, of course without the raisins and with more almonds. For moisture I use a water roux and added grated Marzipan as well, which adds a nice flavour, too. The fine almond flavour get enhanced from some Tonka bean, and for the classical stollen flavour I grounded candid orange peel in the food processor as fine as possible.

After two weeks of ripening we tested the stollen, and it was still moist. Not as moist as Christstollen, but so much better then every Almond stollen I ever baked before! And it taste very good, too! Maybe I have to bake to different kinds of stollen from now on…

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November 9th, 2013

Baumstriezel

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Cake, Karamell, only with yeast, Zucker 21 Responses

Some recipes are so time consuming that they were only made for big events. The Baumstriezel is one of these recipes, something my Transylvanian ancestors would have bake for weddings and christenings. And maybe for a 5th Blog birthday as well?

A traditional Baumstriezel is baked over red hot coal wrapped around a big piece of wood, rotating the cake until the sugar starts to caramelize. Even nowadays it is made rather seldom and so I’m always exited when I could get a piece.

So it seemed the perfect recipe to celebrate the fifth birthday of “Hefe und mehr”. But how to make such a cake without open fire in the kitchen (when setting the kitchen on fire was no opportunity)? I decided wrap the dough around a wooden rolling pin and to use the overhead grilling function of my oven for baking. That means that I had to stay in front of my oven all the time during baking. Every minute I turned the rolling pin a little bit until the sugar caramelized at all sides.

It was quite time consuming but it worked out perfectly. And so I could enjoy some sweet Baumstriezel to honour my Blog Birthday (with ongoing Blogevent).

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October 13th, 2013

Kanelbullar

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Butter, Cardamom, Cinnamon, only with yeast, Pâte fermentée 21 Responses

Now we are really in the middle of autumn. It is this kind of autumn that makes you searching for your scarf and cap. This kind of autumn that puts soups and stews on top of your “to cook” list. And this kind of autumn which makes you cuddle up on the couch with a good book and a cup of tea. And if this cup of tea comes with kanelbullar, the Swedish cinnamon roll, then everything is good once again.

Would I tend to use exaggerated titles, I would call this cinnamon rolls “the world bests”. But do not and so I will only state: They are the best I bake until now. They have such a soft and fluffy crumb with a strong cinamon flavour, they won me over directly.

For cutting the rolls I used the trick with the dental floss: A dental floss is placed below the log shaped dough and the ends are crossed over the top of it. Pulling the sling together will cut the rolls in a perfectly manner!

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September 29th, 2013

Praline-Quark-Cake

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Curd, Geburtstagskuchen, Nougat, Nuss, sugar paste One Response

To bake a heart shaped cake for birthday (also called “Birthday-Heart”) is an old family tradition. Which cake is baked on the other hand is highly variable. We already baked Cheesecake-Hearts, Goldknödel-Hearts and or the good old Pound-Cake hearts filled with a layer of jam.

For the 80. Birthday of my Grandmother I volunteered to bake a festively decorated cake and the heart shape was mandatory for me! But what cake should I choose?

At the end I decided to use the Praline-Quark-Cake from Petra. Jutta chose this cake as base of her sons wedding cake and she praised the cake so much that it was clear to me that it would be the perfect cake.

To fill the heart springform completely I multiplied the recipe by 1.5, but reduced the amount of sugar a little bit.

And now I can only repeat what Petra and Jutta already told us: It is a great cake, moist and nutty but at the same time very stable, perfect for fondant covered cakes!

This is for you, dearest Oma. Happy Birthday!

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September 8th, 2013

Riemchenkuchen 2

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Apple, Hefe-Mürbeteig, Herbst, only with yeast 28 Responses

My 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 →

August 14th, 2013

Rote Gütze-Torte

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Curd, Johannisbeeren, Kirschen, raspberry, Sahne, Torte 17 Responses

I was searching in the world wide web for a recipe for a “Käse-Sahne-Torte”. This is a torte made with curd and cream and it is normally prepared with gelatine. I normally avoid gelatine, but I couldn’t find a recipe for this childhood favourite without gelatine. But it couldn’t be so hard to develop a recipe, I’m used to convert recipes for torte from gelatine to agar.

When working with agar, you have to keep some points in mind: Agar needs to boil before it can gelatinize and you should never ever cool down a liquid containing agar to fast. Agar will start to already around 30°C, which is about 10°C higher then gelatine. And so one of the main tricks in this recipe is the fact that I use curd, which has room temperature, and that I stir it very slowly in the milk in which I boiled the agar.

To add a fresh touch to the Torte I put a layer of red fruit jelly on top of it, which goes nicely with the warm summer weather. A delicious treat for sunday afternoons with the familiy

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July 28th, 2013

Coconut chocolate bar

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Chocolate, Kokos, Vanilla 4 Responses

At the moment I’m couch bound. A horse fly bite on my knee inflamed badly during this weekend, sending me with fever to the hospital. The good thing is that on Sunday mornings only few people are waiting in the emergency department and so I get my antibiotics quite fast. But the rest of the day I have to cool my painful leg and walk as less as possible. That is so boring! And so it is very good that I remembered some blog post I wanted to finish since a while.

Like this recipe for coconut chocolate bars, which I made for my favourite colleague as little “thank you” some weeks ago. I found the recipe over at Paule , who got it from Gourmandises végétariennes. The original recipe stems from a Alnatura contest but is not online anymore.

I stick nearly completely to the recipe, only replacing the rice milk with coconut milk, because I decided the more coconut flavour is in the bar the better it is!

They are perfect for hot summerdays, refreshing when served out of the fridge and so delicious, that you will need to hide the box!

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