September 8th, 2012

Monkey Cake

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: ,   One Response

DSC_0091

I have still a lot of recipe waiting to be posted. And so here is another birthday cake recipe. This time it was not for me but for a very cute little girl. She loves monkeys and B-A-N-A-N-A-S. And when her Mom asked me to bring a Cake for her birthday, I decided to bake a Monkey Cake for her.

The Idea for this cake is from smitten kitchen, who baked this cake as a birthday cake for her son.

I changed the recipe a little bit, reduing the sugar amount to the half and exchanging the butter cream to a ganache.

The cake was delicious and looked very cute. Perfect for first birthdays!

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September 6th, 2012

Banoffee Pie

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , , ,   4 Responses

Banoffee Pie

To a birthday belongs a birthday cake. The traditional birthday cake in my family has to have a heart shape and will not be baked by the birthday child. And so my Mum will bake my birthday heart for me when we meet this weekend.

But anyway I like to have a piece of cake on my birthday, too.

And so I baked a small cake. Better to say, I bake three small cakes, one for each decade :-).

I met the tempting combination of banana, caramel and cream as a cake at a birthday of a colleague and fell directly in love with it. I just modified the recipe a little bit, using my “Confiture de lait” recipe for the caramel, and cut down the amount of sugar in the cream and short crust. Even then, it is a really sweet cake, I can only eat a little piece at a time, but it tastes so good!

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September 1st, 2012

Technical Problems

Category Technical    No Responses

I am just realise that the update of the “Wordpress Popular Post” break down my database. After deactivating and reactivating, everything seems to be running normal. Sorry for any inconvenience.

September 1st, 2012

Burger buns

Category Rolls  Tags: , ,   11 Responses

Burgerbrötchen (2)A happy bubbling sourdough greeted me in my summer warm kitchen when I came home from work two weeks ago. In the morning I had refreshed the sourdough because I promised to bring sourdough for a colleague.

When I was standing in the kitchen, thinking about what to cook for dinner, I looked at the sourdough and rembered that we had frozen some burger patties for the boyfriend when we made burgers the last time. And in the fridge I had tofu, perfect for my vegetarian burgers. And here was the sourdough, ready to bake some burger buns.

Until the  boyfriend came home from work one hour later, the dough for the buns was already rising. And two hours later we sat in the kitchen and enjoyed our burgers.

I’m very happy with this recipe. The buns had a very thin crust, a terrific soft crumb and such a nice complex taste due to the sourdough! Continue reading →

August 26th, 2012

Kanelfläta

Category Cake & Pastry  Tags: , ,   18 Responses

Kanelfläta

Yeastspotting always inspires me always to bake something. And sometimes the recipes urge me to bake them directly. The Kanelfläta from My Italian Smörgåsbord was such a recipe.

Kanelfläta is a swedish cinnamon braid, which –as I learned from Barbara- is eaten together with the colleagues for fika (afternoon coffe break). My colleagues and me meet every morning for a “Frühstückspause” at 9 o’clock with a cup of coffee in our coffee room. And something sweet for the break is always loved. And so I decided to bake the Kanelfläta for them.

I reduced the amount of yeast in recipe and added a Lievito madre and some Cardamom to the dough. The combination of cardamom in the dough and cinnamon in the filling is a “must have” for me. I love this combination. I reduced the size of the braids a little bit and came up with four nice braids which had the perfect size for our “Frühstückspause” .

And what should I say? It’s as well a perfect treat for a morning break as for a afternoon break! A aromatic dough, the taste of cinnamon and cardamom – is there a better way to start a day?

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August 19th, 2012

Little poppy seed braids

Category hand kneaded, Rolls  Tags: , , ,   9 Responses

Mohnzöpfle

Once again a recipe for rolls – but that is the last new recipe I created during our holidays (and I am already back at work for one week).

I was dreaming of poppy seed rolls, and so I grabbed a bag of poppy seeds in the supermarket. I decided to play a little bit with the dough and made not simple rolls but little braids. They are braided with only one strand, a technique I saw in a TV show some month ago. I just forgot which show it was… But I make photos from each step, to make it easier to understand the technique.

I bake the little poppy seed braids with whole wheat flour and white spelt flour and added some lievito madre for a good oven spring and a complex taste. I have to say, I love my new starter. It adds a nice aroma to bread and it is very convenient that it can be used right out of the fridge. Perfect for baking spontaneously.

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August 19th, 2012

How to braid a one strand braid

Category Bread baking theory  Tags: ,   5 Responses

Einstrang-Zopf

Divide the dough into pieces of 85g each. Roll them into strands of about 45 cm (1). Now form with 2/3 of the strand loop, while the other 1/3 of the strand remains free(2). Pull the free strand through the loop (3), then twist the loop (4) and tuck the free end into the remaining opening of the loop (5).

August 11th, 2012

Potato rolls with Lievito Madre

Category hand kneaded, Overnight, Rolls  Tags: , ,   29 Responses

Kartoffelbrötchen Summer holidays are the time in the year when we eat a lot of rolls. Rolls are the most important component for our relaxed breakfast on sunny (or rainy) summer mornings. And when our holiday home kitchen has a real oven, the rolls for breakfast are of course homemade. I love to test new recipes during this summer times.

And what are better recipes for holidays then overnight recipes? And so I played around with the Lievito madre. To prevent the dough of getting to sour, I reduced the amount of the preferment. That resulted in a slightly sour taste which fits nicely to the mashed potatoes and creme fraiche I added to the dough, too. The potatoes and creme fraiche creates a soft and fluffy crumb, and keep the crust a little bit lesser crisp then of other rolls, but I like them like that. They taste just great!

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August 5th, 2012

Bergische Knüppel with Lievito madre

Category hand kneaded, Rolls  Tags: ,   14 Responses

Bergische Knüppel mit Lievito MadreAfter I prepared the Lievito madre, I wanted to test this preferment, too! And to play around with things like preferments, its always good to use a recipe you know inside out. For me, such a recipe is the recipe for “Knüppel”, which I bake already in different variations.

This time, I replaced the with Lievito madre. The rolls were formed as always and after a short proofing I load them into the oven.

It’s said that bread made with Lievito madre has a great oven spring, and really, the rolls rise very high in the oven and cracked open along the “lip” which is created during forming.

The taste of the rolls is complex, but mild, with no acidic hints of sourdough.

I am very pleased with the result and will try other recipes with this prefermt for sure!

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August 4th, 2012

Lievito madre

Category Starter and Preferments  Tags:   189 Responses

LM enIn a comment to one of my bread recipes the preferment livito madre was described, with a link to the Brotbackforum. The description sounded fascinating and I always love to make Sourdoughs, and so I mixed Flour, water, honey and oil and observed what would happen.

After 24 hours, the dough rise highly and doubled its volumen. After 48 hours I feed it again and now it rose even faster, doubling its volumen in 12 hours, after 36 hours it nearly tripled. I feed the livito madre once again and placed it in the fridge for 5 days as the recipe suggested.

In the fridge it showed nearly no activity, but the ovenspring of the rolls I baked with this sourdough (using it right out of the fridge) was amazing. Their taste was mild and complex, not as tangy as with my normal sourdough. The lievito madre itself do not taste as normal sourdough as well. Its taste is fruitlike, with hints of yeast and it smells lightly after fresh yoghurt. It seems, that the lievito madre contains another mixture of bacteria and yeasts due to firm dough and the honey which was added in the beginning.

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