Rhubarb almond crumble

I got this recipe from my friend Marina, who originally had it from Delia Online. It's a wonderful and rather fast recipe to enjoy the slightly sour but refreshing taste of rhubarb.

Ingredients:

400 g    rhubarb
50g       castor sugar
1 tsp     grated fresh ginger

Crumble:

50g       whole almonds, skin on
30g       butter
80g       flour
1 tsp     cinnamon
1tsp     ground ginger
50g      sugar

Recommended side dish: Greek full fat yoghurt

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Peel the rhubarb and chop into 2.5 cm chunks. Next, toss the rhubarb in a bowl with the castor sugar and the grated ginger. Mix well. Place in an oven-proof baking dish and keep on one side.

Chop the almonds into chunks using a large knife. To make the crumble, rub the butter into the flour in a large bowl until it resembles crumbs. Stir in the almonds, cinnamon, ginger and sugar.

In the dish, spread the rhubarb evenly without large lumps sticking out. Spread the crumble mixture over the rhubarb and using your hands, press it down firmly to ensure that the crumble will get crisp. Finish by lightly running a fork all over the surface.

Bake for 35-40 minutes: the rhubarb will be soft and the topping golden brown. 

 

Serve warm with Greek yoghurt and honey.

Holunder Küchle

In spring, elderflowers can be found all over Vienna. I myself usually cycle to Donauinsel to search for them since I believe them to be less polluted there.

While preparing syrup from elderflowers is very popular, it is not known as widely that you can also fry and eat them. The dough is easy to prepare:

dough for 2 portions:

10          elderflower umbels

1            big egg

100 ml    milk

3 tbsp     flour

a bit       baking powder

a bit       salt

(some     rum)

oil (neutral in taste, e.g. sunflower)

Do not wash the elderflowers, but free them from any animals residing in them by gently shaking them. 

Mix the ingredients for the dough in a big bowl. In a pan, heat ca. 2cm of oil. Dip the flowers first into the dough and then fry them in the oil until golden brown.

After removing from the pan, drain any excess oil with some kitchen towel. Serve while still hot and decorate with some icing sugar.

Meraner Torte

Ingredients:

Dough:

150 g    butter at room temperature

150 g    sugar

7 g       vanilla sugar

3          egg yolks

100 g    flour

1 tsp     baking powder

80 g      rasped chocolate

150 g    rasped hazelnuts

3          egg whites

Creme:

250ml   milk
1          Dr. Oetker "Tortencreme"
250g     butter
170g     icing sugar
100g     melted chocolate
(1 tbsp  rum)

Decoration:

some    apricot jam

125g     hazelnuts

200g     sugar

Preheat the oven to 165 C. 

To prepare the dough, whisk the butter until foamy. One by one, whisk in sugar, vanilla sugar and egg yolks. Stir in the flour after mixing it with the baking powder and also add the chocolate and hazelnuts. Beat the egg whites until firm and then carefully add to the rest of the mixture. Add the dough to a greased baking pan and bake for ca 50-60 min.

Once the cake has cooled down, use a large serrated knife to cut the cake in half horizontally.

Prepare creme as instructed, and do not forget to add the melted chocolate. Add rum to taste.

Cover the lower half of the cake in apricot jam and then add 2/3 of the chocolate creme. Place the second half of the cake on top.

Evenly cover the surface of the cake with the rest of the chocolate creme, decorating the border as you wish. I decided to further decorate the cake with some noisettes caramélisées, which I prepared according to a recipe by Christophe Felder.

Bake the hazelnuts for ca. 10min in the over, until slightly toasted.  Carefully insert a toothpick  into the hazelnuts. Prepare a block of polysterene that you will need to dry the hazelnuts.

Prepare a bowl with cold water which is big enough to take the saucepan in which you will prepare the caramel. Add half the sugar to the saucepan and melt it over medium heat. Constantly stir with a wooden spoon to avoid the sugar to burn. Once melted, add the remaining sugar and continue to stir. Reduce the heat to low and keep stirring until the sugar has reached a fluid, medium amber caramel. Then, remove the pan from the hob and let it cool in the cold water for a bit to keep the caramel from darkening further. Be careful not to leave the pan in the water too long to prevent the caramel from hardening.

Let the caramel cool a bit and then dip the hazelnuts, one by one, into it. Check if the caramel has already reached the right consistency: As you pull the hazelnuts from the caramel, the sugar should form long drops. Insert the other end of the toothpicks into the polysterene to hang down. The caramel will drip from the hazelnuts, forming wonderful, tearlike shapes. 

Let the caramel harden and then very carefully remove from the polystyrene. Be careful not to break off the tips.

Use the hazelnuts to finish decorating the cake.

Sweet swirl bread

I recently found a recipe on Joy the Baker that looked so delicious that I could not wait to try it: a sweet swirl bread with plenty of berries and cinnamon. The first try of preparing this proved to be quite challenging in terms of assembly of the swirl bread. Luckily, I had my mum around and could therefore rely on another two helpful hands.

The swirl bread was an explosion of flavours stemming from the different kinds of berries I used and the yeast dough - I will definitely want to prepare this recipe again soon!

Ingredients:

Dough:

175 ml      lukewarm milk
1 pack      yeast (or half a cube of fresh yeast)
1 tbsp       sugar
1             egg yolk
40 g         melted butter
270 g        flour
1 pinch     salt

Stuffing:

50 g          melted butter

30 g          brown sugar

1 tsp         cinnamon

some        vanilla extract

400g         mixture of berries of your choice (strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, gooseberries, redcurrant... whatever you feel like!)

Finish:

1             egg yolk

               icing sugar

               butter and flour to grease the form

In a bowl, mix the yeast with the sugar and stir in the lukewarm milk. Then add the egg yolk and melted butter and stir carefully. Allow the mixture to rest for 5 minutes. Add the flour and salt and knead the dough until smooth and slightly damp (ca. 10 minutes). If the dough turns out to be too sticky, add some more flour. Shape the dough into a ball and place it in a large, greased bowl. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towl and let the dough rest in a warm place for ca. 1 hour (until it has doubled in size).

Once the dough is ready, preheat the oven to 190 C (convection oven). Whisk together the butter, sugar and cinnamon for the filling. Grease a round baking pan with butter. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle on a floured working top. Evenly spread the cinnamon filling on the dough, leaving a clean border around the edges of about 2 or 3 cm. Distribute the mixture of fresh berries on top of the cinnamon filling. 

Now comes the hard part: roll the dough into a roll along the long edge. The roll will be lumpy due to the berries inside. Using a sharp knife, cut the roll in half length-wise, leaving one end uncut by about 3 cm. Carefully place the cut parts to face upward, revealing the inside of the roll.

Under lots of swearing about the softness of the dough or with the help of a friend, start breading the two parts of the roll by carefully lifting the left strand over the right strand. Repeat this until you reach the end of the roll. Seal the two parts by pressing them together. Then shape the dough into a circle, pressing the ends together.
For way more artistic photos on the assembly of the wreath, please head over to Joy the Baker!

Using a cake lifter or someone's help, transfer the wreath into the prepared baking pan. Brush the wreath with egg yolk.

Bake for 20-25 min until golden brown and bubbling. Allow for ca. 1/2 h of cooling before decorating with icing sugar and serving.

Serve with some fresh berries if wanted. Enjoy!

Speculaas

Do you know this phenomenon that one moment you did not even know that something exists and the next moment you cannot wait to try it? That happened to me when my dear friend Marina gave me some wonderful wooden Speculaas forms from Brugge (Belgium). By chance, I then still saw more forms in Zaanse Schans (Netherlands) and right away decided to complement my little collection of forms by a oh so Dutch windmill.

Aside from being utterly beautiful per se, I had no clue how these molds work... luckily, the internet knows an answer to everything! First, the molds have to be coated in a bit of oil, afterwards they should be sprinkled with a generous amount of flour. This will keep the speculaas dough from sticking.

Which takes us to the speculaas dough. I used the following recipe:

225g       flour
115g       butter (room temperature)
110g       brown sugar
7g           baking powder
3g           baking soda/ natrium
30g         butter milk
7g           speculaas/ gingerbread spices
1 pinch   salt

Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and the spices in a bowl. In another bowl, beat the butter and sugar until slightly foamy. Add the buttermilk and mix until smooth. Add the flour mixture and knead into a ball. Use some more flour if the mixture is too sticky or butter milk in case the mixture is too crumbly. Cover the ball with cling film and let rest in the fridge over night.

Once the dough is ready, you can start to prepare your speculaas biscuits. Start by preheating the oven to 175 degrees. Then take the dough out of the fridge and press a small amount of it into a flour-covered mold.

With confidence and in one go, cut away the excess dough with a very sharp knife. Tap the biscuits out of the molds. Use your fingers or a blunt knife in case the biscuit got stuck in the form. It needs a few tries to figure out a technique to get good results. A cold dough and generous use of both flour and swear words have proven to me to be helpful. While you work on a form, let the rest of the dough rest in the fridge. If wanted, you can cover the back of the cookies in almond flakes or almond slivers. Unlike shown in the photos, the best moment to do this is while the biscuit is still in its mold.

Finally, place the biscuits on a baking tray and bake for ca. 15-18 minutes at 175 degrees. Towards the end of the baking time you'll start to notice the typical smell of speculaas. Keep a close eye on the biscuits at that moment so they do not get too dark. Remove the biscuits from the oven when done and let cool on the baking tray until they firm up. Once cool, you can enjoy your crunchy speculaas with a nice cup of coffee or tea!

Toothless

Thanks to my cousin I was introduced to the art of sugar craft last summer. It is also her who pointed out an amazing shop to me in Vienna, called "Alles Torte" (www.allestorte.at). They sell everything needed to decorate cakes (and more). I paid a visit to this shop on Saturday to buy myself some gum paste with the aim in mind to model Toothless from "How to train your dragon". My motivation stemmed from a photo I hard recently seen on "Bored Panda" of some incredible sugar art:

(Photo Copyright: http://www.fernandaabarcacakes.com/)

Armed with some modelling tools that I got as a present from my cousin last year, I set out on my second sugar craft endeavour: 

To model Toothless, I drew inspiration from the following tutorial: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/477733472945370905/ 

First, the head had to be modelled:

Followed by the eyes:

The ears and horns were next:

To keep the gum paste from hardening too fast, one has to keep it in cling film:

 With the head ready, the body had to be shaped:

The head was attached with the help of a toothpick:

After attaching the arms...

... claws, tail and wings had to be attached:

Finished!

Bärlauchpesto

Der Frühling ist meine liebste Jahreszeit: nicht nur werden die Tage endlich länger, die Sonne zeigt sich wieder vermehrt und die Bäume erwachen zum Leben (vor allem Kirschbäume und Magnolien!), sondern es ist außerdem die Saison von Rhabarber, Holunder und Bärlauch. Von Letzterem habe ich letztes Jahr einige Knollen aus Frankreich importiert, welche ich dann auf meinem Balkon in einen Blumentopf eingesetzt habe. Nun endlich, nach fast einem Jahr, in dem ich einen scheinbar leeren Blumentopf gegossen habe, hat sich der Bärlauch herausgewagt und sprießt auf meinem Balkon.

Da Bärlauch nur einige Wochen lang gefunden werden kann, ich ihn aber das ganze Jahr genießen will, bietet sich an, ihn in Form von Pesto haltbar zu machen. Bärlauchpesto schmeckt nicht nur um Längen besser als gekauftes Basilikumpesto, sondern lässt sich außerdem sehr leicht herstellen:

Zutaten:

• 100 g    Bärlauch
• 25 g      Pinienkerne
• 25 g      Kürbiskerne
• 25g       Sonnenblumenkerne (alternativ mehr Pininenkerne)
• 150 ml  Sonnenblumen- oder Rapsöl
• 25 g      Pecorino
• 25 g      Parmesan
• 2           kleine Knoblauchzehen
• etwas    Pfeffer (frisch aus der Mühle)
• etwas    grobes Meersalz

Den Bärlauch gut waschen und danach trockenschleudern. Anschließend Käse, Bärlauch, Knoblauch und alle Kerne grob hacken. Anschließend alle Zutaten mit einem Stab- oder Standmixer zerkleinern und zu Pesto vermischen.