Coffee with Jenny Archives - Jenny is baking

Coffee Date No. 18 – Travel to Bayerischer Wald

Advertisement – unpaid

For our 15th wedding anniversary we went to the village Frauenau in the German forest Bayerischer Wald close to the Czech Republic. We stayed in the dog hotel Gästehaus Falkenau. I didn’t even know about the existence of dog hotels, did you? The hotel is geared towards dogs, meaning they are allowed everywhere, there is no extra charge for cleaning and this particular hotel had a gigantic yard with a spring, an agility parcours and was fully fenced. A dog’s dream come true. Our dog Hazel was extremely excited, you probably can see that on the pictures below. She loves water and was basically non-stop in the little creek enjoying herself.

18/03/2025

Blog Review of 2024

Yay, it is time to do a blog review. I am participating in the German initiation by Sabrina and Steffen fron the German blog Feedmeupbeforeyougogo. The idea is to answer eight question and to review what you did in 2024 as a food blogger. I already participated in previous years and I am happy to oblige this year again. So let’s get started.

#1 What was your most successful blog post in 2024?

As in previous years, these delicious brownie cookies. Honestly, I am super happy that by now the recipe has been visited more than half a million times, however, it does get a bit boring. For that reason I am more excited about the fact that this simple apricot sheet cake was visited thousands of times within a few days and made it to number 5. I am considering making that recipe with apples for winter. Maybe I will publish a recipe shortly. I am also amazed and happy that a lot of articles giving tips and tricks are among the top 10. One example is 12 tips for perfect sponge batter (ranking as number 4 in 2024). Another is How to make flowers with buttercream (number 9 in 2024). It seems to be apparent that I come from a family of teachers. Parents, sister, cousins, you name it. I seem to have a teaching gene even though I refused to study to become a regular teacher. However, I have to admit that I love teaching and showing people how to improve. I am very motivated to publish further tips on how to improve certain baking areas. That’s what it is all about, right?

Quick and easy apricot sheet cake

28/12/2024

Nostalgic Coffee Date about Working as a Pianist and Social Media without Sound

Today is a day for a coffee date. It is going to be nostalgic and we will talk about music. So if you are up to it, get yourself a tea or coffee and let’s chat, at least virtually. I wanted to get started by saying that I asked you on Instagram if you would like to see more stories in which I improvise piano. And, believe it or not, 100% (!) of you hit the “yes” button, wow. I have to say, I was surprised to say the least. For that reason I created the highlight on Instagram in which you can simply listen to me playing piano. Let me back this up a little. You need to know that I enrolled in the music conservatory in Dresden Carl Maria von Weber Musikhochschule for jazz piano. I only studied it for one semester, but it did open the door to working as a pianist. Especially working in the mall Altmarktgalerie Dresden secured me many more jobs as a musician. The grand piano was located on the same floor with all the cafés and was reached right at the end of the moving stairs. I would play on Friday and Saturday for a few hours and was approached by countless shoppers.

Me in the mall Altmarktgalerie in Dresden right in front of the grand piano on which I played on weekends in 2006

(Photo by Elisabeth Schermuly)

19/11/2024

Coffee Date 16

It’s once again high time for a coffee date with you all, so grab yourself a cup of coffee or tea and let’s have a chat. This time, we’re staying in beautiful Bavaria, where we went on an outdoor vacation. I’m still very proud that we did two bike tours with the bike shown, covering 80km each time. Hazel was with us, sometimes running alongside the bike (although mostly for shorter distances). Additionally, we also went hiking. Conclusion: Bavaria is beautiful, and luckily, my husband is now even more enthusiastic about biking than I am, which was quite different at the beginning of our relationship. My husband was also the one who pointed out to me that Lake Eibsee in Bavaria bears a striking resemblance to Jasper National Park in Canada, where I vacationed almost 20 years ago. It’s stunning, with its almost green water, and simply breathtaking.

27/05/2024

Blog Review of 2023

It has by become a tradition for me to participate in the food blog review by the German blog Feed me up before you go go. Each year, eight questions are answered, and a summary is drawn. You can read my food blog review from 2022, 2021, 2020 und 2019 here. My overall conclusion after six years of blogging? I still enjoy it, and there are still people who recreate the recipes. Indeed, the number of visitors and clicks grows every year, so I will certainly continue blogging in 2024, as far as I’m concerned. But now, let’s move on to the questions.

#1 What was your most successful blog post in 2023?

I’m pleased that the all-time favorite brownie cookies was actually surpassed by the strawberry tiramisu, and the cookies only made it to second place. Overall, I’m surprised and delighted that many of the recipes introduced this year made it into the top 10. In total, six recipes from 2023 made it into the top 10, which is really a great result, isn’t it? I want to give special mention to the lightning-fast lemon dessert, which made it to sixth place, and the Kaiserschmarrn with plum compote (seventh place) (see smaller photos). I’m proud of all of them.

Strawberry tiramisu with no raw egg or alcohol

29/12/2023

Coffee Date #15 Receiving Bad News and Medical Gaslighting

Spoiler: After having received the terrifying message that I may have the chronic disease called Multiple Sclerosis, I am happy to say that I don’t have it. This coffee date will be about this experience as well as medical gaslighting. But be warned, this is a long article and quite personal. Baking will only play a minor role. If you don’t feel like it, then read this some other time or not at all. But let’s start from the beginning. On October 24th, I received the following bad news in the form of an MRI report: “A few perventricular T2 hyperintense lesions as a possible indication of multiple sclerosis.” Have you ever heard of MS? Multiple sclerosis is an inflammation of the central nervous system, a chronic, but non-contagious autoimmune disease that is not curable and usually occurs in relapses and usually worsens over time. Even though a lot has obviously been done in recent decades and the disease can be well controlled with medication for many people, it is still not curable. Since this disease affects the nervous system, there are numerous different symptoms. It is not for nothing that it is called the disease of the 1,000 faces (not sure though if this holds true in English as well).

MS usually is only confirmed after running several tests. The MRI is only one important building block, another is the lumbar puncture, the removal of cerebrospinal fluid from the spine, which is checked for inflammations, etc. Of course my neurologist did not explain this to me when we discussed the findings, but I had to research this myself. When I asked him if he could perform this second important examination, he waved it off. When I asked him for referrals, he could not help me either. So I had to find a clinic myself. Perhaps you can imagine that I was pretty down when I was confronted with this suspicion along with a completely incompetent neurologist who could not help me in any way. Of course I wanted to know whether I had MS or not. The day after I received the MRI results, my husband and I took a day off and drove to Schliersee or Spitzigsee. I had to clear my mind. We drove to a place called Albert-Link-Hütte, they are known for their Kaiserschmarrn (see picture on the right). I just needed nature and fresh air so I wouldn’t be trapped in the same thought spiral again. Since fall is my favorite season anyway, I enjoyed the trip despite everything.

Kaiserschmarrn-auf-der-Albert-Link-Hütte

28/11/2023

Coffee Date No. 14: Why there are so many Latin American Recipes on my Blog

Today I am inviting you to a special coffee. I am going to explain why there are so many Latin American recipes on my blog. So grab a coffee or a tea and let me get started. You will see a traditional Colombian breakfast in the featured picture. These are tamales, which is food steamed in banana leaves accompanied by hot chocolate. Yes, this is something you will eat for breakfast in Colombia, I am not kidding. So just as this may be a very unusal coffee, I am also inviting you to grab something out of the ordinary for your “coffee”. The short answer to the original question is because I was born in Uruguay and because my husband is Colombian. Obviously both of us are interested in eating food we ate as a child. So there definitely is a nostalgic factor, for sure. But apart from the very simple and egoistic “I want to eat food I am familiar with”, I started this blog because I wanted to

A nostalgic recipe: Peach cake from my birth city Paysandú, Uruguay

04/07/2023

Coffee Date in Dresden

It has been way too long that I have drunk a virtual coffee with you, so let’s do that now. This time I invite you to Dresden and Radebeul. We got to spend Easter in Dresden and Radebeul. Dresden will always be in my heart as it is the city I first studied jazz piano in at the Carl Maria von Weber music conservatory, and later switched to the Technical University in order to study languages). Moreover, Dresden is the city I got to meet my Colombian husband and where we got married after many months of red tape and many hurdles. Needless to say that Dresden will always have a special place in my heart even if I still don’t like the Saxon dialect.

During one of our walks to Altkötzschenbroda; the church you see in the back is where we got married 13 years ago

11/04/2023

Blog Review 2022

Same procedure as every year? Same procedure as every year. Again I am going to summarize this year’s blogging experience with the eight questions from Feedmeuobeforeyougogo. So here goes nothing. Featured picture by Daniel Cuervo.

#1 Which one was your most successful blog post in 2022?

Again the brownie cookies are the most popular recipe of 2022. However, I am going to focus on the runner-up because why not. The runner up is the round up with more than 20 Christmas cookies, which were clicked on by more than 44k people within a few days, it was crazy! For me this taught me two things. A) that apparently the German Christmas cookie baking starts earlier than expected. The article went online on November 16th, apparently there are many Germans that like to serve Christmas cookies for the first of advent already. I always thought this was for Christmas, but no, it seems to be much earlier. Also, since Halloween is not a common thing, Christmas basically starts in November. B) sometimes it is so much easier than expected. Writing a roundup is so much less work than preparing a new recipe. You have to structure your roundup properly, but boy, you don’t need to bake and/or cook, you don’t need to shoot pictures, you don’t have to write down ingredients, measurements and steps/instructions. It is so simple in comparison, yet this post was so popular. Below picture shows my cookie plate of 2022, it was the most liked post on Instagram in 2022, which I found very fitting.

30/12/2022

Coffee Date No. 12, Lille Travels

We went on a holiday to the north of France and got to see beautiful Lille. If you are up for it, how about a virtual coffee with me and you get to get a small glimpse into what we experienced? I have to warn you though, a lot of pictures and a lot of culinary recommendations, however none of them are sponsored. You can’t deny that I am married to a foodie and probably am one myself by now 😉 By the way, travelling with a dog was super easy, all restaurants we visited allowed Hazel to be with us, she usually got fresh water and was petted by waiters a lot, so don’t fret, Lille seems to be a dog-friendly destination.

13/10/2022

Older Posts