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Coffee with Jenny

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

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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.

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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

Uruguays Version einer Pfirsichtorte (postre chajá)A nostalgic recipe: Peach cake from my birth city Paysandú, Uruguay

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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

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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.

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Coffee Date No. 12, Lille Travels

Merveilleux

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.

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Today I am turning 40!

Bam, so I am turning 40 today, wow. I am old, suddenly all these terms pop up, such as middle-aged, half time, mid-life crisis, not very encouraging, don’t you think? But I can’t change the fact that I am 40 now. So I figured, OK, so be it, I guess I will have to deal. When we were on holiday in Spain end of July, I asked my in-laws if we could pre-celebrate my birthday, they complied. We had paella, which was prepared by my brother-in-law (thank you again!) and since we couldn’t decide for a flavor, we went for paella mixta, so it had it all,  rabbit, chicken, and seafood. I was responsible for dessert (of course) and decided to make tarte tatin with apricots. We drank wine, which is a given in the wine region, we had a wonderful scenery with vineyards and a river, it was just so wonderful! Thanks to my in-laws for this wonderful experience: fue un placer, muchísimas gracias!

Featured picture and above picture by Daniel Cuervo

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Coffee Date No. 11

Kaffee mit Osterhasen

Shame on me, why does it always take so long for me to finally invite you to another coffee date? It has been forever. Last time I invited you to a coffee when I made my my second wedding cake. It was so much fun, but it was also exhausting. The first wedding cake (pictured below on the left) was made in Spain, the second (pictured on the right) I made partially in Munich, took the frozen cake layers with me for 600km, along with my KitchenAid and ten million tools, and then finished the fillings, frosted and stacked the cake in an Airbnb. If you are interested in the process and recipes, check out  this blogpost  and well as this one. In 2022 I haven’t been asked to make a wedding cake yet. This means, I can  just relax and enjoy the spring and summer ahead.

Picture on the left: Hueto Fotógrafos

However, it looks like somehow I ended up making fancy cakes regardless. This time a couple asked if I could make a gender-reveal cake. Of course I could. It is not as common in Germany yet to make an event out of this. One thing I knew for sure was the fact that I didn’t want the traditional pink and blue on the cake, but instead went for a neutral color. In the end I went with a “bee” theme, because baby and babee seemed to be a cute pun. Even though I was not 100% satified with the cake (especially with the air bubble wrap) as it did not represent the honeycombs the way I wanted to, the parents were over the moon regardless. And it was quite a process to get this done in Germany.  First I was handed a sealed letter by the doctor, which revealed the sex, this had to make it untouched to my apartment (the mom-to-be brought it herself), I baked the cake and obviously didn’t say a word to the parents until they cut into the cake and it showed a pink filling. By the way, the color was all done naturally, it simply was raspberries that did the job. As always all parts of the cake were edible, the bees as well, the honeycombs were made with candy melts. Since I am often asked about the cake toppers, I get them on Etsy. If you are interested in the recipe, let me know in the comments.

Gender-Reveal-Torte in Gelb

Our puppy Hazel has been growing, she is almost ten months old and absolutely adorable. The first months with a puppy are really hard, but now we got used to each other and it is more easy-going. However, she had to go through two tough surgeries already, which is a pain if you are this young and cannot play with other puppies. So much restrain! She is recovereing though. I am excited to take her on long hiking tours in summer.

I started 2022 with the vegan January. I published only vegan recipes in the blog. You especially seemed to like the German mole cake. Reason for the vegan recipes was the chronic sickness endometriosis I was diagnosed with about a year ago, you can read more about this here. Supposedly a vegan diet can reduce the symptoms and fight the inflammations. However, I have to say I didn’t feel any different. I have to admit, I did not go fully vegan in January, I sometimes had vegetarian days, but I did not see any change. For me the worst symptom of endomertriosis is feeling exhausted and tired all the time. I didn’t feel that the vegan diet changed that in any way. Maybe I was impatient and the timeframe was too short. However, I did turn to intermitten fasting in February. I basically eat between 7:30 to 3:30 and will then fast until the next morning. Remember, the main meal is eaten during lunch in Germany. I have had cheat days and I eat whatever I want during the eating window. Intermitten fasting seems to be working better for me. I seem to sleep better and feel more energetic. For now I will continue intermitten fasting as this somehow seems to be better for my body.

Veganer Maulwurfkuchen mit einfachen ZutatenBe sure to check in on my blog the week after Easter. I had a horrible bike accident five years ago and I am going to celebrate the anniversary with a lot of other bloggers as I don’t have any permanent damage. I am not going to spill the secret, but I am going to say that there is a lot of chocolate involved. My creation also includes Nutella.

Coffe Date – What I learned Making a Three-Tired Wedding Cake

Dreistöckige Hochzeitstorte mit Schoko-Drip

This is going to be a slightly different coffee date to the previous ones. I decided to show you a few pictures of the second wedding cake I had the honor of making in August this year. I will try to keep it short, but I will let you know the few lessons I learned along the way. If you are interested in the recipes, please check this blog post. For more details on the process, check out my highlights on Instagram.

Lesson #1: A three-tiered cake requires much more work than a two-tiered cake. For that reason I made the cake layers at home in Munich and decided to freeze them. As you can see, I wrapped them tightly in plastic wrap and also used a plastic bag to keep them fresh. I decided to do this as the wedding was 600km away and I was simply too scared to carry a cake long-distance for such a long amount of time. I am glad I went this route, I ended up 7 1/2 hours on the road.

You can see that I wrapped the cake layers in plastic wrap and a bag in order to freeze them

Lesson #2: Cooling boxes are my new favorite toy. I carried the frozen cake layers for 7 1/2 hours in this box, wrapped in ice and it was not problem at all to continue freezing the cake layers in a freezer. Yes!

Kühlbox im AutoYes, it used a seatbelt for the box

Lesson #3: I finished the wedding cake in an Airbnb. Obviously, I carried with me a lot of the tools, including my KitchenAid. But it was very convenient to have an empty fridge for the cakes at hand.

Drei Tortenböden kühlen im KühlschrankYou will see the three cake layers in the semi-naked style here

Lesson #4: Unfortunately, larger cakes tend to look smaller and bulkier than they actually are. I made 4 cake layers for the top tiers, but decided to use five cake layers (as you can see below) for the bottom tier. Reason for this being that the bottom layer somehow looked smaller otherwise. This is something you should keep in mind when you calculate your sizes, I had to add one extra layer to my bottom tier!

30cm Torte im KühlschrankYou see that the bottom tier of 30xm had five cake layers to get it to look a bit taller

Lesson #5: If the bride tears up when she sees the cake, I feel you have done a good job. And let me tell you, making a three-tiered cake requires a lot of work. I think I spent about 20 hours on this cake, let alone the many hours I did research, tried different cake recipes, checked many flavors, etc. Many of the guests came to me thanking me that this was the first wedding cake ever tasting fresh and fruity and was not so overly sweet. Of course each layer had a different flavor combo and as requested by the couple, I had used very little buttercream, but cream cheese, etc. for the filling. Below you can see how popular the wedding cake was, coffee time was not over yet when I snapped that picture.

Reste einer HochzeitstorteI snapped this picture during coffee time, I think barely anything was left

If you are interested in further details or would like to know the recipes, feel free to leave me a comment. Update: I finally gave in and posted the recipes for the three-tiered wedding cake here. Also, I did do a whole series on the first wedding cake I made, you can check it out here:

Part I How to bake a wedding cake at home

Part II How to schedule a plan when making a wedding cake at home

Part III How to convert sizes and recipes

Part VI How to transport and stack a wedding cake

Coffee Break No. 9

It has been a while since I last drank a coffee with you virtually. Reason for this was because there have been many things going on in my life. We moved inside the city and I underwent surgery. I am all good, no worries, it was planned. However, originally there were two zysts they wanted to remove, but afterwards I learned that I do have endometriosis. Endo what? Believe me, I had no idea what the doctors were talking about. So I had to do a bit of research. This is a chronic sickness where tissue develops for example on your ovaries or fallopian tubes where it is not supposed to grow. It can create a lot of pain, usually women with this condition have extremely painful periods, some may faint or need to vomit and in some instances the pain will be constant, not only during your period.

Fortunately, I have not experienced such horrible pain. I do recall, especially when I attended university, that I once fainted during a very large lecture with about 600 students and the professor just sent me home. I don’t know how I even managed to catch the right tram and crawled inside my bed. This is the most painful episode I ever had. But I do have other typical symptoms. One of them is feeling exhausted and fatigued all the time. Nowadays people understand much better what this entails as it can be a symptom of COVID19. It is really frustrating, because I normally sleep well and try to do sports regularly. Believe me, feeling fatigued is much more than simply being tired. For a long time I thought it was my fault. I mean, how can this be that I am living a pretty healthy lifestlye, I sleep 8 hours per night, I excercise, yet I always feel so exhausted. Sometimes it is like a knob was turned off, it may only be 8pm, but I feel like crashing on my bed and falling asleep right away. Martina Liel, a woman who has endometrioses, too, describes it in German as if your body wants to get into hibernation just like the sleeping beauty. I couldn’t have said it any better. That is exactly how it feels.

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