It barely ever happens, but this does coincide. This recipe is the same in Germany as well as Colombia. Today I am presenting a strawberry sponge roll from Germany or brazo de reina from Colombia. This sponge roll is super easy to make and is filled with heavy cream and cubed strawberries. If you are expecting guests, I highly recommend this roll as it is easy to prepare and fast to make. So far every single person has loved this recipe, Colombians and Germans alike.
Today I am finally going to introduce another bundt cake, it has been way too long. This is a traditional German cake, marble cake, with a little twist as it has chrries in it. Currently the cherry trees are blossoming in Munich. I simply had to take advantage of this beauty and take pictures of this marble cake with cherries with some cherry blossoms. It does not mean, however, that you can only serve this coffee cake in spring. Actually, this cake is delicious all year around as the cherries are from a jar. With a little imagination you may even see the cherry tree imitated in the marbled cake. I tried to create swirls that way, but I guess I didn’t succeed fully. Anyway, I promise you, it tastes great!
I just realized that I don’t have that many recipes here on the blog that remind me of my childhood. This probably has to do with the fact that we moved so much. I was born in Uruguay, then we spent three years in the U.S, came back to Uruguay before we finally settled in Germany. Needless to say that my four grandparents all have a German passport, however, all of them were born in the former Soviet Union. Thus, our food and dishes were influenced by a lot of different cultures. Dear to my heart is the Uruguayan cutlet called milanesa, I also love the Russian Napoleon cake or Polish pirogi. I also wouldn’t say no to Ukranian Easter bread named paska. Just recently I tried one of the many peppermint cookies from my grandma she has many recipes for. In this mix of cultures and dishes I am going to throw in a new one, Russian-German twoiback or double buns. You can think of brioche, it is a very soft dough with butter and you will see two balls that are attached to each other. My sister described them as an unfinished snowman. I couldn’t have said it any better.
When I showed you in my stories on Instagram how I made this strudel, so many of you asked for the recipe and how I did it, so this is it! A classic apple strudel with some streusel or crumbs. I know that strudel dough can be intimidating, it was also for me, but like with everything, practice makes perfect. My first strudel looked very different, it had a lot of thick parts and I had so many wholes in it. But one of the good things of strudel is that the main event is the filling anyway, so even if your dough is not perfect, it does not matter that much because the dough is so thin and only is there to hold together the fruit filling or whatever you are going with.
For the beginning of the Oktoberfest I decided to introduce gingerbread hearts, they are a staple during this time, decorated with royal icing, often in blue and white for the Bavarian colors and showing the edelweiss flower common in the mountains. These gingerbread hearts, however, don’t necessarily need to be served for the Oktoberfest only, you can also give them as a gift for a special occasion such as a wedding, baptism, or as another sweet giveaway. Essentially, I went for my beloved recipe for gingerbread, which has been on my blog for a while. You can very easily make a vegan version of this recipe as it does not contain eggs. Please see details in the recipe below.
I asked several experts who have eaten hearts from the Oktoberfest and they did tell me that yes, you usually make it with the traditional gingerbread spices. You don’t necessarily have to, but it is pretty common. So folks, if you are in for some decorating, for having fun, this recipe is for you!
This simple cherry cake has a little embarassing backstory. I once baked this cake many years ago when I was going to college. I remember, it was during one of these horrible times when there were like tons of exams and I was studying like there was no tomorrow. It felt like my brain was a hardware drive and had to be fully deleted and swiped clean just to be crammed again with data and facts for the next exam. It was during this time that my roommate asked for the recipe because she enjoyed it the first time around. She had planned to make it for her family visiting. And I simply didn’t remember anymore where I got it from, my brain, my hard drive had gone blank. However, I was too ashamed to admit to not knowing, so I simply did some research and gave her a recipe I found. Unfortunately, the recipe I had passed on to her was not nearly as good. But I kept quiet, I was too embarassed. Years later when I flipped through the very old cookbook my mom had given to me from the famous German brand Dr. Oetker, I realized that actually this was the recipe I had used back then. So, Susann, if you are reading this, it had nothing to do with your baking abilities, I simply had passed on the wrong recipe to you! Sorry for that.
Today I am going to introduce an extremely nostalgic recipe, it is called Dresdner Eierschecke, which loosely translates as a cheesecake from the city Dresden. You will find a lot of different varieties of this delicious cake. It may come along as a sheetcake, it may be a traditional round cake like in my case. Some are prepared with yeast dough, some with a pie crust. The word “Schecke” apprently comes from the late Middle Ages and would decribe a tunic with three parts: upper part, belt, and lower part. Thus, typically an Eierschecke would have three layers, the base (yeast dough, pie crust or a pound cake), the cheesecake or quark layer, and the top, which is like a custard.
In four days on February 15th, this blog will turn five. That’s reason to celebrate! That’s why I am offering this super delicious raspberry chocolate cake. Why I am doing it four days in advance and why this is the second chocolate raspberry cake on the blog, I will let you know below.
I don’t remember distinctly why I hit “publish” on a Thursday, which was February 15th, 2017. I believe I had made this French lemon tart for Valentine’s. My hubby loves anything with citrus fruits. At the beginning of this blog I thought I wouldn’t publish anything other than cookie recipes and recipes my husband requested. It may sound stupid, but it also holds true in baking. Practice makes perfect. I baked, and baked, and baked. I would simply pick recipes I liked on the Internet. If I happened to make the recipe again, I would usually tweak it a bit. At the beginning I followed recipes as much as I could, tried to understand the basics. At some point I would start creating my own recipes. I would probably use a cake based I used in recipe X, but liked the filling of recipe Y better and would happily mix and match. In 2019 a good friend of mine asked me whether I would be willing to bake her wedding cake with 100 guests. I agreed as I believed to have one full year to practice. Due to COVID one year turned into two, so I practiced layer cake after layer cake. There is a reason that I published some many cake recipes in 2020 and 2021. Many of those were trial runs for the wedding cake. Among these was my first chocolate raspberry cake. Very soon I learned that this was super popular. You guys made that recipe your number 2 in 2020 as well as 2021, I just checked. I am so happy every time somebody bakes it again.
Today you will get a simple, yet extra moist and very lemony lemon loaf or lemon pound cake. If my hubby were to decide, I am sure I would be making cakes with citrus fruits all the time. It is by no accident that my first published recipe is a French tarte au citron oder lemon tart. I made it for Valentine’s Day and published it shortly afterwards. My list can go on and on, I do have double lemon cupcakes, blueberry lemon cake, American lemon pie and (key) lime pie on the blog, I think it is endless. All of these baked goods were for him, of course. He just loves this tart flavor and I won’t say no to lemons and limes either. Especially in winter when fruits are harder to get and the options limited. So I decided to make a simple lemon loaf. The recipe I found used tons of lemons so I gave it a go and the result is full of lemon flavor.
Did you have a wonderful New Year’s Eve? Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? I am somebody who usually doesn’t start with many ambitious resolutions. In my opinion it does not take long for those ambitious dreams to crash, the very latest in February. They don’t last very long. However, this year I decided to eat a bit healthier during January. Especially after the very decadent December it feels good. For that reason the recipes of January 2022 are going to be healthier. I am saying “healthier” as “healthy” is too strong of a word and also depends on what you consider this to be. I am going to post only vegan recipes in January. They are still going to be sweet and some people consider sugar to be bad. It has gotten a pretty bad reputation. I will start with the German mole cake as pictured.
