I already blogged about the Paraguayan version of cheese bread. But today I want to introduce you to Colombian cheese bread: pandebonos! Pandebonos are, as many Latin American recipes, gluten free as they are prepared with tapioca starch. Pandebonos take very little time to prepare and are easy to make with regular ingredients.
Have you every experienced this? You want to bake something you ate during your holiday, but then you can’t find the right ingredients. This is what happened to me when I tried to make achiras, this is a gluten free cheese snack from Colombia. My first problem was the cheese being used, it is called queso campesino and simply is not sold in Germany. Feta is probably the closest you will ever find, but it is firmer and much saltier. So I thought I couldn’t make achiras.
On top of that, Colombians use a special starch for achiras. It is extracted from the Sago palm. I was very certain that regular grocery stores in Germany wouldn’t offer Sago starch. At least this is what I thought.
Today I am introducing a delicious and vegan Oreo layer cake because I feel like celebrating. You may wonder why? Well, today exactly one year ago I had a horrible bike accident including hemorrage. I am sure glad I didn’t google damages you may get from hemorrage, I would have cried my eyes out.
I am extremely grateful that I don’t have any permanent damages and I can live a normal life. That’s why I am in celebratory mood. Hence this delicious and vegan Oreo cake. I was so excited introducing this cake here. I am always happy when I see people sneaking back helping themselves to a second piece. I have never seen a layer cake disappear so quickly, let alone a vegan one. That tells you how good this vegan Oreo cake is.
Today I brought along some porridge, the best basic recipe, which is gluten free and can be made vegan. You may think that this is a simple recipe, but I let me tell you, I tried many versions before I was finally happy to post. You know, because I only want to post the best. But I think that’s the tricky party about basic recipes, for them to really be versatile, for them to work in many different kitchens, you need to have it bullet-proof.
I have come to enjoy porridge when I spent a gap year in Canada after highschool. Porridge was not really in fashion in Germany at that point, the literal German translation of porridge is oatmeal slime. Do I need to say anything else? Who calls food slime? Anyway, so I am delighted to say that fifthteen years later porridge has become much more popular again in Germany, probably also because it is a gluten free breakfast, which can be made vegan very easily and it is extremely healthy and keeps you going.
I love eating warm breakfast, I find it extremely satisfying. For that reason porridge is really meant for me. Overnight oats are not that bad either, but I will always go for porridge instead. I find it is the perfect way to start the day.
I am so excited to finally be sharing this recipe for Colombian buñuelos! Colombian buñuelos are, at least in my opinion, so much better than Mexican buñuelos, they are gluten free as they are prepared with cornstarch and tapioca flour and they do contain cheese, lots of cheese. Do I need to say anything more?
You may have wondered why I barely ever introduce bread on my baking blog as I do today with this Italian bread with semolina and olive oil. Yes, there are a few recipes, such as this farmer’s bread, these Danish buns with yoghurt, or homemade croissants. You may think that I mainly eat cakes and cookies, but that is definitely not true. There is a very simple reason why I barely publish bread recipes. The reason is my beloved hubby who is the master of bread-baking. He even has baking running in his blood, his grandfather was the baker of the entire village. So you can probably imagine that he is very good at baking bread, much better than me. Well, at least today. His beginnings were rather humble, I distinctly recall when I told him about the fact that yeast likes it warm and cozy. I also remember when we made our first yeast bread together. He very awkwardly punched the bread and asked me how I knew when the right consistency was reached.
But soon after his humble beginnings he transformed to an excellent bread baker. He works in IT, he is a computer scientist and for that reason he did a lot of research on bread baking, he did experiements and in general loves a very scientific approach to baking. One blogger who definitely contributed to him becoming a master is Lutz from the blog Plötzblog (in German). Lutz also has an extremely scientific approach to baking, he even tells you exactly at which temperature the bread has to rise. His precise language and very scientific recipes were music to the ears of my hubby.
Vegan Oreo cupcakes! Yes, you read right, vegan cupcakes. You may wonder why I am posting a vegan Oreo cupcake recipe. Well, the thing is that this vegan Oreo cake is one of my most popular blog entries. If you like a layer cake, you may also like vegan Oreo cupcakes, that’s what I figured.
So I started looking for a good vegan cupcake recipe, which I found here. I added some chocolate chunks for good measure. And then I wanted to use Ermine frosting. That’s frosting prepared with a flour base to thicken the butter/margarine and make it pipable. I used the non-vegan option in these lavender cupcakes and also in order to frost a cute cookie monster on this non-vegan cookie cake. Ermine frosting is slowly becoming my favorite frosting as it is not as sweet and, as you can see here, also is great for vegan buttercream. This time I decided to use a real vanilla bean (yes, they are expensive) to get really nice vanilla flavor.
Today I am introducing you to a Latin American speciality: chipa. Chipas are Paraguay’s take on cheese bread and it is naturally gluten free as it is prepared with manioc/tapioca/cassava flour. I know that it is probably not that easy for you to get your hands on this flour, but I can only encourage you to look for it, this bread is so delicious and can also be easily prepared as an appetizer, snack, or party food. If you have any Asian or Latin American store close-by, be sure to check it out, they usually do carry this flour.
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About a year ago I tried a mermaid-themed cake for the first time. Back then I simply piped some meringue circles and stacked them on top of each other. But this time I thought, why not go with pavlova in order to create this mermaid pavlova instead. Why and what this all about, I will explain below.
Has it ever happened to you that you were checking strawberry macaron recipes and you thought that the bright colors they came in were actually real? How disappointed was I when I learned that about 90% of all the color is actually from food coloring! That’s why today I am going to give you the real deal. These strawberry macarons really taste like strawberry because, well the buttercream IS full of strawberries. I didn’t color the macaron shells red, well, because I am hosting a blog event, in which I ask you not to use artifical food coloring when presenting a recipe in mainly one rainbow color and because this would be fake.
