Wow, it feels like it has been ages since I last drank a coffee with you virtually. Sorry for that. So, take a nice cup of coffee or tea, whatever suits you, and find a comfy place, let’s chat! Let’s chat about winter, the season coming up and what has happened. In case you didn’t know, I moved from the north of Germany, from Hamburg, to the south, Munich. I believe I can say that I have settled in after about three-quarters of a year. Obviously, I had to try some more southern recipes such as broken-up pancakes called Kaiserschmarren, sweet dumplings with apricot filling, or the famous Austrian chocolate cake called Sacher. I have to say that I do miss Franzbrötchen, Hamburg’s version of cinnamon rolls. The ones you can find here in the south are simply not the same.

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While I am typing these words, it is the last day of March 2019, which means my one-month break, my long holidays, my time to relax and refuel is over. I know, one full month I had off, it feels like heaven. In case you didn’t know, this blog is still just my hobby, I conciously decided this not long ago. It still is my baby, but I can only take care of it when I am not working or on weekends. I worked full-time in Hamburg, and I am also going to work full-time in Munich. But I needed a small break. I needed this month to destress. It was quite a whirlwind, moving 800 kilometers. You may be in the new city physically, but your sould is still wandering around, lost at some pit stop.

Yes, I do feel nostalgic, this one precious month is suddenly over. How can this happen so fast? Wasn’t it just yesterday when I had to paint walls white again (something very common here in Germany)? Wasn’t it just a few days ago that I taught my replacement in Hamburg the ropes of the job? The farewell party? How can it be that I am suddenly in another city and have to work again? I find it amazing how quickly each day passed without having a proper job.

This is my one-month review

• I didn’t really enjoy preparing my dinner, but I ended up liking it quite a bit

Guess what, pasta was fun to make. You know, like kneading the dough, rolling it out, that’s baking language right there. I definitely prefer baking to cooking. I will never understand how anyone likes to take care of so many pots bubbling with something at the same time. Each one screaming, take care of me! Baking is so much easier, usually one bowl at a time and step by step, I find that much more relaxing. So when I had to make my own dinner, I decided for pasta. Pasta I could prepare without a pasta machine, so this meant tagliatelle, lasagna, anything I could roll out thinnly. My favorite recipe was below tagliatelle with dried tomatoes, spinach and walnuts.

• Taking great pictures of pasta I much harder than I thought

Maybe it isn’t the best idea taking pictures when you are hungry. Especially if you would like the food to be warm when you finally have the chance to sit down and enjoy it. I have to say, cakes and cupcakes are so much easier to handle, you can move them around for hours and nothing happens. Thank God I have a baking blog, otherwise I would be the grumpiest person on earth.

Photo taken while preparing the triple chocolate muffins

• I vowed to take pictures every single day

That was much easier than I thought. In addition, I had so much fun taking pictures. I have to admit, photography is definitely a new passion of mine. I find baking very relaxing, it destresses me. Photography, on the other hand, is much more art. In my opinion baking makes others happy whereas photography shows beauty. Below you will see a “Behind the Scenes” picture of the super refreshing lime bars. You will find the recipe here on the blog.

• I baked like never before

I have never baked as much and as constant as in March 2019. I usually try to keep it to the weekend only, I usually either bake on Friday evening or Saturday morning, but this month I decided to only do things I truly enjoy and one of them is baking. Of course I had a lot of guests over, one time I threw a little get together with more than 10 guests. Below strawberry chocolate cake was definitely a huge hit and gone within hours.

• Since I baked so much, I did gain weight

I find it a bit scary writing this for everybody to read. I am fairly tall, 1.77 cm (roughly 5’9, almost 6 feet), so I can eat quite a bit, but since I had so many baked goods around all the time, it did finally show on the scale. And as many women, I have tried my share of diets over the years. I have never been a huge fan of diets that restrict food, let alone full food groups. You want me to quit carbs? Are you kidding? I can’t let go of cakes and cookies, sorry, just not going to happen. I have never believed in restrictions, in severe food changes, since these are not going to be permanent. Usually what happens is that you are going to gain it all back, the typical jojo effect. Been there, done that. The only thing that has actually worked for me is interval fasting. The basic idea is that you have a window of 8-10 hours in which you can eat whatever you want, but for the remainder of your 24 hours, you can only drink water. That’s a “diet” I can get behind. I intend on starting with the soft version, which is a ten-hour window. Usually you are asked to keep this window at the same time, however, if I had to attend a business dinner or had some other kind of event outside of my normal window, I had no problem simply moving the window. Because one of the things I hate the most is that you have to explain to others why you aren’t eating or eating funny things, bla. I am really sick of that and as stated, once you go back to your normal eating habits, you will gain it back. Let’s see how it works this time, I mean, I am writing this in public, you are my witnesses 😉

Oreos with a cookie stamp, you will find the recipe plus lots of tips working with a cookie stamp here

I just returned from my holiday in San Francisco. For that reason I felt I wanted to share another vitural coffe with you guys and tell you a little bit about this holiday. Not necessarily in the most sturctured way or with tons of tips including google maps and the like, sorry, but I am not a blogger for travels. I prefer telling the fun little stories I encountered as I feel life is full of little stories and they are not necessarily structured either.

I love travelling, I feel it stirs my creative spirits. You know when you smell so many different scents, when the intonation of the people talking around you sounds like an orchestra from another continent. My brain seems to be wired to happily oversee anything regular at home, but when you are travelling, it suddenly stops and gets all excited about litte mundane things such as road signs. At least this was the case when I set foot on Golden Gate Bridge and suddenly saw the sign pictured below. My brain was suddenly fully awake, tugging me, all excited because it could see a little girl with a pony tail. A girl, not a genderless or abstract symbol, clearly a little girl. My imagination went wild, imagining little Eva who was promised ice cream by her grandfather and was all eager to get chocolate ice cream. I know, I know, I have a pretty wild imagination and I don’t need to do anything in particular to get it going. I mean, this was also the case with the second picture you see below “Listen to the wall.” Doesn’t really make sense to me, I mean, aren’t walls created to hold up something or to look at something? Why should I listen to this particular wall? Is there any kind of bar in the vicinity musicians had gigs at? Is this meant symbolically?  Why should I listen to this wall, this particular wall?

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I’m still surprised that you are so interested in my personal life. My new category “Let’s Have a Coffee” seems to be hitting a soft spot, many people have contacted me since then and mentioned that they are really enjoying this new category. If you would like to read my first entry, check it here. And since you were so excited about the first entry, I am doing number two now. As with the first entry, I decided to first answer a question I get asked all the time:

What is your favorite food?

The short answer is: this depends. It depends on the season, whether you are talking about breakfast, main course, etc. Sometimes it will change, just because I am hot or cold, or didn’t sleep properly, etc., etc. Seriously, there is no ONE food I will always eat. However, chances are high that you will get me excited about burgers. I love hamburgers, of course homemade. My husband makes a kick-ass burger bun. He is the master of bread-baking and he has been baking all of the bread we consume for quite some time now. That’s also one of the main reasons you don’t find that many bread recipes on my blog even though we eat a lot of homemade bread. That’s because my husband took over. He once graciously allowed me to document how he made some Italian bread with semolina and olive oil. If you are interested in that recipe, please check here. Do let me know if you are interested in seeing his burger bun recipe, it is a brioche-based bun, just so delicious!

If you are asking about desserts, it gets even harder. You can make me very happy with the classic chocolate chip cookie recipe. Or currently I am craving this chocolate mousse cherry cake. I actually invented that recipe and won a baking price with this recipe.

I won a baking prize with this chocolate mousse cherry cake

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I have decided to introduce a new category here. Don’t worry, of course I will continue posting recipes, a mix of very simple and easy ones, such as these quick and chocolaty cupcakes, but also more complicated cakes, like this cream cheese cake with apples and salted caramel, which we even had for Christmas.

Reason for starting this new category is pretty simple, I have realized that I enjoy reading about more personal matters from other bloggers. I have also found out that people seem to enjoy learning more about me, at least whenever I get more personal, the response rate is high. You will find 35 fun facts about me in this blog post. I often get feedback that these facts are interesting and that I should talk more about myself. For that reason I am inviting you to a virtual coffee with me. I don’t know yet how often I am going to do this, I also don’t yet what exactly it will contain. But regardless, I would also like to talk about other things. For sure baking and recipes will also play a role in this category, but not necessarily the dominant role.

I decided to open the category with one of the questions I get most often and which I have had to answer many times over:

Who eats all the things you bake?

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