My husband asked for a raspberry sponge roll for his birthday. Since I love sponge rolls, his wish was my command. Simple as that. I honestly have no idea why sponge rolls seem to be very much out of fashion. They are super quick to make and usually are gone with in seconds. Everybody seems to enjoy them. However, for some reason nobody makes them. Go figure. If you look for sponge rolls on my blog, you will find plenty.
Today I am going to introduce you to an old friend I have, but in a new outfit, I am talking about the creamy cherry chocolate mousse cake I already have on my blog. I actually made the recipe simpler and added more cherries to the mix. Whoever knows me, knows that I am a sucker for fruity cakes, pies, and tarts. In this instance, I felt about double the amount of cherries would be just perfect. I am still proud though that I won a prize with the original recipe. The award was for me and a person of my choosing to visit the beautiful city Tübing in the south of Germany and actually attend the chocolate festival they display every year. If you would like to learn more, check out this post. For the dressed-up recipe I decided to go for a 20cm/8inch cake instead of 26cm/9inch cake, with about double the amount of cherries and a much simpler chocolate mousse with no raw egg in it. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Finally it is plum time! For that reason you get Bavarian Zwetschgendatschi or plum cake today. Since I have been living in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, for more than a year, I need to introduce some local traditions and one of them definitely is Zwetschgendatschi. There are a lots of fights about what is the most classic version of this iconic dish. You can either prepare it with yeast dough or a pie crust, you may wish to only serve it with plums for them to shine. I, however, am a huge fan of crumbs or streusel and therefore decided to go with the crumb version. If you don’t want to wait for the yeast dough to rise, you can also make this plum tart, which I like just the same.
Today I am introducing the famous hummingbird cake to you. There is a simple reason for that. It has to do with the fact that I love animals and birds in particular. Since I was born in Uruguay in Latin America, I had the privilege of watching these tiny birds close to our house. I find it extremely fascinating how these birds need to constantly eat as otherwise they wouldn’t survive. Every 15 minutes they need to drink nectar. Since these birds are so pretty, I decided that my cake definitely also need hummingbirds on the outside, clearly displayed. So I figured that I would dry some pineapple slices and use them as flowers the hummingbirds would be drinking from. The hummingbirds are made from sugar cookies. So I warn you, if you make my version of this cake, it will require a lot of work. I believe it is so worth it, but you are free to make it without the fancy decorations. Because, who doesn’t like hummingbird cake?
What did you say? Sourdough in brownies? Seriously??? Yes, this was my reaction as soon as I saw a recipe calling for sourdough in brownies on the Internet. Why do you need to add sourdough to brownies, that sounds so strange! I have been pondering that ever since and it is slowly making more sense. If you think about it, sourdough is basically fermented flour, which is much easier to digest than regular flour. IDuring Corona times it looks like everybody was making bread and I had heard of people lamenting the fact that they had to discard so much sourdough, so why not use instead? After a while I was sold and thought, if the sourdough is a little old and may smell just a little like alcohol, even better, I definitely wanted to give these brownies a try!
You don’t want to turn on the oven, but would like to impress your guests with a two, three, or even four-tier cake? If possible, it should be healthy and nice to look at? Look no further, you need to try this melon cake! Yes, this is basically serving fresh fruit, but not just a salad or simply on a plate, no, here you stack melon onto each other and produce a tiered cake! So here you have it, a tiered cake with no gluten, refined sugar, and completely vegan. This is something for health-conscious people. And it is nice to look at and definitely a show-stopper. No matter if you make this in a large size or as I did in a smaller version, I am sure that your guests are going to be impressed.
I asked you on Instagram and you all agreed, you wanted to get the recipe for ths cheesecake with apricots and crumbs. So here goes. I decided to make my favorite cheesecake with a pie crust (this is a very German thing to do) and fill it with lots of apricots (two layers) and sprinkle with some crumbs. Yes, I love crumbs on about anything. If you are not that much into crumbs, you can just leave them out, no problem.
You guys, finally I get to introduce something from Brazil on my blog. Did you know that you can find all Latin American recipes here? Since I was born in Uruguay and my husband is Colombian, you will find a lot of recipes from those countries on this blog. Yes, I also have a caramel custard from Peru called suspiro limeño on this blog and the gluten-free cheese buns from Paraguay called chipa are very popular. However, Brazil somehow hasn’t made it as of yet even though it has such a vast variety to offer and super delicious cuisine. Anyway, be it as it may, today this pavê de pêssego will make the start, this is a layered peach dessert.
My granny was the queen of yeast dough. I cannot recall a single time that her yeast dough was anything else but fluffy, soft, and most delicious. I will never forget her sheet cakes prepared with yeast dough. Complimented with lots of fruit and crumbs, they were always a highlight for me. In low German these sheet cakes are called “plautz” and they have always been one of my favorite. I especially liked trying the middle piece of any sheet cake. This piece gives you a lot of fruit, a lot of crumbs, with just about the right amount of dough. My granny didn’t mind giving me the middle piece of a sheet cake. Which I of course loved. I have been thinking about her famous sheet cakes for a while now. However, since she passed away recently, I knew I had to bake a cake since she was not going to. I inherited her recipe book, which I cherish. But unfortunately, I didn’t find a lot of yeast dough recipes. Probably because she knew it by heart.
If you want to make something delicious for your mom, but are not in the mood for a complicated layer cake, how about this simple fruit heart with pie crust? I used nectarines as filling, but feel free to go with any other fruit. Which fruit is your mom’s favorite? Unfortunately I couldn’t make this fruit heart for my mom for Mother’s Day, she lives too far away. However, today is a very special day for me, it is our ten-year anniversary. So I thought this is also the perfect occasion to make a heart. As soon as I got it out of the oven, my husband had googly eyes and asked whether he could have a piece. So I kept my photo shoot to a minimum to relieve him from his pain.
