How does a chocolate cake as base, lot of bananas, and a stracciatella cream sound to you? For good measure I also included some crunchy banana chips and an elegant chocolate drip. For this cake to look as beautiful as it tastes. My friends, let me introduce you to this banana chocolate cake! Who would like a slice?
Have I mentioned that I hate fondant? I really don’t get it. You see a wedding cake with fondant and you know that whoever made that cake spent hours and hours on beautiful decoration with the fondant, there are flowers and little figures and you can only imagine how many hours it must have taken to prepare them. But what happens next, you see that all the guests happily reach for a piece and quickly get rid of the fondant because it is so ultra sweet. Nobody wants to eat it. I find that extremely sad. I will always say that flavor is so much more important than looks. But this does not mean that a flavorful cake needs to look boring! That’s why today I am going to introduce to you how to make flowers with buttercream. Below you will find lots of helpful tips and tricks and also a video for you to practice making different flowers with buttercream.
Have you ever heard of the red riding hood cake we have here in Germany? Well, it is a cake with a very red glaze, smooth as glass. Its shiny color reminds you of the red riding hood and hence it got its name from this tale. The base of this impressive cake is like a marbled cake, which is dotted with cherries. The second layer consists of whipping cream mixed with quark and the third is a glaze made with cherry juice. Welcome to a German fairy tale!
Apparently I am not the only one who loves the combination of raspberries with chocolate. For that reason I am introducing today this moist raspberry chocolate layer cake. I was surprised that I got so many reactions when I posted the entire process and end-result as an Instagram story. I am not alone in my love for a things chocolate with some tart raspberries to offset the sweetness of the chocolate.
I often take cake to work. My colleagues are some of my regular test eaters. And since I bring cake to work often, I usually can tell if a recipe stands out. That was definitely the case with this apple almond cake. Suddenly I found post-its saying “Thank you to our baking queen” or “Thanks for making my Thursday morning much sweeter.” My conclusion? This apple almond cake is a keeper, it is a keeper because no other cake has received as many post-it notes. It definitely needs to be posted on the blog. If you want apples in your coffee cake, this is the cake to choose. You have some apple in the cake dough, a lot of apple compote on the top with some nicely browned almonds plus one full apple as pretty decoration on the top. I mean, you got APPLE cake for sure with this one.
Do you also bake your own birthday cake? I definitely did this year. When I saw this delicious blueberry lemon cake on the blog Knusperstübchen (in German) I knew this was going to be my birthday cake. Especially since I hadn’t eaten any sweets in week. I wanted to indulge in this beauty. Obviously I had to tweak the recipe a bit. But when I finally digged into the first piece, there was silence. Silence for a full piece of cake, this is how good the cake was. This is a super moist blueberry lemon cake as it contains a lot of fresh blueberries. I also like the fact that so much lemon zest and lemon juice is used in both, the cake and also the cream.
Have you ever eaten anything with daisies? I hadn’t until recently. Funnily enough, daisies grow almost everywhere and don’t ask for much. But somehow nobody considers using them for cooking and baking. I find that extremely sad. We are not used to using herbs and flowers we find in nature. I recently had a conversation with somebody who was very surprised when she learned that elderflowers are not sold in stores, but that if she wanted to eat anything with elderflowers, she would need to harvest them herself. We have forgotten getting out into nature and cook up something with what we find.
Many of the herbs you find outside can be used for cooking. The same holds true for flowers. I live in Munich with more than a million inhabitants, yet even in Munich I can find wild garlic, elderflowers and daisies. I find it important that we use the flowers we find growing around us. For that reason I used daisies as decoration in this cake. The ones you see on the top are candied daisies. I also use them in the second layer of the bar. Daisies make everything look pretty and candied daisies are a perfect decoration in cakes. That’s why I also used daisies to decorate this blackberry lavender cake.
It is a shame that I haven’t posted that many bundt cakes on my blog yet. Seriously, I love bundt cakes, they are so German! And when we moved inside of Germany and I was holding my bundt cake form, I thought, well, it is about time to finally make another bundt cake again! So I decided to go with a fruity one, I love raspberries, so this time I wanted to make a delicious bundt cake with raspberry filling. It is made with yeast dough, filled with raspberries and then rolled up in the bundt cake. The yeast basically does most of the work, so don’t worry, you will have this cake ready in no time!
Many people are intimidated by yeast, but you really don’t have to be. Think of yeast as a living thing, which is actually is. I like to compare yeast to a woman in winter, yeast always likes it cozy and warm, not necessarily hot, but nice and warm. As long as you take care of that and your yeast is active, I promise, it is not that hard to deal with, give it a go!
Once you have the dough prepared, you will roll it out into a rectangle and smear the raspberry filling on top. Think of it as a cinnamon roll, because you do exactly the same, you smear the raspberries on, roll it up, but then you will place this roll into the bundt cake form. I find it so exciting cutting into the rather plain looking cake.
I can’t believe that 2018 is almost over, so many things happened! I distinctly remember my bike accident I had in April. It included hemorrhage, hospitalization and a long road to recovery. I am extremely grateful that I have fully recovered and don’t have any permanent damage. For this really is a miracle. For that reason we had to celebrate here on the blog, we made a gigantic cookie with a cookie monster on top, you will find the recipe here. Or the fact that we are actually moving back to Munich from Hamburg. I am not from Munich originally, but happened to live there for three years some time ago. I am excited to be moving back and see what 2019 will have in store.
Today I brought you some wonderful gingerbread cupcakes with cranberry filling. They are so easy to prepare, really! Basically you cream the butter with the sugar, add the egg, and then all other ingredients and that’s about it. Really simple, I promise.
There is a reason why I called these cupcakes gingerbread cupcakes. I made the cupcakes with molasses and added a lot of gingerbread spices. I mean, you do want them to actually taste like Christmas, right? I also decided to fill them with cranberry jam, which we are going to prepare in a few minutes, it is really simple. And the frosting secretly hides some gingerbread spices in the chocolate. I hope you are as excited about these cupcakes as I am!
I am also excited to be introducing the very talented illustrator Ellen Martens who designed these adorable cupcake toppers. I especially like this very cuddly deer and that cute little fox. She was kind enough to graciously invent cupcake topper PLUS Christmas cards. Let me know either her or on Instagram what you think of these illustrations.
I would also invite you to check out Ellen’s Instagram!
