Brazo de Reina from Chile

Today I am taking part in the German blogger event called kulinarische Weltreise (culinary travels troughout the world). Today’s stop: Chile. I knew immediately what I wanted to make. Brazo de reina! This literally translates as a “queen’s arm”. More commonly known as a Swiss roll or sponge roll. What distinguishes the Chilean roll from others is the filling. Manjar, or often known as dulce de leche, is a caramel made from sweetened milk. I do understand why you would think of a queen when you prepare this, this caramel definitely has some royal characteristics. So be pepared for a light and fluffy roll filled with sweet and delicious caramel spread.

24/03/2023

Festive Yule Log or Tree Trunk Cake

The good thing when you get married to somebody from another country is that you can start your own traditions. I got married to a Colombian 12 years ago, but we have been living in Germany since the start. Christmas is traditionally something we have discussed extensively. I have explained the difference between Colombian and German Christmas in this blog post. Man, we have discussed so many things, should it be the traditional bird as is common in Germany or should we go for the many snacks Colombians like to serve for Christmas? Should we make tamales, which is corn, veggies and meat steamed in banana leaves and which require a lot of work? Should we focus on the gifts instead or spend hours on the food? One thing we have learned over the years is that what works best for us is to create new traditions. Traditions that are neither German nor Colombian, but just us. New traditions we like and enjoy.

17/12/2022

Coffee Date No. 8

Shame on me, I haven’t drunk a virtual coffee with you in such a long time. It is already the last quarter of 2020 and here I am, no coffee date as of yet. Shame on me. The only excuse I have is that due to the Corona virus my full-time job changed quite a bit with an extremely busy workload. But regardless, I should have taken the time to tell you a bit, shouldn’t I?

07/10/2020

Third Blog Birthday and Strawberry Elderflower Cake

Where is the champagne? Where are the streamers and glitter? You are invited to a nice helping of this strawberry and elderflower cake! Why, you ask? I am celebrating my third year of blogging. The first recipe that went online on my blog was this lemon tart, which I still love to make. I honestly never thought I would be blogging for three years. I have always been a person who just learns things by doing them. Instead of figuring everything out beforehand, I just give it a go and see what happens. The reason I started this blog was because I got tired of having to pass on recipes I was asked to provide to my friends and family. I also wanted to have some kind of organization so I thought a blog may come in handy. I would have never believed that I would enjoy taking pictures as much as baking. Mind you, I once was a professional pianist, I always thought my visual ability was not as good. However, I am still enjoying my blog immensely, be it baking, food photography or anything else, and for that reason I hope there are many more blog years to come. How about a slice of this delicious strawberry elderberry cake for this special occasion?

15/02/2020

Mushroom Meringue

I have to admit, I love fall, especially if you check the ground of a dark forest, you will find mushrooms, just like the ones I am presenting today. No, I am kidding, you won’t find these mushrooms in the forest, they are actually made from meringue. However, I do find that they do look very much like their original, don’t you think? I am sure these mushrooms are going to be a show-stopper. And the best thing is, they are basically made from two ingredients. You beat egg whites with sugar, which you then pipe into mushroom caps and stems, you glue it all together with chocolate, and then dust them off with cocoa powder, voilá! Continue Reading…

09/11/2018

Let’s Have a Coffee

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.

Käsekuchen mit Apfelkompott und Karamell

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?

09/10/2018

Strawberry Mojito Cocktail

I wanted a strawberry mojito cocktail. I asked for this cocktail when I picked strawberries with my husband. I really love picking strawberries, there is nothing nicer than to pick them from the field straight into your mouth. I am married to a Colombian, so strawberry picking was something he had never done. I requested we go and even though we live in a big city in Germany, the next strawberry field was surprisingly close. Nothing comes close to plicking fruits and enjoying them right there and then.

Well, and then we had tons of strawberries. I have already some strawberry recipes on this blog. For example this strawberry rhubarb waffle cake, strawberry sponge roll, or this no bake strawberry cake, this strawberry chocolate cake, or these fluffy strawberry pancakes for breakfast. But I wanted something else. I wanted to celebrate. Celebrate that I am fully recovered after my horrible bike accident. For that reason we had a giant cookie monster cake a few days ago. But I wanted to celebrate with a drink. I love mojitos and I love strawberry mojitos. So I asked my husband to make me a strawberry mojito. One with fresh strawberries.

02/06/2018

Why I gave the famous Letter Cakes another chance

Letter-Cake mit Biskuit und Himbeercreme

OK, I have to say something heretical. The letter or number cakes as you can see here have disappointed me. Yes, you read right. I expected something as good as my beloved sponge roll with strawberry cream, at least if you make the cakes with sponge cake. The strawberry cream is a dream come true with a fluffy and light sponge cake. It has this light feeling to it, I expected this light feeling when I took my first bite from below letter cakes. And then I was disappointed. As I made rather narrow letters, the dough tasted crunchy, gooey, just not good. Even though I was happy about the additional fresh fruits, the better ratio of cream versus sponge cake, I was not happy. I wanted my favorite roll! I was depressed.

23/03/2018

Summary of my Blog Event

From February 15, 2018 until March 15, 2018 I asked people to take part in the coffee invite event. The basic idea was for you to make something from scratch and invite somebody over. There was no give-away. So today the event is over and the question is how it went. The answer is, it was great, yet different than expected. I received a lot of messages of people telling me that they were inspired and that they invited somebody over. I also know that the four guest bloggers Nina, Lisha, Marileen and Lizet invited people over. Usually people would either come over to me and be like “You inspired me, I actually baked something and invited my best friend.” I would then reply: “Wonderful, did you take a picture of it?” And the typical reply was: “Oooops, I forgot.” So unfortunately I don’t have a lot of proof of all these coffee invites. However, people did take part. And that is what counts for me. I didn’t want people to just make a recipe in order to generate clicks, I didn’t want people to bake to post later nice pictures on Instagram, I simply wanted to inspire people to share what they had baked.

So as stated, I don’t have a lot of proof other than messages, but below you will find the pictures that were actually submitted. Some bloggers also took part, so yay! I will still call the event a success. As long as people had fun, as long as they were inspired to make something from scratch, I would say we achieved great. Some people also pointed out to me that I was basically doing this during lent. But seriously, there is more than cake you can make, for example I also have some sugar free muffins on this blog I am sure don’t count as sweets during lent. But whatever, I know for a fact that people did bake and did invite somebody over, that’s all that counts!

16/03/2018

The Best Chocolate Cupcakes

I feel it is time for some chocolate. Maybe it’s because I didn’t eat chocolate for three weeks. I wanted to look pretty for my birthday. So I restricted myself to eating relatively healthy, no sweets and no chocolate. That was really hard for me. Three weeks without chocolate? As a chocoholic I am proud to say that I managed. I was allowed to drink one small cup of cocoa per day, but that was about it. I know that a lot of people say they don’t crave chocolate in summer. I am definitely not one of them. I can have chocolate day in and day out. Summer or winter. If there is chocolate, you will find Jenny around.

11/08/2017

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