Mom, I made this strawberry vanilla cake for you. Because you love roses so much. I made this for Mother’s Day. The vanilla cake layers are a moist and sturdy base, which is then filled with a strawberry filling. This time I decided not to make my beloved sponge cake, but instead tried a new recipe. Yes, the filling does contain butter, but it also has a large part of strawberries and also cream cheese. I feel it tastes lighter than any buttercream. This cake is perfect for Mother’s Day, but obviously it can also serve as the base for any wedding cake. You can see in this video how I make the roses.
Yay, it is time to do a blog review. I am participating in the German initiation by Sabrina and Steffen fron the German blog Feedmeupbeforeyougogo. The idea is to answer eight question and to review what you did in 2024 as a food blogger. I already participated in previous years and I am happy to oblige this year again. So let’s get started.
#1 What was your most successful blog post in 2024?
As in previous years, these delicious brownie cookies. Honestly, I am super happy that by now the recipe has been visited more than half a million times, however, it does get a bit boring. For that reason I am more excited about the fact that this simple apricot sheet cake was visited thousands of times within a few days and made it to number 5. I am considering making that recipe with apples for winter. Maybe I will publish a recipe shortly. I am also amazed and happy that a lot of articles giving tips and tricks are among the top 10. One example is 12 tips for perfect sponge batter (ranking as number 4 in 2024). Another is How to make flowers with buttercream (number 9 in 2024). It seems to be apparent that I come from a family of teachers. Parents, sister, cousins, you name it. I seem to have a teaching gene even though I refused to study to become a regular teacher. However, I have to admit that I love teaching and showing people how to improve. I am very motivated to publish further tips on how to improve certain baking areas. That’s what it is all about, right?
Today I decided to open strawberry season, I am celebrating with this delicious Finnish strawberry cake called “mansikkakakku” (which literally translates as strawberry cake). The cake consists of fluffy sponge cake, whipping cream and lots of strawberries, I tell you, even though it is only the two of us, we managed to eat this cake within a few days, we loved it. This is the cake version of the strawberry sponge cake. Reason for this decadent cake is simple, I am celebrating. I am celebrating to date exactly six years ago I had a horrible bike accident including brain bleeding, but I didn’t get any permanent damage from it. If you would like to learn more, check out this blog article. To me this is like celebrating another birthday, it only took a few seconds, but my life could have been completely different.
Today I am going to introduce a speciality from Argentina: torta Balcarce or postre Balcarce. This cake consists of sponge cake layers, the caramel cream called dulce de leche, chopped marrons/sweet chestnuts (often replaced with walnuts), meringue, and whipping cream. The cake originated in the town Balcarce (hence the name). It was created by the pastry chef Guillermo Talou in 1950 and quickly became famous throughout the country. To the present day the town Balcarce celebrates a festival. One event is to actually assemble a gigantic cake and eat it. Unfortunately, I did not have the chance to eat this cake when I went on holiday in Argentina in 2018. However, I figured, why not try making it at home in Germany? I decided to make this cake for my seventh blog anniversary, today exactly seven years ago my first blog post went online, so I wanted to celebrate with you with this delicious cake.
Let’s celebrate! It has been five years ago that I had a horrible bike accident including brain bleeding. You can check the details here. As I didn’t have any permanent damage thankfully, I want to celebrate with chocolate and invite you guys, we will attempt original Sachertorte! In 2014 I was fortunate enough to eat real Sachertorte in the Café Sacher in Salzburg. The below picture is one of the first pictures I took with my Sony camera and I am still proud of the shot. I mean, considering that I knew very little of photography, I would say it is a great shot! Sachertorte is a chocolate sponge cake that contains butter. Traditionally you will glue together the two cake layers with apricot jam and cover everything with a chocolate glaze. The cake is served with unsweetened whipping cream on the side. Of course I already have a recipe for Sachertorte on the blog. However, recently I got inspired to try again and make a version as close as possible to the original. Once I watched the movie “Sachertorte” on Amazon (a nice little romantic comedy in my opinion), I was hooked. In said movie the main character eats Sachertorte every day in the Sacher Café in Vienna in the hopes of meeting his sweetheart that mentioned she would celebrate her birthday in the cafe at 4pm. So I did some research. Obviously the recipe from the Sacher hotel was a big help. But, and I quote, I have to say that even the hotel Sacher mentions that “This is only an approximation of the original recipe, which of course must remain a tightly-kept secret.”
Like every year I like to do a review of my blog. The below eight questions are perfect to answer every year anew.
#1 Which one was your most successful blog post in 2021?
The most popular recipe on my blog has been these chocolatey brownie cookies for three years in a row now, especially during the season. However, I would like to highlight this banana chocolate cake, I made for myself, not thinking about my readers or whether it was in any way publishable. Interestingly enough, it has become very popular and is currently third in place. It makes me very happy. I do believe that you sometimes need to simply bake something YOU would enjoy and not care about target groups or any demands or trends. As a chocoholic I am so happy that you have baked this cake countless times.
Strawberry Tiramisu Cake! If this is not a cake for Mother’s Day, I don’t know what is. I was inspired by this strawberry tiramisu from Life is full of goodies (in German), which I can highly recommend. I have had people specifically requesting that recipe for a get together, so check it out! Anyway, since the strawberry tiramisu was such a hit, I decided to make this a cake. Because, you know mother’s day? I won’t deny that this is an extremely rich and decadent cake. But with such a sweet heart on the top I believe it is worth it. Oh, and just so you know, it does not contain any raw egg or alcohol.
It’s time for a peach layer cake, one from my country of origin Uruguay. This cake was actually invented in my home town Paysandú. Postre chajá is a peach layer cake that is named after a bird called chajá (in English it is called southern screamer, the Spanish tries to imitate the loud screams it produces). Below you see a picture of this bird. Why the cake got this name and why it is extremely delicious, I will explain in this blog entry.
Are you looking for affordable backdrops for your food photography? Then look no further, I will give you tips below how you can make them yourself and this is me talking, a very clumsy person who has problems assembling IKEA furniture. You don’t have to spend much to make beautiful backdrops, believe me, you can make each backdrop easily to your liking and with your preferred color set. Let’s get started!
#1 What do you need?
- Get a chipboard, scrap board, or wooden board at least the size of 60cmx80cm. I like to checkout our local wood market, they often have leftovers they give away for free or very little money
- You will either need a brush or a small paint roller
- Lacquer or wood color (try to go with neutral colors, such as black, white, grey, brown, etc. However, I also wanted to make a point here by using a bright blue because in my opinion it gives a very fresh look to food as well. You should definitely go for at least two colors and one of them being neutral)
- Sanding paper with different strength, I used 60, 320, and 800
- Optional: an old sponge or white chalk
OK, yes, I am watching the world championship of soccer. That’s because my birth country Uruguay made it to the quarter finals, beating the former winner of the European cup Portugal, yay! For that reason I felt like making alfajores, these are the best cookies from Uruguay. Originally alfajores are from Spain. Don’t ask me how they are made in Spain. All I know is that the Uruguayan version is always a sandwich cookie, similar to sugar cookies. These cookies, however, are a little bit drier and crumblier. That’s because they are filled with dulce de leche, caramel made from sweetened milk. The dry cookie balances out the sweet dulce de leche nicely. Since I am a chocoholic, I had to go with the chocolate version, which means that the sandwich cookies are dunked in chocolate. How can this not be good? Officially these are called alfajores marplatenses, mar de plata is in the very East of Argentina.Alfajores can be found everywhere in Uruguay and Argentina. You will find them in school lunchboxes as well as a sought-after souvenir in airports. What I like about my version is that you can easily keep them for weeks as the chocolate serves as a protective layer. However, I do hope that your cookies will not last as long. At least mine were gone within minutes when I made them.