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.
Have you ever heard of the Eton College in UK, the famous boarding school for boys? They happen to have invented a dessert, traditionally consisting of strawberries, whipped cream, and broken up meringue. It’s called Eton Mess. It is commonly served during the annual cricket match agains Harrow School. I looked it up, this year they are playing today, June 23rd. Instead of only serving strawberries, whipped cream and broken up meringue, I decided to go with a cake version, hence Eton Mess Cake.
So if you put a gun on me in the middle of the night, dragging me out of bed and asking me which cake is the ultimate German cake, I would probably say Black Forest Cake. It simply is THE cake. It is German in so many ways:
















