Chocolate Caramel Tart! This is chocolate heaven. If you want the perfect combination of chocolate and caramel, you have to try this tart. A shortbread chocolate crust, a gooey caramel as the first layer and then topped off with chocolate ganache, I couldn’t ask for more. Well, maybe a little more. For flaky sea salt if you really want to take this tart to the next level.
If you were to wake me up in the middle of the night, pointing a gun at me and asked which food I would want to eat until the end of days, I would probably say cookies. Cookies are just so comforting. I especially like Chocolate Chip Cookies. If you give me a chocolate chip cookie with caramel, you got me sold.
Cookies were the reason why I even started this blog. Originally I was obsessed with finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie reciope. I tried more than 20 different recipes before I finally landed on this one. Cookies are comfort food and soul food, in my opinion there is no better dessert than cookies. I love the fact that they are easy to transport and are enjoyed by children and adults alike. Let alone the fact that usually you can whip them up in under less than 20 minutes.
I do love December, here in Germany advent is a special time with each Sunday being celebrated as one step closer to Christmas. I love the fact that, finally, it’s also the season in Germany for cookies. Can you believe it, you have to wait this long? I decided to go a little fancier today. Macarons are a perfect give-away, especially if you go with a strong coffee flavor as I did here, which cuts the sweetness of the macaron shells quite a bit. For that reason I thought salted caramel would be a good partner for coffee. But this is not regular caramel, no, it is dulce de leche, which means it is made of sweetened condensed milk, yum!
I have introduced a few macaron recipes on my blog. I started off with the summer version, which was also the first time I had ever made macarons. This was followed by heart-shaped macarons for Valentine’s. After that I introduced a recipe with real and strong strawberry flavor, until today I went for coffee macarons with dulce de leche filling.
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.
The bird called chajá as is common in Uruguay
Cookies are my weakness. Every time I pass a bakery, I have to quickly check whether there are any cookies on display. Peanut butter and chocolate chunk cookies are one of my favorites. Especially if combined with caramel and sea salt. So I decided to create my own version of this coffee shop classic!
If you use my recipe, you will get about 12 cookies. They are large. Bakery-style. Obviously you can make them smaller, but be sure to check baking time if you do. And believe me, one cookie will satisfy your cravings. They are so thick and full of chocolate and caramel, you won’t regret having made them. Continue Reading…
Exactly one year ago my first blog post Lemon Tarts went online. This means “Blogger Happy Birthday To Me”, yay! I thought really long and hard as to what to do for my first birthday. Somehow I feel everything has been done already. And since I am a stubborn person, I also wanted something more than a boring give-away just to lure in more readers. That’s simply not me, regardless of what marketing says.
Yes, this is a baking blog and I hope that my recipes are mouth-watering for my readers. Yes, I also started this blog since I have been asked to share recipes many times and I simply find baking relaxing. But for me the main purpose of baking is to share the baked goods with others. That’s why I invite you to my event. I ask you to bake something, regardless of whether this is a recipe which was passed down in your family, whether you find a recipe you want to try on my/a blog or whether it is one from a cookbook. It doesn’t matter whether you follow a recipe to the dot or whether you alter a recipe to your liking. Be it cookie, cake, something small, a complicated layer cake, whether you spend hours in the kitchen or you whip something in a jiffy, it all doesn’t matter, as long as you follow one rule. The one and only rule is that you have to share your baked goods with at least one guest.
This is the core of baking for me. That you share, sitting together at a table, chatting, laughing, crying, that you indulge yourself in some cake and learn about the other. I strongly believe that it doesn’t matter if you spent hours baking or went for a simple cookie, as long as you did it with love and passion, I am sure your guest(s) will notice.
For that reason I invite you as of today, February 15, 2018 until March 15, 2018 to invite at least one guest and to bake something for this person for that occasion. I invite you to take a picture, either just of what you baked, or with the permission of your guest, also of your invites and to tell me how the event went. Once the timeframe is over, I will do a roundup on this blog.
I was so ready to bake after three weeks of holidays in Colombia. Yes, I did have the chance to bake something nice for my parents in law in Colombia, but believe me, it is just not the same. I didn’t have a food scale, there were only two types of wheat flour to be found, many people were not sure whether the oven works in Fahrenheit or Celsius (I am not kidding, ovens are barely used in Colombian cuisine). I was ready to bake in my own kitchen. So I was happily browsing the internet, catching up with all the nice food blogs and found a baking event. I always like to bake according to some restrictions, somehow it makes me way more creative. Sure enough, this one was about including nuts. That’s really not hard. We had gotten plums right out of the plane and I still had some pecans at home. For that reason I decided to make mini bundt cakes with pecan caramel. They are really easy to prepare and really taste great.
It’s official today, it is fall in Hamburg, Germany! Did you know that fall is my favorite season? I feel there is so much to like, the leaves are turning color, I can finally get into my cozy cardigans and pullovers, sip some hot chocolate and enjoy being snuggled under a blanket with a good book to read. And the light! So soft, so golden, so nostalgic! Also, fall seems to have all my favorite ingredients: nuts of any kind, apples, pears, plums, and pumpkin. I usually prefer savory dishes with pumpkin, but since my hubby loves pumpkin pie (I don’t really), I thought, OK, why not try a pumpkin cupcake. Don’t ask me why I thought that would be the perfect combination. But it just popped into my head and I faithfully headed over to my favorite baking blog Sally’s baking addiction. Sally produces one perfect recipe after the next, so I was not surprised that her pumpkin cupcake/muffin recipe was just as perfect as all the previous recipes I had tried from her site.
Warning, this is not a quick recipe, this one takes time! Reason is because you need to prepare three different things. But if you don’t mind that (many parts can be prepared in advance), you will be rewarded with the most fluffy, light and airy eclairs, I promise!
I have a treat for you today. Think a very dark chocolate cookie with chocolate chunks and a surprise caramel center inside. Add some flaky sea salt and you got this price-winning cookie. I am not kidding. Sally from Sallysbakingaddiction.com actually won a baking contest with these cookies. It doesn’t surprise me, they are really and truly worth every bite!
