Today is December 6, which is Nikolaus in Germany! Children will put their freshly cleaned boots outside the door, which are going to be filled with sweets and cookies. So for that reason we need cookies today! I decided to make a variation of the most baked, rated, and clicked recipe on this blog, which are the brownie cookies. I decided to make these brownie cookies with sourdough. Yes, you read right. When I heard about this the first time, I thought people were crazy. But then I made these vegan brownies with raspberries and was sold. Since my husband bakes all of our bread, we always, always have sourdough in our house. This in turn means that we often have to throw sourdough as it needs to be fed. Since I liked sourdough in brownies, I figured they it would be as good in brownie cookies.
Today I am introducing a delicious orange cranberry bundt cake. I just love that this bundt cake is so moist, contains real fruit and is just perfect for winter. The batter is fairly easy to prepare and I am sure that you can serve this cake either for Christmas or any kind of get together you have planned in your future. Heck, you may even try it for breakfast!
Since Christmas is just around the corner, I decided to spice this cake with some traditional Christmas spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and the like. I am sure the cake will also taste without, but seriously, I put quite a bit of effort into making this cake look pretty. I mean, for me the taste of a cake will always overrule its prettiness. Seriously. I don’t understand how people find cakes made with ultra-sweet fondant georgeous. Sure, they may be from the outside, but it really saddens me that you cannot eat fondant. So what’s the deal? Why do people say these cakes are gorgeous if you can’t eat half of them? In this instance I decorated my bundt cake with some oranges, cranberries, and rosemary to make it extra special. So I figured it wouldn’t hurt to also make the batter have some secret ingredient. Hence the spice plus fresh cranberries and orange juice. I can assure you, this cake definitely tastes as good as it looks!
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.
As is tradition in Germany, we are celebrating the advent, waiting eagerly for Christmas. Therefore each Advent Sunday (there are always four in total, leading up to Christmas) is super special and for that reason I brought along some ginger cookies or Spekulatius, the German name for these nicely spiced cookies. I decided to make them with a neat little cookie cutter, it was so much fun cutting out my blog name. Look at it, such fine and thin lines! If you are scared of sugar cookies or shortbread, don’t be, I give a lot of tips in this blog post.
I asked you guys to comment on my blog for a give-away. People in the European Union had the chance to win a custom-made cake by me, people outside the European Union had the chance to win this beautiful retro-style food scale from Dr. Oetker. If you want to read further details, check here.
Well, today I would like to announce the winner: (drumroll, please) THE WINNER IS….
Hilde!
I already contacted her. I believe Hilde lives in the U.S., so she will get the scale.
As a small heads-up:
- I got into baking French macarons. Recipe will follow shortly. I am even going to host a macaron-baking afternoon. Will definitely keep you posted how that is going to turn out. Really excited to have some girls come over and listen to French chansons!
- I can’t believe I am writing this, but I have a vegan cake waiting in the fridge to be eaten. Recipe will also follow shortly here. I don’t want to give away any details, but it is definitely a summer recipe, yay!
- Maybe you want to try eclairs but always found them too scary? Don’t be, this is a recipe I can recommend.
Anyway, have a great weekend ahead and let me know what you are planning on baking this weekend!
Hi guys, as you can see, I decided to change quite a lot on my blog. One major change is the layout (or theme how the proper blogging term is called). I decided to go with the Sprout & Spoon Theme by SoloPine. I don’t know what you think, but I am very happy with it. Since my weakest area is design (I also always have a hard time with food props and how to make my food look nice!), I can definitely recommend purchasing a theme. It is well worth the investment. But apart from the theme, there are much more substantial changes such as Continue Reading…