Grandma's Classics: rhubarb cake

Grandma's recipe is by far the quickest and easiest way to turn these tart beauties into something truly enjoyable.
All it takes are a few rhubarb stems, eggs, flour, butter, sugar and 30 minutes bake...

Grandma's rhubarb cake

15-20 rhubarb stems

250g butter
200g sugar
4 eggs
400g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180°C (360°F).

All ingredients should have room temperature to combine well.

Butter the bottom of your baking mold and dust it with flour; remove any excess of flour.
Beat the butter, sugar and vanilla on highest speed until creamy, 4 to 5 minutes, in a bowl with the paddle attachment of the mixer.

Turn the mixer to medium-low speed and add one egg after another, beating for about a minute after each egg.

Turn the mixer to low speed and slowly add the flour together with the baking powder.  Don't overbeat, to prevent the batter getting chewy.

Transfer the batter to the baking mold, smooth with a spatula and arrange the rhubarb stems on top. Until this point it's the exact "Grandma" version. No extravaganzas as you already know, Grandma kept it honest and simple.

I experimented with precooking the rhubarb stems in a mixture of butter, sugar and lemon juice (one tablespoon each) for a few minutes. Don't let the rhubarb turn soft, just let it adopt the caramel flavour.  Heaven!

Bake at 180°C (360°F) for about 30 minutes or until the rims turn golden brown.

Before serving sprinkle with icing sugar.

Enjoy it with a good cup of coffee!

Grandma in her twenties

raw vegan (divine) layered cake with raspberry and chocolate

This beauty of a cake was given to me by lovely Cora. It is a raw vegan layered cake, a species of cake that has always intrigued me, and yet I had never tried one.

After the first taste I knew, this cake is worth all the cashews and the fridge and freezer waiting times. Yes, in fact,  I am making a mini version just now for my Sunday guests. Holding my thumbs that it will be just as delicious as the original!

layered cake with raspberry and chocolate

crust
2 cups almonds
15-20 dates
pinch of salt

Soak the almonds and the dates for 6 hours or overnight. Process the almonds and the dates until it all sticks together. If you end up with a little dough ball it's fine. Press it into the bottom of a spring form and put it into the freezer for one hour.

chocolate layer
100g cashews
15 dates
pinch of salt
pinch of vanilla
splash of freshly squeezed lemon
1 cup of soaking water (of the dates and cashews)
50g raw cocoa butter
3 tablespoons cold-pressed coconut oil
3 tablespoons raw cocoa powder

raspberry layer
100g cashews
15 dates
pinch of salt
pinch of vanilla
splash of freshly squeezed lemon
1 cup of soaking water (of the dates and cashews)
50g raw cocoa butter
3 tablespoons cold-pressed coconut oil
300g raspberries


Soak the cashews and the dates for 6 hours. Blend each layer with the salt, vanilla, lemon and one cup of the soaking water until smooth. I recommend using your Vitamix or any other high-speed blender to make the layers as creamy as possible.
Melt the cocoa butter and the coconut oil gently on low heat and blend it into the mixture.
Add the the raspberries respectively the chocolate.
Pour the raspberry layer onto the crust.
Pour the chocolate layer straightaway onto the raspberry layer. Let it set in the freezer for two hours. No longer, because you don't want the liquid to crystallize.
Put the cake into the fridge during the night to solidify.

Before serving cut along the edge to remove the ring of the spring form.  Decorate with shredded coconut, fresh raspberries and dust slightly with palm sugar.

❤️

If you skip the cocoa butter and the coconut oil the mixture will make for a delicious layered cream dessert or even for an ice cream if you put it into the freezer for a few hours.

There's no limit in combining flavours: vanilla and mango, chocolate and banana, rose and mint.....

 raspberry & chocolate on Instagram

apple tart: puff pastry and home-grown apples

Sometimes it's so easy to make my family happy. For example with an unexpected and beautiful dessert.

A few sheets of puff pastry and enough apple slices to cover the bottom of a baking dish.  Apricot jam to be brushed onto the tart while it's still hot. That's it. (Although I have to admit that a leftover of sirupy mirabelle liqueur in my fridge came perfectly well to marinate the apple slices. ) If you don't have mirabelle liqueur lemon juice will be equally fine.

apple tart: puff pastry and home-grown apples

4 sheets of frozen puff pastry 

3-4 apples, quartered and finely sliced

apricot jam

mirabelle liqueur or freshly squeezed lemon juice to marinate the apple slices

icing sugar

While the puff pastry thaws, peel, quarter and finely slice the apples. Marinate the apples with liqueur or lemon juice.

Roll out the thawed sheets of puff pastry. Put one of them aside to later form the covering grid. Butter the baking dish and cover the bottom with the remaining puff pastry.

Spread the apple slices evenly onto the pastry dough and finally cover with the pastry grid.

Bake for 20 minutes at 180°C or until the pastry dough turns golden. Out of the oven, brush the tart generously with apricot jam. Before serving, sprinkle the tart with icing sugar.

  

clafoutis aux mirabelles

Yesterday we picked the first sun-kissed mirabelles from the tree. Although the season has not yet started I love to enjoy the first bright yellow, but still firm and slightly acidic mirabelles in a clafoutis, sooo good!

Clafoutis aux mirabelles

1 tablespoon butter, softened

5 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups milk

2 tablespoons mirabelle brandy (kirsch or rum are fine)

5 eggs

3/4 cups flour

a pinch of sea salt

3 cups mirabelles, pitted

Distribute the mirabelles evenly in a buttered baking dish.

Combine butter, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, brandy and vanilla in a blender. Blend for a few seconds, add the flour and blend again until smooth. Pour the mixture over the mirabelles.

Bake at 180°C for 35 minutes, until golden brown.  It's fine if the clafoutis is still moist inside. 

Sprinkle with dusting powder. Enjoy!

Lady Furnival's Daughter Cakes

Imagine the humble banana and walnut cake without the decoration of those beautiful rhododendron blossoms! I'm sure Lady Furnival's Daughter would be delighted to lend some of her rhododendron's blossoms in return to being dedicated a delicious cake. Though, don't eat the blossoms, rhododendron is a poisonous plant.

 I love to use the "Blankenburg" baking mould because the cute little crown can be filled with flowers, fruit, chantilly.... It' always looks nice on a table.

Banana and Walnut Cake

200g whole wheat flour
100g sugar
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
60g butter
5 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon lemon peel
2 ripe bananas
100g walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 180°.
Combine, flour, sugar salt and baking powder in a mixing bowl.
Combine the egg, butter, milk, lemon peel and the bananas in a blender and mix until smooth.
Pour the mixture into the dry ingredients and gently. Finally, fold in the chopped walnuts.

Bake for ca. 45 minutes. If you use one single baking mould, instead of two small ones, the baking time
is ca. 60 minutes.

"Lüneburg" baking mould, upside down

Sprinkle with icing sugar. Enjoy!

Tarte au Citron, the quintessential Frenchness

When I was searching the internet for a lemon tart recipe ( it should be quick, easy and the best ever) I found so many enticing pictures, I read so many recipes that I ended up combining my own experience as a home baker with a bunch of helpful advice from the blogosphere.


For the topping:
Thinly slice a lemon. Remove the seeds.
In a small saucepan add 3 tbs sugar and half a cup of water and stir to combine. Place over low heat, dip the lemon slice and let simmer for about 15 minutes or until the pulp looks transparent. Let them rest and cool down in the liquid.

For the crust:

200g butter
100g sugar
300g flour
a dash of pure vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
a pinch of lemon myrtle
1 egg

Combine the ingredients and make a smooth dough with your hands. Press the dough into a baking form and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 175°C.
Bake the crust until light golden brow, about 15 minutes.

For the filling:
4 tbs sugar
3 large eggs
1 tbs lemon zest
freshly squeezed juice of 1 1/2 lemons
2 tbs corn flour

Whisk sugar and eggs until creamy, add the zest, the juice and the cornflour. Pour the filling into the crust and continue baking until the filling is set.

Arrange the previously cooked slices on the tart, dust with powder sugar and enjoy!

a welcome and a birthday cake

Today I spent a big part of my time figuring out  a new "best" size for my blog photos (gracias Cristina por tu ayuda), adapting consequently the width of the text and trying out different script types for a watermark. No time at all for cooking and baking!
Nevertheless I also wanted to surprise my daughter with a freshly baked cake which would fill the house with a welcoming smell on her arrival.  Baucks' Lemon Cake Mix did the trick for me. I just needed to add eggs, mil and butter, mix the batter - and into the oven. More time for my readjusting endeavour....

Two thirds of the batter went into my welcome cake, the remaining third I filled into a little heart shaped form as a birthday gift. (I'm not a football fan, but I hope the television will be on tonight!)
The best part of baking is the decorating; the icing and the moment I browse the garden to collect edible flowers. Difficult today. Rododendron is definitely poisonous. The beautiful yellow daylilies (yes, edible) didn't even decide to open at only 12°C... Also the roses need a few more days of sun and WARMTH. Anyway, happy birthday, Christian!

Julie's clafouti

A clafouti is a great summer cake. It has no crumbly, greasy "floor", but is juicy and moist and fruity and still doesn't fall apart. Julie, originally from France, to be precise la Bretagne, makes the best clafouti I have ever tried. Of course I had to get the recipe and her permission to pass it on to my dear readers!

Julie's clafouti


150g flour
4 eggs
80-100g sugar
80g melted butter
1/2l lukewarm milk

300g fruit (cherries, plums, blueberries....)

Butter your baking dish.
Preheat the oven to 200°C.
Blend eggs and sugar.
Add melted butter, flour, milk in that order.
Spread out fruit on the baking dish.
Pour the batter over the fruit.
Bake for approx. 35mins.
Dust with powdered sugar.

Serve cold or warm.

How to make a Gugelhupf

The typical Gugelhupf is baked in a ring-shaped mold and made with yeast.  With yeast, not with baking powder: important difference! This, at least, is what I learned and what my mother  and my  "Badisches Kochbuch" confirm.  The "Badisches" is the first cookbook I ever owned. It lectures extensively -yet without pictures- about the cuisine I grew up with.  Gugelhupfwise, I suppose, it's influenced by our brioche loving French neighbours...

To make a Gugelhupf is easy if you keep in mind some very important prerequisites:

• close all doors and windows of your kitchen
• turn on the heating; the temperature in your kitchen should be at least 21°C
• ALL ingredients must have room temperature
• you should plan about 3 hours for the whole process (you don't have to spend all this time in the kitchen; the dough has to rise several times, to be baked, to rest...) 

Gugelhupf
the dough:

500g flour
1sachet dry yeast
60g sugar
a pinch of salt
3 eggs
250g butter
1/4 l milk

 the filling:

200g walnuts,  finely chopped
4 tbs sugar
5 tbs rum

First mix the flour and the dry yeast, then add the remaining ingredients and kneed the dough ( with your hands or the dough hooks of your mixer) until it is soft and glossy. If it comes out sticky, add some more flour.
Dust the dough with flour, cover the bowl with a cloth and let it rise for one hour in the warmest corner of your kitchen.

Now you have time to prepare the filling: chop the walnuts and mix them with the sugar and the rum. Put them aside to allow the flavours to mingle.

One hour later: on a flour-dusted table spread the dough  into a rectangular form. Use your hands, you don't  need a rolling pin. Then spread the filling evenly onto the dough and roll it up lengthwise. Place it into the greased Gugelhupf mold. (Any ring-shaped mold is fine!)

Cover the mold and let the dough rise for another half an hour.


Put it into the preheated oven at 180° and bake it for 50 minutes. Have a look after 30 minutes; it might be necessary to cover it loosely with a tin foil to prevent the surface from overbrowning.

Let the Gugelhupf rest for about 10 minutes before you remove the mold. Finally dust it with icing sugar.

Et voilà: your Gugelhupf!

Happy summer weekend!

Rose Carrarini's Pistachio Cakes

One of my most loved cookbooks at the moment is Breakfast, Lunch, Tea from Rose Bakery in Paris.
Rose Bakery offers a modern, simple and healthy cuisine, using first quality, organic ingredients from regional suppliers. Just what I'm  trying to do here in my everyday kitchen for my family and friends.

One of Rose's recipes I tried out lately is the pistachio cake. I was looking for a nut cake, because I had some leftover roasted ground almonds waiting to be used. Hm, only 60g... well , in the drawer I still stored some hazelnuts,  pistachios and pine nuts from my last Almwiesenmuesli. I ground them all in the little Zyliss drum grater (highly recommendable: my best kitchen tool!) and tadaaa:  the required 200g!

The original cake and the original recipe look like this:

 And here is my variation:

250g butter
200g sugar ( I took 25g less than in the original)
grated zest of one lemon
2 tablespoons rosewater (yes, it gives a very subtle and delicious flavour!)
4 eggs
200g ground almonds, pistachios, pine nuts and hazelnuts
50g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180° C.

Butter  a 25cm cake tin or the cake tins you decide to use.

Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Mix in the lemon zest and the rosewater. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Now fold in the ground almonds, ground pistachios, flour, baking powder and salt.
Pout the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 40 minutes. 30 minutes if you take smaller baking tins.

I made no topping, because I liked the little Gugelhupfs just like that. Otherwise heat in a saucepan:

50g pistachios , whole or chopped
50g caster sugar
grated zest and juice of on lemon
and pour  the mixture over the cake.

an old family recipe: summertime potato soup

My grandfather loved it because it was reliably followed by a cake or by sweet yeast dumplings with a divine salty crust. My mother continued the tradition and we all loved it.
I am the one who changed it for just potato soup accompanied by baguette, some olives, a bit of pizza or what else the kitchen offers. The quick and easy way!

Potato cucumber soup

4 tbs olive oil
4-5 spring onions, chopped
 about 750g potatoes, diced
1 large fresh cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 ts salt
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
about 1l  vegetable stock ( I use vegetable stock powder from the wholefood store)

Heat the oil in a saucepan and cook the spring onions and the potatoes over low heat, stirring, until the vegetables soften and begin to turn golden. This step is very important, because it gives a special flavour to the soup. Much better than the raw vegetables simply thrown into the stock.
Add salt and pepper.
Pour in the stock. Should cover the vegetables by about 3 cm.

Simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add now the cucumber and let it simmer for only 5 minutes more. (No longer!)
Liquidize it in a food processor until smooth.
You can pimp the soup with a bit of sour cream, freshly chopped parsley, croutons....

And of course, have a piece of cake afterwards if you like to follow the old traditions!