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!

Healthy food week: DAY 5

DAY 5

Breakfast
    Tigernut Breakfast with hot water and a mashed banana
    Green tea

Lunch
    Potato cucumber soup
    Plum Cake

Dinner
    Green beans sauteed in butter with garlic and chopped almonds
    (I brought this recipe from Spain.)

Snack
    Fresh fruit of the season

 

Healthy food week: DAY 4

DAY 4

Breakfast
    Leftover Brownies
    decaf with oat/rice milk

Lunch
    Vegetable soup Minestrone style
    An easy Minestrone recipe you find here.

Dinner
    Nori Burritos with rice, cucumber and bell pepper

Snack
    Cucumber and bell pepper sticks dipped in Sandwich Creme "Hummus"

 Nori Burritos with rice, cucumber and bell pepper

To season 1 cup of rice you need 1tbs vinegar, 1 tbs sugar and 1/2 ts salt. Bring the mixture to a boil, let it cool down and mix with the rice.
Fold the nori sheets into cones and fill them with rice, cucumber and bell pepper sticks. Actually you also can roll in the rice and the vegetables. My burritos get nicer when I use the filling method!

Healthy food week: DAY 3

DAY 3

Breakfast
    Toast with nut butter and jam
    decaf with oat/rice milk

Lunch
    turnips (Kohlrabi), fennel, carrots and cherry tomatoes in the wok
    white rice

It's more interesting to season each vegetable differently: carrots with sugar, salt and cumin
                                                                             turnips with salt and peperoncino flakes
                                                                             fennel with salt and curry powder
                                                                             tomatoes with sugar, salt and pepper

Dinner
    Quinoa with roasted pine nuts, basil and olive oil
    Steamed greens or green salad

    Bring 1 cup of quinoa, 2 cups of water and a pinch of salt to a boil, then let it simmer for about 20  
    minutes. Roast 1/2 cup of pine nuts. In a bowl mix Quinoa, pine nuts, 1 tablespoon olive oil and
    fresh chopped basil.


Snack
     Vegan brownies (leave a few for the breakfast tomorrow!)

 I used  the Brownie mix from Bauck Hof.

Healthy food week: DAY 2

DAY 2

Breakfast
    Apple-grape sauce topped with almond butter and muscobado sugar
    A glass of oatmilk

Lunch
    Fettucine with fresh sage fried in olive oil
    Lettuce tomato salad sprinkled with roasted sunflower seeds

Dinner
    Pumpkin soup
    You find a delicious recipe here.

Snack
    Roasted sunflower seeds sprinkled with soy sauce while still hot
    (Caution: highly addictive!)

Quarter 12 apples, add some red grapes (for the nice pink colour), add 1/2 cup muscobado sugar, 2 ts cinnamon, a pinch of vanilla powder and 1 cup of water.
Put all ingredients into a pot and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and cook, covered, for about 10 minutes. Add more water, if needed. Cook until the apples are tender.
Puree in a food processor until smooth.

Dress the salad the italian way: salt, pepper, olive oil and vinegar.

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!

evoking childhood

When I think about rhubarb, I remember myself as a little girl playing  in the old garden of my Great-grandmother. There was a huge cherry tree, strawberry plants lined up neatly, oldfashioned shrubs and a few rhubarb plants with their red stems and dark green leaves standing near the fence. I used to take water from the standpipe and fill it into sand moulds together with mud, grass and ripped off leaves. So I "cooked"  for the wild rabbits. Sometimes I took one of the big rhubarb leaves as  tray to offer some appetizing flowers as well. And, to my surprise, every morning the rabbits had eaten their meal without leaving any leftovers...

Unfortunately I never appreciated the very special acidity of rhubarb. Even now, when I only think of it I feel like shrinking inside ... The only way I always loved rhubarb was when it has been transformed into mere taste in the form of syrup.
Delicious to flavour fresh strawberries, icecream and even cocktails.

Recently I stumbled upon a very simple recipe in one of my favourite Blogs eatmakeread.

Rhubarb Syrup

Combine 1 cup sugar with 1 cup water over low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, add 1 cup chopped rhubarb and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain out rhubarb and you've got yourself rhubarb syrup.

Enjoy!

My proposal for your Summer Breakfast:

A few months ago I bought an amazing Almwiesenmuesli (= MOUNTAIN PASTURE MUESLI). Beautiful to look at, in a bottle, with dried yellow and blue  mountain pasture blossoms  between grains and roasted nuts.. I know you understand me, I just had to buy it because it looked fresh and healthy (still colours are reason enough to buy something!...)

We all know this: too often nicely coloured food looks better than it tastes. NOT THE ALM MÜSLI! It tasted so good that when I had finished the original Muesli bottle I decided to buy all the ingredients and assemble my own slightly improved  (additional choco chips!) version.  

Intrigued?? This is the recipe:

Almwiesenmuesli

3 cups of oat flakes 

3 cups of wheat-barley-buckwheat flakes

1cup of amaranth poppies

1/2 cup of green raisins

1/4 cup of hazelnuts, chopped and roasted

1/4 cup of almonds, chopped and roasted

1/4 cup of pine nuts, roasted

1/4 cup of apricot nuts, chopped and roasted

1/4 cup of cedar nuts, roasted

1/4 cup of pumkin seeds, roasted

1/4 cup of psyllium

1/4 a cup of chocolate chips

and not to forget: some dried, edible flowers . If you shouldn't have the possibility right now to harvest your own mountain pasture flowers, take flowers from your garden or get some from the wholefood shop.

Put all the ingredients into a big bowl and mix well. To store I recommend  a high glass jar or a paperbag.

For breakfast fill a handful of Muesli into a bowl, add a bit of hot water to smoothen it, add half a grated apple or pear, a teaspoon of flaxseed or a teaspoon of flaxseed oil (for the culmination of positive effects) and voilà: the perfect healthy summer breakfast. Of course, you may substitute my finishing proposals by milk, yoghurt, fruit juice or whatever you prefer. Enjoy!

Hi, it's me again. I'm back

I have been down with an awful stomach virus, don't make me tell more about it. I was definitely not in the mood neither to eat (urgh!) nor to think about about food nor even to take photographs. It must have been the noro, I  guess...
Thank you for telling me so many of you that you especially love my food and cocktail posts, both the pictures and the recipes. So today  let's  celebrate the mild and summery temperatures with a mild and summery Dragonfruit Shake! In a moment I will be out in my garden planting little crocuses and snowflakes...

DRAGONFRUIT BANANA SHAKE

1/2 l milk
1 ripe banana
6 slices of dried dragonfruit (2 for decoration)
You may add a spoonful of sugar if you like more sweetness.

Blend all ingredients until sweet and creamy. The dragonfruit gives a subtle aromatic flavour and is strongly colouring.
Enjoy!

the big spring cleaning followed by a big artichoke dinner

Yes, March seems to become a "food" month, I'm aware of it. But  anyway, the weather was so bad until now, so grey, that I didn't feel like going out.  I felt like staying  at home, playing Mozart quartets, cooking, waiting for the sun... April will be more "outdoor", I promise!

And coming to the artichokes; we cooked them as a whole and ate them with a yoghurt dip. So yummy!

How to cook and eat whole artichokes:

Rinse  the artichokes in running cold water. In a large pot, put water , a clove of garlic, a slice of lemon, a bay leaf and salt. Add the artichokes. Bring to boil and let it simmer until the outer leaves can easily be pulled off.

The dip: yoghurt, salt, pepper, lemon, olive oil and fresh herbs, like chopped chives and parsley, mixed together.

Once cooked, pull off outer petals, one at a time.
Dip fleshy end in the sauce. Grip the other end of the petal, place in mouth and pull through teeth to remove soft, pulpy,delicious portion of the petal. Discard remaining petal. Continue until all petals are removed.
With a spoon scrape out the fuzzy part covering the heart of the artichoke. The remaining bottom is the heart. Dip it into the sauce and eat.  Enjoy!

My garden coming alive after the cold winter and some irresistible Choco-Coco Cupcakes

As to the cupcakes  I felt a bit sorry that I hadn't doubled the amount of the batter. The twelve ones we baked we had to give away to a charity project of my youngest daughter's grade. But, of course, we tried number thirteen ( set aside in a tiny baking form) and it came out delicious!

A bit like a BOUNTY bar in form of a cake...

The recipe:

100g       bittersweet chocolate

150ml     milk

100g       flour

2 ts         baking powder

100g       grated dried coconut

100g       butter (creamy)

100g       icing sugar

1             egg

Pre-heat the oven to 180°. Chop the chocolate in small pieces. Heat up the milk and melt the chocolate in it. Leave to cool down a bit.

Mix flour, baking powder and the grated coconut. In another bowl stir butter, sugar and the egg until creamy.  Add the chocolate milk, then the flour mixture.

Fill the dough into the papercups and put them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Yields 12 cupcakes.

Did you notice the arty papercup in my picture? Unfortunately I had run out of papercups and this is the homemade version. If you want to follow me just strap a piece of baking paper over the bottom of a glass.... 

Birthday Torta per la giovane fiorentina

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! LOVE YOUR LIFE AND BE ALWAYS HAPPY!

Inspired by Jamie Oliver's Torta della giovane Sara I created a birthday cake for my daughter living in Florence right now. 

Vik, if you liked the pictures and want to taste it in real-life, follow the recipe:

250g       butter, melted
500g       flour
4             eggs
300g       sugar
1             lemon or orange, peel and juice
1 sachet  of dry yeast ( 11g)
100g       pine nuts

Whisk the eggs together with the sugar until creamy. Add all the remaining ingredients but the pine nuts (the melted butter should be cooled down a bit) and mix well.
Fill the dough into a buttered baking form and sprinkle it with the pine nuts. Bake in a preheated oven (180°) for 30 - 40 minutes depending on the size of the baking forms. I took three small forms and let them in the oven for 35 minutes.
(I must confess, that I also sprinkled candied orange zests over the dough. CAUTION, they  didn't sink in but adopted the appearance of roasted onions. Luckily I could shake them off...) Enjoy!

Ground Peanut Brittle

Still ice on the lake today.

Schlossteich, Moritzburg

In my kitchen a bowl of leftover roasted and salted peanuts from the last party. STANDING THERE FOR DAYS. Strange ideas about  homemade peanut butter  had already passed my mind when I stumbled upon an amazing recipe in one of my favourite food Blogs  EatMakeRead by Kelly Carámbula.  Ground Peanut Brittle! After having left Kelly a spontaneous "Thank you"note I went straight to the kitchen to adapt her recipe to my needs.

This meant to wash off the surplus of salt, to dry and ground the peanuts. For the rest I followed Kelly's recipe to the letter.  DIVINE!

Homemade Blood Orange Jam

I hope this recipe comes  still in time....

because usually the good quality sicilian blood oranges are sold  by the end of February. If nevertheless you decide to have a try in your own kitchen, you should start  NOW with the adventure race in search for the last organic blood oranges. I promise it's worth the effort: this Jam is to die for!

"La Marianna" is not organically grown. I bought 1kg of organic oranges ( for peel and juice) and 1kg of the regular "Marianna" (for juice).

peel, pulp and juice

The recipe

2kg      blood oranges, zested and pressed (should yield 1l of juice)

500g    sugar

2 tbs    apple pectin

100ml freshly pressed lemon juice

Instead of sugar and apple pectin, you may use 500g of  "2:1 sugar" containing already the pectin.

Zest the organic oranges with a zesting tool. Then squeeze the oranges  and the lemon. Add also the pulp of the oranges. Add the zests of 2 oranges. Should yield 1l altogether.

Add sugar and apple pectin, bring to boil stirring constantly. I cooked the mixture for 10 minutes always stirring. If you are not sure if the jam is ready, place a small amount on a chilled plate. If it wrinkles 

the jam is ready to be filled in glasses.

Spread  the remaining zests on a baking paper, sprinkle with sugar and let them dry during the night.

Next morning you'll find a most delicious candied treat!