First, I was in Berlin again and visited a vegan food market there. For refreshind, we tried the flavoured coconut milk with a cute design. The ‘Veganz’ shop was pretty expensive, you’d better buy normal stuff like fruit, vegetables and bread in a normal supermarket. But there is everything and more in a vegan version available. I had a chocolate coconut milk, which I liked, because it reminded me of Bounty.

If you want some interesting and cheap food, you should walk around the area of the Adalbertstraße. There are many restaurants and bars offering food of foreign origin. I had an awesome falafel wrap at a Lebanese restaurant which offers a lot of Oriental vegetarian and vegan meals.

The next day I was in Leipzig, where I found a neat place called “Bagel Brothers”. I am not that into bagels, but the hop offers homemade apple lemonade with fresh apple juice. Perfect on a hot day!

Walk along Karli street for some good vegetarian and vegan food. You should try one of the kebab shops, they often have fancy menus with falafel, tofu and seitan fillings as a substitute for the traditional meat stuff. I had a wrap with cheese and spinach which made me very happy (you do realize I like wraps).

I was also in France for several days where we visited Nice, Cannes, Monaco and Marseille. On our first day in Nice, we found a bakery providing traditional sweets of southern France, offering these buttery cookies and the traditional navettes, butter cookies with orange flavour. I personally liked the violet flavoured cookie above, but I am sure it tastes best as a part of a triffle or cheesecake, since it was a bit dry.

The best food I had was at a small restaurant a few metres away from our hotel in Nice. ‘Chez Moi’ offers a delicious menu with three courses for 15 Euros. You have the choice between about 3 different meals per course. When we had dinner there, we only saw French people there, which means this place is not a tourist trap. I had a very interesting salad with roasted bread, fresh tomatos, peaches and fennel. The main course was a risotto with vegetables and pickled citrus – try this and you will know what heaven is like. As a dessert, I chose a slice of apricot tart and concluded that I have to learn more about french patisserie. Danm, they know how to cook!

In Marseille, we proceeded with exploring French pastries. First thing, we ate our was through fruity macarons and then I fell in love with a citrus meringue tart.

The markets in southern France offer a lot of good fruit and vegetables which are ripe and full of flavour. We went across a food market and had some figs, apricots, watermelon and honeydew.

In Cannes, we tried some sugared churros. These are really fun to me, because I love finger food and food that can be dipped into different sauces. Maybe I should give these another try (The last time I fried churros, one of them exploded and my whole kitchen was messed up).

In Le Souk, a restaurant at the Old Harbor in Marseille, you can try very good Moroccan food. We ordered couscous and got a big pot with a kind of spiced vegetable soup, chickpeas, raisins with chinnamon, chicken with curcuma and chili paste. It is a lot of fun to sit together with friends and combine the different components.

And last but not least: our food at Lafayette Gourmet. We tried Belgian chocolate and caramel soft ice cream in the mall. I had a salad with parmesan and a vinaigrette dressind in a cute little glass bottle.
One highlight was the creamy mousse au chocolat. I really need to make this at home or look for a Lafayette Gourmet in Berlin, so I can buy some fresh mousse as a dessert.

Hope this post gave you some inspiration!

Yuuuuum! I finally made a real cake this weekend and had a blast while doing so (and while eating it).
This new combination of lychee, hibiscus and a little vanilla transformed my fluffy and light cake into a juicy tropical flavor bomb.

The basic is a fluffy sponge cake, soaked with the juice from the canned lychee.

Aaaand on top of it, you form a dome of beaten heavy cream and curd with a spoon. It feels great to just dig in and have a spoonful of this cake. (It should not contain that much fat because of the skinny curd and the sponge cake. – Just sayin’.) I put a little orange food coloring into the cream to make the optical effect more intense and decorated the whole thing with coconut flakes, one hibiscus flower, white chocolate and rose petals. But this is not really nessecary.

Luchee Hibiscus Dome

sponge cake layer:

85 g (2/3 cup) flour
2 eggs
110 g (1/2 cup) sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

cream layer:

250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream, beaten
1 pckt. instant yoghurt/curd powder vanilla
500 g (18 oz.) curd (0,2 % fat)
1 can lychee, drained
juice from 1 can lychee
4 hibiscus blossoms in sugar syrup
powdered sugar, to taste

Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°C).

Beat the eggs and sugar in a bowl with a mixer until the mixture is all light and fluffy, for about 90 to 120 seconds.
Stir in vanilla.

Mix baking powde and flour and sift the dry ingredients over the egg mass.
Stir again on medium speed until the flour is incorporated – do not overbeat.

Pour the dough into a slightly greased round pan with 26 cm (10´´) diameter. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until a toothpicker comes out clean. Let the cake layer cool on the counter.

To prepare the cream, beat the heavy cream until stiff. Then add the vanilla powder (I used ‘Paradise cream’) and stir. The cream will become thicker, but that is exactly what you need to get a steady dome.

Purée the drained lychee fruit and stir it in the cream, add the curd. Chop the hibiscus blossoms and stir them in. You can add some orange food colouring to for an optical effect.

Stab a couple of wholes into the sponge layer by using a fork. Soak it with most of the lychee juice from the can. Now place the cream on top of the cake. You get a kind of dome by putting one heaped tbsp in the center after the other. Decorate and let set in the fridge for about 2-3 hours

Christmas time has begun. Yeah, I don’t talk about winter because I hate winter. There are three seasons of the year for me: Spring, Summer, Christmas. So, when I saw the first snowflakes fall from the sky and melt on the dirty streets this week, I assumed Christmas might have begun. You got any presents for your people already? Well, I do, because I love giving stuff to ohers – even more than getting it myself.

And what fits Christmas time more than a chai latte? I have no idea (I do not like spiced wine that much, so this is the drink I become addicted to during the cold months). It was a kind of vision of mine that a chai latte needed to be made and that it would be a succes.

Love the spices in this wonderful fluffy mass. I also added some small pieces of apple under the cheese layer, which added some freshness to the spices. It is definitely worth a try. (Not only because it is my very own creation.)

Chai Latte Cheesecakes
(makes about 12 cheesecakes in a muffin pan)

60 g (1/4 cup) butter
90 g (3/8 cup) sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp flour
2 eggs
250 g (9 oz) curd
100 g (3 oz) sour cream
100 ml (3/8 cup) heavy cream
50 g (2 packets) instant chai latte powder

1 small apple, cut into thin slices

12 round cookies (for the bottom of the molds)

Line a muffin pan with paper molds. Place a cookie at the bottom of each mold. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

For the cheese layer, mix butter, sugar, vanilla extract, flour and eggs in a bowl. Add curd and sour cream and cream until incorporated.
Beat the heavy cream in a seperate bowl, then fold it gently in the rest of the mass. Last but not least, put in the chai latte powder.

Put apple slices into the molds, so the cookie is covered by a thin layer of apple. Fill the molds up to 3/4 with the cheese mass.

Bake for about 35 minutes.

Et voilà!

Do you love oreos? Well, pretty much everyone does. And so does my cousin. When I asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he only said this word: oreo.

It was not difficult to figure out what would make him happy, so I did some research in my archive and looked for recipes with the yummy cookies. As I am quite indecesive, I could not help but combine my favourites in one cake. One cake full of oreos. An oreo excess cake.

I loved the way it turned out and so did the kids/teenagers – it is tricky to find the right word for this age. The fluffy cupcake dough with oreo pieces, the oreo truffle mass and the vanilla cream on top… Do I have to convince you any more? Stop dreaming, get inside your kitchen and bake it yourself.

Oreo Excess Cake:

cake layers

10 oreo cookies
300 g (2 ½ cups) flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
200 g (1 cup – 2 tbsp.) sugar
100 g (3 ½ oz) butter at room temperature
2 pck. vanilla sugar or 2 tsp. Vanilla extract
3 eggs, room temperature
160 ml (2/3 cup) milk

100 ml (1/2 cup) milk, for soaking

truffle layer:

16 oreo cookies
150 g (5 oz.) cream cheese

cream layer:

250 ml (1 cup) heavy cream
250 ml (1 cup) vanilla heavy cream (e.g. Rama)

Put the oreos in a freezer bag and crumble them with a rolling pin. Set aside until needed. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside. In a bigger bowl, combine the butter, sugar and vanilla. Cream until the muxture becomes lighter and fluffy. Add one egg at a time and stir until it is fully incorporated. Now add the milk and the dry ingredients by turns while stirring in between so the dough stays smooth. Finally add the shredded oreos. Stir just to combine.

Oil a round pan (26 cm/10´´ diameter) and pour the mass inside. Bake until a toothpicker comes out clean when stuck inside the center of the cake, for about 20 minutes. Let the cake cool.

Crumble the oreos in a freezer bag. Combine them with the cream cheese until the mass is smooth.

Cut the cake into two layers and soak the bottom with 50 ml (1/4 cup) of milk. Place the truffle mass on it. Now place the second layer on top with the muffintop down and the soft side up – do you know what I mean? Now soak this with the rest of the milk.

Combine both kinds of cream and beat the liquid until stiff. Cover the sides of the cake with a thin layer and then place a thick layer on top of the cake.
Decorate. Let the cake sit for a few hours in the fridge to set, then serve cool.

Bulgarian pumpkin strudel is originally called ‘Tikvenik’, because ‘tikva’ means ‘pumpkin’. To keep at least a bit of the tradition when I prepare it here in Germany, I use bulgarian phyllo dough, which I take with me when I visit my granny.

I do not have exact measurements for this recipe but I hope you can get along with the pictures showing the process step by step. Let’s just start.

You’ll need:

about 100 g (3 1/2 oz.) ground walnuts or pecans
white sugar (have about 150 g/5 oz. prepared)
1 small butternut, grated
125 g (4 oz.) butter, melted
400 g (14 oz.) phyllo dough
cinammon, powdered

Prepare your ingredients, place nuts, butter and sugar in bowls so you have them on hand.
Divide the grated pumpkin into 6 portions, about this size. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°C) and line a rectangular pan with a sheet of baking paper.

Roll out two pieces of dough. Butter one of them with a silicon brush, place the other on top and butter it as well, using very little fat.

Spread one portion of pumpkin across the buttered sheet.

Now spread nuts, sugar and cinammon on top. I use about 2 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp cinammon and 2 tbsp nuts, and the result is really not very sweet, but that’s how I like it. Use more sugar if you like.

Now roll the phyllo sheet carefully and place it in the pan. Repeat with the rest of the sheets.

If you have some butter left, you can pour it on top. Now bake for about 20 minutes or until the cake is slightly browned. Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy warm or cold.