Not a very long time ago, it has been Strawberryelmo’s last teen birthday. It is quite a strange feeling, because I really loved being 18 years old but we can’t change that time goes on, so I will do my best to enjoy being a teenager for one more year.

And now, enough philosophy, let’s move over to dessert. For my teeny tiny celebration I made some light and fluffy mousse au chocolat. But not the classic thing. But it had to be some more special, which is why I used kinder chocolate instead of dark one.

It surprised me how easy it was to prepare – you need only 2 ingredients!
By the way, it looks great if you serve the mousse in surprise egg shells and makes the dessert more handy, too.

100 g (3,5 oz.) kinder chocolate
3 egg whites
2 tbsp water

Break the kinder chocolate into pieces and place it in a small pot, together with the water.
Heat over a water bath until it has melted. Don’t forget to stir!

Place the egg whites in a tall dish. Blend with a mixer until they form stiff peaks (you will want it to be firm so the mousse gets all the tiny air bubbles in it).

Let the chocolate cool for a minute.

Use a whisk to stir the egg whites into the molten chocolate. Be careful not to beat down the egg whites.

Transfer the mousse to small cups or chocolate shells. Let it cool in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.

And then… enjoy.

I don’t have an oven. Since I have moved to Berlin, where I am about to start studying, my kitchen contains no oven, nor the possibility to place one inside the new flat.

Until I move out, it will not be possible for me to bake sweets in my new home, so baked goods might be shown here less often (you might have already noticed). Nevertheless, I have prepared some things for you that should keep the blog going until my kitchen supplies have changed and I hope you like the result shown in the pictures as much as I do.

You know I love figs. Hells, I REALLY love them. When visiting my grandma in Bulgaria this year, I kind of occupied her oven to experiment. This is a result, isn’t it? Cinnamon cheesecake with a crunchy cookie crust, topped with sweet, soft and juicy figs and in between a caramel note due to the decorative parts.

So this is how things are going right now and I really hope to be able to show you more of this as soon as possible. But for now, we remain with this beauty here. And this is the recipe:

Fig Topped Cinnamon Cheesecake:

crust:

250 g (8 oz.) Hobbit cookies
125 g (1 stick) butter, melted

cheese layer:

600 g (20 oz.) cream cheese
200 g (7 oz.) sour cream
200 g (1 cup – 1 tbsp.) sugar
3 eggs
3 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pckt. vanilla pudding powder (or 2 tbsp. flour)

fig topping:

400 g fresh figs
50 g (1/4 cup) sugar

Preheat oven to 175°C (350°F).

Crunch the cookies in a freezer bag. Mix the crumbles with the melted butter and spread in a round cake pan with 26 cm (10´´) diameter. Press down the cookie and butter mixture with a spoon.

In a large bowl, combine the ingredients for the cheese layer and beat with a mixer until the mass is smooth. Pour the mass over the cookie crust and bake for about 45 minutes (until the center stops jiggling).
Don’t turn off the oven yet.
Let the cheesecake cool and prepare the figs in the meantime.

Place the figs in a large pan. Spread the sugar on top and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, until there is a jelly-like liquid at the bottom of your pan.

Place the figs on top of the cake and pour the jelly all over them.

You can decorate the cake with caramel ornaments, if you wish. (Heat about 75 g/ 1/3 cup of white sugar in a saucepan until it melts and spread the caramel on a sheet of parchment paper to harden.)

Tastes best with… nah, it tastes good enough the way it is. Enjoy!

It is helthier than Nutella and oh-so-creamy. You can prepare a lot of it ahead and store it in an airtight container in the refridgerator.

Basically, you can choose any kind of chocolate for this cream, but I like dark chocolate the most, because it contains a lot of cocoa and has the strongest taste.

If you are a chocolate-lover, you should just grab the following two ingredients and make yourself some happiness topping.

Chocolate Cream Cheese

150 g (5 oz.) cream cheese
50 g (1 2/3 oz.) dark chocolate

Chop the chocolate and microwave in a bowl until it melts, heating for not longer than 30 seconds at a time. You can also use the water bath method to melt the chocolate.

Mix chocolate and cream cheese until well-combined.

Let the topping cool in the fridge for about 30 minutes, so it gets a little firmer.

Spread on bread, cupcakes, cake and the like.

Enjoy!

1. about a new Pokemon?
2. about the effects of drugs on human eloquence?
3. about strange autofill mechanisms?

Nope, nope, nope. I will introduce something culinary to you, something I found at the Restaurant Day in Berlin on August 17th.

The so called ‘Restaurant Day’ takes place once every three months in Europe. Every passionate cook or baker can open their own restaurant for this one day. There were 6 pops-up restaurants in Berlin and the offer of savory Japanese pancakes Pekopeko offered sounded the most appealing to me.

You could try the delicacy at the former airport Tempelhof, which is now a kind of huge park. Okonomiyaki is the name of these savory pancakes made basically of cabbage, flour and fish stock (the vegetarian version I had was made with vegetable stock). The dough is baked on a hot plate and garnished with special Japanese sauces.

Okonomiyaki is traditionally served on festivals and makes a good snack to go in Europe, as well. The organizer of the event has imported the recipe from its origin and according to the many customers , I assume Okonomiyaki has potential to be a real competitor for sushi.

Now let me tell you about the taste: Okonomiyaki is best when served warm. There is a nice bite to the dought and it tastes fresh, since it contains cabbage. The sauces are salty and add an aroma to the dish, which I personally associate with Asian food. it is not easy to find a word for that. A combination of fruity and savory maybe? You’d better try yourselves.

If you want to visit Pekopeko’s pop-up restaurant, you should come over to Berlin for the next restaurant day, if you’re around. By this, you will support the organizers, so they might be able to open a real restaurant, offering the snack throughout the whole year.

Peace.

In summer, it is often too hot to bake. But I have never wanted to miss a homemade dessert at the weekend, so I always look for a lot of no-bake desserts in July and August. Trifles have always worked for me this far – especially since I discovered something really neat.

You can melt a bar of white chocolate in Rama heavy cream and beat the cream until stiff. You get a kind of mousse then which tastes like white chocolate and fits perfectly the consictency and aroma of juicy berries or other fruit.

After going to a strawberry field, we had picked a huge amount of strawberries which I did not want to transform into jam. That is why I made these gorgeous triffles. 4 ingredients and about 15 minutes prep time, do I need to say more? Go ahead and try yourself.

White Chocolate Strawberry Triffle

(makes about 3 servings)

100 g white chocolate
250 ml (1 cup) Rama heavy cream
90 g (3 oz.) strawberries
1/2 cup chocolate crispies (I used Nesquik ABC)

First, you should prepare the heavy cream.
Chop the white chocolate and dissolve it in the cream over low heat in a small saucepan. Let the mixture cool overnight in the fridge.

Cut the strawberries into small cubes. You might add a little vanilla to the pieces.

In a medium-sized bowl, beat the heavy cream until stiff.

Layer chocolate crispies, cream and strawberries in cups. Serve immediately.