Hellooo...anyone still out there?

I haven't been at this place for so long that I hardly know my way around it anymore... Well, I won't bore you with a bunch of lame excuses and only state the most exciting one: an overseas trip, first and foremost to attend the christening of my ueber cute nephew no. 2 in Germany (as aunt and godmother, I did bake a few things but sadly, no pictures), and secondly to visit Cambodia on the way back.

In preparation of our trip, I spent quite some time reading our guide book and agonizing over where to go - quite a difficult question when all you've got is a mere week to cover such an amazing country. Pretty high up on my list of priorities was taking a cooking class in traditional Khmer cuisine. Thus on a very sunny and hot morning, T and I walked towards the aptly named restaurant 'Smokin' Pot' in the laid-back country town of Battambang. None of us had ever attended a cooking class before, so we didn't really know what to expect. However, we had eaten at the restaurant the previous night so we knew that the chef's secrets were worth knowing.

The half-day course starts off with a trip to the market. Like chicks running after their hen, we follow our teacher Vannak - one would be lost without a local in this buzzing frenzy. We see all sorts of oddities like hard-boiled eggs cured in salt and ashes or little tubes filled with fermented fish paste and a whole chili. Cambodians, Vannak explains, like to eat this as a snack while traveling on the bus for example. 'Don't try this yourself', he warns us, 'we Cambodians develop a strong stomach.' Another popular snack that I've also seen in the Philippines, is hard-boiled duck eggs - or to be precise, a hard-boiled duck chick, eaten with a spoon right out of the shell, feathers and all. Needless to say, none of us is keen to try that one.

Back at the restaurant, professional equipment is already waiting for each of us: a big round chopping board, an impressive looking knife, and a pestle and mortar. Whilst Vannak explains the three dishes we're going to make, the kitchen staff washes and trims our ingredients so we won't have to work very hard.

However, Vannak does take his job seriously and from now on tells us in rapid, short commands what to do: 'Skin remove!' - that's for the ginger-like galangal. 'Chop into 3cm-pieces' - that's for the snake beans. And before we know it, we're already pounding away in our heavy-duty mortars to get a smooth spice paste for Cambodia's most famous dish: a mild curry called Amok that we make with fish and vegetables. To my great surprise, once the prep work is done, the actual cooking time is very short. After the fish curry, we also make stir-fried beef - lok lak - with salad and a dipping sauce and to finish, hot and sour soup with chicken. Unlike western cuisine, in Cambodia the soup comes as the last course thus bringing all the flavours together. And there's always room for some soup, Vannak says. However, there's no way I can finish three mains in a row - no matter how good it tastes. So I'm all the more happy when Vannak gives out small folders with a bunch of recipes from his restaurant - we will be able to recreate our Cambodian experience at home!

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful Christmas with all your loved ones and try to eat as many cookies as you can - CU again after the holidays!

CU soon!

I'm going on a short trip and - of course - didn't manage to put up a new post before that. However, I've got already something lined up for you. Can you guess what it is about..;-)

Time to change...finally

Had it not been for Nora's comment, I would have promptly forgotten about this blog's third birthday - it does seem to be some sort of recurring theme... Especially when yesterday's post would have been quite suitable to double as anniversary post....ah, never mind!

Being time-poor as usual, any culinary adventure fit for an anniversary was out of the question, so I decided to finally do something about the long-planned make-over of this blog. Yes, that's right, it was planned for a long time with designing new headers, fighting with the template, trying to understand Html and CSS (still not much of an advance in that respect) and all the cursing that comes with it. However, I didn't really like any of my earlier attempts. The day-long shooting for the perfect new header photo somehow never came - and the project was abandoned - shame on me...

So, on a whim, I decided to turn yesterday's cheeseckae photo into my new header and played around with the new blogger-template (luckily it worked out this time). There are still a few odds and ends to fix up - haven't figured out how to change my column width or how to convert to three columns and many more things like that.

However, this blog got new clothes to start afresh into its third year! Feel invited to come along with me and please tell me what you think of the new look!

Wedding Wrap-Up

In case you're currently contemplating to get married - I can honestly recommend doing it not once but twice. But before you cry out in dismay, I'm talking about doing it twice with the same guy..;-)

This April T and I tied the know in Copacabana Beach (not in Brazil but on the lovely Central Coast of NSW) for the first time; and this September we did it allover again in Germany - accompanied by our families and relatives (and again lots of friends) who hadn't been able to come to Australia.

Although the settings of the two weddings could not have been more different (first just a few friends, an outdoor wedding with a barbecue reception and now about a 100 guests, a very festive ceremony in a grand Gothic church, and a four-course-dinner plus a huge wedding cake buffet) a few things remained the same (apart from wearing the same dress twice..;-)

Both times it was a very relaxed celebration - it was all about having a good time with lovely people while eating and drinking as much as possible. Much to my own surprise, it was just as exciting the second time around. Until three days before, I had managed to convince myself that I was a total pro where getting married was concerned so no need for butterflies in the stomach or any such nonsense. After all, we had been legally married for almost half a year already, right? However, shortly before the wedding, we decided to write our own vows just like for the first ceremony and to learn them by heart this time which was enough for me to finally get nervous again...
But most importantly, listening to my man promising to always be my friend, companion, and lover - it was definitely enough to make me get teary allover again...


PS: In case you wonder, what our wedding has to do with the tart I'm blogging about today - my lovely workmates from Sydney had sent me off with a wonderful bunch of flowers. So once I was back in Sydney, I wanted to bake something nice for them. Thinking that I had enough shortcrust pastry in the freezer, I quickly decided on a frangipane tart. However, after defrosting the pastry, I realized that the two portions weren't the same thing - one was a parcel with streusel topping. Hence this rather unconventional take on a frangipane tart which hopefully still qualifies as an entry for Kochtopf's food blog event "Quiche, Tart & Co"..;-)

Note to self: Thou shalt not only label your freezer bags but also read the label before proceeding.


Emergency Frangipane Tart

The ingredients

Your favourite shortcrust pastry to line a 24cm-spring form pan (I use this one)

2 small eggs
50g caster sugar
a few drops of rum essence (optional)
60g marzipan, grated
100g streusel topping (like this one - freeze the remainder for another time)
50g almonds, ground

1 pear, peeled and cut into thin wedges (add more fruit if you like)

1
Either grease your spring form tin or line it with parchment paper. Press the pastry into the tin, forming a small rim (if you happen to have enough pastry, that is...). Prick with a fork a couple of times and fan-bake at 150 degrees Celsius for roughly 10 minutes.

2
Using a hand-held mixer, beat eggs, sugar, and rum essence (if using) until pale, thick, and foamy.

3
Add ground almonds and streusel topping and fold in gently. You don't want to destroy the foamy consistency.

4
There are two possibilities for adding the marzipan:
You either grate it into the bowl where it will most likely clump together again - in this case try to mix it in as gently as possible. Or you pour the filling into the tart case and grate the marzipan directly on it (I'll try this method next time).

5
Cover with pear slices and fan-bake for another 30 minutes or until crispy and golden-brown on top.


The source
My own invention - out of necessity..;-)

Starting allover again...

It´s all so quiet around here... The reason for this is the fact that I will remember 2008 as "the big wedding year"... About ten days ago, I´ve arrived in Germany, went straight to another friend´s wedding and have been preparing my own, second wedding since then. After the first, rather home-made affair in Australia - this is going to be the full shebang with church, lots of family and friends, and - of course - loads of food and wine!

Luckily, most of the preparations have been taken care of by my parents - thank goodness - so things aren´t quite as crazy around here as one might imagine otherwise. Still, there´s plenty of stuff to do and I won´t be blogging very much until it´s all over. Well, who would have thought...

To top it all off, my husband and I will be attending another friend´s wedding before finally heading home again. And we haven´t even been able to go to all the weddings in Australia and Germany we have been invited to this year!

I wish you all a great time and hope to return to blogging as soon as normal life kicks in again!

Daring Bakers do Opera Cake...

...even if it doesn't look like one... Finally, I've been able to participate once again in one of the Daring Bakers' Challenges - and what a challenge! This time, it wasn't nothing less than the classic opera cake that we had to try our hands on. Usually I would shy away from butter cream laden desserts, however, when I saw this challenge I knew instantly who to feed it to. This month, my now-husband was finishing the four-year trial called PhD and I had planned on baking cake for his research lab to eat after the public thesis defence. This super rich recipe seemed to be exactly the thing if you want to feed loads of people (but to be sure I made a red wine dark chocolate cake as well - these engineers can eat a lot).

I started with the joconde two days before - after all, I couldn't risk running late and keeping him awake while trying to finish it. The recipe worked like a charm and now I know which one to choose if I ever try again to make a Swiss roll (my one and only attempt resulted in a totally broken sponge base). The only tricky part was dividing the batter evenly as I didn't have two baking sheets. If trying again, I would probably try to get this unbelievable elastic joconde even thinner for three layers.
To moisten, I used a cointreau-flavoured syrup following the Daring Bakers' recipe.

For the filling I wanted to make a Swiss meringue butter cream, simply because I don't own a sugar thermometer and this variation seemed to be the easiest of butter creams. Luckily, again with a little cointreau as flavouring, it also turned out to be the tastiest butter cream I've ever had (and I normally don't like any of them). This recipe was easy to follow and easy to scale down to 20 per cent which all went on the first layer.

Although I would never want to eat white chocolate on its own, I love white chocolate mousse and the one from the Daring Bakers' recipe was no exception. I doubled the original amounts and used it all to cover the whole cake. As my filling to cake ratio was a bit off the mark, I decided to only pipe some of the white chocolate glaze on top instead of covering the cake or it would have been too sweet for me (besides, my glaze turned out rather stiff anyway).

Only much later (and despite reading the recipe several times) it dawned on me why my concoction wasn't looking like an opera cake at all - I had forgotten to cut the joconde properly to make a smaller cake with three layers! Too bad but I know that I wouldn't have been able to cut dainty, slim slices anyway. While cutting away, T was being questioned by his reviewers and although I was sure that he would pass the whole thing splendidly (which he did), I was the nervous one of us both (so nervous in fact that I couldn't get a decent photo). Well, better this way than the other way round...

Anyway, everyone loved this opera cake despite its homely appearance. Here you can see what it should have been looking like. Check out the recipe at the host's and the two co-hosts' blogs as well as the results of all the Daring Bakers members! This month's DB edition is dedicated to Barbara of Winos and Foodies and her event The Taste of Yellow in order to promote Lance Armstrong's LiveSTRONG foundation - that's why we changed from the traditional coffee-dark-chocolate opera to this light-coloured version!

My first wedding..;-)

Ok, I freely admit that it took only two requests for me to gladly display some of my wedding photos. It's already one month later and I still can't wipe this big smile off my face..;-)

The only drawback was that none of our families could come down under. However, we'll have another - bigger - church wedding back in Germany in a couple of months. Therefore, with only a couple of close friends, this celebration was quite different from your regular wedding (if there's such a thing at all). I simply loved its hand-made, improvised feel.

Originally we had planned to get married directly on the beach so we booked holiday houses in a lovely small town called Copacabana Beach up the Central Coast. However, due to this year's rather cold and rainy autumn in Australia, the place didn't quite live up to its name and we opted for a more sheltered spot at the local lagoon. It still provides you with a view of the beach and plus the added benefit of an awesome sunset over the lagoon - if you're lucky, that is. Alas, the weather held up only for as long as we were posing for the formal shots. Just before the ceremony was about to start, we again had to swap locations - and the whole bridal party simply jumped the fence (ok, it was only a little wall, about one foot high) that surrounded the veranda of a nearby empty holiday house (we did knock on the window to check though). This lovely veranda provided a roof so we stayed all dry and could have some Sparkling Shiraz while listening to a saxophone player as planned.
We have no clue on whose property we got married in the end but we plan to go back there one day and rent this rather lovely house for an anniversary weekend...

But maybe now I should start from the beginning as our wedding was the affair of a whole weekend: We wanted to get away from Sydney to a more secluded spot and quickly decided on a full weekend - to make it worth it. T and I arrived on the Friday afternoon in Copacabana Beach, frantically collecting keys for three houses and just making it in time to our rehearsal with the marriage celebrant. Then our guests started to trickle in and the celebration began already, fuelled by a whole vat of home brewed beer courtesy of our friends George and Nadia. I kept running back and forth to accommodate all our 30 guests in the different places, we cooked loads of spaghetti to feed everyone - and then I decided that I need to relax and went back to the house I was sleeping in. My friends Romina and Nora took care that I started to relax by giving me a foot massage and hot milo as a night cap - aaahhh, I could have that everyday...

The next day, whilst most of our guests explored the area, went for a run along the beach or simply chilled out, I set to work to assemble the wedding cake, a Black Forest Cake. I had made the genoise two days in advance but it still took me a while to make syrup, cherry filling, and cover it all in whipped cream - I'm certainly no good at cake decorating. Anyway, after that was done, it was time to slow down, let the hair dresser do her thing and have a sip of champagne with my girlfriends. And in case anyone wondered - I did eat something during my wedding day..;-)

In fact, I managed to stay calm most of the time - until about five minutes before T was about to pick me up. What if he didn't like the way I looked (admittedly quite different from my everyday look)? Wouldn't that spoil the whole day or maybe even make him change his mind - well, luckily I only had a couple of minutes to spend on such nonsense... Of course it was all good, and when walking towards the location of our wedding, we had the rare sensation of practically everyone, regardless of age, looking at us, cheering and waving. The people in Copacabana Beach were so nice; some even offered us a ride in their car as it had started to drizzle.

Luckily, our friend Alex who took the official photos, managed to get lots of wonderful shots before it started to rain in earnest. And with a little spontaneity, all was fine and the wedding could go ahead. Afterwards we went back to the biggest of our three houses where the reception was being held. More sparkling red was drunk, lots of nibbles were eaten, and several speeches were given which made this occasion even a little more special for us. Then the main course (different spit roasts, roast vegetables, salads, and jacket potatoes) was being served by the caterer (food was a little so-so, unfortunately, we weren't able to taste-test beforehand and had to trust a recommendation). However, for a sweet-tooth like me this was all being eclipsed by the wedding cake anyway..;-)

The big advantage of a small wedding is that you really get to speak to your guests - so we talked, and ate, and drank until the wee hours of morning. The next day, T and I slept in whilst our guests took care of cooking a big Aussie breakfast on the BBQ for everyone. Then we all helped together to clean-up and the guests started to depart one by one. T and I spent the afternoon with a few friends in one of the surrounding national parks and then headed back to Sydney for a quiet end to our eventful wedding weekend.

I often wondered what would be different after getting married - if anything would change or nothing at all. Meanwhile, my life has gone back to normal but so far, the marital bliss hasn't worn out yet!

PS: Many thanks to my parents who made it possible for us to have not only one wedding but two!

PPS: Several people tried to count afterwards - I think the most reliable number was 30 guests representing 11 different nations (and that's not counting in all the Aussies with mixed parentage) - a lovely mixed crowd - and that's really what Australia stands for, in my eyes!

Time to change...

... and to catch up on homework - to say the least! Whilst I'm busy pondering about how to give this blog a different look before (hopefully) resuming my usual blogging routine, it's high time that I display all the wonderful badges I've been given over the last few months! This post is going to get a permanent home in the sidebar under "Fame and (no) Fortune".

Just around the time when my blog turned one year old, I got this wonderful birthday present: My dear friend and fellow blogger Nora of Life's Smorgasbord awarded me this yummy badge for being a 'droolworthy blogger'. Thank you, Nora!

Only a little later, I was thrilled to win in several categories of Jugalbandi's Click event: My photo of floating noodles won in 'originality', made the overall second place, and got the much appreciated readers' choice award. I couldn't have been happier about the outcome!


Earlier this year, Margot of Coffee&Vanilla nominated me for the 'inspiring food photography' award, and lucky me - I won the public online poll! Now I can proudly display this lovely badge, makes me want to start baking right now..;-)


Around the same time, I was lucky enough to win one of the host awards at the DoesMyBlogLookGoodInThis competition. Jennifer of Bake or Break liked my soft pretzels, and I'm so glad she did! I just hope to bake more, photograph more, and blog more, so I can enter this amazing competition again.




And last but not least, it's time to proudly display my Daring Baker's badge - check out the amazing number of daring bakers worldwide!

I need to take a break...

...as you might have guessed by now..:-(

The final weeks before my (first) wedding are full with all sorts of things but not much that involves cooking or baking. Therefore, after neglecting this blog for so long (and feeling really bad about it), I thought I rather let you know why. And I promise to come back on a regular basis once all the excitement is over. Hoping that you will come back, too...

PS: This isn`t me - I just took the photo of a dear friend who got married recently.

PPS: Just to clarify - I have no intentions of marrying someone else after the "first" wedding, it´s just that we´ll be celebrating twice in two different countries..;-)

Happy Birthday!

Have you ever forgotten your own birthday? Whilst this has happened to me with other people's special days - luckily not too often - so far I was at least able to remember mine. However, it almost happened to this dear blog. Just by chance, I asked myself yesterday when its first anniversary would be. I quickly checked here and - oh my gosh - only one more day to go!

After one year, it's almost hard to believe that there was a life without food blogging. Not that I create something blog-worthy everyday - but all this thinking about food, making food, and photographing food turned out to be much more than a mere hobby. For some people, it might not look like a creative outburst having to wait for dinner whilst I'm busy taking pictures from all angles. However, it gives me an unexpected sense of inner satisfaction when one of my creations not only tastes good but also photographs well. And the best part? Lots of nice people, completely unknown to me, stop by, have a look around and sometimes even drop me a line. This thrill I get when I read new comments, still hasn't worn off. Whenever I'm feeling moody, all I have to do is looking at my stats and smiling at the idea that someone from the Maldives or Ghana or some other very remote place payed my little blog a visit... Nora, I'll always feel indebted to you for introducing me to this new world!

But back to the birthday - there has to be a cake, right? Being only one day ahead of time, I couldn't possibly make a layer cake, try my hands on macarons or do any other fancy stuff. However, I still wanted to do something I'd never made before. One idea popped up in my head that had been lurking somewhere for quite some time: financiers. They're quick to make but still have something mysterious about them. At least for me because in German cookbooks you would never see a cake that doesn't contain any egg yolks, almost no flour (let alone baking powder) but lots of butter, sugar, and almond flour instead. I was a little bit suspicious how such a cake should rise and brown nicely. However, I decided to go with a recipe I had found at Feeding my Enthusiasms - it's originally from David Lebovitz so I figured you can't go wrong with that.

And all my worries proved absolutely unnecessary. After very little work, these tiny cakes began to fill the kitchen with their almond perfume - and they looked so cute with their golden brown tops peeking out of the paper garments. They even made my boyfriend utter an appreciating "hmmmm"...

Meme: 7 Random Things about Me

Nora from Life's Smorgasbord has tagged me for my first meme ever: I am to tell 7 random things about me - that she doesn't know already. That's a hard one... I thought and thought and thought - and could only come up with food-related things. I wonder why...

1. I have already mentioned how much I love semolina pudding. And I always had a particular notion about how a proper semolina pudding should be like. One time on a holiday, (I was so small back then that I don't remember the following story but my parents take great delight in telling it over and over again..;-) my parents ordered my beloved pudding. The friendly staff of the nice restaurant not only cooked something that was for sure not part of the menu - but they also put a smiling face on it (using chocolate, nuts or something like that). However, this wasn't the semolina pudding I was used to. Therefore, I refused to eat it until they removed the face. You wouldn't call that stubborn, would you?

2. I still remember my first words in English: "One piece of Canadian Bacon, please!" I was 12 years old and spent the summer vacation with my family in the US - it was the first time for me to be outside of Europe. Pretty exciting. However, my English lessons were to start right after the vacation (having started with Latin first) so communication was only possible in a non-verbal way. After having had pizza for lunch in some city along the east coast I still felt hungry and I felt courageous. So back I went to the pizza stall and repeated what I had learned by heart: "One piece of Canadian Bacon, please!" I didn't understand what each word meant but it worked nonetheless. I was sooo proud of my achievement...

3. I've always been quite hopeless with mental arithmetic. So my mum thought that's got to change and tried to train me while simultanously showing me how to bake. It would go like that: "For this recipe you need 375g of flour. If you want to make one and a half times this recipe, how much flour will you need?" Well, what shall I say, I'm still pretty bad with mental arithmetic...

4. My most exhausting cooking adventure happened during a camping trip with my former scouts club (yes, I was a proud member of our local scouts club!). Together with a friend, I was cooking for up to 25 11-14 year-olds. Imagine a makeshift hearth with four wooden beams rammed into the earth supporting two sturdy metal grids: one as a stove top and one for the wood to burn. Each day, with some help from little pyromaniacs, we started a real hell fire. To stand the heat you had to wear sturdy gloves like the ones construction workers have. And when wearing shorts you were in danger to get all the little hair burnt off your legs... One day, we got a bit over-confident and made Kaiserschmarrn from scratch. It took forever - but the kids loved it!

5. One of the most terrible things to try is yak butter tea. Last year, on a hiking trip through Tibet, we ordered a flask in a guesthouse. While secretly being watched by the locals, the men of our party managed to down the stuff. After the first sip, I politely declined. However, I tried it once more: After having reached a pass in 5225 metres altitude, I was pretty stuffed and gladly excepted the bread and the tea cup our local guide handed around. His version was less strong and less buttery - and I was exhausted enough to give it another try. However, I've had my share and will never do it again.

6. Once upon a time, a Black Forest Cake taught me a lesson in humility. It was during my studies and I had promised to make such a cake for my friends. Okay, I did boast just a little bit that my Black Forest Cake was the best ever, for sure. Little did I know that this was to be the first one I would ruin. To make the cream filling extra-tasty, I had added a bit too much kirsch. Therefore, the cream didn't seem to get stiff at all. I kept on beating and beating - until the cream had almost turned into butter. My friends teased me mercilessly - not that I didn't deserve it...

7. The last one is a little bit embarassing but I have to admit that I secretly love a certain type of instant baby cereal/mush/porridge - there's no real word for that in English. To my defence I have to say that I only like the ones of a certain German brand (and I hate all the other brands). When my sister was little and we had the stuff at home, I always ate it after school as a quick snack. And if it's good for babies, it won't be bad for you either, right? Alas, I can't get it here in Australia and I haven't had it in years but I would eat it without hesitating a second...

PS: I won't tag anyone because it looks like everyone has been asked about it already. However, if you read that and you haven't disclosed 7 random things about yourself yet, go ahead!

PPS: The picture above shows a low-fat banana cake - yes, I was trying to be good. The recipe will be coming soon.

Humble Beginnings of a Great Enterprise

Does the world need another food blog? Purists and people with no understanding of the marvels of sweet and savoury discoveries may say “no”. But, as long as there are other food lovers out there, the only real answer to that rather odd question is “yes”. For everyone who can get excited over the 127th way to prepare an apple cake, there are never enough opportunities to share delicious recipes, to stare at mouth-watering pictures and to delight in 1001 tales of food experiences. This food blog – my first attempt at combining an old love with new technology – invites you to continue the tradition of telling stories at the kitchen stove. As I appreciate both sweet and savoury dishes, this food blog will cover both. But to be perfectly honest, I’m a person who judges a new cookbook by the attention given to the dessert section. If chefs use up all their creativity for main courses and their desserts are dull and uninspiring, I never appreciate their creations. You see, when it comes to sweet things, I can be pretty serious. So this food blog will pay slightly more attention to cakes, tarts and biscuits, as well as to mousse, ice-cream, fruity desserts and other kinds of sweet treats.

My intention is to present sophisticated but uncomplicated recipes that are interesting for experienced food lovers as well as easy to follow for kitchen novices. I have never quite understood the saying that baking is more difficult than cooking because you have to stick strictly to recipe – otherwise you will end up with an inedible concoction. In my opinion, there is not much difference between the two disciplines: As a beginner, it might be better to follow the instructions – but as soon as you gain some experience, you will be able to anticipate the result of slight or major changes. I like to experiment: Switching ingredients according to my pantry, combining two different recipes or simply changing my mind and trying something new. So, follow my recipes step-by-step and follow your own imagination. Feel the excitement of so many still-undiscovered possibilities about food – this is what this food blog intends to show.

"Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises."
Demosthenes