Vanilla Chocolate Chip Biscotti

No, I haven't started making loads of sweet, sugary, chocolate-y stuff again. I promise. I'm still eating very healthy and am still running every second day. Yay me!

This is a recipe I made some 4 or 6 weeks ago, I just haven't gotten round to writing anything about it before now...

Chocolate Spice Cake

Remember when I talked about the start of spring and healthy food, and the end of heavy buttery, sugary stuff a few weeks ago? 

I've been eating quite healthy for the last few weeks. Salad, rice, veggies, olive oil instead of butter. But somewhere in the middle of it, I had a relapse. Major relapse. And it came in the shape of a moist chocolate spice cake. Moist + chocolate + spices + cake. Honestly, who'd be able to resist? Not me, obviously.

 

Everyone's Irish On March 17th

Beannachtaí Na Féile Pádraig or Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone!

For those of you who've been living completely behind the times for the last centuries and don't know what March 17th is all about: We are celebrating St. Patrick's Day. The day of the Irish patron saint St. Patrick who brought christianity to Ireland a bit more than one and a half millennium ago. It is said that he banished all the snakes from Ireland (thanks, Paddy, I appreciate that!) and explained the concept of the Holy trinity to the Irish by means of a shamrock which has developed into an ubiquitous feature of St. Patrick's Day celebrations.

March photo-a-day 11 and 12: "Can't live without" and "Favourite Drink"

Actually two things I can't live without and one of them happens to be something to drink.

Tea and chocolate. Could it possibly get any better? I don't think so.

Wild-Berry New York Cheesecake

It's cheesecake time!

My flatmate has been pestering me about making a New York Cheesecake ever since I moved in last October. And even though making cheesecake is not something I have to be talked into, it took more than four months until I/we finally made one. Well, the search for the perfect recipe might've been a partly reason why it took so long. Most New York Cheesecakes are more of a plain cheesecake and lack the New York part. They're not as dense, not as moist, not as delicious as they're supposed to be. Well, most of them. But not this one. This one is perfect. And it is perfect because of one secret ingredient. Wanna know what it is? Do you? Do you? Do you?

*drum roll*

March photo-a-day 2: Something sweet

Challenge day 2 and a super moist, decadent chocolate spice cake. Add some white wine, a macbook, and the world's best flatmate, and you have the perfect friday night.

I'll post the recipe in the next few days.

Take care!

Salted Spice Caramel Hot Chocolate and Munich's best chocolaterie

You know those winter days when you come home after a bad day at school or work, frozen to the bone, craving nothing but warmth and comfort? Well, then this is exactly what you need: A good steaming cup of hot chocolate. With all the necessary knickknacks to make it an almost religious experience and to make you forget your troubles.

Hmm, maybe I should open a chocolaterie? As in Chocolat. Oh, that'd be lovely...

Salted Spice Caramel Hot Chocolate

Serves 2

750 ml/24 fl. oz. milk

75 g/o.5 cups chocolate (I love Simón Coll's Xocolata à la pedra, but any good(!) dark chocolate will do)

8 cardamon pods

1 vanilla pod

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp golden caster sugar

1 generous pinch of pepper and chili

Crush the cardamon pods and extract the seeds, scrape the vanilla seeds out of the pod. Put the cardamon and vanilla seeds and the empty vanilla pod into a pot, add the sugar, salt and chocolate and pour in the milk.

Heat it all up, stirring constantly until the chocolate has melted, then remove the vanilla pod. Season with chili and pepper, and serve hot. You could also add a decadent spoon of whipped cream or rum for that extra bit of comfort. As you please.

A cup of that stuff has almost the same effect as going to the Götterspeise: It makes you feel like everything is going to be all right. The Götterspeise (Food of the Gods) which, in my humble opinion, is the finest chocolaterie in all of Munich, is a fairly small but incredibly beautiful shop, and the chocolates they sell make you weep with joy and your credit card groan with exhaustion. Every time I'm there, I'm seriously tempted to spend half my monthly salary on chocolate. Wouldn't be hard.
You can also enjoy a variety of hot chocolates, almond milk and other fancy comfort drinks right there and have a slice of one of their obscenely delicious cakes to go with it (my favourites are raspberry white truffel tart and chocolate ginger cheesecake). A sip. A bite. A smile. Everything is going to be fine, oh yes it is going to be fine.

 

 The chandelier is gorgeous, don't you think? I especially like the stucco. As for the rest: No talk. I think the pictures speak for themselves...

Xantner Brocken

Xantner Brocken are a speciality from the German town of Xanten. They're real calorie bombs and honestly the best Christmas biscuits I ever tasted. Gingerbread + chocolate + nougat + brittle = heaven.

 

Nomnomnomnomnom!

Actually, they're not really biscuits. They're more something like pralines or petit fours. Or whatever. 

They're delicious, and that's what counts.

Nougat and cream, how could this possibly get any better?

 

Well, by smearing it on gingerbread!

Xantner Brocken

(Recipe adapted from Brigitte 12/97 (I think))

50 ml/1.75 oz double cream
150 g nougat
0.5 Tbsp rum


125 g/0.4 cups honey
60 g/0.25 cup sugar
60 g/0.25 cup coconut oil
250 g/2.5 cups flour
0.5 Tbsp cocoa
0.5 tsp cinnamon
1-2 tsp rose water
2 tsp salt of tartar/potassium carbonate
1 egg yolk
300 g/12 cups bitter couverture, grated
Some hazelnut brittle to sprinkle on top




You need to prepare the filling one day in advance: Pour the cream into a pan, heat it up, add the nougat and stir until it has melted. Cover the pan with a lid or plate, then leave over night in a dry, cool place.

In a medium pan, heat up the honey, sugar and coconut oil, and stir until combined. Remove from heat and let cool. Add flour, cinnamon, cocoa and the egg yolk, and combine. Dissolve the potassium in 1-2 tsp of rose water, then add that to the dough, too. Knead into a smooth dough, wrap it in cling film and refridgerate for 1 hour.


Preheat the oven to 200° C/390° F. Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out until it's about 3 mm/0.1 inch thick. Transfer it to a baking tray, put it in the oven and bake for 7 minutes. Then immediately cut it into squares (2.5 cm/1 inch wide and long).


Now take out the nougat cream you made the night before, add the rum, and beat the mixture with an electric mixer until soft and creamy.


Spread nougat cream on every other gingerbread square, then put another square on top.


In a small pot, melt the chocolate. Coat all the gingerbread parcels in chocolate (it works best if you put them on a fork and pour over the chocolate with a spoon), then sprinkle some hazelnut brittle on top and let the chocolate harden.


And now (I know, it's very hard): Put them away. Let them rest for a couple of days. Trust me. The longer they rest the better they get.

Double, double toil and trouble, Chocolate Chip Cookies this way come!

Every time I'm ill, I get cravings like a pregnant woman. Friday night, it was herring in dill remoulade, today it's chocolate chip cookies.

After hours of searching, I finally found the perfect recipe on A Full Measure of Happiness. Lauren calls them "Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies" which immediately reminded me of Macbeth and, first and foremost, of the fabulous "Double Trouble" song in the film version of "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (the song was in fact inspired by the witches' scene from Macbeth). The last time I listened to it, it got stuck in my ear for several weeks. Am expecting a similar effect this time (not that this is a bad thing, it's an awesome song, after all. And it goes really well with the upcoming Halloween).

I know that bustling around in the kitchen making chocolate cookies is not exactly the best thing to do when you're ill. But those cookies are done in a flash, and I was back in bed within 45 minutes, eating cookies, drinking milk and actually being ... ... cheery! That's got to be a good thing.

No, they are not healthy and I don't even want to know the calorie amount. But: They're chocolatey (white AND bittersweet chocolate chips) and walnutty and fudgy, and they make you really happy. Even when you're lying in bed with a fever.

 Yes, that bowl next to the cookies is a huge cup of milk. Yum!

 

Aaaah, delicious beyond imagining..!

They were gone pretty quickly.

Double Trouble Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Recipe by A Full Measure of Happiness)

Makes for around 25 cookies

115 g/1 stick butter
170 g/0.75 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
40 g/0.3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 large or 2 small eggs
125 g/1 cup flour
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
180 g/1 cup chocolate chips (I used a mixture of bitter and white chocolate)
120 g/1 cup walnuts

Preheat the oven to 180° C/350° F and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Mix the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla, cocoa powder, and eggs together until combined. Then add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, chocolate chips, and nuts.

Put tablespoon-sized dollops of the dough on the baking tray and smoothe them down. Be careful to leave enough space in between, the cookies will expand quite a bit.

Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes. They will still be a bit gooey. Leave them in the oven for another 5 minutes if you like them crispy.

Let them cool for 15 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack.

Eat with a large cup of milk.

And now all together:

Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Something wicked this way comes!

Eye of newt and toe of frog,
wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
lizard's leg and owlet's wing.

Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Something wicked this way comes!

In the cauldron boil and bake,
fillet of a fenny snake,
scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
witches mummy, maw and gulf.

Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Double, double, toil and trouble.
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Something wicked this way comes! 

Flapjacks

Monday was an absolutely awful day for me. I won't go into the details, let me just say that I got into a row with my ex-flatmate, felt depressed anyway, had trouble with our electricity provider and my ex-landlord, and the cold that had already announced itself last Wednesday finally kicked in (yay! (not).  I've almost got over it by now). In short: I felt like the whole world had turned on me. 

On days like that, for me, there are only two things to do: (1) Make yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate, snuggle up in a blanket, turn up the heat, and watch a movie, (2) get in the kitchen and bake something. Anything. Preferably biscuits or something like that. 

I went for option 2 (when you have a cold, milk and chocolate aren't that good, anyway) and decided to make flapjacks. Not American flapjacks which, as you might know, are some sort of pancakes, but British flapjacks, in other regions of the world mundanely known as muesli bars.

 

 The basic recipe is, of course, by Sophie, but I made quite a few modifications. You can really get creative with flapjacks. As long as you get the ratio honey/syrup to butter, and honey/syrup/butter to dry ingredients right, you can use whatever you want.

They came out a little more flat (and as a consequence also a lot more brittle) than I intended them to which, of course, was entirely my fault: It said in the recipe that you should use a medium-sized deep baking tray, and that the thickness of the flapjacks depends on the size of the tray. I ignored this and just spread the mixture on a normal (=large), shallow baking tray, thinking that would work. Well, it didn't. The flapjacks mixture spread about 2 inches on each side, something that a smaller, deeper baking tray would propably have prevented.

 

No matter how they look, they taste de-li-cious and make a nice snack for breaks between classes. Or for tea. Or breakfast. Or whenever.

Flapjacks

(Basic recipe by Sophie Dahl)

Makes for 12-24 pieces, depending on how large a baking tray you use

 

2 Tbsp runny honey

2 Tbsp golden syrup

2 Tbsp black treacle (if you don't like it, you can leave out the treacle and substitute 1 Tbsp runny honey and golden syrup respectively)

150 g/2.25 cups butter (Sophie uses salted, I don't)

150 g/1.5 cups porridge oats

75 g/0.5 cup dried cranberries

50 g/0.5 cup chocolate chips

100 g/1.5 cups julienned and flaked almonds, mixed

Preheat the oven to 180° C/350° F.

Grease a medium sized, deep baking tray. Remember: The size of the tray will determine the thickness of the flapjacks.

Melt the honey, golden syrup, treacle and butter in a heavy-bottomed pan over a low heat. Stir until combined, then remove from the heat.

Mix all the dry ingredients, then add them to the molten butter and syrup.

Spread the mixture onto the baking tray and smoothe it down.

Put into the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Cut the flapjacks into pieces as long as they're still hot. Allow to cool, then take them out of the tray and store in a dry, cool place.

They crumble quite a lot which annoyed me at first until I came up with the idea to sprinkle the crumbs on yogurt and have that for breakfast. Yum!

Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies

A couple of days ago autumn finally arrived. And I don't mean autumn as in pumpkins at the farmer's market and halloween costumes in the stores but autumn as in coolish, windy weather with grey clouds chasing each other across the sky, trees turning yellow and shedding their leaves and people pulling out their woollen coats, scarves and hats.

I love autumn almost as much as winter. I love the chilly air in the mornings with the mist over the meadows, the damp smell of the air and the yellow and brown of the leaves gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, I love going for a long walk wrapped in a warm coat and a big scarf, with my pretty autumn boots at my feet and returning with a cold face, rosy cheeks and windswept hair. I love sitting at home on a rainy day with lit candles, a cuppa and some biscuits, listening to Laura Marling on the stereo and dawdling away the time, or watching a film while lying on the bed, snuggled up with a warm blanket and a cup of hot cocoa.

Another good thing about autumn is the start of the winter term in mid-October. Don't get me wrong, I love summer hols. But after 2 months of no courses and only an occasional term paper or test, I tend to get extremely bored and my brain yearns for something to do. If you say "swot" now, I'll hit you.

But the best thing about autumn is that it's the season of harvest. Which means food. Loads of food. And I love, LOVE autumn food.

Pumpkins, grains, parsnips, sweet potatoes, beetroots, chestnuts, spices, apples, pears. Autumn, for me, means colourful, earthy food that warms your soul and your eyes as well as your stomach. Soups, gratins, purees and pies. I can't wait.

This autumn, pumpkin will call the tune. I plan to let it star in syrups, pies, cupcakes, pancakes, brownies and much more. I already made some amazing healthy and tasty pumpkin dishes in September but I promise to make them again and post the recipes.

The first recipe on this blog is incidentally also the first thing I baked in my new kitchen in my new flat. So I thought to myself, I could as well start my blog and life in my new flat with my new flatmate (and good friend, here's to you!) off with a bang, or better: a calorie bomb for the hips and an explosion for the taste buds: Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies. Your life will never be the same. Cross my heart and hope to die.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies 

(find the picture in my header; recipe adapted from Confections of a Foodie Bride)

Ingredients

8 Tbsp butter

8 oz / 225 g bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup / 200 g+ 2 Tbsp sugar

4 large eggs

1 cup / 125 g + 2 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup / 30 g cocoa powder (the darker and the less de-oiled the better)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

4 oz/200 g reduced-fat cream cheese, at room temp

1/2 cup/250 g canned pumpkin

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/8 tsp ground all spice

1/4 tsp ground ginger

- If canned pumpkin isn't available at your local supermarket, you'll have to make the pumpkin puree yourself: Cut 250 g of pumpkin or winter squash (I prefer onion squash) in thin slices, put them on a baking tray covered with baking parchment and bake at 200° C for about half an hour.

- Grease a square 8-inch/20-cm baking tin or something similar. I didn't have one and used a round tarte tin.

- In a bain-marie, melt butter and chocolate together and whisk until completely smooth. Be careful not to let any water from the bain-marie get into the chocolate-butter-mixture because for some reason, the water makes it turn into a tough, unusable lump.

- Whisk in the sugar and then add 3 of the eggs, one at a time, whisking between each addition.

- Whisk in the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Use a wooden spoon for that, the batter will get too tough for a handheld mixer or an egg whisk.

- The batter will by now have reached the consistency of something resembling greasy chocolatey bubble gum but that's what it's supposed to look like, don't worry. Transfer it to the greased tin and spread it evenly.

- In a separate bowl, beat cream cheese and 2 Tbsp sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

- When the pumpkin is ready, transfer it to a blender and puree it. Add the puree to the cream cheese and beat until thoroughly combined. Beat in the egg and vanilla, then add 2 Tbsp flour and the ground spices. I used freshly ground nutmeg but was a bit over-enthusiastic and ended up using nearly twice the required amount. It didn't hurt. And I was out of ginger, so I used ground cardamon instead. You can never go wrong with cardamon.

- Create wells in the top of the brownie batter. Spoon the pumpkin cheesecake mixture into the wells. Use the tip of a knife to swirl the chocolate and pumpkin together. I didn't manage that very well, but I think I like the brownies better with the pumpkin cheesecake on top of the chocolate dough instead of swirled into it, anyway.

- Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, 40-50 minutes. Cool in pan for 30 minutes then cut into squares and serve.

Happy eating!