Speculoos Tiramisu - It's Starting to Taste A Lot Like Christmas

Yesterday we had L's parents over for a pre-Christmas lunch. L and I will be heading off to Germany soon for a cold Christmas in the Northern hemisphere. I'm so excited!

After prawns for entrée and a turkey that L had prepared, I brought out my dessert.

Lemon Pie Bites

With all this good food that I'm eating I do have to watch my waistline a bit, most people in Australia would have heard of Lola Berry by now. The young, blonde nutritionist that makes healthy food look and taste awesome.

I've had her 20/20 Diet Cookbook for a while, and have tried a few things. To be honest, I'm not very good when it comes to staying away from desserts, so when I found this recipe in her book I had to try it.

These tangy little balls are delicious and yet healthy. Win/win I think!

Lemon Pie Bites

150 g (1 ½ cups) almond meal*

45 g (½ cup) desiccated coconut

3 tablespoons maple syrup

juice of 3 lemons

zest of 1 lemon

1 vanilla pod, split and scraped

125 ml (½ cup) coconut oil, melted

pinch pink salt

60 g (1 cup) shredded coconut, for rolling*

Put all the ingredients (except the coconut for rolling) in a food processor and blitz for 30 seconds. 

Place a teaspoonful of the mixture into your palm and shape into a little ball. Roll in the shredded coconut and place on a plate. Repeat until you have used up all of the mixture. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes or until firm. Store in a plastic container in the fridge or freezer.

*Notes:

I used a Thermomix, so instead of using almond meal I just blitzed 150g of raw almonds, a bit cheaper than almond meal.

Rolling the bites is much easier with slightly damp hands. I actually used of mixture of shredded and desiccated coconut for rolling. 

Recipe taken from Lola Berry's 20/20 Diet Cookbook.

Vanilla Slice

Last weekend I might have gone to one of the strangest Hen's parties ever. The party itself was great, we went to Toast To The Coast in Geelong and enjoyed a lovely day of wine tasting and good food. However, the strange part was that my lovely friend, the bride, unfortunately couldn't come to her own Hen's Day as she was sick at home (she did come for breakfast the next day).

Vanilla Slice is one of her favourite sweet things to eat so of course it had to be on the menu. i have never made a Vanilla Slice before, it's another one of those things that we don't really have in Germany so I only discovered them when I came to Australia.

Delicious Tangy Lemon Tart

Lemon tart was one of the first cakes I baked when I first moved to Australia in 2007. My friend had introduced me to it, I can't remember ever having it in Germany before coming out here. But the first time I ate it I fell in love with this tangy smooth tart encased by a crunchy base.

I recently promised a colleague a cake as a thank you for a favour and as I had made the French Appletart for the office before we decided on a lemon tart instead. 

Engadine Nut Cake (Swiss Nut Cake)

It's winter over here in Melbourne and winter to me means cold, short days and snow. I get two out of those three, unfortunately hardly ever snow though! Growing up in Germany meant we were not too far from Switzerland which meant we could go skiing some years. I remembered vividly one time when we went skiing my grandmother on my father's side came with us and the day we arrived we went to this cafe and had 'Engadiner Nusstorte', a swiss nut cake from the region of Engadine.

A Country Wedding Cake

Unfortunately, since starting a new job in February I don't find nearly enough time for baking anymore as I would like too. But when my brother and (then still prospective) sister-in-law asked me whether I wanted to make their wedding cake I was more than happy to get my baking utensils out!

Lemon Cake with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting from the Hummingbird Bakery

At this time of year there are usually a few engagements around. Very excitingly, my brother and his awesome girlfriend just got recently engaged, but unfortunately Germany was too far for me to fly over to celebrate with a glass of champagne with them. However, my boyfriend's sister also just got engaged and we caught up with her and her fiancé at their parents house for some dinner and bubbles. I thought an engagement cake would be great to celebrate the occasion. 

Pasteis de Nata (Donna Hay)

Pastéis de Nata are little scrum-deliam-ptious goodies that I tried in a cafe in Melbourne for the first time. By the time I moved back to Hamburg in 2011 you could get them at a lot of cafés over there too.