Homemade Meringue and An Easy Peasy Dessert

I can't remember ever going to my grandmother's house and there isn't a big green tin on her kitchen shelf that's full of meringues. We would get an after lunch treat of ice cream with meringue crumbled over the top. Or a bowl of fresh ripe raspberries with meringue on top. Or just a meringue to go with your afternoon coffee. My sister absolutely loves them, so much that my grandmother brought over a whole tin for Christmas. 

People are often confused when they see I freeze my egg whites when I only need the yolk for a recipe. But egg whites actually freeze really well and once I have a small container full I usually whip up a batch of meringue. 

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.

Eggnog, a yummy treat for Christmas

At home we have the tradition to decorate the Christmas tree on the night of the 23rd of December and drink Glühwein (mulled wine) while we're doing so.

Since it's very hard to find Glühwein in Australia we opted for a change of tradition and made some eggnog last night while we were decorating the tree. 

Super creamy and yummy and tastes Christmassy! 

Gingerbread Men Garland - an edible Christmas decoration

This year is going way too fast... When I arrived in Australia in October I thought I had a lot of time before Christmas but now it seems like the last two months just passed in a blur...

I'm mostly giving away home-made gifts this year, when I found this cute idea in the current Donna Hay magazine I thought it's worth giving it a go since I had never made gingerbread before and they worked out reallly well! 

From the other side of the world with scrumptious scones

Oh dear, I feel really bad. My last post was written months ago and maybe some of you thought I had lost interest, but no! I'm back! Over the last few months I have been busy sorting through my apartment and packing boxes to move to the other side of the world.

I arrived in Hobart, Tasmania (Australia) about a month ago and I'm settling in well. For those of you who don't know where Tassie is, I found a little map for you.

A parcel from my kitchen for a fellow blogger...

Once upon a time, three German bloggers came up with the idea how lovely it would be if all the bloggers and kitchen goddesses in Germany would create a parcel every few months and exchanged that with one another - Post aus meiner Küche (A Parcel from my kitchen) was born. It's always a different theme and this time it was "It tastes better when eaten together" since the 30th July was the International Friendship Day and I met my lovely exchange partner exactly on that day to not just swap parcels, but to actually eat them together.

I had packed different little things in my parcel for Gesa and her little daughter.

It consisted of antipasti, redcurrant cupcakes,creamy rice pudding with cherries and lemon curd.

Chocolate Malheur with a caramel centre - A quick and easy way to get a chocolate fix... maybe too easy!

It's been a while since my last post even though I have been baking, cooking and trying some delicious things in the past weeks! But I had a special visitor from Down Under and was on holidays, so the posts are coming in a bit delayed now! 

As I said, my boyfriend visited from Australia, we met in Paris and came back to Germany so I could show him my country. In Paris we did try some delicious food, but being back in Hamburg meant we could cook together again. He was in charge of the main course (Salat and chicken, perfect summer meal) and I was making dessert, which meant I could finally try the book (sorry, seems it's only available in German) Zum Dahinschmelzen - Kleine Kuchen mit flüssigem Kern which has been standing in my bookshelf for a while but I never had the chance to make anything.

Green, green, green - Chocolate Espresso Cake with Salted Caramel Filling

I wrote a post about lots of green cupcakes with a bit of glitter the other day and I've been wanting to write another post that is about something green. To quickly tell the story again, my friend had invited me to her birthday party which was themed "green" and I had offered to bring something. 

She took me up on that offer and asked if I could make cupcakes. As a suprise for her and her flatmate I decided to make this cake, which I had found on "The Culinary Trial", which looked soooo delicious that I had been waiting to find a good occasion. Maike from the Culinary Trial got the recipe from Steph of "Kleiner Kuriositätenladen" and changed it a bit and I changed it a little bit again. (Unfortunately both blogs are in German...).

Delicious, little strawberry tartlettes with vanilla custard - Sarah Wiener

Different reasons have led to this post:

1. I had a punnet of strawberries that needed to be eaten
2. I haven't baked in over a week! 
3. A friend from France, who used to sit in the same office as us, is visiting our office and she doesn't get to try my baking too often but I know she likes my cakes
5. Since I'm moving to Australia in October I've made the decision to only take those cook books, that I actually use. 

Now that I've listed my very plausible reasons for this cake I have to admit that I only bought this book about two weeks ago but again I had a reason for buying this. Sarah Wiener, a chef from Vienna, now based in Berlin, used to be our neighbour and I think therefore she is a bit of a must-be-idol for me. And when I flicked through the book the food looked very yummy! So this one is definitely moving down under with me! Unfortunately, I think the book is only available in German so far.

Strawberry Meringue Cake - perfect for a hot summer day

The temperatures in Hamburg reached almost Australian levels today, I'm loving the heat! Finally a little bit of summer! This strawberry meringue cake is perfect for a hot summer's day. The combination of strawberry and cream is nothing new, but this cake always tastes really, really good!

My mother makes this cake for my sister's birthday every year, for some reason my sister usually manages to visit my parents shortly after her birthday to get her cake! I need to remember to do that for my next birthday too...

Green, green, green - Vanilla Cupcakes with green topping

This weekend I was invited to some friends' party which was themed "A hint of green". Thankfully Saint Peter was in a good mood and the weather was fairly good, as the party was supposed to happen in my friends' backyard and they were expecting over 100 guests! I offered my help to my friend H. who said cupcakes would be great as they always look so cute and are easy enough to eat.

Elbe Flood Cake Part 2: Cherry Cup-Cake

Since I did a post about the Elbe Flood Cake Part 1, there obvisouly had to be a part 2. And not only that, but the helpers also needed feeding on the second day, Sunday. 

This time there was also an extra little challenge, a power box located in our front yard was starting to get flooded too and a guy from the electricity company was on his way to my parents place to check it out. Usually they turn the power off pretty quickly in a situation like this, so we needed to act quick! 

This time I made a cup-cake, a recipe my mother used to make quite a lot when I was growing up. It's quick, easy and yummy. We changed it a little bit this time, added cherries and crumble instead of a layer of almonds and honey. 

Elbe Flood Cake Part 1: Apricot Crumble Cake

Some of you international people might have heard that parts of Europe, including 
Germany have been suffering under severe floods. I'm based in Hamburg but my parents live on a farm directly next to the Elbe river. 



The water level was rising for several days, until it reached its peak on Friday. All week we had all kept an eye on the levels and my parents seemed to be doing ok, given that they had the help of lots of people, firemen, army, SES, etc. However on Friday my parents said every helping hand would be good as it started to look critical. I arrived at my parents and it looked, well, wet. The backyard was flooded, there was a huge "lake" behind our house and the fields were flooded as well. On Saturday the groundwater had reached our basement which meant regular shoveling of water.