Cantaloupe Muffins

Did you know it was possible to make muffins with cantaloupes? Well, I didn't until we came home from our community garden patch with yet another batch of fruit that was really sweet but a wee bit on the soft side.

Our son was determined to find a recipe to make use of the fruit other then turning them into smoothies which has been my strategy lately.

Little Willow was at first very dubious about the recipe. She turned her back and would hear none of it.

I hope you get to try this recipe if you should run into a mushy but still edible melon...

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup oats
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• pinch allspice or nutmeg
• 1 cup cantaloup puree

butter or oil for greasing the muffin pan


Preheat oven to 400 degree Fahrenheit
Mix together all the dry ingredients: flour, oats, brown sugar etc.... making sure you break up all the brown sugar clumps. I didn't do this. So there were some holes in my muffins because the brown sugar melted and left strange holes behind - like in Swiss cheese...

Scoop out the flesh of a cantaloupe and turn into soft pulp/ puree.
Add cantaloupe pulp to dry ingredients and mix together well.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.

Here is Willow enjoying a delicious vegan cantaloupe muffin. Her comment was that the muffins are not as fluffy as regular old muffins and definitely more chewy. But overall the flavor reminded her of a super tasty oatmeal cookie. And that's not a bad thing to have first thing in the morning. I am sure it will give Willow and the rest of the family lots of energy for the rest of the day...

German Gingerbread Recipe

Happy Fourth Advent! Slowly I have been catching up on my chores to get done before Christmas. Two sets of cookies are ready and stored away neatly in tins. Sadly I didn't get any Christstollen baked this year. Usually I give a loaf as a gift to friends and folks who have helped me a lot during the year. But there is is still time, right? Like 3 days...

German Tin that was sent to me by my mother many years ago

Here is , as promised the Lebkuchen recipe for the German Gingerbread cookies in case you want to give it a try. Even if you don't have the rice paper, I am sure they would work on a well-greased cookie sheet.

 You will need the following ingredients:

• 3/4 cup of shelled fresh hazelnuts, ground into fine flour
• 3/4 cup almonds, ground into fine flour
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 stick softened butter (preferably unsalted)
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup candied lemon peel, chopped very small
• 1/4 cup candied orange peel, chopped very small
• zest of one lemon

For decorating the cookies:

chocolate for glazing and blanched almond halves

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare two cookie sheets. I lined mine with parchment paper and put two sheets of ricepaper on top side by side.

Beat honey, soft butter, brown sugar together in a mixing bowl. You will need a mixer with a strong motor for this. My little handmixer had trouble with the chore. So when I made this recipe a second time around I doubled everything and used the kitchen aid instead!

Mix the two types of ground nut flour with flour, spices, baking powder, baking soda.

Add the eggs one at a time to the sugar, honey, and butter mixture. Then slowly add the dry ingredients. Add about a half cup at a time. You will get a very heavy batter.

Last add the chopped fruits and lemon zest.

The recipe we had suggested cutting the rice paper in rounds of about 7 cm diameter and making little balls that were about 2 tablespoons each, then flatten those onto the wafer rounds. Since we didn't know how to cut the rice paper in circles we rolled out the dough between sheets of parchment paper and made cut-out cookies. We baked them for about 15 minutes (or until they are dry on top) on the big sheets of ricepaper. We cut the cookies out of the rice paper after they had cooled down.

It's always fun when you share the cookies with folks who have never had real German Lebkuchen. They don't know about edible ricepaper and try to peel the "paper" off the bottom of the cookies.

After the cookies have cooled down you can brush them with melted chocolate mixed with butter or glaze or just leave them plain. You can stick some blanched almond halves on top of the cookies while the chocolate is still wet. I baked the almonds into the cookie and ended up having to paint the chocolate around the almonds. Duh!

I hope you give these cookies a try. If not this year - safe the recipe for next year. I will definitely make them every year from now on.

Lebkuchen - Gingerbread

Finally! Hubby and I baked some Christmas cookies yesterday. We had so much fun working together in the kitchen, enjoying the peace before the storm - before the kids get out of school this week...

I have never tried to make Lebkuchen from scratch. Why? I didn't have the white wafers to bake them on. In Germany you can buy "Oblaten" (white wafers) in any grocery store this time of year. Not so here... So my tricksy husband ordered some "edible" ricepaper from Amazon. An early Christmas present, you know. How sweet is that? Now I have about two hundred 11X8 inch sheets. Should last me a life time.

We even decorated them with blanched almonds and glazed them with dark chocolate. I took the first batch down to the Post Office. I know they have been waiting for me all week. I always take the postal workers a tin this time of year. After so many days of dealing with grumpy folks my sweet German cookies make for a welcome treat and distraction. Hope my experimental batch was good. The folks in line all looked longingly at me. Can I have one? Hmm, maybe next year I'll have to start handing them out to the folks in line. Might make for more cheerful customers...

I'll share the recipe we used tomorrow.

Happy 2.Advent

I gave a rest to sewing this morning and made the family some delicious German sweet bread for breakfast. I'd say it was a success. After a few minutes the big loaf I baked was nearly gone.

 

 

 

Hefezopf - Yeast Braids are a very common German breakfast food. My mom would always buy two loaves at the bakery for a special weekend breakfast. Or if she had time, she would  bake some herself. Of course, homemade is always better!

These loaves are really simple to make and require few ingredients:

500 g flour
2 cups warm milk
3/4 stick butter (melted in the milk)
1 egg
2 teaspoons yeast
1/3 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons honey

I put in a few handfuls of candied lemon and orange rind to celebrate the season. You can also put raisins, nuts, or other dried fruits.

Just throw all the ingredients together. Let he dough rest until doubled in size. Knead and separate into three even chunks of dough. Pull them into ropes and braid them together.

Before baking rub the loaves with an egg wash or some milk will.

Bake in preheated oven at 375 for about 40 minutes. Cover with aluminum foil once it gets brown.

Happy Second Advent to you! I hope you get a chance to make this delicious German sweet bread.

Rosinenbrötchen - German Raisin buns

Oh my gosh. I stepped on the scales yesterday and found that I put on 5 pounds during my trip to Germany. I don't understand why, really. I walked everywhere. My legs hurt from hiking all over the place. I swear if I was still living in Germany I would have turned into a large Frau by now...Good thing I am back in the US and there are no baked goods tempting me.

Here is a recipe for German raisin buns to tempt you.

Rosinenbrötchen – Raisin Buns

Raisin buns are a German breakfast food. You can buy them at any German bakery if you get up early enough. If you are a late riser, that’s too bad. The bakery will  have run out of them, and you have to make your own!

They are commonly served with Butter, Jam, or Nutella.

Ingredients:

·         150 g potatoes about (4 medium sized potatoes)

·         500 g wheat flour

·         2¼ teaspoon dry yeast

·         50 g sugar

·         ½ teaspoon salt

·         125 g softened butter

·         200 ml warm milk

·         100 g raisins

Steps for making raisin buns:

1.       Boil potatoes until they are soft and can be poked easily with a fork, peel while still hot, and put through a potato ricer. Let cool down a bit.

 

2.       Mix potatoes, flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter, and the warm milk with a hand mixer. Use dough hooks for mixing, not beaters. Mix until you get a soft smooth dough.

 

3.       Turn out the dough on a surface dusted with flour. Knead in the raisins until they are spread throughout the dough.

 

4.       Roll the dough into a log and cut into fourteen pieces. Shape each piece into a round bun. Set on a greased cookie sheet. Let the buns rise for about 30 minutes or until they have doubled in size.

 

5.       Brush each bun with warm condensed milk. Bake in a preheated oven at 375°F for about 25minutes or until buns are turning golden brown.

Tip: While baking, you can keep a bowl of hot water in the oven. This will keep the buns extra moist.

 

 

 

 

Apfeltaschen - Apple Pockets

I often wonder whether my time spent at the University of Berlin getting a Master's Degree in North American Studies wasn't a huge waste of time. Wow, I can't believe I said that. I worked so long and hard for that degree I still have nightmares every now and then over the finals...

Reading novels and studying American history may have enlightened me about what I was getting myself into when I moved to the US, yet in no way did it prepare me for the food crisis I would encounter once I started living here. I still  get really depressed when I wonder the food aisles of the typical American grocery store.

Photo by Jes Anthonis

Bread. I miss those hardy German loaves to no end. I miss the multitude of rolls and buns one can choose from at a German bakery in the early morning hours. Donuts and Bear Claws? Ridiculous! If you have ever visited Germany you know what I am talking about...

I am convinced that an apprenticeship at a German bakery most likely would have prepared me better for life in the US. At least food wise. In order to survive, I had to teach myself how to make some of the baked goods that I love so much. I never knew how some of my  childhood favorites were prepared until desperation drove me to search for recipes in imported cookbooks and on the Internet.

One of my favorite childhood sweets are Apfeltaschen. Yum! So simple and a yet so good. My kids agree. What kid doesn't love apples?

If you are a German expatriate or just prefer a less sweet treat in the morning enjoy this German recipe!

Apfeltasche/ Apple Pocket

For the filling

Fresh homemade applesauce is best! But you can also use chopped sauteed apples with raisins. You need about one to two cups for the filling.

If you are wondering why the applesauce in my pictures is intensely red: I made it from an old variety of crab apples (you know from before they started messing with the genes to make big ornamental flowering kind of trees). I cannot tell you the location of this tree. It's probably the last one of it's kind in the US. I would have to kill you if I did. LOL

For the dough:
400 grams of all purpose flour
1 package of dry yeast or fresh if you have it
50 grams of sugar
pinch of salt
1 package of vanilla sugar
50 grams of melted butter
200 ml of warm milk
1 egg

Mix all the ingredients together and knead them until you get a smooth dough. Let the dough rest until it has risen or visibly increased in size. Then punch it down and knead it again.
Roll out the dough into a flat sheet. It should be a little less than a quarter inch thickness. Then take a little bowl with a diameter of about 5-6 inches. Use bowl as pattern to cut circles from the dough sheet. You should get about 8 circles. Crack and egg and separate the egg white from the egg yolk.

Put a heaping spoonful of applesauce in the center of each circle. Smear the edges around of your circle with egg white. Then fold over and make little half moon pouches. Pinch the edges firmly together or apple sauce will leak out!

"Looks a lot like an empanada", my husband commented. "You probably stole that recipe from my grandma!" HaHa. Not funny!

Set your apple baggies on a greased baking sheet. Parchment paper works well too.
Cover them up with a towel and let them rise in a warm place once more. Rub the top of each bun with some egg yolk. Once they look bigger bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until the tops turn brown. Takes about 15-20 minutes.

Best Cake Recipe ever: Rotweinkuchen

Are you a fan of dark chocolate? Love the taste of red wine? I love both but have found that, as I am getting older, I am prone to bad headaches having red wine. The only way I can consume it these days, is in cooked or baked form. Luckily I have a recipe combining these two wonderful flavors into one amazing dessert.

When asked what birthday cake to make for friends or a family member,  they will always shout: Rotweinkuchen (transl. Red Wine Cake)!

This recipe was given to me by a friend in college many years ago. So thank you, Nanette! I will always fondly remember those afternoons hanging out together in your Berlin kitchen and baking this delicious cake.

Ingredients:

250 g butter
250 g sugar
4 eggs
1 packet Vanilla sugar, or if you can't find it in grocery store some vanilla flavoring
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking cocoa
125 g dark chocolate chips chopped into smaller pieces
1 scant cup of red wine

1.cut up butter in small pieces and cream it together with the sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl

2. using a hand mixer incorporate the eggs one egg at a time, blending for about a minute per egg

3. mix together the remaining dry ingredients: flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon

4. incorporate dry ingredients into the egg butter mix adding a little at a time
5. add chopped chocolate chips
6. mix in the cup of red wine

Bake in well greased Bundt pan or loaf pan in preheated oven  at 375 Fahrenheit or 180. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

No reason to polish off the rest of the red wine after a dinner party! Tell the guests to come back the next day for cake! =)

Christstollen Part II

Are your READY? First you may want to ask yourself: Do I really have time for this project, in the midst of the Christmas insanity, in the middle of writing & mailing out cards, buying & wrapping gifts, taking your kids to Christmas concerts and Nutcracker performances? Are you sure about this?

Well, if your answer is "Yes", you should start shopping for these items now! Might take you a while to scout for the ingredients:

For >>the<< recipe you need:

• 1 kg flour


• 450 g butter


• 1/2 liter warm milk


• 200 g sugar


• 100 g of fresh yeast (ca. 5 tsp of dry yeast)


• 10 g salt


• spices: 1 tsp each of ginger powder, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg


• pinch of ground cloves


• zest of one lemon


• 100 ml rum (whenever I am not looking my husband adds more to the bowl...)


• 500 g raisins


• 150 g corinths (small kind of raisins, I found them at Sprouts)


• 200 g almond flour


• 150 g candied lemon peel


• 150 g candied orange peel


• logs of marzipan, if you are feeling rich buy 2-3 (You know they keep that stuff hidden in the baking section at the grocery store, I swear. Usually I find it behind a display of some sort on the bottom of some shelves...Make sure you squeeze the package to ensure its freshness. If the paste inside the cardboard and wrapper are rock hard and won't give, don't purchase! Grab the next package and repeat till you find one that is squeezable. Sorry, but I came home many a time with old marzipan. I guess not too many people buy that stuff)



• 100 g butter


• powdered sugar


• Vanilla sugar ( impossible to find in this nation - find a long lost relative in Germany and have them mail it to you!)

Step 1 Put raisins, corinths, chopped candied citrus fruit peel, almond flour, rum, lemon zest in a bowl and soak over night or for a longer time in the refrigerator. Monitor husband and bottle of rum closely!

Step 2 Make the pre-dough. put flour in a bowl and make a little well. In the well put a few tablespoons of lukewarm milk mixed with the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Stir taking small amounts of the flour from the side of your well. Cover with a dusting of flour, put a towel over the bowl, and let it rest in a warm non-drafty place ( are you kiddin' me? there is no non-drafty place when you live in an old house ) for 45 minutes. During that time you can work on those last Christmas cards for the uncle and aunt in Germany you forgot...

Step 3 Go back to your dough and see if any rising action took place. If not, write more cards or wrap another gift. Maybe you could mail that last package to a customer. By now the lines at the post office might be too long.But you got time! If the dough has risen, once you return from your errant, add the rest of the warm milk, spices, butter, sugar, and mix all of in with the flour. You know the real German Hausfrau has big arms from doing this. It's hard labor to move these mountains of stuff and kneed them together. Luckily I own a kitchen aid. My scrawny arms could never manage this. So hopefully you have one of those miracle tools, too! Once everything is nicely mixed together into a sticky ball of dough, let it sit and rise for another hour. During that time you could run out and buy another gift for your husband. If he is deserving...

Step 4 Hopefully you have removed the soaking fruits from the refrigerator - so the warm yeasty dough doesn't suffer too much of a shock from the cold fruit mixture! Your bowl is probably too full already. But you can take out batches of the dough and kneed in the fruit mixture by hand. I like to do it that way because you get a feel for how sticky the dough is. Maybe you want to add some more flour...

Step 5 Make loaves. Split the dough into parts, depending on how many loaves you want to make. I usually make one larger loaf and two small ones. But you can do whatever you want. Roll out the first batch of dough flat. Take the marzipan log out of its package, sprinkle some powdered sugar on your workspace and roll out the marzipan as flat as you can. Move the marzipan over on top of your rolled out yeasty dough pieces and roll the two layers together. Sort of like making a jelly roll. Shape the roll into a nice loaf and place onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. Start working on the next loaf. You can bake more than one loaf on a cookie sheet! Put towel over the finished loaves and set them in warm place to rise again! Is it Christmas yet? =)

Step 6 I promise you are almost there...Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit while the loaves are rising once again. Bake them until they are cooked all the way through. Now this is the tricky part. In case you thought the rest was hard... Maybe it's living at high altitude that messes me up each year. Sometime I end up with loaves that are way too dry. Other times they are still sticky despite the fact that I stuck in a knitting needle and tested them. It's really kind of hit or miss. I have baked them for 35 -45 minutes. But I am hoping some day mine will turn out as perfect as my mother's. Sigh!

Step 7 It's the last one I promise, honestly! As soon as the loaves come out of the oven brush the hot loaves with melted butter and sprinkle with vanilla and powdered sugar. Does it look like baby Jesus in his swaddling cloths? Good job! Once they have cooled down wrap the precious loaves tightly, put a bow on them, and give them to a person who has been good to you all year. Or feed them to the family right then! They are probably tired of waiting around for you since you spent most of the day in the kitchen...

So sorry for another long post. But I warned you, right!

If you really should endeavor to make some Stollen, please, let me know how they turned out! I'd love to hear about your experiences!

Pflaumenkuchenrezept / Plum Cake Recipe

Finally! Here is the recipe for the German Plum cake. For those of you who speak German or the ones would like to learn the language, I wrote it up in both languages. I wrote the German version first, so you may take guesses at what those funny words might mean?

Zutaten:

• 375 g Mehl
• 75 g Zucker
• 1 Paeckchen Vanillezucker
• 2 1/4 Teeloeffel Trockenhefe
• 1 Prise Salz
• 1 Ei
• 200 ml Milch
• 100 g Butter
• 2-3 kg Pflaumen

Mische die trockenen Zutaten: Mehl, Zucker, Vanillezucker,Hefe, Salz. Erhitze die Milch mit der Butter. Kannst Du im Topf auf dem Herd oder in der Microwelle machen. Pass auf das die Milch nicht zu heiss wird, sonst geht die Hefe kaputt! Gib das Ei und die Milch mit der fluessigen Butter zu den trockenen Zutaten. Mische alle Zutaten mit dem Kochloeffel oder einer Maschine mit Knethaken bis ein Teig entsteht. Sollte er zu klebrig sein muss man noch mehr Mehl dazugeben. Mit den Haenden kneten bis er weich und geschmeidig ist.

Decke den Teig mit einem Handtuch ab, und lass ihn gehen bis er sich sichtbar vergroessert hat! Teig ausrollen und auf ein gefettetes Backblech legen. Man kann auch mehrere runde Formen verwenden. Beim ersten Backen habe ich ein amerikanisches Backblech verwendet. Beim zweiten Versuch waren es zwei runde Springformen, plus drei kleine Foermchen. Die Kinder finde diese Minikuchen super! Den Teig mit den entsteinten Pflaumen belegen. Die Pflaumen werden beim Entsteinen halbiert und dann in ein schuppenfoermiges Muster geschnitten. Dann legt man sie in dichten Reihen auf den ausgerollten Teig. Wenn der Teig komplett belegt ist bei 200 Grad Celcius 20-25 Minuten im vorgeheizten Backofen backen!

Serviere mit Zucker bestreut und Schlagsahne wenn Du sie magst!

Falls Du die Schlacht mit den Eichhoernchen dieses Jahr verloren hast, kannst du den Kuchen auch mit Aepfeln backen. =)

How did it go? Did you take some good guesses? Think you can follow the German recipe? If not here is the English version:

Maybe you noticed that Germans use grams rather than cups in baking! (see scales in the first picture!) Using weight measurements rather than volume measurements leads to more precise measuring. Also, take note of the different temperatures. Germans use Celcius rather than Fahrenheit. Since my math is not the greatest my husband had to print me up a conversion table and tape it to the refrigerator when I first moved here.

Ingredients:

• 375g flour
• 75 g sugar
• Vanilla in liquid form since it's not sold in little packages like in Germany...1 tsp will do
• 2 1/4 tsp dry yeast
• pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• 200 ml of milk
• 100g butter (a stick is fine)
• 2-3 kg of Italian prunes or small plums

Mix dry ingredients together. Add the stick of butter to the milk and put it in the microwave for about a minute or two. You can also melt the butter in the milk on the stove top. Be careful and don't burn the milk! It should just be warm enough to melt the butter gently. If the mixture is too hot it will destroy the yeast when added to the dry ingredients...Add the egg, the milk, butter, and vanilla to the flour mixture. Knead everything together. This can be done by hand or with a machine using kneading hooks.

Put dough in a bowl and cover with towel. Let it sit until it has visibly enlarged in size! About an hour or so.

Roll out dough and place it on greased baking sheet or several smaller springforms. I used two large round springforms and 3 little tart pans. The kids really love the minicakes!

Arrange the plums closely together in rows or a circular pattern. Press into the dough lightly arranging them in a fish scale pattern. Plums must be cut halfway through and taking the pit out. Then you add too smaller slashes to flatten the plums out.

When the dough is completely covered with a dense layer of plums bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 to 25 minutes. Once the edges turn brown it's probably done!

Serve sprinkled with sugar or a spoonful of whipped cream on top!

If you lost the battle against the squirrels this year, and they got all your plums, you can also use sliced apples for this recipe! =)