Some More X-Mas Images

Soon I don't bother you any more with Christmas pics!

My Very Own Spice Cake Recipe

Spiced bundt cake

This is a bundt cake that can't be missed during the festive season - my very own spice cake.

Very own because it's my recipe. Once, a long time ago, I took a similar recipe and then developed it to its recent form - perfectly balanced. Thanks god I wrote it down, so I can replicate it every year! (Too many recipes are lost because of not writing them).

Spiced bundt cake - Recipe:

250 g butter
250 g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
4 eggs (whole)
almond aroma oil
2 tsp. gingerbread spice
2 tsp. cacao (unsweetened)
350 g wheat flour
4 tsp. baking powder
200 ml milk
rum, orange zest, a pinch of salt
bit of icing sugar

Cream butter, add eggs, then sugar and all the rest. Grease and flour a bundt cake pan and bake in the preheated oven.  From 160°C increasing to 190°C for approx. 45 mins. Dust with icing sugar. Enjoy.

I buy gingerbread spice ready packed. It's available in Austria, but not in Italy. If you want to mix your own, these are the ingredients: cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander seed, fennel seed, ginger, clove, all spice, aniseed, star-anise, pepper, cardamom.

Gingerbread House

Well, by now you know my love of gingerbread. And this is the crown of it: A gingerbread house!

For a long time it was just a distant, but fond childhood memory, yet last year I found a ready-to-build kit in Austria. Fantastic and beautiful! Surely I thought of baking one from scratch, but I didn't feel up to it yet. Maybe next year! My Mr. helped me building and it was great fun! It's not something to do only with kids, also for adults it is really homey, christmassy and peaceful!

On our trip to London we've seen many gingerbread houses, but none of them was as beautiful and rich as ours. Honestly.

We've made tons of photos of it.... all of them are gone. That's a tragedy really. A shame. I'll do my best to find something.

At least here you can glimpse it in the background:

Homemade Panettone - Gingerbread House in the background

Gingerbread My Love

Yes, I must admit it. I'm a gingerbread addict. In any kind, form, shape, whatever - Gingerbread rulez!

I adore storebought gingerbread as chocolate covered pretzels or jam filles hearts or sugar iced buttons. Not to forget the large bag of differently coloured buttons with different sugar sprinkles on them. 

Of course I do have also the best recipe for the best homemade gingerbread, which absolutely cannot be missed in December. Why is ist the BEST? Because normally homemade gingerbread gets really dry and hard (you almost break a tooth), but this one (Mum's recipe) comes out of the oven with the right soft consistency and stays like that the whole time (of course if the jar is closed tightly). So, what's the secret? Psssst...I'll tell you: It's YELLOW sugar. I had to import it, as no one knows it here, not even the experts. It's unrefined, still moist beet sugar. IT DOESN'T WORK WITH CANE SUGAR.

I made 2 types of gingerbread last Christmas:

regular (cut out shapes with cookie cutters and traditional shape) and filled

Normally I also make a gingerbread parfait after Christmas with the leftovers, but this year there weren't any!

Don't forget - gingerbread (well, only the homemade version I'd say) is also the healthiest cookie/sweet ever! Look at those super ingredients:

560 g rye meal
360 g yellow sugar
250 g runny honey
3-4 eggs (depending on size)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 packet gingerbread spices

Recipe
Mix togehter all the ingredients

Roll out immediately - not too thin (about half a centimetre)

Fill with a mixture of chopped nuts, dried fruit, chocolate and jam or cut out anything you like (brush everything with egg before baking). Decorate with icing, liquid chocolate, .... be creative!

Bake and enjoy!

Sunday Evening Desserts

The last Sunday evenings we always had dinner "alla surprise" with friends at home.
And what's a dinner without dessert? So I started at 9 or 10pm to bake....mad, I know!

Cacao-Lime-Vanilla-Cream Slice

Neighbours Invited

After almost 6 years living here, we never invited our neighbours... what a shame! They invited us once (some years ago already) for dessert after dinner, so I thought I'd do the same. The days before I madly cleaned the whole living room and kitchen and baked something really Austrian. Something they already know from Italy, but the Austrian version. And a soft dessert, as Italians prefer this to proper cakes.

This Gitterkuchen is similar to Linzer Torte. Italians know it with a slightly different taste (and heavier) as "Crostata".

Gitterkuchen

This is the Austrian's housewives pride: Kardinalschnitten, which means "Cardinal's slices". It's really a soft, melting cloud in your mouth!

Meringue and sponge cake stripes are baked together to form the two parts of the dessert, which are filled with coffee cream and jam. Preferably raspberry, but I used cherry.

Next On The List

Next on the list was Apple Bread. Also a first time try. Really easy to make, incredible smell already during preparation. It needs to set for 2 weeks tightly wrapped in plastic and aluminium foil before it is ready to eat.
Smeared with butter it was my absolute favourite.... we tried it also with ham, cheese, and jam. For me, only butter worked best.

Apfelbrot - Apple Bread

Next - Chocolate crescents - this was kind of an invented recipe, which turned out well, but it was missing the  special edge. I filled them with nougat and dipped them in chocolate. Never will I be able to recreate this recipe, so they will live on only in my memories...

Chocolate-Nougat-Crescents

Vanillekipferl: This is the absolute Austrian Christmas biscuit highlight. And everybody, EVERYBODY, no matter what nation, gender or age, prefers them to all the other biscuits!!! That's a shorcrust pasty with walnuts and rolled in a vanilla-sugar mixture after baking while they are still warm.

Vanillekipferl - Vanilla crescents

Christmas Baking Kick Off

I kicked off the 2 week baking session with Burgenlaender. I tried them only once when I was a child and my sister baked them. They can also be found at Birthday celebrations and weddings in Austria. I made them for the first time in my life and they turned out great. Burgenlaender are made of cold yeast pastry with a meringue filling and chopped nuts.

Burgenlaender

I had to use up some cream, so I decided to make Florentines. Unfortunately they didn't turn out as I expected. - hmmm I expected them to be as Tim's... he's baking the World's Best Florentines!!! Definitely gonna ask him for the recipe. These stayed too soft, while the taste was ok, but nothing special.

Florentines

On the 5th January, the eve of St.Nicholas Day, "Krampus" (kind of a devil) comes to each child accompanying St. Nicholas (Nikolaus). If the kid was good during the year, it gets sweets, nuts, and apples (nowadays also small presents) from Nikolaus. If the kid was bad, it used to get coil from Krampus and beatern up. Nowadays, nobody gets beaten up anymore...instead you eat sweet Krampus!

Krampus - best with Punch tongue (not shown)

I'm Here To Stay

I'm back again and now I'm here to stay!
We simply cook and eat too good for not sharing it!

Me and Big Ben (cold.very cold.)

I stopped interrupted blogging when we went off for our UK weekend:

It all started with a friend's birthday party with Brazilian party food and homemade cake and truffles in the afternoon. As we stayed only for one and a half day, we needed to fit in my beloved Indian food somewhere, therefore after the party, Mr. went to get some. While it was being prepared, he had a super chat and some beer with the Indian guy... and paid really a friendship price!

Indian variety

The first Ginger beer in my life! Love love love it - send over a box, please!

The next day we shopped til we dropped - so we needed a wholesome snack... we found "Square Pie" at the Ms Selfridges food hall. Love it!

Pie + mash + peas + gravy

Spinach feta pie + mash + peas

finally I know how a REAL mince pie tastes! the Apple Crumble wasn't the best... the Cookie ok

In the afternoon we had a reservation at The Wolseley for their famous Afternoon Tea. Really great and posh location.

Scones (ooohhhh!), mignon sweets, sandwiches

Afternoon tea at The Wolsely - very posh 

Afternoon tea at The Wolsely - fantastic mignon sweets

Afternoon tea sandwiches

In the evening we went out for Mexican Dinner with our friends.... and started off with Strawberry Margarita... unfortunately I didn't have a lot of it! I simply drank too slowly (or the others too fast)!!! Later on we ordered also a jug of regular Margarita, which went down straight also for me!

Strawberry Margherita @ Greenwich

 Our Mexican food plates (really everything was delicious):

Baked potato skin with shrimps and guacamole (that was mine)

Mr.'s dish (can't remember the name, but it was with chicken I'm sure)

Our All-Time-Favourite: perfect NACHOS

Mango sorbet (not my favourite)

Rum Fruit Cake

What a beautiful, easy to make and light cake! Unfortunately at Christmas lunch there was not a lot of room left for it in the stomach, so I had just a tiny bit of it.