Cinnamon Rolls

I decided to give baking with yeast another chance after I avoided it for a long time due to a failed attempt caused by my lack of patience. Once I started looking into recipes, I quickly found out that contrary to popular belief, cinnamon rolls are actually pretty easy to bake and require few ingredients. This recipe yields 12-15 cinnamon rolls.

Ingredients: 

Dough:

•  3 cups flour
• 3 tbsps sugar
• 1 pack yeast
• a pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 3 tbsps butter
• 1 egg

Filling:

• 3 tbsps cinnamon
• 3 tbsps butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Icing:

• 3 tbsps butter
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar or vanilla aroma
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 tbsps milk

Dissolve the yeast in warm water (not too hot!) and let it sit for a bit. Mix the dry ingredients. Add the butter, milk, egg and yeast to the mix and knead the dough until it has an even texture. Let it sit for 1 to 1.5 hours to rise. Preheat the oven to 160°C (fan oven). Roll the dough into a roughly rectangular shape.

Mix the ingredients for the filling and spread it on the dough. 

Start rolling the dough from the longer edge inwards so that the filling is on the inside. Then cut it into evenly sized pieces. Place the rolls into a greased oven form (I used a lasagna form).

Bake for approximately 25 minutes.

Seperate the individual rolls and let them cool.

For the icing, sift the confectioner's sugar and mix it with vanilla sugar, butter and milk. Spread it over your cooled off cinnamon rolls.

Key Lime Pie

 

I feel like this pie is not particularly well-known outside of the US, but my roommate asked for this for her birthday so I happily obliged. :) As the name suggests, the most important ingredient are limes and I took the liberty to switch the recipe up a little by using Leibniz cookies instead of the traditionally used Graham crackers (mostly because they are much easier to come by in Germany).

Ingredients:

Crust:

• 1 1/2 cup Leibniz cookies (or any alternative available in your country)
• 2 tbsps sugar
• 5 tbsps butter

Cream:

• 1 tin condensed milk
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 lime
• 3/4 cups lime juice
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• vanilla sugar or 1 tsp of vanilla aroma

Decoration:

•  4 limes
• 1 cup whipped cream
• 1 tbsp confectioner's sugar

Preheat the oven to 160 °C (fan oven). Break the cookies into crumbs and mix with sugar and butter. Line a tarte form with butter and evenly spread the dough throughout the form.

Bake for 15 minutes to 20 minutes.

Let the pie crust cool off before proceeding. Squeeze out the lime and mix all ingredients for the cream (I like to use at least one real lime for the cream for authenticity's sake). Pour the cream into the pie crust.

Bake for approximately 15 minutes.

Either keep the pie refrigerated for several hours or freeze it so that the cream hardens. Whip the cream and add some confectioner's sugar. Grate the limes for lime zest. Pipe the cream onto the pie and garnish with lime zest.

Oreo Chocolate Cupcakes

I may or may not take things a bit too far when it comes to chocolate, but sometimes you just need to have 3 different kinds of chocolate! In this case, the chocolate cupcakes have a chocolate ganache core and an Oreo topping. Just because I feel like moderation and chocolate don't go too well together. Yields approximately 16 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 pack Oreo cookies (154g)
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate
• 1 1/2 cups whipped cream
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 pack of vanilla sugar
• pinch of salt 

Preheat the oven to 175 °C (fan oven). Mix the flour, sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Dissolve the instant coffee in 1 cup of boiling water and add it to the dry ingredients. Add the eggs, vegetable oil and buttermilk. Distribute the dough among your muffin forms. Bake for approximately 20-25 minutes (use a toothpick to make sure that the muffins are done).

Next, melt the chocolate in the microwave or with a saucepan. Mix 2-3 tablespoons of whipped cream with the chocolate. However, you might want to keep a bit of the chocolate to use it as decoration later. Remove part of the muffin core and fill it with your chocolate mixture while it's still soft. 

Smash the Oreos with a rolling pin and mix them with the remaining whipped cream and vanilla sugar. Use the mixture as a topping.

Fudgy Brownies

Just the fact that I spent a whole day eating nothing but brownie batter and these brownies should suffice to convince you that these brownies are going to make your day. However, that does not mean that I reccomend this as a healthy lifestyle :P I usually go a little overboard with chocolate, so I guess the ganache topping is optional (but definitely worth it).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar 
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup whipped cream
• 1/2 tsp instant coffee powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• a pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 175 °C upper and lower heat. Mix the dry ingredients. Melt the dark chocolate inside a saucepan or the microwave. Put 3 tbsps of the dark chocolate aside for the topping. Mix the rest of the chocolate with the dry ingredients and add butter and eggs. Line an oven form with butter (I had to go with a lasagna form, because I don't have a proper one for brownies) and spread the dough.

Bake for 20-25 minutes. Don't leave them in the oven for too long, as they're supposed to stay a little chewy and sticky. For the topping, mix the remaining dark chocolate and whipped cream. Cool the mixture for a while and spread it over the brownies. Do not cut the brownies until everything has cooled off properly, otherwise they'll break into lots of crumbs.

Harry Potter Golden Snitch Cupcakes

Happy New Year, everyone! For our Harry Potter movie marathon last night, I decided to bake some Snitch cupcakes inspired by these Golden Snitches. If you're not a Harry Potter fan, the cupcake on its own with the chocolate dough and maple syrup topping is quite tasty and definitely worth a try! The recipe yields approximately 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

Dough: 

• 125g butter
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 1 pack vanilla sugar
• 2 tbsps cocoa powder
• 2 tsps baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• (Nutella)

Topping:

• 1 cup whipped cream
• 1 pack vanilla sugar
• 1 tsp maple syrup
• 12 ferrero rochers 

Preheat the oven to 175 °C (fan oven) or 200 °C (upper and lower heat). For the dough, slowly melt a mixture of butter, sugar and vanilla sugar in a saucepan or inside the microwave. Mix all the remaining dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt) in a separate bowl. Add the butter-sugar mix as well as the eggs and buttermilk to the dry ingredients and mix until the texture is even. Fill the muffin cups with your dough.

This step is optional, however I was in the mood for some Nutella, so I added a bit to each muffin cup.

Bake the muffins for approximately 20 minutes. Let them cool before you add the topping. For the topping, beat some whipping cream until it is stiff (not for too long, as it might turn buttery with little lumps if you beat it for too long) and add the maple syrup and vanilla sugar. I used a closed star piping nozzle for the topping.

For the snitches, remove the brown wrapping from the ferrero rochers and peel off the little sticker. Cut out wings from white cardboard (I used the first pair of wings as a template for all the other ones).

Use the sticker you peeled off earlier to attach the wings. If this doesn't work, use a bit of glue. Stick a toothpick through the bottom of the ferrero rocher and through the tip of your topping. 

If everything worked out well, your Snitches should now look like they are lifting off  of your cupcakes. 

Chocolate Fudge Cake

For my dad's birthday, he asked for an extremely dense, chocolatey cake. So be warned, this recipe is definitely not suited for you if you are on a diet. ;) Since I used dark chocolate with 80% cocoa, the cake turned out rather bitter than sweet (which went great with vanilla ice cream, I might add), however chocolate with 60% or less cocoa should work just fine if you are more into sweeter cakes. 

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 1 1/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sunflower oil
• 250g dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup hot coffee
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cup sugar 
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 pack vanilla sugar

Ganache:

•  250g dark chocolate
• 1 cup cream
• 1 pack vanilla sugar

 Preheat the oven to 160 °C (fan oven) or 180 °C (upper and lower heat).

Slowly melt the dark chocolate in a sauce pan together with the oil, coffee and sugar. Mix the remaining dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon and vanilla sugar) in a bowl. Add chocolate mixture, eggs and milk and mix.

Line the baking form with oil or butter to avoid sticking. Pour the cake batter into the form and let it bake for approximately 50 minutes (you can use a toothpick to check whether the cake is done).

Do not worry about cracks in the surface of your cake, as these will get covered by the ganache, anyways. Add the vanilla sugar, cream and dark chocolate to a saucepan and slowly melt the chocolate for the ganache. Let the ganache cool down in the refrigerate for about 45 minutes so that the texture becomes less liquid. If you want an extremely thick layer of ganache on your cake, just keep it in the refrigerator for a longer period of time.

As you can see, I was a little impatient, since the ganache was still pretty fluid. ;)

 I hope your cakes turn out well and please come back for more recipes! :)

Spitzbuben - "Redcurrant christmas cookies"

Another German christmas-classic to finish off this year's holiday season. While these are absolutely delicious, I am usually a bit hesitant to bake these, since you basically only end up with half as many cookies as you bake. This is due to the fact that the cookies consist of two cookie layers separated by redcurrant jam. The dough is fairly easy to prepare and aside from the redcurrant jam, the ingredients are pretty basic and should therefore be easy to find in your local supermarket.

Ingredients:

Dough:

•  300g flour
• 100g sugar
• 200g butter
• 1 egg

Other:

• Redcurrant jam
• Confectioner's sugar 

Preheat the oven to 180 °C (fan oven) or 200-210 °C (upper and lower heat). Chop the butter into very small portions and add all ingredients to a mixing bowl in the order mentioned above. Knead the dough until the mixture is even. If you use your hands to knead, cool them before you get started (for example through cold water) to keep the dough as cold as possible, as it will get sticky otherwise. Refrigerate the dough for 1-2 hours. Spread flour on a surface and use a rolling pin to get a dough thickness of approximately 0.2 cm.

 Feel free to use whichever kind of cookie cutter you have at home, however Spitzbuben are traditionally flower-shaped.

Use a small circular cookie cutter to remove the center of every second cookie. 

Bake the cookies for approximately 10 minutes. Cover all cookies without holes with redcurrant jam and put one of the cookies with a hole on top. Squeeze lightly and remove all excess jam pressed out on the sides. 

Lightly dust all cookies with sifted confectioner's sugar.

I hope everyone enjoyed christmas day with their loved ones and please check back for more recipes to keep you busy during the upcoming winter months!