Have I stopped procrastinating productively?!

Well… not really.

And now that I got some lovely comments here, I wonder why I haven’t posted anything in such a long time. There are a number of reasons, some of them quite sad – but I need to get back to the fun things, and that should also mean this place here, my Sherlock coat and all the other things I squeeze in between work and more work and writing 🙂

See you in 2019. The better year.

Noodle-Love

I have already been busy in the kitchen this year! I really have. But it was mostly trying some new things, especially making noodles. If I had known how ridiculously easy they are t make, I would have started AGES ago.
Last week I made my first tortellini, which were incredibly tasty, mostly for the tons of garlic I put in them XD

Tomorrow I want to make gouda-tortellini, and I’ll document them properly this time round, recipe and all. If they are any good that is 😉

A new year.

It’s a new year. Again.

Though I am very much aware that I announced my intent to return pretty much exactly two years ago (and sort of did it again last years), without being able to follow through, I feel confident this year WILL be different. Why?

Firstly, I will have much more free time than I’ve had in the past… like, five years. For excellent, glorious reasons :3

Secondly, a very good friend prescribed a Course of Irresponsibility. And I ALWAYS listen to her advice!

So, again: 2018, let’s finally have some FUN again! Seriously! XD

Friday 13

JUST the right day to let people who might accidentally take a look and wonder know that – despite all appearances – I am not dead yet. Not even close. Just terribly, awfully busy. I know I said that pretty much exactly one year ago. So I won’t bore anyone with more promises… Still, I hope very much that this year will be better for creative madness of all kinds.

We’ll see. I DO promise to check out comments here more often, though.

All kippers and curtains…

… yeah, I looked that phrase up 😉 It’s very fitting, though – with the kippers being bland butter cream, and the curtains being the flashy structure and noble-looking fondant exterior.

I followed a certain Dr. Oetker’s recipe closely, having had a lot of good results with them so far. Every run of luck has to end somewhere, or sometime, I suppose. It’s just a bit sad that it happened to be a birthday cake, of all things…

No way will I post the recipe here, since it was such a disappointment with regard to taste (the best thing were the chocolate peanuts hidden inside). I admit that I was and still am fascinated with the fundamental idea of a hollow surprise-cake, though; and so I have planned out a vastly improved version of this, where I am going to replace the absolutely tasteless butter cream with something yummy, and – even more importantly – the fondant (YUCK, seriously, HOW does anyone eat that stuff!?) with almond paste, or just a thick crust of chocolate 😀

So, for now enjoy the pictures, and imagine it tastes as lovely as it looks…

Darling Florentine

Because these are probably the best-loved and most frequently demanded baked goods in my house, I would like to share them with you. I know, they’re rather Christmas-y, but what the hell. There’s going to be a new Christmas soon enough, and maybe you, like me, have too much baking ingredients left still that you won’t regret using to try these!
Their original German name goes more like Florentine Fingers, by the way 😉

Miss Me?

Well. My writing, as well as my blogging, life have been on something of a massive hiatus, I know. As always, there are reasons…
At least with regard to my fanfiction writing (or lack thereof, rather) it’s very tempting, and mostly accurate, to point the blame at a certain Series 3.
Of course, this may have influenced my ambitions concerning The Coat, as well.
And going from there, since that was my starting point for blogging at all, I sort of fell out of the habit of posting… See, everything’s connected 😉

Anyway, it’s a new year, and the Christmas Special was by far less awful than it could have turned out to be, so I am determined to get back to this – and the writing.

So, to all of you: Happy 2016 🙂

Five Hundred Days Later…

… I have finally found a way to continue my wallpaper, that is both practical and yields clear-edged results! HOORAY!
I just had to share the news, but will write more about the method, and the looong way there, later on.

Jane-Inspired Daim Cheesecake

Well. This was quite the adventure! What came out is like the illegitimate child of Jane’s Malt Chocolate Cheesecake and her Toblerone Cheesecake… which suffers from some congenital defects (no Toblerone, OR Maltesers) and was born on the hottest day of the year, to boot. BUT. It’s the sweetest thing 😉

I basically followed Jane’s procedure for her No-Bake Malt Chocolate Cheesecake, deviating every here and there to the No-Bake Toblerone Cheesecake. I totally would have made a Toblerone Cheesecake IF I had been able to get hold of the necessary ingredients, but – and that WAS a surprise –  there was no Toblerone to be had anywhere. O.o Nor Maltesers, actually. Imagine me staring desolately at the supermarket shelves for minutes, then grabbing random chocolates, sizing them up for Cheesecake-iness… The best I could do was Daim. Also, there were the usual slight deviations due to differences in the dairy product range. So, there’s the list of ingredients I worked with:

• 250 g of Biscoff biscuits, which I chose for their caramel flavour
• 150 g of butter

• 250 g of Mascarpone
• 150 g of cream cheese
• 150 g of milk chocolate
• 150 g of dark chocolate
• 50 g of icing sugar
• 100 g of cocoa powder (which accounts for the much darker look)
• 200 g of creme fraiche + 100 g of cream (instead of 300 g of double cream)
• 1 packet of whip-it
• 200 g of chopped Daim chocolates

• the remaining 100 g of cream for decoration
• the left-over Daims, too

There’s no need to drescribe the procedure, really, just follow Jane’s recipes I pointed out above. They’re brilliant! Also, they’re an excellent source for making your own variations, as this experiment proved. I really cannot wait to try out another of her recipes, OR create a new chimaera. I’m pretty sure she’ll forgive me 😉

Quick (and delicious) Pear Butter

I don’t think I’ve made anything this simple that noentheless made such an impact and left such an impression at the table. That is true efficiency!

All you need are:

• 1 kg of good pears, not yet too ripe
• juice of a lemon half
• vanilla pulp from two beans (?), and those beans themselves
• one stick of cinnamon
• 500 g of caster sugar
• and if you are of that particularly persuasion, a small piece of ginger

Grab a few things

Vanilla

The smell!

Cut-up pears

Flavouring

Fishing out the spice

Cinammon

Boil until creamy

Pear butter times two

The process is as simple as can be.

Prepare your ingredients by peeling and dicing the pears, cleaning and chopping the ginger and scraping out the vanilla pulp.
Put everything minus the pears, but plus 100 ml of water into  a pot and let boil for a minute. Add the pears and simmer at medium heat until they’re soft.

Prepare your canning jars.

Remove vanilla beans and cinnamon stick before mashing up things with your immersion blender. Add the sugar and cook the mixture at a rolling boil for a minute or two.

Pour the (hopefully) slushy Pear Butter into your prepared jars, close immediately and turn them upside down for at least five minutes.

 

The resulting Pear Butter tastes incredible, all by itself, on fresh white bread, or on butter, or – my personal favourite – on cream cheese! Yummy in the extreme. And a tiny bit Christmas-y for the intense vanilla and cinnamon notes…
The next time I’ll use this recipe, I’ll try and make my butter a little bit more creamy, though; it stayed a bit too liquid this time round and tends to run off the bread when I’m not looking 😉