Sunday evening treat

Hi again,
this is a very quick post, I just thought I'd share my sunday treat with you. I watched an episode of my cooking hero's show (Nigel Slater, not Jamie O :-) today and he had this brilliant idea about combining left over coffee with shop bought custard and freeze it to make a yummy ice cream. As much as I fancy ice cream, there is simply no space left in my freezer at the moment due to a large amount of cinnamon rolls and scones... But still, I had left over coffee from the morning and some custard. The original plan was making an apple crumble, so I kind of combined the two. I mixed the left over relatively strong coffee (espresso really) with the custard and added some cinnamon and ground cardamom. That alone was already yummy. Then I cut up some apples and mixed the apple pieces and the custard together. I topped that off with some crumble mixture, where I replaced half of the flour with ground walnuts as they always go well with coffee.
Finally, a bake in a 175 °C oven for 40 mins and I could hardly wait that long, given the smell!
And voilà, it was even better than expected! A crumble with built-in coffee-custard. I have to keep away from that dish.... :-) Have a good sunday evening all!

Thai-spiced squash soup

Hi everyone,

soup time has arrived with the low temperatures. At least, we don't have any snow in Berlin yet, as in other parts of Germany! At this time of the year, I just like to cuddle up inside with a cozy blanket, a good book and a proper warming soup. I remembered, that a friend of mine made a thai squash soup last year, and I have found a recipe on BBC GoodFood as well. I though I give it a go as I have recently purchased a beautiful butternut squash at the market. As usual, I didn't stick to the recipe, but for anyone interested, here is the link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/775669/thai-pumpkin-soup
I found that the addition of fish sauce gives it just that slightly better thai flavour.

So, ingredients:

• 1 small or half a medium-size butternut squash, peeled and cut into rough chunks
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 500 mL of vegetable stock
• 1 tbsp grated ginger
• some chili flakes to taste
• 3 or 4 kaffir lime leaves, finely chopped if fresh or shredded if dried
• thai red curry paste (1 tbsp or less)
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tsp palm or brown sugar
• lime juice

And how I made it:

• place the squash chunks with some vegetable oil in a preheated oven at 175 °C
• bake until soft and slightly browned
• fry the ginger, the chili flakes and the lime leaves in some oil
• add the curry paste, stir and then the squash
• add the stock, followed by the coconut milk 
• simmer for ten minutes on a low heat, so all the flavours can develop
• add the fish sauce and the sugar
• simmer for another 2 mins
• take off the heat and blend everything, the texture should be not to liquidy but smooth, add more stock if needed
• serve into individual bowls and add lime juice to taste

Done!

Cinnamon rolls - Cinnabuns - Zimtschnecken

Hi all,

as promised, I have tried out my long existing recipe for cinnamon rolls this weekend and after making a batch, I really can't remember, why I ever hesitated to make them in the first place!
I finished them off with a cream cheese frosting, however, this is just a little more decadent and you could survive without. I haven't tried them with soy milk, but I would assume it would work equally well.


So, as usual, ingredients first:

• 3/4 cups of milk
• 1/4 cup softened margerine
• 3 1/4 cups flour (non-raising), maybe extra
• 1 pack of dried yeast or half a cube fresh yeast
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 medium sized egg
• and for the filling you will need 1 tbsp. ground cinnamon, 1/2 cup margarine or butter, 1 cup of brown sugar, if you can, choose muscavado

Ok and the making of it:

• heat milk in a small pan until it bubbles, then take of heat and stir margarine in until melted; let cool to lukewarm
• meanwhile, mix 2 1/4 cups of flour, yeast, sugar and salt in a bowl and combine well
• add water, egg and milk-mixture and beat well, you should have a liquidy dough
• now add the remaining flour slowly until you have a smooth dough; you might have to add more than the recipe says, depending on the egg and how exact you keep to the measurements using a cup
• once in a smooth dough, take it out of the bowl and get your hands in, means, kneading time on a floured surface for at least 5 mins, better 10
• cover with a damp cloth and set aside
• now mix all the ingredients for the filling together, so it becomes a spreadable mixture; you might want to vary on the amount of cinnamon here, it really depends on your own taste
• now role the dough out into a rectangle shape, make sure to have enough height to be able to roll it a couple of times
• spread the filling evenly over the whole dough and begin rolling it up
• pinch the end to make sure they won't come apart 
• cut slices of roughly 2-3 cm; the amount of rolls will vary with the width of your previously shaped rectangle, I got something like 18 out
• now place the rolls carefully on a greased baking sheet, keeping then roughly 2 cms apart from each other
• cover with a damp cloth and set aside until risen so much, that they touch each other
• preheat the oven to 190 °C and bake for 30 mins until golden brown
• let cool and prepare the frosting by combining all the following ingredients:
• 1 1/2 cups icing sugar
• 1/2 cup softened margarine or butter
• 75 g cream cheese
• 1/2 pack vanilla sugar or half a tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• once finished, drizzle over the buns as you like
• and finally you are finished and can indulge :-)
• this should take roughly 90 mins alltogether and believe me, it is worth it!