Roads to Safe Places

I love coffee, though I'm not so much a gourmet rather than a gourmand when it comes to it. I partly blame my upbringing for the early destruction of my taste buds and their lack of ability to distinguish good from bad. Everybody in my family drinks a lot of coffee, and usually spoons can stand up in it and it smells and tastes like what I expect tar tea to taste like.

Still, this thing has seriously improved my life this week: 



It has a grinder and a timer, and even though it's about as much fun to clean as my French press and my moka pot due to the reusable coffee filters, but the coffee is still really good as far as I can tell.

Now the only thing I need to find is a source for affordable ethical coffee, though I gladly bought the expensive beans because niaseath is staying with us this week.

We had a cookie baking-and-decorating marathon on Sunday. A few of the guys from the theatre group came round to see us and between the five of us we baked and decorated eight trays of cookies for us and for the pre-Christmas rehearsal on Wednesday. We had brought out the green food colouring for the occasion and finally had an excuse to use the shiny new cookie cutters we bought on the Christmas market two weeks ago.

And what could be more festive than green Apatosauri, chocolaty clefs, notes, butterflies, dogs and bats? Oh, and some stars, too.



I was so busy organising the actual baking and arranging the trays in the oven that my cookies did not turn out as absolutely gorgeous as the ones of the others, who were working wonders with icing, sprinkles, and especially the lilac sugar colour. Except for S., who formed a whole zoo with the help of the dog shape. We understood how she got the goat - slightly shorter tail because of a spot of drier dough, slightly odd ears - even the seal made sense, somehow - hind legs pressed together, the head being roughly the same shape, anyway - but we have no idea how she got to the cock, the mouse or the elephant.

( Really festive cookies )
 

I've been searching for fresh peppermint plants for ages, but even though they always have rosemary and sage in stock our shops never offered any. One of the things I missed most when coming back to Germany from Glasgow was the lack of peppermint plants, or even peppermint extract. Maybe I just go to the wrong shops, but I've been searching and not finding anything for months. I was very exited when I finally spotted two scrawny plants in the herb section of our local supermarket, and they've now got a new home on our living room window sill and have been growing happily so far.

( Peppermint lime sorbet recipe and nectarine sorbet recipe. )

The lime sorbet was unexpectedly good for the cold I had last week, and tea with fresh peppermint is also a real treat.

I fell in love with these cookies which I found on this blog here. They're not fat free as I couldn't get hold of prune puree, and I used (again) only half the sugar advised in the recipe. I don't know what it is with recipes, in particular vegan recipes, why they go overboard with the use of sweeteners. The same is true for the use of dairy and fat in non-vegan recipes, and I usually cross-reference recipes to find the lowest common denominator.



I'm baking these for the sewing marathon next Tuesday. One brave girl from Crocky's theatre troupe has agreed to hem the costumes in the institute's student café that day, and she asked for company. I was going to go for muffins, but it's easier to prepare enough of these and they're tasty. I'll try to get them more chewy until then, though.

When Crocky and I went shopping on Tuesday we cracked an egg and decided to make banana pancakes with cinnamon, cocoa and sugar. I am curious whether there's a vegan alternative to the eggs in pancakes. I suspect it's probably baking powder, but I can't imagine the consistency'd stay the same. Huh. 



Banana pancakes consist of your basic pancake mixture of choice (in our case a small egg, 100mg flour, 100ml milk) and a puréd banana. No sugar, as the banana is sweet enough, although we did sprinkle some sugar on top in the end.

No bakery this time, but I have to say that I ♥ my hand blender. I don't know what I used to do without it, my favourite snack these days is soy milk or buttermilk with various kinds of fruit. Very yummy, very easy, and great for a treat between meals. These days, living in an apartment right under the roof on the fifth floor, these things are awesome with crushed ice.



( Food )

Right. More work. Whee. It's absolutely beautiful weather outside and I wish I could do something else entirely.

... with apple sauce filling because I loved the different textures in my Blackout muffins so much. They did not turn out as pretty, but they are tasty and the smell is amazing.

I used lordhellebore 's recipe, halved, because I did not want to make as many cupcakes. I also used two apples for both cupcakes and apple sauce partly because I enjoy the rich taste of the apples we bought last week and because they needed eating up.



For the sauce, I used two diced apples, a table spoon of cinnamon and a pinch of ginger. Instead of anything fancy I just eased a spoonful of the stuff into the still warm cupcakes - unfortunately, they collapsed during the process, resulting in the crater look above. I lost track of time half-way through and was scared that I had not baked them enough to boot, so I put them back in for another five minutes in the already cooling oven - now the dough is golden brown and crunchy, but sadly, they remained in their collapsed state.

Crocky loves them, even though I used too much cinnamon in the dough. I'll give them another shot next week.

Weirdest recipe ever, but it was perfect because we had two eggs left and loads of ... I have really no idea what to call it in English, and apparently, other people don't, either. It's called "Quark" in German, and you can buy it as "quark" in some supermarkets in Britain, but people also call it "fromage frais", "curd", "low fat curd" or "farmer's cheese". Wiki lists it as "quark (cheese)". Huh.

Anyway, it turned out great. Very tasty with the mild flavour of vanilla due to the custard.

During our year in Glasgow we used to eat naan all the time, and I've missed it after coming back here. You can buy it in some supermarkets over here now, luckily, and you should definitely try it if you haven't yet - it goes great with all the dishes that bread usually goes with, and I love dipping it in spicy sauce. Seeing as It's not a very difficult recipe, I've been wanting to try it for some time.

I used the following recipe I got from this site:

( Recipe and musings )

Now I only need to learn how to make something to go with it. I've been thinking about trying Moong Dal with Spinach, but I'll need to find a shop that sells some of the ingredients that our local supermarkets don't provide.

Lately, increased stress levels have unfortunately been wont to translate into increased housework and baking activity.

This week, I have already baked four trays of cookies and tried out meringues twice. The first load turned out globs of brownish stuff which were sticky at the bottom because I baked them for too short a time at the wrong temperature and did not get the egg white stiff enough in the first place, the second batch were pretty decent.

The differences in texture still annoyed me. Some were as crunchy as they are supposed to be, some where sticky and chewy and it was impossible to eat them without having to brush your teeth immediately afterwards because they stuck to the teeth so badly. I'm also not really that good at shaping the things and kept getting the spoon stuck on the baking tray while trying to shape. These blotches will have to do for the time being.



Does anyone have any quick and simple recipes they'd like to share? (I'll definitely try that apple cake, lordhellebore.)

I became addicted to them in Scotland, but due to my mother's nightmarish experiences with molten sugar and caramel in general I had shied away from the task until yesterday.

Ingredients
100g sugar
100g sesame seeds
1 ts butter
(4 ts honey)

All you need to do is to melt the butter, the honey and the sugar in a pan, add the sesame seed, spread it on a flat surface, slice pieces or stripes or at least indicate where you want to break it later on, and let it cool down. It takes about fifteen minutes, and the things are absolutely delicious.

Also, my brother showed me to a funny comic and a video today. I love chatting with my little brother.

WoW - The Edge of Real Life


Ok. Back to work.
Sigh.