Becca's Berlin Birthday Party

This is the first time the three of us have been together for one of our birthdays in a very long time!  We went to this awesome store called Kochhaus (Cook House), which sells groceries organized in individually portioned recipes.  Jarrod, Becca and I each picked one recipe that we wanted to make and share with the group and these three dishes collectively created our dinner for 5!  

The birthday girl has recently gone gluten-free so we made her a flourless chocolate mousse cake made from a secret ingredient that you will never guess!

Avocados!  

6 Avocados

3 Teaspoon of Vanilla

1 Teaspoon of Salt

1 1/2 Cups of Melted Chocolate Chips (or more if you want)

3/4 Cups of Sugar (or more to taste)

Whisk it up, then refrigerate for 3 hours.  Jarrod made fresh whipped cream to top it off.  It tasted great with raspberries and apples! 

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Becca.

Happy Birthday to you!

Thanks for coming all the way to Germany so we could celebrate the start of year 27 with you!

Cyber Apple Cake Baking with Irma

We did it again!  You might remember the last time Irma and I baked together over skype, but if you missed it, check out the time we baked pinwheels!

Just to remind you, Irma is my very dear friend whom I met when we both lived in the US.  Now Irma lives in Austria with her family.  This is lovely because it means we are in the same timezone unlike everyone else in my life.  

We skype pretty often and on this day, we decided to make an apple cake after I requested a dessert that could be made in a springform pan.  Our kitchen came equipt with a springform pan along with many other advanced cooking tools.  

Irma picked the recipe and provided all the instructions.  And now I shall pass it on to you.  

It's quite simple really.  

Oven Temp: 350° F

Ingredients: 

4-5 eggs (separated)

4 apples

1 Cup sugar

1 Cup flour

cinnamon and sugar topping

butter for greasing your springform pan

Start out by separating your eggs so the yokes are in one bowl, and the whites are in a medium-sized mixing bowl. 

Whisk the whites until they begin to make soft peaks- like if you have ever made a meringue.  I haven't personally, but I saw my mom do it once.  Egg yokes never looked so appetizing.  But don't eat the stuff... I promise it doesn't taste as good as it looks.  Honestly. 

Add your cup of sugar and keep whisking until the egg white peaks are a bit firmer than before. 

Gently and briefly whisk in the yokes.  The meringue will flatten a little but not too much. 

Add in your one cup of sifted flour.  As you can see, I don't have a real measuring cup since the Germans use the metric system, but this approximate cup should be close enough.  And isn't that little metal sifter just the cutest?  Very carefully fold in the flour.  You don't want to take all the air out of your fluffy meringue.  

When it is just mixed, dump that stuff in your greased pan.  Try not to touch it too much.  Every time you touch it, you take some of the air out of it.  Irma was very clear on this. 

Now it's time to chop your apples and artfully display them on top of the fluffy batter.  

Once that's done, sprinkle your cinnamon and sugar mixture over the top of the apples. 

Put it in the oven for about 30 minutes.  You'll know it's done when the cake feels a bit springy if you gently push down on the apples in the middle.  

Tah-dah!  A beautiful apple cake!  

You can remove the outer part of the pan after it cools.

Let's thank our host, Chef Irma!  

Thank you Irma!  Your culinary expertise continues to impress and satisfy the mouths of many!

Now eat that tasty little morsel! 

Pinwheels with Irma!

Cooking in Germany continues to be a noteworthy experience.  Today was particularly exciting as I had the opportunity to cook with a culinary marvel who also happens to be one of my most favorite people- Irma!  Irma used to live outside of Boston and when I moved to the city after college, she and her husband Brian took me in and let me live with them until I found an apartment of my own.  While I was there, Irma taught me how to bake bread with yeast, the best way to cook mushrooms, how to make a chocolate ganache, and many other scrumptious tricks.  One of the great things about Irma's cooking is that it never requires measuring cups, and in Germany where everything is labeled in millimeters, a measure-less recipe is exactly what I need!

One problem- Irma now lives in Austria.  True, we are in the same time zone, but we still have a substantial distance between us.  So, we decided to cook together over Skype!  Basically, it was like an interactive live cook show starring Irma!  

She gave me permission to share her measure-less recipe.  So here you go!

Pinwheels

Ingredients:

Flour

Butter

Sugar

Quark (or ricotta cheese if you are in the US)

Fruit Preserve 

Powdered Sugar

Lemon Juice

Set your oven to 175 degrees Celcius.  Ok I lied.  Welcome to my world Americans!  Now you get to do the temperature math.  And then I promise everything else will be easy after this.  

In a bowl, dump about about a cup of flour.  Now take your butter out of the fridge and while it is still cold, cut it into little chunks and plop them into the flour bowl. 

Use your fingers to squish up the butter chunks and mix them with the flour.  Keep doing this until it's all pretty evenly distributed and the flour looks kind of like wet sand.  

Add a little sugar to the mix.  Maybe like a 2 tablespoons or so, depending on how sweet you want your cookies to be.  

Time for the secret ingredient: Quark!!  It might also be called Topfen depending on whether you are in Germany or Austria.  Don't worry Americans, I have a substitute for you.  Just use ricotta cheese.  Add about 2/3 of a cup.  

Now with your hands, knead it all together until it seems like everything is pretty well mixed. 

Once the ingredients are mixed together and you have a nice little ball, roll it out on the counter until its about 1/8 of an inch thick.   Irma used a rolling pin.  I didn't have one so I just used a tall drinking glass.  Sometimes you just have to work with what you've got. 

This is an actual screenshot from Irma's computer during our Skype Cooking Session.  You can see her with two of her children in the small screen on the top right. 

Cut the dough sheet into squares.  Maybe 2 x 2 inches each. 

They don't have to be perfect.  Cut little diagonal lines in the 4 corners of each square.  

Now take a glob of your favorite fruit preserve and plop it in the middle of the square.  I used raspberry which can be a little runny.  Irma advises apricot since it is a little bit thicker, but it's up to you.  

Irma's live demonstration for how to plop the jelly glob using two tea spoons. 

Now take one corner from each of the 4 little slices you made in the dough square and pinch them together in the middle around the jelly glob to make a pinwheel.  

It should look like this. 

Grease your cookie sheet a little bit, and spread out your pinwheels.  

Stick them in the oven for about 15 minutes.  

While they are baking, make a little lemon glaze.  Whisk together about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice with about half a cup of powdered sugar.  If it is kind of soupy add more powdered sugar.  You want it to be more on the globby side so it will drizzle without being too runny.  

When the timer goes off, take your cookies out of the oven but leave them on the baking sheet while you drizzle your lemon glaze over them.  Once they have cooled a little bit (like 5 minutes maybe), you can take them off the cookie sheet so they don't get soggy in all the overflowing jam and lemon glaze.  

Take a picture!  They are really pretty!

Oh.  And eat them!  Yum!

Skype baking session success!  Thanks Irma!

The other fun thing is that Irma has also written a blog post about this experience.  In addition to being a terrific cook, she is a very talented photographer.  If you'd like to see her pictures and read her rendition, click here.