Monthly Archives: February 2013

The Liebster Blog Award

The Liebster Blog Award

Hello everybody!

Yesterday I received my very first blog award from Greek Bites. The Liebster Blog Award! What is a blog award you ask? It is a little honoration you can get from other food bloggers, if they like your blog. As most of you know, I am quite new to blogging, and so I am especially thrilled to receive this award!!! 🙂

The liebster blog award is given to new bloggers that only have about 200 followers yet. ‘Liebster blog’ is german and means dearest, loveliest or favourite blog.

liebster blog award

There are some rules to accepting this award:

1. Each awarded blogger will post 11 random facts about themselves

2. 11 questions provided by the sender have to be answered

3. 11 new bloggers have to be chosen to which the award will be passed on

Go to their pages, tell them about the award and pass on the link to your post!

So it is kind of a blogger chain mail. But there is nothing bad happening to you, if you don’t pass it along! 😉 It just makes fun and is a nice way to push new blogs a little and get to know the owners.

So here it goes: 11 random facts about me:

1. My birthday is in two days, I will be 26!

2. I have one brother and no sisters

3. I am crazy about flying – planes, airports and all 😉

4. I am studying nutrition science

5. I sing in a gospel choir

6. I am very proud of my 16 year old godchild and I love her very much!

7. I am definitly not the tidiest (tidyest?) person in the world

8. I haven’t painted a lot yet, but I once  did a painting of a crest as an order and even got money for it 😉

 9. I am a junkie of american series

10. I play the clarinette and saxophone

11. I like snow

11 questions asked by greek bites :

1. Do you remember the first dish you actually prepared on your own?

I guess that was Miracoli Pasta – a spaghetti and tomato sauce all-in-one package 😉

2. Who’s your favorite cartoon hero? Definitly superman!

3. PC or Mac – I have a PC, never had a chance to test a Mac before

4. Name one thing you hate the most – exams

5. If you had to live with just one food for a long period of time what would that be? – I can’t really decide, I love food too much! 😉

6. Rain or sun? – sun of course. More difficult would have been: Snow or sun?

7. A meteor falls on you and you have a super power. What’s that? – Flying!!

8. Say what comes first on your mind when you see/hear the words salt – pepper, egg – breakfast, sky – flying, kiss – love, black – white

9. According to you what’s your biggest advantage and disadvantage? Do others agree?

Wow – difficult. I am very creative, i’d like to think that’s positive. I am bad with keeping contact with friends – time just flies by to quickly and sometimes it’s already a few weeks until i write/call back. If others agree I can’t say. Have never asked!

10. What’s the most important thing in your life? (besides family) – This blog and music

11. If you were a food, what would that be? – Maybe a big colorful decorated exotic cake 😉

So now is the time to pass this award along!

I was orienting on facebook likes, as I could not find out how else I would now how many people follow a blog. Also I was a bit liberal with the 200 limitation and the required 11 blogs  🙂

I give it to:

shortcaked

all about food

juggling real food and real life

modest munchies

memories by the mile

cafe vita

simple awsome cooking

melisa colin

lovefoodies

And here come your questions!

1. What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?

2. Summer or winter?

3. What did you dream of becoming when you were growing up?

4. What is your profession?

5. Beer or wine?

6. What are your hobbies besides blogging?

7. What is your favourite band?

8. Is there a food you hate?

9. Sweet or salty snacks?

10. Coffee or tea?

11. What was the first blog you read?

Enough said – now I want to hear your stories!!

I hope you have as much fun as I did 🙂

~ Kathrin

Something to celebrate – 150 Facebook Fans!!!

Something to celebrate – 150 Facebook Fans!!!

Hey there – it’s me again!!

 

Celebrating 150 fans on facebook I thought about something special: A jigsaw puzzle!!

I thought you should have a chance to play too 😉

It is very fun and addicting! Just click on the picture to play. 🙂

150 Milestone Collage ginger, lemon & spice

~Kathrin

Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts and the self critic in me

Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts and the self critic in me
Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts and the self critic in me

Hey there!

Another day, another time, another meal. What are you up to?

Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts Recipe

The ones of you, that follow me on facebook have already seen what I did yesterday. I made roses out of apples and put them on muffins!! Majorly cute!! 🙂

I couldn’t wait sharing!! Even if the dough is not exactly what I dreamed of.

You see – I’m a big self critic. One time my brother said something to me, which is sooo true – and what hit me again when I was sharing those muffins. You must know, we are all food lovers. We really like to cook, bake and prepare delicious food, especially for other people!! We get creative together, alone or talk about stuff we want to try out. Very important for us is to do things the old fashioned way. To work with our hands to create something incredible and then share it with others! We want to know how to make the food we eat on our own, and not just buy a package of perhaps premade lasagne at the store. My father has designed and built a wooden fired oven in our backyard which we use to bake his handmade sourdough bread, make a pizza party or bake cakes. My brother likes to do different kind of meat roasts and my mum does the side dishes like traditional sauerkraut or so. You see – it is kind of a family hobby 😉

 

So what my brother said to me was: When we share our food with someone, and that someone tells us it tastes great, we can’t really believe it. There hast to be at least a little bit of criticism for us to believe that the other person really is honest!

 

And this was soo true this time again. For me the muffins were a bit too crispy, it is not a really cakey dough. But I hadn’t even tried them myself! I just nibbled on a bit of dough that was overflowing during baking. So when I was told, that they really liked the muffins, I was very skeptical and had to ask if it wasn’t too crispy and stuff.

BUT WAIT – Why am I doing this? I worsen my own creation by myself?! Isn’t there a false to this logic??

I am sure there is!! I definitly have to learn to accept when somebody is liking what I did. Just like that. And not look for mistakes myself! It makes myself just feel worse, with now real reason…

Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts Recipe

Dear reader, i hope your still with me. Those muffins definitily deserve a chance! They look soo pretty with the roses on top! And they acutally were quite good. Not the way I imagined when I first judged over them without even trying myself 😉 There not the best muffins I ever ate, but they still are very good! Have fun trying out the roses technic and don’t give up too early. It is not so hard once you found out how!

And off we go:

 

 

Apple Rose Muffins with Marzipan and Walnuts

Recipe of dough adapted from Kawaii Kitchen

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Ingredients:

100g butter at room temperature

150g sugar (I used homemade vanilla sugar)

3 eggs

150g flour

1/2 package baking powder (about 8g)

40g chopped walnuts

Filling:

50g marzipan (optional)

6 apples (you need mostly the skin, so keep in mind you have to do something else with the flesh)

 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 170°C. Whisk butter in a bowl with a hand mixer until creamy then add the sugar and whisk some more.

2. Add the eggs, one by one.

3. Put flour and baking powder in your bowl at the same time and mix slowly just until incorporated. Fold in walnuts.

4. Put a bit of batter in every of the 12 molds of a buttered muffin pan or one lined with muffin papers. Divide marzipan into 12 pieces and put them in the middle of the dough. Divide the rest of the batter equally between the 12 molds.

5. Now the apples: wash and dry them. Start peeling the first apple from the very top near the stem with a peeler. Try to make stripes with half skin half flesh and try not to brake them. You can make roses for two muffins with one apple (depending on the size). Roll the stripe in a circular motion, the part of the stripe with the skin should be on top. Put the rose on top of the muffin, don’t press it down too much because the dough will rise a lot.  For the second rose of the first apple start peeling from the bottom to the ‘equator’ of the apple. Don’t be scared! It just needs a little bit of practice. But the cute look is sooo worth it!! If your stripe cracks that’s no problem, just make a rose of the parts. Happened to me too 😉

6. Put the muffins into the oven and bake for 30-35. min.

7. Dust with powdered sugar if you like. Enjoy!!

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I am sorry that I don’t have step-by-step pictures. It was because I was not sure if they turned out well, and I was occupied with the technic myself. 😉 But as there was already a request for the recipe I thought I couldn’t keep you waiting!! I will definitly make those again and maybe do a proper tutorial. If you experience any difficulties or have any questions, just ask!!

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What to do with the rest of the apples? What I did was a compote with apples, green seedless grapes, freshly pressed orange juice of 2-3 oranges and a little bit of vanilla sugar. We had this plain as a dessert! But I imagine it would be great with joughurt, rice pudding or semolina porridge too.

Apfelkompott

~Kathrin

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms
Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

Hello everybody!

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

I hope your last week was nice? Nicer than mine, at least? 😉 I had to study, study, study, sleep a little and then again study,… You might have guest it: It was the week of my exams at university! I don’t like this time at all… But it is necessary.

So yesterday was my final exam for this period, and now I am FREE!! I can do whatever I like!! At least for a few days…

 

Also I had written a ‘what to do after the final exam’ list – which included watering the plants, hoover and clean and of course, write a new blogpost. As you might have noticed, this was not what happend! 😉

So when I finally went home yesterday what I did was starting a movie. I really love movies!! No special kind – I just like digging in another reality for a few hours! Of course there are good movies and bad movies for me too, but I would watch all of them – and the good ones more than once.

When I came home yesterday I felt the need to disengage myself from all the stress of the days before and watch a film. Not any kind of film! I wanted romance, I wanted the feeling of an idyllic world and a little bit of action so I turned on Twilight. Don’t judge me!! 😉

I haven’t seen the movies for quite some time now! And last time I did, I thought they were embarrissing because they are such a tear jerker (I hope that word exist – that’s what my translater tells me! ). So this time, to make them less awkward for me I watched them in english. It helped a lot! I really think you could say anything in english even if it is way too much in german. I actually did enjoy them so much that I watched part 2 and 3 right after the first and went to bed at 1 o’clock…

Yes – I don’t know what was going on with me either 😉

So today is the day for the list – all the stuff that needs to be done and was postponed because of the exams! It includes preparing for the studying period for the exams in april  but I decided to do the ‘fun’ parts first. Here I am, writing just what comes through my mind and hoping you don’t think I am too awkward, strange or crazy 😉

 

But I have brought you something, too!!! As my meals needed to be quick I didn’t do much cooking in the last two weeks. But one thing I did was these Tagliatelle with frehs tomatoes, ham and mushrooms! It was a really quick lunch and very delicious!

 

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

for one person

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushroomsTagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

 

Ingredients:

Tagliatelle for one person (I used wholemeal – approx. 100g)

100g mushrooms

100g ham

3 big tomatoes

75 ml cream

salt, pepper, parsley for decoration (I used frozen)

 

Directions:

1. Cook Pasta according to package.

2. Put a nonstick frying pan on medium heat. Chop the mushrooms in half slices, ham in stripes and tomatoes in cubes – or the way you like them.

3. Put mushrooms and ham into the pan, and let the mushrooms loose some water (5 min maybe). Add the tomatoes on top, let them sit on top for 2 min then stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4. The Pasta should be ready now. Put the pasta into the pan using a pasta scoop with holes in it to get rid of most of the cooking water. Add the cream to the pan. Stir everything and let the sauce and pasta reheat until it bubbles (2-3 min). Maybe add some more salt (the cream takes away some of the saltiness).

5. Put Tagliatelle on a nice platter and sprinkle with some parsley.

Enjoy!!

~Kathrin

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Orange Ricotta Chocolate Chip Muffins

Orange Ricotta Chocolate Chip Muffins
Orange Ricotta Chocolate Chip Muffins

A very warm WELCOME to all my new readers!!

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I am sooo excited that you all joint me here and on facebook to follow my little blog! This blog is my heart’s desire and I love to bake and cook, tell my story, photograph and sew to make this blog a part of me and a nice place to be! And this is true, even if it rhymes 😉

For everybody that stumbles on this little site and especially the ones who decide to stay I am soooo very thankful!! It is so nice to see that other people like the same things I do and that encourages me very much!

I would like it best if I could get to know all of you personally, but as this is a very difficult task because you are living all over the globe, I encourage you to leave a quick comment! Don’t be shy! 🙂

 

Today I want to talk about muffins. Aren’t they great? You can bring them to any celebration and they are never out of place. People love them because they are already in single servings and can be transported easily! But most of all: They taste great!!!

If you have a muffin for yourself, it is just like you have a little cake baked just for you. They are cute, they are easy to make and simple to modify!

 

What I have here is a recipe which is loaded with a bright orange flavor, rich chocolate taste and is very moist thanks to the use of ricotta!

I used homemade ricotta which I made of the leftover whey I had from making my own camenbert and feta cheese. Also the only oranges I had were blood oranges! That is why the dough had a pretty rosa color and the baked muffins where a light green on the inside, because the color changed from rosa to green during baking.

I was very surprised when I had a bite of my first muffin! And they really tasted very delicious!!

 

So here it comes:

Orange Ricotta Chocolate Chip Muffins

from two peas & their pod

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Ingredientes:

115g unsalted butter, at room temperature

150g granulated sugar

Zest of 1 orange

15 g vanilla sugar (or use 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)

1 cup ricotta cheese

1 large egg

4 tablespoons fresh orange juice

240g white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup chocolate chips (I used 125g chopped ‘Kouvertüre’ chocolate, but choc chips are fine)

Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1-2 tablespoons orange or lemon juice

 

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 180° C (about 350 degrees F). Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners, or use silicone cups. Set aside.

2. Beat the butter, sugars and zest with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add ricotta cheese and mix well. Then add the egg and orange juice.

3. Now it is time to put in the dry ingredients. Flour, baking powder and -soda and salt go in. Don’t overmix! Just stir it in on low speed of the electric mixer.

4. Add the chocolate and just mix it in with a big spoon.

5. Using two large spoons divide the dough between the 12 muffin moulds.

6. Bake muffins for approx. 25-30 minutes. Take a skewer and make the test! If it comes out clean, they are ready!

7. Now prepare the glaze.  In a small bowl whisk together the powdered sugar and the citrus juice (not all at once, check consistency!). Drizzle over the muffins. Let it sit until glaze hardens and muffins are cooled down.

Enjoy!!

 

~Kathrin

 

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Speedy Shrimp Pasta

Speedy Shrimp Pasta
Speedy Shrimp Pasta

Good evening out there!

This weekend I was all alone in the flat by myself, so I took the chance to make a very big mess in the kitchen over and over again 😉

I should be studying as my exams are getting closer and closer and I have really difficult ones to pass this semester – but I just couldn’t let the chance go by!

During all the testing, picture taking and recipe studying I was getting hungry. I was stumbling on a recipe of a blog I am reading: Speedy Sauteed Shrimp & Pasta from dinners, dishes and desserts.

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It had pasta, shrimps and sun-dried tomatoes, which especially of the last I am a big fan at the moment. I usually eat them plain or with cheese  but I was already wondering what else I could do with them! On top of it all the package I have right now is very special to me, as it says the tomatoes are from Izmir region in Turkey!! That was where I stayed last summer – and we also went on the fields, ate fresh tomatoes and saw the people laying out the tomatoes in the sun to dry. You see – I had no chance but to make something special with them!

This and that I had already pre-cooked shrimps in the fridge that needed using made this a no brainer for me. Shrimp pasta it was!

Of course I had to give the recipe some twists, as I didn’t have everything on hand. But it was very delicious!!

 

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

adapted from dinners, dishes and desserts (see for exact messurements, I just did it roughly for one person)

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredientes:

spaghetti for one person

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/2 piece of onion

1 piece of garlic

a few red chili flakes

about 7 shrimps (I had precooked ones, but fresh or frozen ones would work to – just cook them through)

about 3 sun-dried tomatoes

juice of 1/2 lemon

parsley (I used frozen), salt, pepper

parmesan to taste

 

Directions:

1. Cook the pasta according to directions on box.

2. Meanwhile heat a large skillet on medium heat and put the oil inside. Chopp onions and put inside. Saute for a little bit, then crush garlic in a garlic crusher and add with chili flakes  to the onions.

3. Put shrimps into the skillet and after 2 minutes add the chopped dried tomatoes and lemon juice.

4. Season with parsley, salt and pepper.

5. Put the cooked spaghetti in the skillet and mix well with shrimp mixture. If you want you can drizzle with additional olive oil and sprinkle with parmesan.

6. Enjoy preferably with a glass of white wine!

Speedy Shrimp Pasta

~ Kathrin