Tag Archives: cheese

Sep23

Zucchini Corn Muffins With Cheese

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Kathrin

Hello everyone!

Today I have something for you, that I have never made or even tried before then:

CORN MUFFINS!

I saw corn muffins or bread on different blogs and it always looked so yummy with it’s light brown top and golden color! I know that they are/it is often eaten with chillis or other warm comfort dishes, so I needed to try!

With what do YOU like to eat your corn muffins or corn bread?

These ones of course have a special little twist. They have shredded zucchini in them, which makes them a little healthier!

Since my mum forgot to pick a zucchini in our little backyard it grew quite big – like REALLY big. I haven’t seen one this big before!! It was like a baseball bat, but about three times as thick!!

I didn’t have my camera on hand (big mistake 😉 ) so I don’t have a picture, but please just believe me when I tell you – this thing was enormous!!

I googled and searched all my sources to find recipes to use up my zucchini monster. And this is one of the recipes that has made it to the final list! (which means, there will be more! *wink* 😉 )

I adapted this recipe from Two Peas and their Pod and I am quite pleased how they turned out!

I hope you give them a chance! Have fun baking!!

Zucchini Corn Muffins With Cheese

Prep time

20 mins

Cook time

20 mins

Total time

40 mins

A yummy side for any chilli! Or simply perfect as a snack.

Author: Kathrin @ ginger, lemon & spice

Cuisine: American

Serves: 12

Ingredients

1 cup buttermilk
45g (3 tbsp) butter, melted and cooled
3 tbsp canola oil
2 large eggs
150g (1 cup) flour
120g (1 cup) corn flour
4 tbsp sugar
2½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ cup shredded zucchini, liquid squeezed out
½ cup corn kernels (frozen or canned)
1 cup shredded Cheese (I used Gouda)

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 300°C (400°F). Line the 12 molds of a muffin pan with paper cups.
In a bowl mix eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, and rapeseed oil until well blended. Add flour, corn flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix well but start slow.
Fold in zucchini, corn and cheese and divide the batter evenly between the 12 molds.
Bake for 15-20 minutes in the oven until the tops are golden and a skewer inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Let the muffins cool for 5 minutes then remove them from the pan and serve.

See you soon,

xoxo ~Kathrin

Jul24

Around the World: Turkey – Künefe

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Kathrin

Around the World: Turkey – Künefe

Merhaba!!

– that means hello in Turkish! 🙂

Today I will talk a little bit about the religion in Turkey.

Most of the people there are Muslims. That means they believe in Allah which is God. The Islam stands on five pillars: Testimony, Prayer, Alms-Giving, Fasting and Pilgrimage. Those are considered obligatory for all believers. The holy book in the Islam is the Quran or Koran, which is said to be verbally revealed from God to the last prohet Mohammad through angel Gabriel. The Muslims are restricted in their diet and should not eat pork, blood and carrion or drink alcohol. All food should be halal.

I am telling you all this because I want to talk about the month of fasting: Ramadan or as they say in Turkey: Ramazan. It is during the ninth month of the Islam and in this time it is obligatory for all adult Muslims to fast from dawn till sunset except those who are ill, travelling or pregnant. One should refrain from food, drinks (no water!), smoking, having sex and sometimes even swearing. Everyday after sunset there will be the big Iftar (fast-breaking meal) where families and friends come together to celebrate.

I have to say that during my stay in Izmir it was also the time or Ramazan, but most of the people I met weren’t so strict to do a whole month of complete fasting. Some of them did a few days but not all of them. Also the working life is still going on as normal – maybe a bit slower but everything is open. I didn’t expect that! But it could be that this was only because I was in a big cosmopolitan city and it is different in the rural areas! 🙂

Ramazan is acutally happening right now! It concludes in the three day long festivities of breaking the fast (Ramazan Bayramı – this year from 8th to 10th of august). Those days are called ‘Zuckerfest’ in German which means ‘sugar festival’ and that says it all about how it is celebrated. Lot’s and lot’s of food will be prepared and eaten together with family, friends and neighbours, especially sweet dishes can be found on the table!

It is only logical that today I have a special dessert for you: It is the crispy and sweet angel hair in syrup with melted cheese called Künefe! It is my absolute favorite dessert in Turkish Cuisine and I hope you enjoy it too!

Don’t foget, if you have any questions about Turkey or have made your own experiences please tell me about it in the comments!!

I’d love to hear about it!!

Künefe

Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

25 mins

Total time

40 mins

A sweet and crispy, creamy and warm dessert that will surprise your taste buds!

Author: Kathrin @ ginger, lemon & spice

Recipe type: Dessert

Cuisine: Turkish

Serves: 8

Ingredients

Syrup

300g (1⅓ cup) sugar
3 cups water
1 teaspoon citrus zest (I used lemon)
3 tablespoons fruit juice (orange or apple)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 sachet vanilla sugar

Künefe

300g tel kadayıf (angel hair noodles from the Turkish store)
150g butter, melted
300g mozzarella cheese
300g kaymak (Turkish cream, mascarpone works too)
100g pistacchios, finally chopped

Instructions

Syrup

Cook water and sugar on the stove until the liquid is reduced to half. Stir once in a while. Take the pot from the stove and whisk in zest, juice and vanilla.

Künefe

Preheat your oven to 180°C (360°F)
Chop mozzarella in small cubes and mix with half of the kaymak or mascarpone. Set aside.
Cut the angel hair noodles in 1-2 cm pieces and loosen them up with your fingers. Pour the butter over the noddles and mix very well! Take half of the noddles and press them into a casserole dish big enough or use several smaller ones to make them portion sized.
Distribute the cheese mix evenly on top and add the rest of the noddles on top. Press them down gently.
Put your dish or dishes into the oven and bake for 25 minutes. The top should be golden brown!
Take them out of the oven and pour the syrup over the Künefe. Wait until the syrup is soaked up. Decorate with the rest of the kaymak or mascarpone and the pistacchios! Then serve whilst hot.
Enjoy 🙂

Notes

I forgot to put on the kaymak and pistacchios as the decoration. You will just have to imagine it 😉

Adapted from Sofralar of the KochDichTürkisch-Blog

Afiyet olsun!!

Here are the other recipes I shared during this series:

An Introduction to the new series

Appetizer – Sigara Böreği

Main Dish – Köfte, Cacık & Pirinç Pilavı

Drink – Ayran

Salad – Kısır

Pastry – Kurabiye

Snack/Fast Food – Lahmacun

Guest Post – Acılı Ezme

~ Kathrin

Jun20

Cheese & Cream Cake with Strawberries and Oreos – Käsesahne-Torte mit Erdbeeren und Oreos

Posted on June 20, 2013 by Kathrin

Cheese & Cream Cake with Strawberries and Oreos – Käsesahne-Torte mit Erdbeeren und Oreos

Hello everybody!!

I am so very sorry that it took me so long to get back in posting mood! I had so much stress and worries about university that I couldn’t really think about the ‘nice’ things in life – like updating this food blog, that I have grown to love so much 🙂

Well things with university are still not sorted out and I have to wait until the beginning of next month to get notice if I will be allowed to keep on studying or if I have to quit. This is very nervewracking and it seems to take forever!!

After the first shock and some time of despair when I received the news I am back to seeing things positivly and try not to think about it all the time. In the last weeks I was barly cooking and did no baking at all – that’s how you can see how serious this was! Also I was sick quite some time with a stomach flu, I guess all the stress before just caught up on me…

That’s just how live goes I guess – with all its up and downs…

But I finally brought you something, you all have been waiting for a long time: My mother’s day cake!! It is a creamy and not too heavy Cheese & Cream Cake filled and decorated with strawberries and oreos!! ‘Käsesahne-Torte’ as it is called in Germany is liked very much here. It is a traditional!! Usually it looks quite different, but I gave it my own little twist and spiced it up a bit for the special occasion. Also I like decorating cakes and I don’t get the chance often, so I had to do that too!! 😉 The traditional German Käsesahne-Torte only has one layer of filling and has mandarin oranges and no strawberries or oreos. But that wasn’t fancy enough for me 🙂

You can find the rest of my mother’s day meal here: Steak, Grean Beans and Hasselback Potatoes.

I guess you have waited long enough! Here it comes! Just give it a try yourself, you won’t regret it, it is very yummy 🙂

Cheese & Cream Cake with Strawberries and Oreos - Käsesahne-Torte mit Erdbeeren und Oreos

Prep time

1 hour 45 mins

Cook time

30 mins

Total time

2 hours 15 mins

A cake perfect for mothers day or any other fancy occation! Easy and quick to make - just needs a little time to set.

Author: Kathrin @ ginger, lemon & spice

Recipe type: Cake (Torte)

Cuisine: German

Serves: 12

Ingredients

Cake Base

5 eggs
5 tablespoons of water (lukewarm)
250g (2 cups) flour
250g (1⅛ cups) sugar
1 sachet of baking powder (1 tablespoon)

Filling

10 sheets of gelatine + cold water for soaking
juice of one lemon
100ml (1/2 cup) water
150g (2/3 cup) sugar
500g (18 ounces) of curd cheese (Quark)
500g (17 fl.oz) cream, whipped
15 Oreos
400g (14 ounces) fresh strawberries

Instructions

Cake Base

Preheat oven to 160° C (325° F).
Butter a 28 cm (11 inches) springform pan and line the bottom with baking paper. For this you just put the pan on top of a sheet of baking paper and trace the pan and then cut it out and put on botton of buttered pan!
Beat eggs with water in a bowl until foamy. Add sugar and beat until white, thick and creamy. This takes time! It has to be really creamy! Add flour and baking powder and mix gently until just incorporated. Pour into springform pan and bake on the middle rack for about 20-25 min. Insert skewer to see if it is ready! Skewer then comes out clean when put into the middle of the cake.

Filling

Put gelatine in a small bowl of cold water and soak for 10 min.
Meanwhile heat up sugar, water and lemon juice in a pot on the stove on medium heat. It doesn't have to boil. Take the gelatine out of the water and press gently and then dissolve in the warm liquid.
Stir the curd cheese in a bowl and add the gelatine liquid. Mix until incorporated. Add the whipped cream and mix gently. Reserve ⅓-1/2 of the mixture. Pour it into a box or bowl and cover tightly and put in refrigerator.
Wash strawberries. Reserve 12 pretty small strawberries and 6 oreos for decoration and cut the rest into bits.

Assembling

Take your cake base and cut twice horizontally. Take a plate and put 3 stripes of baking paper in form of a triangle on top. When you put the bottom cake base on top the borders should be sitting on the paper! You can later remove them easily and still have a clean plate! Place a cake ring around the cake base and adjust it to the cakes size.
Half the rest of the filling. Use one batch for the first layer: Distribute just a little bit of the filling on the cake base - just a thin layer. Add half of the cut strawberries and oreos. Make it kind of even and cover with the rest of the first half of the filling.
Now put the middle piece of cake base on top. Repeat the filling layer like you did the first time!
Place the top piece of cake base on top and press down gently. Refrigerate the cake for at least 2 hours, the best is overnight.

Decoration

To finish up the cake loose up the cake ring and remove it carefully. Take the leftover filling out of the fridge and whisk it until it is fluffy again. It will not be as creamy as the day before, but with patience and taking little by little you will be able to cover the whole cake. If you are not known for your patience you could still just use all the filling actually to fill the cake and just frost the cake with some whipped cream with whipped cream stabilizer.
Decorate the cake like you want, you can see how I did it on the pictures 🙂 Remove baking paper stripes and put the cake back into the fridge until you are ready to eat it! Earn a lot of uuuhs and aaahs for all the work you've done! 🙂

Notes

Cake Base can be made a day ahead without any problem! Just wrapp in cling film! You can also use a 26 cm (10.2 inches) sprinform, then you need only a cake base made of 4 eggs (you have to cut down the rest of the ingredients accordingly). If you really can't find curd cheese you could use cream cheese, but you might need a little more liquid in your mix. Traditionally the German Käsesahne-Torte only has one layer of filling and is filled with mandarin oranges. It is not frosted on the outside, just sprinkled with powdered sugar on top!

Bon appetit!

~ Kathrin

Recipe admitted to Gewinnspiel Erdbeerzeit from Party Princess Blog!

May4

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Kathrin

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

$Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad$

Hello everybody!

Today really is a nice day!! The sun is shining, not brightly, but still and it is quite warm outside! I was already on tour this morning – I went to the flea market and looked for nice probs, went to a nice store in the city where I looked for more probs 😉 And then went to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients for this yummy Tex-Mex Taco Salad!!

I was craving this salad because of all the delicious Cinco de Mayo recipes posted all over the food blogging world… I didn’t even know what Cinco de Mayo was. I had to google it!!

For those of you who don’t already know: It is a national holiday in Mexico where they celebrate the victory over the French army in the village Puebla which happend on the 5th of May in 1862.

So I suggested you get into your kitchen and look if you might have already all those ingredients at home or you go for a quick stop at the supermarket and buy them to make this fresh and delicious salad right now!! 🙂

The flavors mix together really well, it has the freshness of the iceberg salad and tomatoes, the creaminess of the sauces and the beans and just the right amount of a little spice of the chilis in the Texicana sauce. I just ate this salad for lunch, it is quite filling and you don’t feel like a tightly stuffed sausage afterwards. In fact I could go outside again and do some more cycling! 🙂 I hope you like it too!

Just a quick note before I continue with the recipe: I made only half of the recipe this time. So the salad bowl you see on the pictures is just half of what you will get!

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

Ingredients:

1 head of iceberg salad

400-500g minced meat (I used half & half low fat)

1 onion

1 can of corn

1 can of kidney beans

1 bottle (500ml) of Texicana Salsa Sauce (or something similar)

2-3 tomatoes

200g sour cream

4 tablespoons milk

200g shredded cheese (I used Emmentaler)

optional: Taco Chips or Nachos

Directions:

1. Put a pan on your stove and heat up on high heat. Meanwhile peel and cut your onion into small squares. Put meat and onion into your pan all at once. reduce heat to medium and stir often. The meat should be very crumbly and in small pieces! Once your meat is done set it aside and let cool.

2. Wash your salad and dry it with a salad spinner. Take a very big bowl and put the iceberg salad in it and make it even. Layer the meat on top. Drain Beans and corn and sprinkle them evenly over the meat. Pour your Texicana Salsa on top and try to create an even layer. Cut the tomatoes in cubes and sprinkle on top.

3. Take a little bowl and whisk together your sour cream and the milk. Pour the mixture on top of your salad and distribute with a spoon. Take the shredded cheese and sprinkle on top!

4. The salad tastes best if you cover it and let it rest in the fridge for 1 hour. If you want you can add the taco chips on top (whole or crushed) or give them as an extra! I usually don’t eat any with my salad because I just don’t need it and I’d rather save the calories 😉 It is important that if you want them you put the taco chips on top of your salad just before serving!! They will become mushy otherwise.

As with all layered salads you should take something of every layer when you put salad on your plate. Enjoy!! 🙂