A few weeks ago, I got very excited when, for the first time this year, I found a cart full of  pink and green bunches of tender springtime rhubarb at my local farmers market.

That same weekend was also the first time this year that we had a proper sunny Sunday, which meant it was time for my first brunch on my balcony.

The dish for this was meant to showcase my newly purchased rhubarb stalks, so I decided to make a quick and easy custard bake, which is a ‘clafoutis’ like dish that can be made easily with all the ingredients that you probably already have at home…except the rhubarb!

For about 6 portions – depending on the size of your dishes – you will need:

• 300g thin stalks of rhubarb
• 100g butter, melted and cooled
• 140g – plus an extra 6 Tbsp – sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 185ml milk
• 60g flour

Preheat the oven to 180-degrees/-gas mark 4.
Butter 6 pudding or brulee dishes.

Wash and cut the rhubarb into the length of your pudding/brulee dish diameter and line the base of the dishes with a layer of it. On top of the first layer, add another layer in the opposite direction, so you have a kind of overlapping lattice.

In a jug, whisk the butter, sugar, salt, eggs and egg yolks together. Add the milk and flour and whisk again, so that there are no lumps. Pour over the rhubarb until they are just covered with some pieces still poking out, if you wish.

Sprinkle with the 6 tablespoons of sugar and bake for about 25 minutes until the top is golden and a little crispy and the rest of the custard set. Leave to cool before serving.

I love Belgian Waffles – those thick, square yeasty ones.

Sadly, I can’t really make those in my little waffle iron at home, as that one is for the thinner German ones. Still, I wanted to try out a waffle receipe with yeast anyway, as yeasty waffles are also quite American (I think!) and the waffles there are not really sweet and actually, often eaten with chicken.

As you know, I’m always one for sweet rather than savory though, so I opted to serve them with blueberry compote, quickly made from frozen blueberries.

Please note, that the waffle dough  has to rest overnight, so you’ll need to make it in the evening ahead of your waffle brunch!

For the waffles you’ll need:

• 21 g OR ½ a cube of fresh yeast
• 125 ml water at room temperature
• 1 tsp sugar
• 485 ml warm milk
• 120 g melted butter
• ¾ tsp salt
• 235 g white flour*
• 50 g wholemeal flour*
• 2 eggs
• ¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda

*of course, you can also just use 285g plain flour instead of the plain/wholemeal flour combo, if you prefer

For the blueberry compote you’ll need:

• 2 cups frozen blueberries
• 3 tbsp water
• 2 ½ tbsp honey
• ¼  tsp ground cinnamon

In the evening, mix together the yeast, water and sugar in a big bowl (about 3l capacity) and set aside for 5 minutes.
Add milk, butter, salt and flour and mix everything together with an electric whisk. Cover the bowl with cling film and let it sit on the kitchen counter overnight, for the batter to rise and (at least) double in size.

In the morning, start with the compote:  pour 1 cup of the blueberries into a pot with the water, honey and cinnamon. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.  Now that the blueberries are soft, mash them against the pan with a potato masher or wooden spoon. Add the remaining blueberries and on a low heat, warm them through for about 5 minutes.

For the waffles, mix the eggs and bicarb of soda and fold them in the risen batter.

Warm up your waffle iron and get baking (as per manufacturers instructions).

If you fancy, add a dusting of icing sugar…

It’s hard to believe it’s almost Easter, thanks to the ongoing sub-zero temperatures and snow in front of my window, that makes it feel more like Christmas.

That’s no reason though, to not try to get into a more spring like mood, at least indoors, for example with the help of some springtime decorations. And when it comes to decorations, why not go for edible ones, such as these Easter cookies. You won’t even need special Easter cookie cutters for them,  any round cookie cutter can – with the help of icing – make some cute Easter chicks…

For about 24 cookies you’ll need:

• 90g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
• 100g caster sugar
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp almond OR vanilla extract
• 200g flour (plus extra for rolling out the dough)
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 250g icing sugar
• 1 egg white
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tube of ready-made black icing

Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt. In another bowl, whisk the butter and sugar together until the mix is fluffy and pale in colour. Add the egg and almond or vanilla extract and whisk again, then mix the dry ingredients in to the wet.

Using your hands bring the dough together to form a ball. Wrap it in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 180C/ gas mark 4 and line two baking sheets with baking parchment.

Sprinkle your work surface with flour, flatten the dough ball on it and dust it’s surface with flour as well before rolling it out to the thickness of about half a centimeter. Using a round cookie cutter of around 6cm cut the cookies out and transfer them to the baking sheets. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes (one sheet at the time) until the cookies are lightly golden.

Cool on a rack whilst making the icing by mixing the icing sugar, egg white and lemon juice (do this slowly with a fork, or the icing sugar will fly everywhere). Set 2 tablespoons of the icing aside, which will be used for the eyes.

Add yellow food colouring to the rest of the icing. Then set 2 tablespoons of the yellow icing aside and mix that with some red food colouring to make some orange icing for the peak and feet.

Using a (palette) knife ice all cookies with the yellow icing and let it dry, before piping on the white eyes, followed by the orange peak and feet. If you don’t have a piping bag with a fine tip, you can fold some baking parchment into a cone, leaving a small opening at the pointy end of it. Finally, add black pupils on to the white eyes, with the ready-made black icing and there you have it: a bunch of spring chickens – Happy Easter!

Defrosting my freezer the other night, I came across some raspberries, which I needed to use up.

Not that this is a hard thing to do. I always like to have some frozen berries, when fresh ones are not in season so that I can still have berries with my breakfast – or at any other time of the day for that matter. They are great just as an accompaniment for pancakes, stirred in porridge or with yoghurt and granola.

In this easy receipe they make up a fruity layer between yoghurt mousse, which sits on a biscuit base, similar to the base of some cheesecakes. The little pots of this combo make a great brunch dessert, enjoyed after some Eggs Benedict or such likes. Of course, you could always also just go straight to dessert…

For 8 small pots you’ll need:

• 40g butter
• 100g plus another 2 -3 for the topping, crunchy oat biscuits (Hobnobs work best in the UK)
  
• 400g plain yoghurt
• 3-4 Tbsp honey
• 3-4 Tbsp vanilla infused sugar (if you don’t have that you can go for the same amount of sugar and add 1 tsp vanilla essence)
• 200g whipping cream
• 300g frozen raspberries
• 4 Tbsp crushed hazelnuts (optional)

For the biscuit base, crush the biscuits until you have fine crumbs. I find the best way to do this is to put the biscuits in a freezer bag and bash that bag with a rolling pin.

Melt the butter on the hob, then stir in the biscuit crumbs and spread the mixture between your 8 dessert pots/glasses and press it down with the back of a teaspoon. Leave to set in the fridge for half an hour.

For the mousse, start by whipping up the cream so it holds it’s shape. Now, in a larger bowl, whisk the honey and vanilla sugar into the yoghurt. If you have a sweet tooth go for 4 tablespoons of each, the honey as well as the sugar – otherwise start with 3 tablespoons and add more if desired.

Carefully fold the whipped cream under the sweetened yoghurt and using a piping bag, pipe half of the mousse on top of your cooled down biscuit bases. Add a layer of frozen berries and then pipe on the rest of the mousse to cover the berries.

Break the extra biscuits down to crumbs and sprinkle those on top of the mousse. And/or, for extra crunch, roast small hazelnut pieces in a non-stick pan for a few minutes and, once they have cooled down, add them to the crumbs, as a final finishing touch.

You can eat the desserts straight away “semi-freddo style”  (though I’d suggest even then to wait about an hour for the raspberries to defrost a little) or transfer the pots back to the fridge, where they will keep for up to 24 hours.

Anyone for some lemon cake?

Apparently, someone in my circle of London friends always is.
At least that’s what I’ll assume as this lemon cake seems to be one of my most popular cakes here and whenever I make it, people compliment me for it.

To be honest, I don’t quite actually quite know why, as it is just a basic lemon cake, which isn’t very exciting really but then again, I guess, it’s the simplicity of it that everyone likes: the light lemon flavor and the crunchy sugar topping.

What I like most about it, is that the making is very simple too, which is always a plus…

For the cake you will need:

• 275g flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 225g unsalted butter or margarine
• 225g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4 tbsp milk
• grated rind of 2 lemons
• pinch of salt

For the cake topping you’ll need:

• 175g sugar, if you want it crunchy go for granulated sugar
• juice of 2 lemons

Preheat the oven to gas mark 3 and prepare a deep baking tin (mine is about 20 x 30 cm and the type that’s great for pasta bakes or tiramisu) by brushing it lightly with oil and lining it with baking paper.

Mix the flour and baking powder in one bowl. In another one, mix the butter/margarine, eggs and sugar, as well as the pinch of salt and lemon rind with an electric whisk until combined. Then add the baking powder enriched flour and milk and whisk again until the dough is smooth, which won’t take long at all (2-3 mins).

Pour the dough in your tin and level it with a spatula, then bake it for 40 – 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. 

Cool the cake down in the tin, on a wire rack, but while it is still a little warm, use a toothpick to prick a few holes in the cake. Mix the sugar into the lemon juice and slowly drizzle it over the cake, letting some of it getting soaked up, so that it will infuse the cake with the lemony syrup but the crunchy sugar will stay on top.

Enjoy when it’s completely cooled down and the topping has set.

Near my office, there’s a new bakery that I often walk past in the mornings. The other day I stopped to get myself a little something sweet and the “Strawberry and White Chocolate Drop Scones” caught my eye and what a good choice that was! Sweet white chocolate drops and juicy strawberries liven up a chewy on the inside but crispy on the outside scone. It only took one and I was addicted. And rather than spending £2 a scone at said bakery on this new habit of mine, I decided to see if I could make them myself and I am glad to say, I can.

The receipe is easy, quick to do and doesn’t even require many ingredients. The resulting scones might not win a beauty contest but I can ensure you, that there will still be plenty of people who will happily eat them out of your hands…

For 12 scones you’ll need:

• 1 cup plain flour
• ½ cup wholemeal flour (or plain if you prefer)
• ¼ cup sugar
• 1 ½ cup frozen summer berries 
• ½ cup white chocolate chips
• 2 tsp baking powder

• a pinch of salt

• 1 cup heavy cream

• 2 tbsp butter, melted

• 2 tbsp (preferably granulated) sugar

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5 and prepare a baking sheet by lightly greasing it or lining it with baking parchment.

In a bowl, combine the flours, baking powder, sugar and salt, then add the chocolate chips.
Mix the frozen berries in, followed by the cream.

If you find that everything is nicely mixed already, then you can just drop 12 big spoonfuls of the dough on a your tray. Most likely though, it is not, in which case turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and knead everything together by hand. This should happen quickly as it is only to combine all ingredients. Shape the dough into 2 rolls and cut each in 6 pieces, which you then spread out on your tray.

Brush each scone with some melted butter and sprinkle them with the sugar and bake for 15 – 20 minutes until the scones start to brown.

Leave them to cool – first on the tray, then on a wire rack – and eat them the same day.

For today’s receipe I’m combining something from my recent American memories with my not quite so recent German childhood memories:

When I grew up in Germany, waffles were a special treat – a very popular one I might add. You could be sure that someone would have a waffle stall at any church or school fair and you’d always find them on Christmas Markets too. At home, most families also had waffle irons but they wouldn’t come out that much and certainly not as often as they seem to in the US where waffles are a bit more of a breakfast staple, such as pancakes. In America waffles are often eaten with maple syrup and maybe with some crispy bacon on the side. The fanciest way to eat waffles back home in Germany was with cherry compote and whipped cream – though more often then not us kids were just as happy to gobble them down with just a dusting of icing sugar.

This morning I combined an American buttermilk waffle with some typically German cherry & cream topping and it worked a treat. Served as a breakfast or brunch it looks pretty and impressive but the nice thing is, that it is super quick and easy to make!

For 10 waffles, which is plenty for 4 people and might stretch to as many as 6 depending on their appetite, you’ll need:

• 2 cups flour 
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 2 eggs
• circa 350 g of cherries in light syrup (in the UK and the US these usually come in small tins, so you will probably need two tins, in Germany in glass jars which are larger, so one jar will do)
• 1 tbsp of corn flour
• 250ml whipping cream, whipped

As with a lot of similar receipes, start by mixing the dry ingredients – the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt – with a spoon in one bowl.

In another, larger bowl mix the buttermilk, melted butter and eggs with a whisk then add the flour mix and combine all ingredients. Don’t over whisk the batter though, a few lumps here and there are fine.

For the cherries, add the fruits and juice to a pan and heat them up until the juices start to boil. In the meantime, mix the corn flour with an equal amount of water in a small cup and stir this mix in to the cherry pan, once their juice starts to boil. Keep stirring until the juice thickens, which will only take 2 minutes or so. If you like the juice to be thicker still, mix some more corn flour and water and repeat.

Heat up your waffle iron and set it to the desired browning strength you like you’re waffles to be baked at (if you haven’t used the iron before, check the manufacture’s recommendations) and get baking!

When I make waffles they get eaten pretty much straight out from the hot iron but if you want to bake them all first to serve them in one go, you can use your oven, set on a very low heat, to keep them warm.

Serve with the cherries and cream and tuck in!

So here it comes, the first receipe inspired by my recent time in New York.
I had heard of these chocolate chip cookies from Levain, with various sources telling me that they were the best in town, so I had to check the out. The original Levain Bakery is all the way up in Harlem – but it was so worth the track!

There they sell the famous chocolate-chip-walnut cookies freshly baked, still slightly warm, and though their lumpy shape might not get to win them beauty contests, taste wise it’s full marks all around. The outside is crispy while the inside texture is still chewy and cookie dough like. And the walnuts, which I am normally never a fan of, compliment the melted chocolate very well.

Unfortunately the receipe is secret, so my attempts to re-make them here in London will never be as good as the real thing but the chocolate and walnut combo in a gigantic chunky cookie I have tried out here are still good enough to share with you.

For 12 big cookies you will need:

• 225g butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 2 tsps cornstarch
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 1 cup walnuts

Preheat oven to gas mark 4 and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Mix the sugars in big, huge bowl and cut the butter in to it in pieces. Then mix them together with an electric whisk until well blended and the mix has become a paler colour. (The butter shouldn’t be too soft for a cookie dough, which makes the mixing a bit hard and I had to stop the whisk a few times to free the beaters from the butter lumps…bear with it, you’ll get there eventually.) Now, add the eggs, one after the other and again whisk until well blended.

In another bowl mix the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder. Add this flour mix in 2 or 3 stages to the sugar-butter-egg dough and beat it in, again with an electric whisk (or the help of a wooden spoon, if the electric whisk can’t cope, as was the case for me).Gently fold in chocolate chips/chunks and nuts and tip the whole dough on a clean surface to finish off the mixing and kneading by hand. Once you’re satisfied all is mixed in evenly form a thick roll and cut this in 12 equal portions.

Form 12 round balls out of these portions and place them on your baking trays. Cover these with cling film and put them in a freezer for 10-20 minutes, to cool them down again (but not freeze).

Take the tray out and transfer it directly to your preheated oven, where the cookies need to be baked for about 15-25 minutes, depending on how gooey/ raw you like them to be (be careful not to over bake as they harden when they cool down!).

Cool the cookies on a rack and eat them on the day they are made…maybe even after an hour or so, when they are cooled down but still ever so slightly warm, just like at Levain…sigh!

I’m back!

Having spend most of the last three months in NY (with a visit to Botswana in between), I am now back in my own kitchen, here in London.

I have to admit, that I did become one of those New Yorkers who doesn’t bother cooking or baking. But why would you when the choice for eating out, delivery and deli food is so great. I loved the food markets, especially the weekly Smorgasburg in Dumbo…I loved the fact that you can get dessert at midnight, if you go to the Chocolate Room…I loved the American bbq joints… the cheap Chinese dim sum… the great Mexicans tacos…

And as for brunch – oh, how I’ll miss my weekly girlfriend brunch outings. My favourite brunch place overall was probably Bobo in Chelsea but I will tell you about that another time.

Right now, I want to share the first cake I made this year with you. Since it’s January and everyone (apart from me) seems to be on some new year’s resolution healthy eating scheme, I wanted to make something a little less loaded with sugar and fat and decided a chocolate beetroot cake is the way to go.

It might sound strange but is actually one of my most popular cakes. It’s lighter than a regular chocolate cake, probably as it contains neither butter nor chocolate but features sunflower oil and cocoa powder instead.

The icing is another story, of course. If you really want a healthier, reduced calorie cake you have to omit it, though you could maybe drizzle it with some plain melted chocolate instead. But I think, the taste of the sweet white icing on top of the dark cake is worth the extra calories. It also turns a plainer cake, that’s not too heavy and can therefore be eaten for brunch, in to a celebration cake, especially if you make enough icing for the top and a layer for within the cake.  

Either way, it’s super easy to make but you will need ready cooked beetroot (NOT the pickled vinegar one, of course) and a blender!

For the cake you’ll need:

• 180ml sunflower oil, plus more for the tin
• 190g self-raising flour
• 60g cocoa powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 250g (golden) caster sugar
• 250g beetroot, cooked
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• a blender
• a round tin at the size of 18cm min – 23cm max

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 and line your cake tin  – both sides and bottom – with baking parchment

Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, cocoa and sugar in one big bowl.

In your blender, purée the beetroot, eggs and vanilla. Then slowly pour in the oil, while the motor is running on the slowest speed (make sure it really is on a slow setting and don’t take the lid of fully, or you may end up with a red kitchen…). Pour the beetroot mixture into the dry ingredients and gently combine by folding them together with a bit spoon or spatula.

Pour into the cake tin and bake for 40–50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
After removing it from the oven, leave it for 5–10 minutes in the tin, then turn it out on to a wire rack and peel the lining off to let it cool completely.

For the icing you’ll need:
(Note, that if you want enough icing for a sandwich cake, with a thick layer in the middle, you’ll have to double the quantities)

• 25g white chocolate
• 100g cream cheese, softened
• 50g unsalted butter, softened
• ½  tsp vanilla extract
• 250g icing sugar
• 1 tbsp whipping cream

Melt the white chocolate carefully in the microwave by using a low setting and checking it every 4 seconds. Stir until smooth, and allow to cool back to room temperature.

In the meantime, whisk together the cream cheese and butter with an electric whisk until smooth, then mix in the melted white chocolate and vanilla essence.

Finally beat in the icing sugar and cream, again with an electric whisk until fluffy.

Spread the cake and let it set in the fridge for at least an hour – but note, that before eating you want the cake back to room temperature, so the icing isn’t too hard!

It’s been too long since my last post but things have been a bit busy for me lately as I have temporarily moved to NYC for a couple of months, which is very exciting.

NYC is a food lover’s heaven!

I am based in Brooklyn and the two local shops down the road, delis, as they are known here, have more varieties of European cheese on offer than English supermarkets (which are in Europe, after all). You can also get all sorts of baking and cooking ingredients in the delis though it’s true what they say, New Yorkers don’t cook much. But who can blame them with so many nice eateries around. I intend to try out as many as possible whilst living here and hopefully will be able to recommend the best ones to you too.

Before coming out here, the last brunch I had in London was back at Workshop Clerkenwell (see my earlier review here). My favourite dish there that day was a toasted banana bread with espresso mascarpone and rhubarb compote. It inspired me to make my own version of this at home: toasted banana bread with maple mascarpone and plum compote, which is probably the longest receipe title on my blog yet.

I looked for a fat free banana bread receipe, which I found on Gourmet Getaways, as I like to top it with a generous helping of mascarpone and figured that would be rich enough. As for the fruit compote, you could go with any fruit of your liking but I since plums are in a season right now, that’s what I’d recommend. You could use the plum compote receipe that I gave out for the oat pancakes a while ago.

You can make the banana bread up to 3 days ahead, if you like since it will be freshly toasted just before serving.

For one banana bread, you’ll need:

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 4 ripe bananas
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 whole eggs

For the plum compote, you’ll need:

• 500g plums
• 50g sugar
• 3 tablespoons of lemon juice (or water)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cinnamon stick

For the mascarpone:

• 250g mascarpone
• 1 tbsp maple syrup, or more if desired
  

Start with the cake:
Grease and/or line a loaf tin and preheat the oven to 160 degrees,

Mix the flour and bicarbonate of soda and salt in a large bowl, then add the sugar.

Mash the bananas in another bowl, with the help of a fork – they don’t need to be fully mashed to a puree, leaving a few chunks is actually quite desirable.

Break the eggs into a small bowl and lightly beat them, then add them to the mashed banana along with the vanilla essence. Combine the three and add the mix to the bowl containing the flour. Mix gently with a wooden spoon until combined.

Pour the mix into the prepared loaf tin and bake at 160 degrees for 40mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool down for 5 minutes before turning the cake out to cool down fully on a wire rack.

Now make the plum compote, for directions please see my earlier post here.

For the maple mascarpone, just mix the two ingredients together until the syrup is blended in and the mascarpone is getting softer.

Just before serving, cut chunky slices off the bread and – for best results – toast them, for about 3-5 minutes, in a non-stick griddle pan on a medium heat. Alternatively, a toaster will also do the trick.

Serve with a spoonful or so of the compote and a generous dollop of the sweetened mascarpone, which will start melting on the warm banana bread. Hmmmmmmmhhhh….