Vegetarian BBQ

So I was at a friends place the other day for a bbq session and we literally didn’t had any meat at all. What went wrong? Basically nothing. I am not a vegetarian but a few of my friends are and we kept it simple: No meat. And now it’s getting really exciting! The host was also a vegan!

HOW ON EARTH ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO ENJOY A VEGAN BBQ?!

Really easy: Focus on all the yummy veggie dishes! We had some amazing marinated aubergine and zucchini grilled. *drool* Marinate the veggie slices in olive oil and seasoning (pepper, salt, herbs, garlic, chili etc.) for a day and you get some delicious stuff! A few other treats had been: garlic stuffed mushrooms, herb tofu, grilled corn and of course bread with yummy homemade pesto and aoli (made with soy yogurt).

I also decided to make a couscous salad with sunflower seeds, sweet pepper, tomatoes, lemon juice, olive oil, mint and parsley. =) *nom nom nom*

At the end of the day I was really stuffed and really happy since the food was sooo good. We focus on the veggie more often since there are tons of great dishes! I hope I could inspire you to try some meat-less recipe for next bbq!

Cheers!

Mini Guglhupf

I got the this cute baking set (including a silicone baking mold and a cookbook) from our local bookstore : Click here for the set. It was reduced to 7€ so I couldn’t resist and had to buy it. :/

The baking mold is amazing! There’s absolutely no sticking even when the cake is still hot. Will use it often now to prepare some cute treats for teatime.  In the pictures I’ve made some orange gugl with white chocolate coat.

The recipe is from the book “Kleine Kuchen” from GU (  Click ). It’s one of my favourite cakes since it’s really juicy and aromatic.

I simply took half of the ingredients since I didn’t want to make too many pieces and it turned out really well.

Cheers!

Cheesy frenchtoast coated in bacon

Since I love it to stay in bed very long, I don’t have breakfast . Instead I am preparing some small brunch. Here is a nice recipe for you to try:

Ingredients (for 4 frenchtoasts) :

• two eggs
• 3 slices of toast
• 3 slices of cheese
• 8 slices of bacon
• salt
• pepper
• herbs

1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and season them with salt, pepper and the chopped herbs. You can also season them with paprika or chopped onions. Just add anything you like.
2. Take 2 slices of bacon and place them into a muffin tin to get a nest. Take the cheese and cut it into 4 smaller squares (1 cheese slice = 4 squares; 3 = 12 squares).
3. Cut the toast slices in 4 smaller sqares (1 toast slice = 4 squares; 3= 12 squares). Place one square at the bottom of each bacon nests and press them down. Take a piece of cheese and put it on the bread. Now dunk one of the other bread pieces into the egg mixture, place on top and cover it with cheese. Repeat this with one more time until all your bread squares are gone.
4. Bake the nests by about  200°C for 20-25 minutes. If it’s still too liquid leave it for 5-10min in the oven.

It’s basically frenchtoast with bacon. I guess I saw it on Jamie Olivers FB-Page once (not sure though) and tried it out. =) Very yummy and a nice treat for the next brunch!

Good luck in the kitchen!

Flower Cupcakes

My sister got me a fancy flower backing sheet from Poland and so I just had to try it as soon as possible. I decided to make some cute pink cupcakes with whipped cream.

The recipe is really easy, I simply used my basis cupcake dough and coloured it pink and yellow.

Basic Cupcake dough Ingredients (~24 cupcakes): 4 eggs 1Pk bourbon vanilla sugar 200g cream cheese 325g flour 1Pk baking powder 125g soft unsalted butter 1. Whisk the eggs with the sugar and the vanilla sugar until its creamy. Add the cream cheese mix it until you have a smooth texture. 2. Mix the flour with the baking powder and add it to the cream, whisk until the dough is smooth. Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Fill one spoon of dough in each papercup and bake them for about 20min. Use a toothpick to check if the cupcakes are done. Remove them from the oven, let them cool down and decorate them with frosting.

As I said, this one is just the basic version. You can add whatever you like to make them more fancy. In my case I used only half of the ingridients (since I didn’t want so many cupcakes) and add some foodcolouring. To avoid the yellow part mixing with the red part, I baked the flowercenter first for about 5min. By doing it the yellow dough got a thin skin and won’t mix with the red dough.

After cooling down I cutted them open with a thread since using a knife would deform the flower shape.  What you can’t see on this pciture : I also spread a bit of caramell cream (my mom got it from a random Russian store) before I added the whipped cream. While whipping the cream you should keep in mind not to add so much sugar since the dough is already pretty sweet. If there is no “too sweet” in your vocabulary just put as much sugar as you want.

Put the upper half back on top and you just made your cute flower cupcake.

I really like the soft texture of the cake, it goes really well with the whipped cream. You can also garnish the cupcakes with fresh fruit such as berries or banana slices. I am looking for the strawberry season to re-bake this recipe. I think you can use anyshape you want. What about heart shaped ones? Anyway just try it out.

Kiss and hugs
June

Braunschweig