Lemon Drizzle Cake

This is an easy lemony cake and many recipes are found on different websites. I wanted to prepare a cake from Mary Berry, but these cakes were all traybakes. I was looking for a different kind of cake.
I found something on the SortedFood website and changed it a little bit.

I gave the recipe to my coworker and received slices of baked cake in the morning. She baked it for Mother´s Day and her mother liked the cake a lot and kept some for the next day too.

It tastes fresh and keeps moist a couple of days. --- If the cake last that long!

recipe:
2 lemons
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup whole milk
120 g butter
2 large free range eggs
250 g powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Get the zest off one lemon and toss it in a large bowl with butter and 1 cup of sugar. Beat that until creamy.
Add flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and make the batter.
Use a standart rectangular box form and butter and flour it.
Get the batter in and bake it for 1 hour.
Juice the zested lemon and mix it with the 1/2 cup of sugar in a small pot and let it dissolve on low heat. Cool down.
When the cake is done, get it out of the mould and with a toothpick make some holes on the top.

Drizzle the lemon juice on top.Cool it down completely.
Juice the 2 lemon and mix it with the powdered sugar to make the glaze.

Nutella Muffins witn Blueberries

At the office we have a communal kitchen with 2 fridges. A couple of years ago we decided on a monthly cleaning list were all users took part once a year. After this is in  motion for quite a while now, first the fridge is a lot cleaner and not so many spoiled food is stuck there.

But often the ones on the list forget their monthly duty and lets say only 7 out of 15 are really taking care of it. The first thing is to throw all things out that are long overdue. And sometimes there are goods in with a long shelf life, but taken there for a special event and forgotten.
Such as 3 bottles of a good bubbly wine. Six of us emptied the first one on Friday.Great Job!

A jar of organic hazelnut chocolate spread was from our last after Christmas breakfast, open and a couple of spoons out. Still in great condition. My roomie at the office was cleaning the fridge and came back with the jar - aka Nutella- and gave it to me. You are baking and cooking often, just use it up, she said. It was to expensive just to throw it into the waste bin.

recipe for 14 muffins:
100 g Nutella
40 g sugar
80 g soft unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
3 large free range eggs
100 ml milk
20 ml egg liqueur
300 g flour4
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk chocolate chips
42 blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200 C.
In one bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate chips
In a larger bowl combine the other ingredients except the bluebs and make a smooth foamy liquid with an electric whisk.
Use a spatula and get the dry ingredients in. Use paper cups and a muffin tin and spoon the batter in.
Push the blueberries on top into the batter.
Bake for 25 min  until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

Berlin boiled pork knuckle with sauerkraut

During the week in Berlin, there was no time to try all the specialities of the City.

Berlin Eisbein or pork knuckle is served in old school Family Restaurants. We had no time to look for one.

But there is no problem just to try it at home. I bought a hind leg at my favourite butcher shop in the morning. The preparation itself is not such a hassle, it just takes a bit of time to cook.

Traditional the huge piece of pork is served with Sauerkraut and some Peas, mashed or otherwise.

recipe for 2:
1 pork knuckle About 1,4-1,5 kg
1 onion unpeeled
1 spring onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
Fresh lovage, rosemary, parsley, tarragon
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
4 juniper berries
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp salt

Bring the ingredients to a boil in a huge pot and then reduce the heat and cook for 2 Hours.
Take off the skin and most of the fat.
Serve with peas and sauerkraut and mustard.

Keep the broth and use it to make a pea soup with it and some leftover pork meat.

Asparagus Salad with egg based dressing

We are on a Holiday in an asparagus area , the Mark Brandenburg. The sand box of Germany. Asparagus is a crop that grows here very well.

I made a salad. At the supermarket I bought a couple of fresh goods and some herbs like wild garlic leaves and dill. A bunch of red radishes and a box of greens.
I boiled some eggs and used the hard boiled egg yolk for the base of the sauce, that made it very creamy.

When I cook white asparagus, I cook the peel and offcuts first with some salt and sugar. After 10 min I get that out and discard it. Then the stalks go in and cook. A knob of butter gives the water an intensive taste. That is a good way to counteract the loss of flavour from the asparagus during cooking. The water already is saturated.

recipe for 4:
600 g asparagus
3 hard boiled eggs
40 g wild garlic leaves
20 g dill
6 cherry tomatoes
125 g baby green salad leaves
1/2 cucumber
8 red radishes
2 tbsp olive oil
6 tbsp asparagus water
1 lime
salt
pepper
paprika
sugar

Prepare the asparagus and cut it into bite size chunks. Cook the way as I cook it.
Save some  hot asparagus water.
Boil the eggs
Use 2 egg yolks and  mix them with oil and asparagus water to a creamy consistency. Add lime juice, spices and a dash of sugar.
Thinly slice the cucumber and the radishes on a grater, mix them with salt and let them sit for 10 min. Drain.
Chop the herbs and quarter the tomatoes. Bring everything together and mix with the dressing.

Spanish Omlette or Tortilla

Sunday Evening after a long sightseeing trip through Berlin, we were hungry and all the shops were closed.  The day before when we arrived we went to a Supermarket in our neighborhood and did the first shopping. We knew what to eat that night but nobody made some suggestions what to eat the next night. We shopped a bag of potatoes, onions and garlic and a dozen eggs. Together with the olive oil in the shopping cart, that was the dinner for the next night.
I did not say anything to my friends, just loaded up the cart.

Sunday afternoon the question of what to eat at dinner came up. We haven´t bought anything!
Wrong, we have all what we need at the apartment.

 

recipe for 4:
800 g salad potatoes
250 g mixed onions (red, white, yellow and spring onions)
3 cloves of garlic
6 eggs
3 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper, paprika

Peel the potatoes and slice them evenly. Peel the onions and slice them into strips, not rings.
Crush the garlic and chop it. Use a wide pan that is oven save.

Cook the potatoe slices for 8 min, then drain.
Heat up the oil in the pan and heat up the grill of your oven to 180 C.

Cook the onion mix with the garlic for 10 to 15 min, then add the potatoes.
Now let them cook together until the potatoes are almost tender.
Pour the beaten and seasoned eggs on top and let them get all over the potatoes. Reduce the heat to medium low and let the eggs set.

Now place the pan under the grill for 5.min until the eggs on top are set too.
Place on a cutting board to serve.

Block House at Bikini Berlin

Our last night in Berlin we went out to have some steaks.

There are a couple of restaurant chains that serve steaks. I decided to try the Block House Steak House. This one is located at the famous Movie theatre Zoopalast, where the movie premieres are taking place.
Next to it is Bikini Berlin, a long stretched building with shopping and dining.
A reservation on a Friday night is important.

When we arrived at our reservation time, the restaurant was full. But we had a nice table directly at the window looking out at Breitscheidplatz.
The nice wait stuff was coming and we ordered our beverages. They came very quick.

I ordered a rib eye steak with baked potato and sour cream, garlic bread and a bowl of salad. This was a set menu.

The quality of the beef was very good. That tells me something, because I always order my steaks medium to well done. I hate rare or bloody beef. The meat was tender and juicy.
The mixed salad came as a starter. A wait person made them fresh at a huge salad counter. They serve them with the standard dressings of American, French, Italian and so on.
Fir a little extra charge, you could switch the salad to a Caprese with buffalo mozzarella.

The baked potato with sour cream had an extra helping of sour cream in a bowl. That was good, because the potato was huge.

A good evening meal in a chain restaurant.

Young Herring as a Berlin Specialty

Matjes are these herrings called that are not yet ready to spawn. In spring they are a delicassy.

I made a boats tour around the river Spree and the Landwehr canal for 3,5 Hours and Food and Drink was to buy on the boat. It was the first of May and a Holiday in Germany.
The boat was half full by a capacity of 290 passengers.

We started at 10:30 and had a Pharisee hot coffee first. This coffee is a speciality of the North of Germany and it comes by it´s name from a funny story.
The group of people who went to a funeral assembled later for coffee and cake. The priest was taking part.
The coffee was served with a good amount of whipping cream on top.
During the time of the afternoon the people got funnier and laughing a lot. The priest got suspicious and took one of the cups that were drunk from the people around him. He detected rum.
He called the people Pharisee.
That is were the coffee with rum and cream has his name from.

A beer mix is well known in Berlin and only drunk here. It is a light beer that is served with syrup, either raspberry or woudruff.

Food later was a dish with the young herring on top of a mix of apple, onions in sour cream.
Hash Browns are a good side to this dish. Very tasty.