Smile :)

How can you bring a smile upon someone's face? Right, there are so many possible ways to do so. I decided to bake because yes, I love it and I know that there are other people out there who also have a bit of a sweet tooth and long for something sweet every now and then :)

My best friend moved into her own appartment this week and I thought this to be a wonderful occasion to take out my apron, whisk and all the other useful pieces of equipment and start baking.

Normally I'm not that kind of person who bakes cupcakes. Maybe it's because of my trembling hands or my love of pies. However, this week I overcame my fear of cupcakes and took the challenge. I already tried out this recipe once before about a year ago and therefore knew that the sweet taste would finally make up for all the effort (yes, they were part of my present but I knew that there would be at least one for me ;)).

Do you know this custom of giving bread and salt as a present to someone who has just moved into a new house or appartment? I did this the last time a friend of mine moved, first because I love the wonderful taste that starts filling the air when the bread is still in the oven and second because well, it's your own bread, you know the ingredients and somhow it's something that few people do these days.
Nevertheless, this time I couldn't find the right motivation for baking bread. I was looking for something more special (even though I have to admit that baking your own bread is already special enough these days) - something worthy of a moving-in present. So I decided to bake these cupcakes, Strawberry-Vanilla, yummy.

The frosting was the greatest challenge because my hands always start to tremble exactly when I should really keep them calm. BUT, my intention was not to create perfect cupcakes, I told myself that I would be happy if they tasted great - if you ask me, definitely the most important thing!
The final result didn't even look that bad! When I stood there outside the new appartment with the plate of cupcakes, I wasn't the only person with a huge smile on her face - mission accomplished :-)

Mhhh, apple pie!

Have you got a favourite kind of bakery? Is it something with chocolate? There are so many people who would die for a piece of chocolate (so do I) and love brownies or every other kind of chocolate cake and there's no question about that, I am the first one who can understand a passion for chocolate pie. But have you ever tried a delicious, still a bit warm piece of home-made apple pie? There's a cookbook in our kitchen shelf at home that contains the best recipe for apple pie I've ever found and I guess I may find other recipes but they will never ever reach this one.

Sarah Wiener. Her name is identical with the city this successful woman was born in - Vienna! I have to admit that the recipe for apple pie was the first and only one I tried from her book but it convinced me completely. Every time I look for something to bake and stumble over her cookbook there's no other way, I have to make an apple pie and all the other recipes again have to wait for some day in the future.

The wonderful thing about this recipe is that you don't need many different ingredients, just butter, flour, an egg, sugar, apples and so on - ingredients you either have at home or quickly buy at the supermarket round the corner.  I'm always amazed how these simple ingredients mixed in the right way can create such a delicious pie.

The preparation will need some time but mainly because the shortcrust pastry needs to refrigerate for about half an hour or a bit longer. The rest isn't complicated at all and at the moment you first smell the sweet taste of this apple pie you will know that it was absolutely worth waiting - I  promise you.

So you're getting excited and curious about the recipe? Here it is! :))

Ingredients: 

for the shortcrust pastry:

250 g flour (I always mix whole-wheat flour and plain flour)
125 g cold butter
100 g sugar
1 egg

for the filling: 

800-900 g apples (they can or should be a bit sour)
2 tsp lemon juice 

1 tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp sugar
optional: a handful of raisins

Preparation: 

Sieve the flour onto the worksurface, chop the butter and add them on top of the flour. Add the egg and the sugar and knead the dough until it's smooth. This can take a little time but be careful not to over-work the dough as it will make the pastry tough. When you're finished put the covered dough into the refrigerator. 

For the filling chop the peeled apples into small pieces and immediately sprinkle them with lemon juice and finally add the cinnamon and sugar. While chopping the apples you can already preheat the oven to 180°C because normally it takes some time until they reach the desired heat.

When the 30 minutes are over, take the dough out of the refrigerater and separate it into two parts (about one third and two thirds). Take the bigger part and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough so that it is big enough to cover a pie pan or a normal pan with a removable bottom (if you use such a removable-bottomed pan it will be useful to cover the bottom with parchment paper so that it doesn't stick to the pan later on). You can use a knife to trim the edges of the pastry so that it fits into the pan. 

Cover the pastry with the apples and in case you're a fan of raisins you can add a handful of them to the apples. Finally roll out the second part of the pastry and place it on top of the apples. Press down on the pastry edges and make sure they are properly sealed. If there is any excess pastry you can trim it off with a knife. 

Now it's your turn to realize your creativity. There's always some dough that remains at the end and with this dough you can show how creative you are. You can roll it out and cut out anything you want. As you can see on the photos I cut out some hearts but it's also possible to write something with the dough. There are thousands of possibilities :-) 

Finally prick the surface of the pastry lightly with a gable before placing the pie in the oven and then cook for about 40 minutes.

Well that's it! Before serving you can dust the pie with caster sugar or enjoy it with some vanilla ice cream - it will taste delicious either way!

Lazy Saturday afternoons...

Do you know these days when it is raining throughout the whole day without stopping for even a minute? And do you know these days when there is hardly any sunlight? So even though it is not later than three o’clock you have to turn on the light because otherwise you would not be able to resist the strong desire to just lay down on the sofa, turn on the TV or sleep for about an hour.
 

Yesterday was such a day and trying to keep my eyes open and concentrate on all the things I should do was my biggest challenge. What happened was that a big battle took place in my head. On the one hand I knew that I really had to work and study for university but on the other hand it hardly made any sense. I had been sitting in front of my laptop and had been staring at some Russian exercises for too long without anything happening. So I decided or better realized that it was hopeless to keep trying when all I really wanted was to sleep or read or whatever.
 

Exactly. WHATEVER. You have to know that I have got my own strategies for situations like that one. Watching TV or sleeping would somehow make me feel guilty, especially when I know that I really have to learn.  So what I have figured out over the last years is that baking first and foremost doesn’t cause any feelings of guilt and beside that I absolutely love baking. It makes me forget all the things happening around me (or work waiting for me) and all I do is to concentrate on the different steps of baking a cake or whatever.
 

So the first thing I did after having decided to stop to learn (or at least trying to learn) was to look for a recipe. At the beginning I had absolutely no idea what I was looking for, but suddenly I remembered a recipe that I had tried out about a year ago. It is a yeast pastry, similar to cinnamon rolls but instead of the cinnamon use walnuts (and because there were no walnuts at home I had to improvise and used hazelnuts instead – there’s only a subtle difference in taste). It’s actually a simple recipe but it takes some time because you have to wait for the yeast dough to rise. So it was getting dark outside while I was baking and rolling and so on.

In the end, when I perceived the wonderful smell of my yeast pastry, I knew that spending my whole afternoon with baking instead of learning had been worth it! And the taste of the end result was convincing as well :-)