Monthly Archives: February 2013

February 25th, 2013

Chocolate Pear Tarte

Birnen-Schoko-Tarte

When I saw the pears in our fruit basket I had the Idea of baking a pear tart. In my recipe folder in Zotero I found the Birnentarte mit Mascarpone from Chaosqueen.  The tarte sounds very delicious but Mascarpone is nothing you will find normally in our fridge. Chocolate  on the other hand you can find nearly always in my baking cupboard. And so I checked the internet for a recipe. On Confessions of a tart I found a delicious looking recipe, a Chocolate Pear Tart.

I was to lazy to convert cup to gramm and so I decided to use one of my short crust recipe, and when I cooked the pears I followed my own directions, too. But for the chocolate filling I read the recipe attentively.

While the Tarte was baking the whole kitchen was filled with a seductive smell, and the still warm Tarte for our “Kaffeetrinken” was very delicious!

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February 17th, 2013

Flake rolls

Flockenbrötchen

At winter mornings when one look out of the window make me shiver I need something warm and filling before I go out in the dark and cold morning to catch my train. A porridge made with rolled oats is easily made and a favourite winter breakfast since my childhood. Sometimes I buy a rolled grain mix instead of rolled oats to have a variation for breakfast. This grain mix contains rolled oats, wheat, barley, rye and spelt and is very delicious.

One morning I decided that I could add some porridge into a bread dough, too. And so I made some overnight rolls with rolled grains and porridge. The roll stay nicely moist but the dough was easily to handle, too.

For baking the rolls I used the same trick as for my “normal” rolls: I placed the rolls together with a small oven proof bowl on a baking tray, filled the bowl with boiling water and covered them with a second baking tray. The steam is trapped between the baking sheets what improved the oven spring quite nicely. It is similar to baking a bread in a dutch oven. After half of the baking time I removed the cover and the bowl.

With this trick the rolls turned out great. A soft crumb with a crunchy crust, a complex flavour due to the long rise over night which underlines the nutty taste of the rolled grains.

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February 16th, 2013

Food-o-grafie # 1

Food-o-graphie (5)

Zorra has revitalized her Food-o-grafie event. A good Idea, because I love to look behind the curtains and see how other food blogger take their pictures. In the first event, Zorra asked us to tell a little bit about our camera and if we bought them especially for blogging.

For me, taking pictures is as naturally as breathing. I grow up with cameras around me because my father is a amateur photographer. My first camera was a christmas present for my sister and me. It was a Olympus compact camera – of course it was an analog film camera . I think I was around 10 years then and I used this camera for a long time. When I started at university I bought my first digital camera, a little HP, no Zoom but with 2 MP resolution. Today any mobile has a better resolution, but 10 years ago it was state of the art! But soon I wanted more, a better resolution and a Zoom. And so I bought my Kodak Z740 in 2005. I take the first pictures on this blog with this camera. But then the prices for digital SLRs started to drop and 2009 I saved enough from my salary as Ph.d-Student to buy the camera I’m using since then as a birthday present to myself:

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February 12th, 2013

Spent Grain Flour

TrebermehlIf you, like me, do not like to waste food, then you too has to think sometimes about recipes to use leftovers or byproducts. Such a byproduct is the spent grain, a leftover from our homebrewing. I added a part of it directly to a bread and dried the remaining spent grain overnight in the oven. I found this great idea on this site.

During the night a delicious malt odour filled our flat and spent grain was compeltely dry. Milling with my home mill was easy. I got a slightly coarse flour with a slightly sweet malt taste. Its taste reminds me strongly of roasted grain “coffee”. I think it will make a great substitution for bread and rolls or whole grain cookies or even for the dough of a quiche. And beeing figh fibere (50%) and high protein (23%) makes it a healthy substitution, too.

Another interesting point for me is the fact that 1.5 kg malt yields only 500g Spent Grain Flour. That means that about 1 kg starch is converted to sugar during the mashing process. Now that it does not amaze me any longer that the wurt was so sticky.

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February 11th, 2013

Spent Grain Bread

Treberbrot

Since I gave my boyfriend a home brewer set as birthday present, we learning how to brew beer. For our first try we used the beer kit that came with the set, which is malt extract with hop extract. Nice for the start, but it reminds us of cooking with packaged mixes. That’s not what we want, we want the real adventure.

And so we started a second try using real malt and hop. After mashing – the break down of the starch to sugar in the malt – we had the spent grains as byproduct. Our recipe mentioned that this spent grains can be fed to chickens or cattle or that it can used for bread baking.

It can be used for baking bread? Pass me the sourdough, sweetheart…

The Spent grain bread has a compact and moist crumb and if I would not know that I added some all-purpose flour, I would thought it is a whole grain bread. It is a hearty loaf with the aroma of sourdough and the spices I used. The spent grains add a nutty taste. It goes very well with some strong cheese.

And what am I doing with the remaining spend grain? It is drying in the oven right now, I want to test milling it into flour…

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February 3rd, 2013

Pommes Duchess

Herzoginkartoffeln

I complained here about my piping bag with which piping always was a pain.The Christkind seems to read my blog, too and so I found a new, strong one with nice tips under the christmas tree.

And so I needed a niece recipe for the first test of the new piping bag. After thinking about it for a while I remembered that we had not had Pommes Duchess for quite some time because piping needed always a lot of time and strength.

And so I boiled some potatoes, mashed them and mixed the mash with egg.

Drum whirl, entry of the new piping bag…

Before I could realize it, all of the pommes duchess were piped, perfectly easy and fast. And once again the saying proofed true that good tools make your life easier. Thank you, dear Christkind for this great present!

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