Category Archives: Cake & Pastry

September 8th, 2019

Greta-Garbo-Schnitten

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Currants, Nuts, Sweet starter, Walnut, Wheat 12 Responses

Sometimes questions of readers are timed just perfectly. So when Jasmin asked for a way to reduce yeast amount in my heirloom recipe of Greta-Garbo-Schnitten I told her I would try it right away, as I was planning to bake them for my upcoming birthday anyway. Baking Greta-Garbo-Schnitten has two advantages: They are a delicious favourite of mine and they taste best when baked a week in advance. And the second point goes well together with the fact that my birthday was at the end of a very busy week.

And I adjusted the recipe carefully. Reducing the yeast and adding a bit of sweet starter as preferment. As the recipe contains no big amount of liquid, adding a preferment was tricky. I had to reduce the amount of sour cream. Instead I used a bit of cream fraiche which higher amount of fat balances the reduced over all amount.

The recipe worked like a charm with this adjustments. And it is still one of the most delicious treats in the world!

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July 16th, 2019

Little Lemon Cheesecakes

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: basil, Cake, cream cheese, lemon, White Chocolate 9 Responses

In the (until now) hottest week of this summer we had a barbeque with the colleagues. When we planed this get-together it was still nice and cool and I volunteered to bake a cake. But when the temperature climbed wide above 30°C I was not so enthusiastic about turning my oven on anymore.

I needed something else and so I opted for a “Fridge Cake” with lots of cream cheese, white chocolate and lemon. And this spontaneous cake was liked very much and so I promised to bring my short notes into a proper recipe and publish it on the blog.

But there was no picture and so I had to “bake” it again. I used the chance to fine tune the recipe. One major change is that the cake is prepared in individual servings now. Adding a bit of basil to the lemon curd is another tiny change that makes the recipe even better. And so I like my version 2 even more then version 1 and I’m well prepared for all the warm weather to come!

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February 23rd, 2019

Apple Fritter

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Apple, Cinnamon, fried, Sweet Starter, yeast 12 Responses

Baking fritters is something very typical for this season. And while I have still not much love for celebrating carnival, I like to bake fritters once in a while. These apple fritters were inspired by some left over miniature apples, we used as decoaration for our christmas. After christmas I kept this cute little apples in my open kitchen shelf for because they were to beautiful to eat. But now the started to shrivel and so apple fritter were my new idea for them.

When baking apple fritters you can find two kinds of recipes in Germany: Some are baked with a yeasted dough only, while others use a additional layer of Pâte à Choux to keep the apple piceses fixed in the fritters. I opted for the second variant and choose my favourite Pâte à Choux recipe and a standard yeast dough. From there it was only a short way to a delicious afternoon treat…

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January 19th, 2019

Spelt Panettone

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Candid lemon peel, Orange, Spelt, Sweet starter, Vanilla, wheat free 18 Responses

It is already middle of January, but I still have two Recipes from christmas waiting. The first one is the recipe for a spelt panettone. Baking panettone or pandoro on the 23. December is already a kind of tradtion here at “Hefe und mehr”. In the weeks before, I take intensivly care of my sweet starter to make it especially fit for the task.

As baking Panettone is already nearly a no brainer. And so I was looking for a new challange. Switching from wheat to spelt is definitly more challenging, as kneading the sensitive spelt to full gluten development needs experience. And it is a good idea to check which sort of spelt you use. Different spelt sorts behave differently as their gluten composition differs. For Example if you use Oberkulmer Rotkorn you need to shorten the kneading time compare to Franckenkorn, which I used here. But with these in mind, baking panettone with spelt works very well. Just keep a close eye on the gluten development.

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August 2nd, 2018

Poppy seed–Nut–Rolls

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: almond, Egg, hazelnut, Nuts, only with yeast, Poppy seeds, tonka 9 Responses

Sometimes recipes are just created to use leftovers. This recipe is one of them. I created it spontaneously, when my mother-in-law and me started to sort her baking supply’s last week and found different nuts and poppy seeds a bit past the “best before” date. We checked them and they tasted still fine, so we decided to bake something with them. And while the thermometer outside slowly reached 35°C we kneaded a dough and prepared a filling following a well proven formula.

The rolls turned out very delicious : the moist filling is wrapped inside the fluffy crumb. We enjoyed them at a nice shadowy spot in the garden. A fast and delicious treat on hot day!

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February 9th, 2018

Goldknödel (low fructose)

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Almonds, Biga, fructose low, glucose, Water roux 5 Responses

Goldknödel, the Transylvanian variant of monkey bread, is a all-time family favourite in the extended family. But as we have a genetic deposition for fructose intolerance some family members have to have a close look on their fructose intake. And as my favourite cousin asked for a low fructose Goldknödel for her birthday a work-over was necessary.

The main point was exchanging sugar (saccharose) with glucose. And as I made the experience before that to much glucose will dry the dough, I added a water roux to keep the dough fluffy soft and moist. As my cousin can eat some nuts, I halved the normal amount. Adding some tonka bean helps to replace the missing nut flavour.

And with this few changes on the recipe it results in a cake that tastes nearly indistinguishable with the “normal” variant. If you can not tolerate nuts at all, I would replace it with a teaspoon of cinnamon. That gives the cake a different flavour, but tastes good too.

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December 29th, 2017

Panettone 2017

Category Cake & Pastry, Special Occasions Tags: Butter, Candid lemon peel, Christmas, Egg, Raisins, Sweet starter 29 Responses

I love the Italian Christmas cakes Pandoro and Panettone. And as my sweet Starter is happily active it was no question that I would bake one of this cakes for Christmas eve. And when i found the lovely mini panettone forms for little cakes of 50g each the decision was quickly made. Panettone it would be this year.

My recipe for panettone yields an amount that fits for 3 normal sized cakes or for 30 mini ones. But forming so many minis was a bit to much, even for me and so I went for 2 big and 10 mini Panettone.

I tweaked the recipe a bit, too. I increased the liquid and butter amount but reduced the raisins a bit. The resulting cake was incredible light with a crumb that can easily be shredded into long strands and so tender that it seems to melt in the mouth.

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December 3rd, 2017

Chocolate Panettone

Category Cake & Pastry, Christmas Cookies, Special Occasions Tags: Cacao, Chocolate, Christmas, lemon, Orange, Sweet starter 25 Responses

My plans for the first of advent were somehow different, but as I caught a mean cold I have to spent the day on the sofa instead of baking something delicious for Christmas. The only good thing is that I had enough time to browse through the unpublished recipes. I rediscovered the chocolate panettone I bake last Christmas but never published the recipe.

And so I used the time to publish it now, nearly a year later. It is a delicious twist on the classic recipe which combines the flavours of chocolate and citrus fruits. And just like the “normal” panettone this chocolate version is baked with sweet starter only which adds a delicious deepness to its flavour.

And with this last year’s delicious treat in my mind I begin to dream about what to bake for Christmas this year….

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October 23rd, 2017

Plum cake with separate baked streusel

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Cake, only with yeast, plum, shortcrust, Streusel, yeast 15 Responses

You can scold me for coming up with this recipe now, add the end of plum season. But the cake is too good to vanish for another year in the draft folder and I had to wait to try this idea for to long time. Problem was the freeze during spring that left us nearly no good plums. And so I had to wait for the late plums until baking this cake.

The special twist I longed to try was baking the streusel separately. This helps do avoid soaked streusel and adds a nice crunch to the cake. The cake itself and the streusel recipe as well are old friends you know already. But combined they make a great team. Save the recipe for next year in case you get no plums any more!

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August 23rd, 2017

Spelt Goldknödel

Category Cake & Pastry Tags: Butter, Cream, Flohsamenschale, Nuts, Spelt, Sweet starter, wheat free, wood fired oven 17 Responses

I posted our family favourite cake already some years ago here in the blog. When we have to choose between torte and goldknödel on a birthday celebration, all of us will take a piece of the goldknödel. It is THIS kind of favourite of extended family!

The cake stems from the Transylvanian and Hungarian part of family heritage and is all by it self a rather simple pastry. It is made from a sweet yeast dough which is formed into small balls and coated with warm butter and a mixture of grounded nuts and sugar. While baking in a kugelhopf pan the sugar caramelize and adds another delicious flavour to the aroma of nuts and butter.

A Kugelhopf pan is mandatory for this cake. Wen the Teflon coat of my – rather cheep – pan started to fall apart after ten years of using I decided that I need something longer lasting. And so I bought an ancient brass kugelhopf pan. It has very good baking qualities, is rather everlasting and looks beautiful on my kitchen wall when not in use.

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