An easy chocolate cake recipe with a twist

Students are interesting creatures. Even though each and every one of us adores the cakes and cookies our mom makes at home, once we say goodbye and start living the college life we tend to live off of cup ramen and McDonalds. And when we decide to do some home cooking, we stick to the simplest of recipes.

So, what do we get when we combine a chocolate craving, a student on a budget and general laziness? The best chocolate recipe ever! The catch? You only need two ingredients.

First things first. You will need a kitchen. Got it? Great. Now, go put on your apron and find that cooking hat because we are going for a ride.

Ingredients:

      -  5.8 oz. Unsweetened chocolate

     - 3 Eggs

That’s all you need.

  1. Break the chocolate bars into little pieces, then melt the chunks over hot water (you can also use the microwave for that, but using water look more fancy (plus, you can make tea out of it).

2.  

  2. While the chocolate is melting, crack and separate the eggs into whites and yolks. Get your electric hand whisk and beat the egg whites until fluffy. You can test the fluffiness of the egg whites by turning the bowl upside down. Just be careful, and make sure to keep extra eggs at hand in case you mess up.

3. Preheat the oven to 350° F

4. By now the chocolate should be nice and creamy so let it cool down for a minute or two before adding the yolks. Mix them together and you’re almost done.

5. Start adding the beaten eggs whites into the mixture while stirring. Do not use an electric whisk, because the batter won’t stay fluffy and the cake won’t rise.

 

 6. Pop it into the oven for 30-40 minutes. If you are not sure you can always check if the cake is ready by piercing it with a toothpick.

And voila, your very own cake is ready to be enjoyed. Just let it cool down and sprinkle some powdered sugar over it.

Chocolate-Banana Pancakes without measuring scales!

When I tried to find something to blog about I thought I could try something unique and crazy. Since I love chocolate and I wanted to have a sweet meal, I tried out pancakes. I collected several recipes for pancakes and made my own recipe. The only difference is that the recipe is completely made without measuring scales! It is super easy to make and tastes wonderful. 

You should have most of the ingredients already at home. The amount will serve 2 people. This will make about 6-7 pancakes. Do not underestimate that little amount, it fills a lot!


Ingredients:

Dough:
Milk, Cake Flour, Butter, 1 Egg, 1 pg. Baking Powder, 4 pgs. Vanilla Sugar, Salt

Additional:
2 Bananas, Chocolate Sauce, Whipped Cream

Instructions:

Step 1: First fill a normal sized cup with cake flour and add it into a large bowl. Add the vanilla sugar, baking powder and a half teaspoon salt to it. Mix it until you have a consistency like on the picture without lumps. Create a cradle in the middle.

Step 2: Break the egg into a small bowl. Stir it with a whisk until it has a creamy consistency. Melt 3 teaspoons of butter in the microwave or a pan and add it to the egg. Then add 1 cup of milk to it and stir well. 

Step 3: Now place a medium sized pan onto your oven and turn the heat to 3-4. While the pan is heating up you can prepare the bananas and the plates and finish the dough. Cut the bananas into slices. Add the egg-milk-butter mixture to the dough. Now take a wooden spoon and mix the mixture and the dough with an up and down movement (a little like an 8-roatioan). 

Step 4: When the dough is ready and the pan is heated up, take a crested trowel to portion your pancakes and place it into the bowl. Put a small amount of butter into the pan and coat it. Now it's time for the first pancake. Take half of the crested trowel filled with dough and slowly put it into the pan. Slightly spread it from the middle. Wait 10 seconds (it really depends on your oven if it's ready to flip or not) and poke it with a spatula on the edge. If the dough doesn't stick to it then it's ready to flip. Wait another 10-15 seconds and your first pancake is done.

 

Step 5: Place your pancakes onto a big plate. Now take one and place it onto the plate you want to serve them on. Add bananas and chocolate sauce on top of it. Take another pancake and repeat until you have 3 pancakes on the plate. Now finish your pyramid with chocolate sauce and surround them with whipped cream. Now your delicious dessert is ready to be eaten!

Chocolate Cupcakes - Chocolicious!

Hello everybody! Since I wrote about cupcakes for the food magazine I thought that it would be nice if I show you how to make some on your own. Therefore I baked the dough yesterday and mixed the cream for the topping today. Read on to find out more about the recipe. This recipe is for 20 cupcakes.

Ingredients:

Ingredients for the mixture

·         Mixture:

o   1 packet of baking powder

o   4 eggs

o   1 tablespoon of cocoa powder

o   130 ml of oil

o   170 g of icing sugar

o   130 ml of lukewarm water

o   270 g of wheat flour

o   1 ½ grated lemon peel

  

·         Cream:

o   75 g butter

o   180 g whipping cream

o   120g cooking chocolate

o   50 g of icing sugar

o   125 g quark (20% grease)

o   250 g mascarpone

o   As much extra icing sugar as you like ;)

At first mix the flour and the baking powder in a bowl. Mix the eggs in another dish until they get quite frothy. Slowly add the water and oil to the eggs. Then carefully trickle the flour to the mass. Now add the cocoa powder, the grated lemon peel and 170 g of the icing sugar. Afterwards mix the batter with a hand mixer on the lowest speed.

Line a 12 bun muffin tin with muffin cases and carefully pour the batter into the hollows. Fill the mixture into the paper cases until they are half full. Now bake it at a temperature of 180°C (upper and bottom heat) in a preheated oven. Bake it about 40 minutes, and then let them cool down.

While the cupcakes are baking you can start with the cream for the topping. Melt the butter in a pot at low temperature. Then add the chocolate and also wait until it melts. Let it cool down by putting the pot into the sink filled with cold water. Now whip the cream until it gets stiff and add the cooled down chocolate with the butter and 50 g of icing sugar to the cream and mix it well. Place the mass in the refrigerator until the muffins are ready and cooled down.

Now mix the quark, the mascarpone and the icing sugar with a hand mixer, but only for about 5 seconds. Add the mass from the refrigerator and mix it until the consistency becomes smooth and thick. Fill it into a piping bag and top your muffins with it. At last, just decorate your cupcakes as you wish. Voilà!

Have fun and don’t forget to share your cupcakes with your family and friends! -J

Baking gone wrong...

So my friends and I have been planning on baking something together for quite some time now, and now that the holidays started we could finally find the time to do so. Since we are quite inexperienced when it comes to baking, we wanted to start off with something rather simple. Luckily, we’re not really hard to please when it comes to sweet stuff and we didn’t really care about what we’re gonna bake as long as there’s chocolate in it. After doing some research we decided on something that sounded just as good as it looked: a nutella-flower.

how it's suppposed to look like

Looks amazing, right? If you’d like to give this beauty a try, just keep on reading. But be warned: it doesn’t taste as sweet and chocolaty as you would expect.

Ingredients

450g flour

180 ml milk

70g sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons dry yeast

40g butter

a pinch of salt

1 cup nutella

Directions

1. Tepefy the milk, mix it with the dry yeast and let it sit for a couple of minutes. In the meantime, melt the butter and blend it with the flour, the sugar and the eggs. Then combine all those ingredients. Finally, add a pinch of salt and start kneading the dough until smooth.
2. Now separate the dough in four equal-sized parts. Roll one of them into a circle and cover it with a thin layer of nutella. Make sure you heat the chocolate first, that way it’s much easier to spread it on the dough. And: try not to eat all of it before you’re done (I know it’s hard - it looks so delicious!).
3. Repeat the process with the other three parts of the dough.
4. When you’re done, cover the cake with a round cake tin and cut the excess dough off to create a nice circle.
5. Put a glass in the middle of the cake - the inner part should stay as it is. Divide the outside into 16 equal-sized stripes by cutting the dough from the glass all the way to the edge.
6. Take a pair of these stripes and twist them in opposite directions. Repeat this process with all the stripes.
7. Let it rest for an hour, then bake it at 175°C for about 30 minutes.

Unfortunately, my friends and I failed miserably. I guess the most difficult part was step 6. It’s hard to keep the nutella from pouring out, so when we were done it was smeared all over the place, making our flower look really messy. Our version of the beautiful, bloomed flower from the internet looked more like a flower that has already started withering. Well, at least we had fun. ;)

our messed up version of a nutella-flower 

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs

Hello my dear fellow students!

As you know, Easter and the eating-sessions at home are coming soon and so I was searching for some recipes I can share with you. Unfortunately I didn’t find a recipe but a friend of mine did. She sent it to me and I changed it a bit. So, here you go…

Cheesecake Filled Chocolate Easter Eggs

Ingredients:

You will need 7-8 kinder surprise chocolate eggs (I bought them at my local grocery store)

Cream

150 g         cream cheese, softened
30 g           icing sugar, sifted
1/2 tsp       lemon juice (I put some in, but it doesn’t go with rum)
1/2 tsp       rum
125 ml        thickened/heavy whipping cream

Yolk

2                peach halves

1/2 tbsp     apricot jam

15 g           unsalted butter

Preparation:

Chocolate Eggs and Cream Cheese Filling

 

1. First you need to cut the top of every chocolate egg off – be careful. 
2. You can either heat the knife under warm water to cut it off easier or let it be and having jagged edges, it's up to you
3. Place the eggs in the fridge while you prepare the filling – I used a refrigerator egg tray
4. Take a big bowl and place the cream cheese, icing sugar, lemon juice and rum into it
5. Beat on high until the mixture is smooth and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes
6. Set the bowl aside
7. Take another bowl and carefully whip the thickened cream to stiff peaks
8. Use a whisk to combine the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture until it’s smooth
9. Spoon or pipe the mixture into the chocolate eggs – set them aside for at least 30 minutes

Fruit sauce

1. Mash the peaches
2. Place the mashed peaches, apricot jam and butter in a small saucepan
3. Gently heat on low, whisking until the butter melts and the mixture is smooth
4. Remove from heat and let it cool
5. Place in the fridge until it thickens slightly
6. Filling in the sauce
7. Use a small spoon to scoop out a hole in the centre of each cheesecake –  1 cm deep and wide
8. Fill the hole with some of the peach sauce and return the eggs to the fridge for about 30 mins
9. Remove eggs from the fridge about 10 minutes before serving

This is a really light and easy-making dessert you can serve after a big meal. Give it a try and enjoy the pictures below! :)

 

You say heaven, I say chocolate.. or Schokolade?

Hello dear readers, students, teachers... Hello, Hello.

This week's blog post topic "Do you speak food?" glided me into the rivers of a specific and special substance. A substance that makes your heart leap for deep and endless joy. This joy is called TAM TAMMM... chocolate/ Schokolade.

My year abroad in Albuquerque was an enrichment to mind,soul and heart in many ways. It opened my eyes to a lot of matters. One of these were that chocolate and Schokolade are not the same thing at all. I am not saying that one tastes better than the other, but they sure taste very differently.

So what are some typical American chocolate sensations?

1) Hershey products
Hershey's Bar aka "The Great American Chocolate Bar"

Not a fan I must say. It tastes like eating 90% sugar with a teeny tiny pinch of cocoa.

                                       
Reese's... Amen.

Easy mathematics I would say: Peanut butter + Chocolate = BOOOOMMWAAO Explosion of taste nerves. The only sad thing about this chocolate is, that I can not find it anywhere in Germany nor Austria. There are all these 100% American Chocolate Chip Chup Chop Cookies, but where the heck are they hiding the good old Reese's? Where?

Kitkat

Kitkat in America tastes intensely unlike the European version of its "twin". The American version produced by Hershey and the European version produced by the Swiss company Nestlé use different kinds of ingredients and proportions for their KitKat product. The sugar, cocoa and fat proportions are not alike, as well as the country from which the cocoa beans are delivered. In my opinion, Nestlé's Kitkat tastes creamier and a lot better. But everybody has their own taste and preferences. 

                                            

 2) Mars products
Snickers, Mars, Bounty etc.

Hello, Hello. These chocolate products are always warmly welcomed in my sweet home. Without them it would not be as sweet. When I was thirteen I only loved the Mars bars, with fifteen I started obsessing about Bounty, now I can not help myself with Snickers. Globalization has its sweet sides to it.

                                     
 And guess what, you're not you when you're hungry.

 

Love this commercial! ... and Liza Minnelli of course :D

Now moving on to the typical German Schokoladen sensations...

1) Milka

Milka is a must. With its main production in Germany, Lörrach, I count it as a German chocolate. 
So let us have some Milka talk...If you are an explorer kind of type, then you can go on exploring Milka's flavors until death do you two part. For the ones who love it fruity and with more vitamins take the one mixed with strawberries, raspberries, bananas, oranges etc. For the ones who love it classy take the original whole milk or bittersweet one. You like Oreo's? Well, you will adore Milka Oreo.

 

  
If I ever find you, purple-white cow, I will stand by your side for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. I will trust you and respect you, laugh with you and cry with you, loving you faithfully through good times and bad.

Milka awakens the romantic side in everyone....








2) Ritter Sport
 
Three words eight letters (+1) Yum Yum Yum. Ritter Sport chocolate tastes amazing! Caramel, Nut, Flakes, White+Crisp, Espresso, Grapes+Nuts, White+Nuts, Half-bitter, Rum+Grapes+Nuts, Marzipan, Strawberry+Yogurt, Nougat, Peppermint, Noisette and so on and so forth. I won't go on... Too much eroticism in one post. 

  
                           
                               

:D Can't wait for these to come:




À la finnnnn....

Chocolate and Schokolade, two different taste sensations, which both should be experienced. In my experience, a lot of my German friends went crazy over Reese's (me included), and my friends from America went luuunnatic over Milka, Kinderschokolade and especially Kinder Überraschungseier (which I now found out are illegal in America...Opps). If you ever spend a semester in America and want to have lots of back massages, take some Schokolade from home and start dealing. My back was never more relaxed than back in 'Merica.

Thank you for your attention and you are very welcome for the eye canddyyy.