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!

French Pizza (or “Tarte flambée“) – An Alsatian cooking experience by Shishi

When I fly to Paris, I usually make a stop in Vienna, crash by an old friend of mine called Leni and enjoy the city for a couple of days. We always cook together but this time, as she had to work on her bachelor thesis, I decided to kill two birds with one stone preparing a little motivating something for her and her flatmate and improving my English food vocabulary. I chose to make a “Tarte flambée” (only takes a few minutes ^^) and I tried to translate a recipe my grandmother once told me about.   

Ingredients (for 1 very hungry person or 2 people)

Dough:

~    250 g Flour

-          1 packet dry yeast

-          1 pinch of sugar

-          1 teaspoon of salt

-          Water

Topping:

~    2 cups of crème fraîche 

-          Salt

-          Pepper

-          Nutmeg (optional)

-          Grated cheese (optional)

-          Spinach (or bear's garlic)

-          Feta

-          Cherry tomatoes (or red and green pepper)

-     Actually everything you're in the mood for ;)

Preparation

-       Mix all the dough’s ingredients in a bowl and knead until obtaining a uniform ball. Let the ball rise at a hot spot approx. 20 - 30 min.

-          After this time, roll it very thin and place it on a backing sheet lined with parchment paper.

-          Season the crème fraîche with salt, pepper and nutmeg and coat the dough with the mixture.

-          Spread the grated cheese, the sliced tomatoes, the feta and the spinach on the dough.

-          Bake for around 10/12 minutes in the preheated oven 220-250°C at hot air.

And..... That's the result!! :)

It's quite easy to prepare it, so I hope you'll try it once. Enjoy!!!

Scrumdillitelyumpschous!

It’s been a while, hello again!

Today’s subject, as you might have guessed, is food! To be honest, I have served so much food in my life that I’m not even remotely interested in that subject.

Even though I am a trained chef and I actually really enjoy cooking, I have actually never really enjoyed eating. I don’t really know why, but I have never been that enthusiastic about it. Therefore, food is for me indispensable to life but unfortunately I am not so much into the whole eating business.

Why am I telling you this? Well, I don’t want to post pics of something I just cooked, mainly because I could just google it or look in one of my cookbooks if I would really care to know a recipe. So I decided I am just going to write about how I feel in relation to that whole subject.

When you work seasonal jobs, which I did quite a few years, staff usually gets a free meal every day. For the most part, you will like the food for like a month until you start to have a problem swallowing it. I am not picky at all when it comes to food, I really do eat everything, but it is really hard to keep eating the same shit (excuse my word choice) over and over again, and that’s sadly basically what happens. Off course, a restaurant doesn’t want to spend all their food budget on their staff, therefore it’s basically the waste that you get. It is not that easy to generalize though, since I have gotten such great food in some places, however, it doesn’t vary that often and that’s what makes it so hard to eat. Imagine eating meat for 6 months every day. You just can’t stand the texture anymore in some point (not to mention that a one day old bloody steak warmed up in a microwave just isn’t everyone’s dream). I am neither a vegetarian nor a vegan, but I prefer not eating meat. However, when I am invited somewhere for lunch or dinner, I like not having to say that I am not going to eat something.

One more thing worth mentioning is probably the time. You usually don’t have time to eat. Especially when you work in a restaurant that runs all day. You officially have a lunch break, but most of the time you probably don’t really have one. This is because in the hotel and restaurant industry you are usually understaffed. Because of that none existing time I can proudly announce that I am able to eat a Wiener Schnitzel plus side dish in 5 minutes. What a record!

Happy Easter!

Come Dine with Me - Vegetarian Edition

Hello everybody!

Today I am going to share with you two of my most favourite recipes ever. Since I am a student, nearly all of my favourite dishes are very easy to prepare and do not require any extraordinary ingredients or great cooking skills. I have prepared two different recipes for you, which I have used many times in the past and they have never failed.


Tuna pancakes

Ingredients
1 can of tuna
about ¼ cup onion
1 clove of garlic (optional)
salt
black pepper
1 ts sesame oil (optional)*
1 egg
1 tbs flour
vegetable oil


* This is a Korean recipe, so it requires a few drops of sesame oil. If you do not have it at home, you can replace it with any other oil you like.

Directions

1. Strain out some of the excess liquid of the tuna by using a sieve, a paper towel or your hands and place it in a bowl.

2. Add the chopped onion, minced garlic, the egg, salt, pepper, the sesame oil and the flour to the tuna and mix everything thoroughly. If you have got the feeling that the mixture is not sticky enough yet, you can add some more flour.

3. Heat up your frying pan and add your preferred cooking oil. In my case, I used my beloved peanut oil.

4. Scoop about a spoonful of your tuna mixture and put it in the heated pan. If you distribute the tuna evenly, it should be enough for 6 patties.

5. It is time to turn them over when the bottom is golden brown. The whole process will last about 3- 5 minutes.

6. Transfer the pancakes to a serving plate and serve with rice, salad or potatoes in any way, shape or form. If you use a little more of the mixture per pancake, you can also use it as a vegetarian burger patty.

This is how mine turned out. I personally enjoy my tuna pancakes with some salad and some croquettes. I have also tried them in a burger bun before, but I prefer them plain with some side dishes.  

Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins

This is a recipe that I have been using for many years and I have never followed it very closely. I will give you the whole list of ingredients, but I will give you the instructions for my own, improvised version of it.

Ingredients
2 small apples (can be replaced by any fruit or frozen berries)
250 g of all purpose flour
1 tbs cornstarch (optional)
2 level teaspoonfuls baking powder
½ teaspoon sodium carbonate (optional)
1 packet of lemon peel

1 egg

150 g sugar
100 ml sunflower oil
200 ml buttermilk

30 g raisins

Directions

1. Add the cornstarch, the baking powder, the lemon peel and the sodium carbonate to the flour. I only used the baking powder, so I added that to my flour.

2. Whisk the egg in your big mixing bowl.

3. Add the sugar, the sunflower oil, the buttermilk and your fruit and the raisins to the egg. I did not add any fruit* at that point but I added some vanilla sugar instead. Make sure to add the oil in small portions instead of pouring it in all at once.
*frozen berries are added at a later point in the recipe

When you are finished mixing the batter, it should look similar to this.

4. Add the dry ingredients that you combined together in step one. Like in step 3, do not add the flour in one go. Use a spoon to add smaller portions, so that the batter can mix well. 

5. Put the batter in the paper muffin cases that you have placed in your muffin tray. If you want to make blueberry muffins like me, add the frozen berries now. You might have to push them in a little with the handle of a spoon, since the batter is very thick and creamy.

Tip: Always use two paper muffin cases at once, since one alone does get soaked too easily. Also, try not to overfill the cases - the batter will rise in the oven.

6. Put your tray in the oven for 20-25 minutes at about 347 degrees. You will know that the muffins are ready, when they start to slightly brown around the edges.

Mine turned out very fluffy and moist and my roommates really enjoyed them.

I hope you like my two recipes – if so, leave me a comment, whether you would want to try one of them yourself. I would also appreciate any feedback on how to improve any of the two recipes even further.

Who Am I?

Hello everyone! My name is Stefanie Schauer, I am 21 years old and a person with way too many different hobbies and interests. A day must have at least 48 hours in order for me to be able to embrace all of my favourite activities.

My affection for my two biggest passions already began to show when I was very young. At that time, my family and I lived in a very small house only surrounded by forests and endless maize fields. It was beautiful to look at but sometimes really boring – until we got our first personal computer. Ever since then I spend way too many hours of my weekends either playing games or browsing the Internet. It was around the same time, when I started binge-reading any comic books and novels that I was able to get my hands on.

Here you can see my first attempts at knitting and crocheting,
some cupcakes I made for my niece's birthday party
and my homemade Onigiri.

Nowadays, my hobbies are more varied than that. Besides reading, I also enjoy writing, drawing, painting and doing crafts. Some of the hobbies I recently started are knitting and crocheting easy applications. It may sound like something only your grandma would enjoy, but I found out that it is the perfect activity for me to do while watching my favourite series.


On the weekends, I also love to cook or bake all kinds of confectionery for my family and friends. Lately, I have been trying to extend my cooking abilities by experimenting with different Asian recipes, especially Japanese and Korean ones. Most of the easy ones actually turn out pretty good, like these Japanese Onigiri.

I think that should be enough information about me for now. If you are interested in getting to know more about me, feel free to talk to me any time.