Marabou Banana Cake

Its been a while since I have baked and I really enjoy it, when I have some time for it. For me it's really a meditative process when I can stand in my kitchen and concentrate on a cake ( or two ).

So I spend my morning with baking until I went to „the late shift“ at the hospital.

I had some really ripe bananas and usually I make smoothies with them, but I couldn't have eaten them all, until they got rotten, so I decided to bake a banana cake.

Tip!

Afterwards a colleague told me that I can cut ripe bananas into pieces and freeze them to use them for smoothies or baking later. I always thought that it's not possible to freeze bananas because they become brown and nasty, but they just get a little mushy which doesn't matter when they get mashed anyway. 

It was the first time I made this cake and it was really delicious. The Muscovado sugar gave it a spicy note and the sour cream made it perfectly spongy.

I usually use dark chocolate in cakes, but at the supermarket I saw the Marabou chocolate, which is one of my favorites, and I couldn't resist.

I only took about half the chocolate plate to put into the cake and melted the rest to decorate.

When you have difficulties to get muscovado sugar, because I know it's for example not known in Germany, you can use some brown sugar or syrup instead.

It can also be difficult to figure out what is similar to sour cream. I used what's called „Saure Sahne“ in Germany, but you could also take “Creme Fraiche”, which is the closest thing in Denmark.

Someday I might make a list of both ingredients and measures from different countries because I often use American or British recipes and always use a lot time to convert the measures.

Marabou Banana Cake

4 eggs (room temperature)

350 g Muscovado sugar

200 g unsalted butter or margarine (room temperature)

2 ripe bananas

2 dl sour cream

350 g all purpose flour

50 g hazelnut flour

1 tsp. Baking Soda

1 tbsp. Baking powder

140 g Marabou chocolate

Preheat oven to 180 °C.

Beat eggs and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the butter and whisk thoroughly.

Mash the bananas, mix them with the sour cream and add to the batter.

Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl and mix into the dough.

Chop the chocolate coarsely and fold into the batter.

Pour into a small baking pan (20x30 cm) greased and lined with baking paper.

Bake at 180 °C for approx 35 minutes or until toothpick comes out dry.

When the cake is completely cooled decorate it with melted Marabou chocolate.

                                                                       Yours AK

Moonblush Tomatoes

I just love these tomatoes, I'm not so good with raw tomatoes but these semi-dried tomatoes are really delicious. I found them in Nigella Lawsons book: „Nigella Express“ , but the recipe is also available on her Homepage.

If you haven't a night or day to make them, it's possible to make them a bit quicker. For that you preheat the oven as told in the recipe, but instead of turning it off when putting the tomatoes in, you dry them on a lower degree. Just be sure to have an eye on them so they don't get baked too much. 
Anyway they are best when they are "Moondried" in the oven over night. I don't know why but maybe it has something to do with the ingredients to get absorbed by the Tomatoes.

The Tomatoes make a perfect topping on salads, that means when there are some left, cause they just disappears very quickly in my kitchen. 

Don't they look , mouthwatering?...maybe I should make some tonight.

Moonblush Tomatoes with Mozarella and Rucola

Salad with Moonblush Tomatoes

Diaper Wedding cake

This Time I didn't bake, but made a cake of diapers. 
It's a wedding gift for a couple who are becoming parents soon. 
The cake is made of 46 diapers and (because I hadn't enough) 2 toilet paper rolls :) 
I choose a green silk ribbon to wrap around and made to lovebirds as cake topper. 
It was my first time to build such a cake, but I will definitely do it another time. It turned out to be very cute, it's easy to do and it's a great gift, for a baby shower as well.

Lovebirds Caketopper

Diaper Wedding Cake

You wanted kissing in the rain....

Today's outfit, fits the rainy weather. I really need some cosy knitwear when it's grey and cold outside. 

     

     Yours AK

Summerdreams

While I am lying sick at home and really wish the summer to come back, I want to share some summer dreaming with you.

This was a small garden barbeque with our small „smokey joe
“. We got delicious Tandoori-chicken with Nigella's New Orleans coleslaw and home-grown peas & carrots, with middle-east inspired yogurt cream.

Mmmm...it tasted mouthwatering and I feel right better when I think of this beautiful summer evening. The autumn has certainly its beautiful sides, but I'm already looking forward to next summer.

Tandoori-chicken

1.5 kg chicken legs

500 g yogurt

½ tbls. grated ginger

3 crushed garlic cloves

2 tsp. ground red pepper

2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. ground coriander

1/4 tsp. ground cloves

freshly ground black pepper

and some fresh Limes

Pour the yogurt into a bowl, add all the spices and mix well. Make 2-3 deep cuts into each chicken-leg, cover the legs with the marinade and rub the marinade into the slits.

Let the chicken marinate for at least 8 hours in the fridge.

Take the chicken out of the fridge and and wipe off the excess marinade

Grill the legs indirectly for 40 minutes and serve with the fresh limes.

Yours AK

Wedding Cake

This was a weddingcake I made for my aunt. The design of the cake was up to me and because they got married in an old mill, I wanted the the cake to have a rustic look. So I spend the hole weekend making theese white chocolate cigars. They didn't turn out perfect, but they wasn't intended to look similar, because that's what makes out the cakes charm.

The cake was made of sponge cake filled with: lemcurd and creamcheese frosting, Wildberriemousse and a Peach-passionfruit cream.

There was a little to much cake, but I think a wedding cake must at least be 3-tiered.