Essecke

Monday, 18 March 2019

My son turned already six months old!

Cake for my son's welcome party last autumn.

Brother and sister

Mommy and son.

Spring, Sping...Come already

26.5.18

Oh spring! Can you came already, please. I can't wait to get my hands dirty with plants and flowers. And I'm sure that my daughter is gonna be a great help already. Some smaller bushes are starting to turn green but otherwise it's still quite gray so here are some sunny photos from last summer.

26.5.18

8.6.18

26.6.18

7.8.18

9.10.18

13.10.18

Saturday, 22 December 2018

Busy family life

My, my!!! Quite some time has passed since I last wrote here...have been busy working and making kids. Ha ha haa...well, we do have two kids now. Our son was born this autumn. Mainly due to me being a full time working Mama, I have been ignoring this blog for ages. Now I still have a bit over one month of maternity leave left, so I thought I could try to update this blog a bit.

It's not that I wouldn't be doing things. I'm cooking pretty much everyday and I'm also baking every now and then, specially since my maternity leave started, but I have less time for taking photos and writing things up. Often I have had this blog in my mind and I have even put some recipes to the side with a plan to publish them one day but somehow I never come to it.

I was going through my photo archives and trying to find some photos for the recipes and found some from my daughters birthday. So here are couple of pictures from last summer.

What happened? When did my small Mausi get so big?

Birthday cake for my little two year old. An apricot mousse cake with some sugar fondant decoration. The summer day was so hot that I didn't want to coat the whole cake but keep it fresh instead.

Cookies for the birthday

Animal cookies

200 g butter

2 dl sugar

2 eggs

Zest of one orange + dash of orange juice

4,5 dl all-purpose flour

1,5 dl whole-grain flour

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

1/2 tsp sodium

1/2 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar.

Add eggs while mixing quickly.

Mix the dry ingredients and orange zest together.

Add them to the butter mixture.

Add the orange juice.

Take care not to knead the dough.

Place the dough into a fridge for at least 1 hour.

When the dough had hardened you can roll it and cut our different shape animals with cutters. Bake at 200 C for about 7 min.

Small tartlettes with creme patissiere and lemon curd

Decorated with flowers from our garden

The original recipe for the hedgehog cookies I found somewhere in Internet but unfortunately I don't remember anymore where. All I know is that I did some changes to the recipe to suit better for my purpose. Here is my version:

Hedgehog cookies

75 g butter

35 g confectioners' sugar

1 tsp vanilla sugar

85 g all-purpose flour

85 g ground nuts (I used almonds)

Chocolate for decoration

Sprinkles for decoration

Cream butter and sugars.

Mix the ground nuts and flour together.

Combine everything and mix quick.
Form the hedgehogs and bake at 170 C for about 10 min.

Hedgehogs in the oven

Ready to be finished...

I think they turned out pretty nice

Wednesday, 7 December 2016

Lavendel biscuits

Couple of months ago, when I had my birthday, my neighbours gave me some self dried and wrapped lavendel as a present. Since the it has been sitting in our kitchen corner and trying to tell me I should use it for something. Well, I decided finally to "roll my sleeves up" and do something with that lavendel. I found a nice and easy sounding recipe in Internet on site Ichkoche. After small changes I was ready to try it and it worked out great. Even Hubby who normally doesn't care for lavendel though that the biscuits were good. So guess what I'll give for my neighbour as a christmas present :D

A beautifully packed present I got from my neighbour

Lavendel biscuits

250 g wheat flour

130 g butter

1 egg

130 g sugar

2 tbs (about 2 g) dried lavendel

pinch of salt

for the top

egg wash

dried lavendel

decorating sugar

1. Rub the cold, cubed butter togeter with the flour

and throw in the salt.

2. Place the sugar and the lavendel in the mixer and let run

for couple of minutes until the flowers and sugar

are some what fine.

3. Foam the lavendel sugar with the egg

4. Add the egg foam to the flour mixture

and mix into a dough

5. Let the dough rest in the fridge for about one hour.

6. Roll out the dough and cut out the desired biscuits

7. Brush with the egg wash and sprinke with lavendel

and decorating sugar

8. Bake for about 5 minutes in 200 Celsius.

Biscuits in the oven

Enjoy!

A late afternoon stroll with the Cutie

Sunday, 4 December 2016

Christmas magic in Zürich

Zürich is a lovely christmas destination. I have been there twice inside couple of days. First with Hubby and Cutie and two days later with Cutie, my sister and her friend. My sister was visiting us for one week. During that time she also drove to München for a few days and visited the Christkindlmarkt there. She actually thinks that the christmas makets in Zürich were more enjoyable. I wouldn't know because I have never been to München in christmas time.

We have a tradition that every year shortly before christmas we visit Zürich to enjoy the nice atmosphere. Before we used to go to the moves and have dinner afterwards. All the moves playing in the cinemas close to us were dubbed so the only change to watch any with an original audio was (and probably still is) is to go to Zürich. Last year we even stayed over night. Now, with the Cutie, the movies are obviously out of the question and so are fancy dinners as well. Well, it doesn't matter because we just enjoy the walk around the town, the lovely christmas lights and great foor at the christmas market on the Sechseläutenplatz: Wienachtsdorf. We were there already last year and this year it was even better. There are loads of food in offer like Flammlachs, curries, fancy burgers, peruvian food etc. This is the place to go for a foodie. Here are some pictures to inspire you to visit Zürich.