Cake Crown – Hefekranz

This is halfway between a cake and a sweet bread, depending on your tastes. In Southern Germany you serve it with coffee and tea in the afternoon, sometimes with butter (unsalted) and jam. It’s delicious whatever the occasion, especially around Easter, when yeast-based breads are everywhere. For the cake in the pictures I used Hagelzucker, which…

Diary of an Expat

Technically I am more of an ‘inpat’, as I am a German citizen who lives in the UK, rather than a British citizen living abroad. The struggles are roughly identical: just like the Brits in Spain who seem to be forever complaining about the low quality of the fish and chips, I feel similarly disheartened when…

Delicious Minicakes in Jars

German cake recipes tend to use rather big cake tins (usually 26 cm), which means that you end up with pastry and fillings should you try and use the more common 8” or 9” tins. Rather than adjusting the measurements to the tin (2.6 eggs anyone?) I use a jam jar or two, oiled and…

Sourdough Bread

Once you have a sourdough starter, you can think about making a loaf. In order to make your starter last you will need to double it, which is called the levain and takes roughly 8 hours. Then you put half of it away as a future starter and use the rest to make your bread. Levain (10 mins…

Sourdough Starter

How better to start this blog than with sourdough starter. If you haven’t eaten sourdough bread yet you have been missing a treat: it’s chewy, has a slightly sour taste and keeps for longer than your average loaf. Although making the bread doesn’t take that long, in order to do so you need a starter, which takes…