Hot, hot, hot!

Hello my lovelies, a damn cold but sunny weekend is over and I was rater productive. Tried some things and started some others, and because they are still work in progress it makes no sense to show them in the early stages. It's more fun when you can see the result, right? 

As mentioned before, weekend is cake time. Saturday I opted for a peach-vanilla-cake, and the vanilla was caused by vanilla sugar and vanilla pudding which had to be added to the dough as powder. Although the taste was awesome I thought there was room for improvement regarding the relation dough:fruit. It wasn't as if you had desert sand in you mouth but the cake definitely needed some whipped cream. If I had to do it again, I would use a baking pan instead of my springform and double the amount of peaches.

I parked the rest in the freezer so I don't have to bake next weekend when I am going to do some travelling. Hubby can simply defreeze in case he wants some cake. 

Saturday evening I made a bacon bomb. Not the high calorie one completely filled with mixed minced meat but with minced beef only and a cauliflower center. Doggies got their fair share and thus were jumping with joy. Have to admit that despite the veggies and the lighter meat the bacon bomb still stayed a calorie bomb. Good that we skipped lunch and did a long walk instead!

And as I put the peach cake in the freezer I had to come up with a compensation. If I ask hubby what he wants, the standard answer is "cheesecake". Well, there were some apples which should be used up, thus I made some baked apples with a kind of cheesecake stuffing. Simply scoop out the apples and sprinkle them with brown sugar and cinnamon. Then mix cream cheese with powdered sugar and vanilla-flavor (just pour vodka over vanilla pods and let that sit for a while) and fill it into the apples. Put some crumbled Spekulatius (traditional German Christmas cookie with a spicy taste like pumpkin pie) on top and bake for 15 minutes. In desperate need of repetition!

Slowly the weather is changing from fall to winter (grey, wet and cold - not very nice) which means: The flu is knocking at the door to come and get us. I like colds and the flu as much as I like German volksmusik and broad beans, and therefore we had to change into anti-flu combat mode. We all know that medicine isn't supposed to be delicious but effective. And if this is true, hubby and I will stay healthy throughout the whole winter, I can tell you... I made ginger shots which were so damn hot that it brought tears to our eyes. Diluted by OJ it is still pretty warming but we don't need a fire extinguisher afterwards anymore :-) To be sure I got it right I did some deeper research but all recipes were rather similar: blend appr. 100 g ginger, an optional apple, juice of three lemons and 100 g honey. Drink a shot of this potion every morning for a few days which will boost your immune system. I pretty much hope so!