Sweet, Sweeter, Brownies!

Oookay, I know… it’s Monday already. But to defend myself, I started work really early on Sunday and had to work overtime cause there was just so much to do. That however didn’t keep me from preparing a delicious breakfast for myself. Just had to get up a little earlier 😉

The recipe is from Stephanie’s beautiful blog A Modern Christian Woman. I really enjoy her posts about cooking from scratch and on a budget so be sure to check it out yourself.

My craving for chocolate seems extremely intensified those last couple of days, so what better than to whip up a batch of these?

Dense, sweet, soft and chocolateyyy. Oh and of course incredibly easy to make.

Back to Basics Brownies

{recipe adapted from A Modern Christian Woman}

1 stick butter

12 tablespoons cocoa powder

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 eggs or 4 flax eggs {4 tbsp ground flax seeds with 12 tbsp water}

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

Melt together butter, cocoa and oil until a thick paste. Combine with rest of the ingredients. If using flax eggs, add in a bit of milk or buttermilk for moisture or your dough will not be “brownie-like”. Pour into a greased 9 x 13-inch baking pan lined with foil.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 – 25 minutes until set.

Deliciate!

I did feel a little guilty while indulging in them because they were so full of chocolate flavour 😉

Wishing you a beautiful week!

… from Berlin with Love,

Patricia

DeliS – Strawberry Love

Hello and a wonderful morning to you all!

Beautiful May has almost arrived at our doorstep and so I picked up a pound of delicious, sweet strawberries yesterday 🙂

That’s probably why I love these months so dearly: aspargus, strawberries and rhubarb are finally back in season.

And while I had to seriously limit myself to not eat the whole pound last night, I searched for the perfect strawberry-breakfast recipe.

Now I’m actually sitting on my balcony {the weather feels a lot more like July…} and enjoying this little treat:

Best Strawberry Bread

{adapted from: Taste and Tell}

Ingredients:

{makes one loaf}

1 1/2 cup flour {as usually I use whole spelt flour}

1 ts baking powder

1 pinch of salt

cinnamon

vanilla extract

1/2 cup of sugar

2 eggs

about 1/3 cup cooking oil

1 cup sliced strawberries

Preparation:

Stir together all ingredients except berries until you get a creamy, muffin-like dough. I added oil at last until I had the wished-for texture so I’m not quite sure about the quantity. If you want to use less oil, try adding milk instead to make the dough more fluid.

Then add in strawberries.

Spray loaf pan {10”} with cooking spray or line with parchement paper. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees F for about 40 minutes.

Let cool for about 10 minutes and serve warm.

The combination of the berries and the moist, fluffy bread had me smiling all breakfast long.

Deliciate!

…from the Berlin balcony with Love,

Patricia

прия́тного аппети́та! – Enjoy your meal!

Goood morning everyone, I hope you all slept well. 🙂 Don’t worry I won’t be asking you for your room number and keeping the goodies hidden when you’re not on my list. {guess, work is taking its toll on me ;)}

Today I had a lot of time at hand, so I tried something a bit more elaborate, including my worst enemy: yeast germs.

This recipe is a Russian breakfast goodie and I hope you will enjoy it just as much as I did.

Sweet Apple Rolls

Ingredients

500g flour (about 4 cups)

40g sugar (1/4 cup)

1 pinch salt

20g yeast (or a small package)

1 cup milk (lukewarm)

1/4 cup butter (softened)

1 apple

1 egg yolk

Preparation

Put flour into a large bowl and digg in a small hole in the middle. Add in sugar, salt and the yeast and pour over a bit of  milk. Let sit for about 20 minutes then add rest of milk and butter. Again let sit for 30 minutes. Meanwhile cut apple into cubes.

Knead dough again well and form little rolls while adding a few apple cubes to every roll. Brush beaten egg yolk over rolls. On a baking sheet, lined with parchment paper bake for 15 minutes at 200 degrees celsius (390 degrees F).

Deliciate.

DeliS – Comfort Food in the Form of Banana-Buttermilk Muffins

Living all by yourself is sometimes a rather lonely business, I dare say.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my life in Berlin, my apartment is a charming little place and work and colleagues are really great. Also I don’t have any difficulty entertaining myself. Knitting, crocheting, reading, cooking and being creative keep me pretty busy all the time. I prefer living alone because of my inhumane working-times that might easily disturb others and because I dread dependency.

However, when you wake up on a Sunday morning, knowing you will be locked up at home because of a steady rain all day, you cannot help feeling a little lonely. I miss home. My friends and family, the bustling around, the laughter and the noise. Now the apartment seems too big to be inhabited by just one person. I wish for someone to communicate my thoughts to. Melancholy takes over and I wonder wether I’m doomed to spend life all alone.

That sounds really dramatic but these are the thoughts to cross my mind during such a sunless day. I’m not the person to go out and immediately make friends. My reservedness and my serious looks often leeds people to the prejudice of me being arrogant and proud. Also I don’t talk much in public. Doesn’t seem like it right now, I’m aware of that 😉

So, now on to the actually important part of this post:

My comfort on this cloudy morning were some {very ripe} bananas and a can of buttermilk {close to expiring} which quickly turned into these “sweeties”:

Banana Buttermilk Muffins

{adapted from The little Teochew}

Ingredients {makes about 6 muffins}

100g flour {I used whole-spelt}

30 g sugar

1 1/2 spoon baking powder

1 large ripe banana {mashed}

125 ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk

1 tbsp oil

vanilla extract

Preparation

Simply combine the wet and dry ingredients seperately. Then add the dry to the wet and mix well. Line a muffin sheet with muffin cups and fill in the batter to about 3/4 of the cups.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius.

Let cool and Deliciate.

The original recipe asked for more sugar which I thought it really didn’t need because of the sweet banana. Also I skipped on the egg and it still turned out great. You can also add a little cocoa powder to the batter. A moist, fluffy and an easy-to-make treat for Sundays breakfast or just to indulge inbetween 😉

… from Berlin with Love,

Patricia

DeliS – Time for some Easter goodies

I love Easter {almost as much as Christmas, but pssst!} That might be due to the fact that spring with all the birds, flowers and sun makes me very happy.

I even tried my hand on some homemade Easter decor. Ever tried colouring eggs with red beet juice? No? Definitely a fun experience and an interesting outcome. 🙂

Unfortunately I was not allowed to spend the holidays with my beloved family because I have to work. Of course Hotel business in Berlin gets crazy during the Easter holidays.

So for a bit of consolation and of course to deliciate my Sunday morning anways, I pulled out this recipe for the traditional German Easter wreath. It is made of a sweet yeast dough and supposed to bring health, luck and vitality.

Here you go:

Ingredients

4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 package dried yeast (7g)

1 cup milk

2 eggs

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 ts salt

ground lemon zest

1 beaten egg for glacing {optional}

Preparation

Put flour in a large bowl and dig a hole in the middle. Dissolve yeast in luke-warm milk  {at this point I often kill my yeast germs 😦 } and pour it into the middle of the flour. Sprinkle some sugar over it and let sit for about 5-10 minutes.

Add in 2 eggs, butter, rest of sugar, salt and lemon zest and knead thoroughly. Again cover it and let sit at a warm place for at least 30 minutes. I usually preheat the oven at 120 degrees for 5  minutes, then turn it off and put in the dough. It should grow quite large.

Divide the dough into three parts and form long rolls. Now braid the three rolls together and form a wreath. It would be best to do this right on the baking sheet so don’t have to bother about moving it. Let sit for a few more minutes. If you want you can now brush it with the beaten egg.

Bake at 340 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes.

It is best enjoyed warm with a bit of butter or Nutella 😉 But of course it can be prepared the night before {as I did}. Be sure to eat it quickly because it gets dry after a few days.

I made a smaller one for myself and a large one for my office girls which I filled with homemade chocolate crossies because I find the prices for chocolate eggs ridiculous.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday and Happy Easter! 🙂

from Berlin with Love,

Patricia

Time to confess…

My name is Patricia and I’m terribly addicted to all things sweet and sugary.

And that’s why I cut out all sweets from my diet until Easter. Do I feel better now? No. Not really. Instead I miss chocolate and cake and cookies. But that’s probably normal for the first few days. I do hope though it’ll get easier day by day.

I’ve really been wanting to make healthier choices in eating, cutting out processed foods {That one wasn’t hard. I love cooking and baking :)} and carbs at night  but sometimes it seems just so hard to always worry about things like “Is this right to eat?” “Should I not have left that out?” Always feeling guilty when indulging in something you know is bad for your body and wondering whether you are getting enough nutritions with your foods. I’m not quite sure how to keep myself motivated especially when stumbling across these on the net…

{via}

Blog (Re-) Launch

Hello everyone and a hearty welcome to my new “virtual home” ~ ‘… from Berlin with Love’

I actually started this blog November 2011 but never quite got around to actually to set up the theme and start posting. This will {hopefully} change now.

A huge goal of mine for 2012 was to blog at least once a week and over the year be able increase to three or four times. Not because I think my thoughts are so special to be shared but simply because I love to write and need to practice my English. And who knows ~ maybe there will be something interesting to read for one or another reader…

Things I’ll be posting about will mostly be things that come to my mind while rushing through the busy students-life but also about cooking, diy, decorating, music and books.

So for a start, I’d like to introduce you to one of my favourite cookie recipes:

Black-and-White Cookies

What you’ll need:

• 6 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 lb butter (chilled)
• 2-3 tbsp cocoa powder (or nutella for a super-chocolatey-guilty-feeling-taste)

For the cookies knead together all-purpose flour, sugar and butter until the dough is soft and non-sticky. Divide the dough into half and add 2-3 tablespoons of cocoa to one half, knead again well.

Be creative when creating your cookies. For example I rolled out the dough until about 1 cm thick, then cut into long, thin stripes and form a chess-board pattern. You will end up either with round or square blocks. Wrap them in plastic foil and place in the fridge for at least 45 minutes. Then cut your cookies from the roll. Make sure they are about the same thickness or else some will burn while others are still chewy inside. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and bake them in  pre-heated oven at 360 degrees for about 10 minutes. Take out immediately if the edges start turning dark.

I usually keep half for myself and take the other half to the office or university on Monday mornings. Always starts the week with happy faces 🙂