Waiting for spring

I don't know how you feel, but I'm waiting for Spring to come. As much as I love Christmas, but  during February at latest I get the feeling that I have had enough of the darkness (which even candles can't change :) ). Normally Tim and I fly away during March to escape from winter but as I have started my new job I can't. Tim will fly to the Canary Islands mid of March, but I will stay here. I guess that's the reason why I wait for Spring to come even more this year….

Photo: agnesmatre

Saffron cardamom bun - Leif Mannerström's recipe

This weekend I've been longing for something with saffron and cardamom and I found a recipe from Leif Mannerström, who is a famous chef in Sweden with these 2 ingredients. So I had to try these :)

100 g butter
1 g saffran
5 dl milk
50 g yeast
250 g curd cheese
2.25 dl sugar
1 msk cardamom
0.5 tsk salt
1.5 l flour

1 egg

Melt the butter and add the milk. Pour mixture into mixing bowl and allow to cool until “finger-warm” (still quite warm, but just cool enough to touch). Stir in yeast and let sit for 10 minutes. Add sugar, salt, curd cheese, cardamom and saffron.

Mix 7 dl flour into liquid. Add enough of the remaining flour to form a soft dough (just until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Don't add too much flour as the dough gets dry). Put the dough to a large bowl and cover it with a clean towel and allow to rise until doubled, approx. 1 hour.

Take the dough after 1 hour and knead two or three times on a floured surface. Take small handfuls of dough and roll into buns. Place on a baking sheet that is covered with a backing paper and cover with the towel again, and let rise until doubled (approx. 1 hour).

Brush buns with beaten egg, and bake in preheated 225 °C oven about 6-8 minutes, just until brown.

Hope you like it too!

Kram,

Isabell

Tidy up!

After this long winter and darkness, we had a real spring day here in Munich today. The sun was shining and Tim and I went for a long walk. I've worked from morning till evening this week and when I left in the morning it was still dark and when I left the office it was already dark again. So you can imagine how good it was to feel the sun today. When I came back I suddenly felt I need to tidy up the apartment (I blame it on the sudden energy from the sun ;) ). But what I recognized is that our bed linen always looks so wrinkled, no matter how hard I try to make it look good. I've decided to buy a bedspread which will make that the bed will always look perfect with just a little effort :).

Photo: H & M

Looking forward to showing you the pictures!

Kram,

Isabell

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins receipe

When I was in Texas I've had a lemon Poppy Seed Muffin every morning together with a cup of coffee. I miss that very much now, these were very good! So I'm currently trying to get a good receipe for it, I found one from Leila Lindholm, which I would like to try this weekend.

Photo: photobucket

These are the ingredients:

3 eggs
200 gr sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
100 gr butter
100 ml milk (full cream)
200 gr flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 pinch of salt
lemon zest of 2 lemons
lemon juice of 1 lemon
40 gr poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Stir eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar and heat the milk, let the poppy seeds soak in the warm milk. Melt the butter and add to the poppy seed milk. Mix with the egg/sugar dough. Add flour, backing powder, salt and the lemon zest and juice.

Fill into the muffin forms and bake in the middle part of the oven for approx. 15 minutes.

If you like to add a frosting:

60 gr soft butter
300 gr icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
zest of 2 lemons and juice of 1/2 lemon
100 gr cream cheese

Mix these ingredients and add on top of the cooled muffins with a piping bag.

Let's try it on the weekend! :)

Isabell

Fort Worth, Texas

Sorry for my long absence. I've been sent to a training in Dallas in Texas for my new company. It was a challenge because of the time difference and of course the training itself was very intense. I just came back tired (14 hours of travelling) and also happy to be able to have made this experience and to see a part of Texas. These are some pictures from the sightseeing in Fort Worth, where I saw the Stockyards :

But also downtown Fort Worth you could see a lot of nice buildings :

Hope you have a nice evening, I'll go to bed and sleep a little bit.

Kind regards,

Isabell