Rhubarb-Strawberry Streuseltaler

Germany is famous for its "Streuselkuchen". We also love to put streusel, a sweet crumble topping, on fruit pies, cheesecakes and tarts. One item you can find in almost every bakery is the "Streuseltaler". Basically a free form tart from yeast dough topped with a huge amount of streusel, sometimes filled with custard and often with a sugar glaze. It's a great snack to take away.

Often these "Taler", which is another word for coin and resembles their shape, are also topped with fruit. They are my favorite kind. Mostly you will see peaches, but since rhubarb and strawberry are in season, I wanted to try this combo. They turned out great and will be best he day you baked them, when they are nice and crunchy.

Brioche Easter Bunnies

Easter is just around the corner, so it's time to bake some Easter treats. Baking some kind of sweet yeast bread for Easter brunch is a very common tradition in Germany. Usually it comes in the form of a braid or wreath. It can be plain and enjoyed with butter and jam or filled with nuts or dried fruits.

I wanted to make some different shape this year so I made some Easter Bunnies. But you can use the same dough for making a braid or wreath as well. The dough is great to work with and tastes really good.

If you are like me you probably don't want to get up really early on Easter morning to prepare your baked goods. You don't have to. You can prepare the dough the night before and let it rest in the fridge overnight. Then you just have to shape and bake the bunnies in the morning. I made a note in the recipe, at what point you can interrupt the process.

My little bunnies were so well liked that I am gonna make at least two more batches until Easter. I hope you will like them too.

White Loaves [TWD]

If you are a regular reader of food blogs, you probably heard of the baking group "Tuesdays with Dorie". For several years this group baked their way to Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours. They finally finished their endeavor and now there is time for a new project. They chose another book from Dorie, "Baking with Julia". It's a classic, which is on my bookshelf for some time now. It has wonderful recipes collected by Julia Child from all kinds of famous American bakers. I always use her recipe for puff pastry, it's wonderful.

In my infinite wisdom I jumped on the chance and joined the group. We are gonna bake two recipes of the book each month. I hope I can participate at most of them, since it is a really interesting book, with a lot of general recipes, which are nice to learn.

We started of with baking white loaves. It is a nice bread, and goes well for breakfast or sandwiches. It was easy to make and a good bicep training, since my standmixer couldn't handle it. I made the bread as directed, just substituted the dry yeast for fresh yeast. I usually try to use fresh yeast, since I like the process and taste better. If you want to use it you can substitute 1 teaspoon of dry yeast with 10 g of fresh yeast. I know that it is quite difficult to get in North America, but I had always luck when I asked at a local bakery.

We are not gonna post each recipe we are making, but you can find it on each weeks hosting blog or go get the book "Baking with Julia", it's worth it. This week is hosted by Laurie of Slush and Jules of Someone’s in the Kitchen. Please also check out the results of my fellow bakers.

Daring Bakers: Povitica

For this month's Daring Bakers we made Povitica. You might have never heard of this before, at least I haven't. It's origin is from Eastern Europe and it is basically a yeast bread with a nut filling. It becomes its nice pattern from rolling and layering the dough with its filling. I made the suggested recipe provided, just changed the dry yeast to fresh yeast, since I like to use fresh yeast a lot better. The bread tasted really good, not to sweet, and moist enough that you didn't even have to spread anything on top.

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

Streusel Plum Tart with Yeast Dough

Plum Cake is my favorite early fall cake, so I was glad to see they were still available in the market last week, as we were already finished with picking all of our fruits a few weeks before. For baking, my favorite variety are Italian plums. They are more firm and also more tart than regular plums. They are perfect for a crumble cake, either with short crust or yeast dough.

This time I used a yeast dough and baked it in a tart form. Under the plums is a layer of crushed amarettini cookies, which prevent the dough from getting soggy and also give a great taste.

Daring Bakers: Filled Meringue Coffee Cake

This month the Daring Baker's chose a yeasted coffee cake, formed into a wreath as their challenge. It's a little early, but this would make the perfect bread for your Easter brunch. The special thing about this recipe is the addition of a meringue layer in the filling. The dough was very easy to work with. I chose to use fresh yeast, instead of dry, and it was a really smooth dough.

For the filling I used a combination of dark chocolate, dried cherries and pecan nuts. The bread was moist and very yummy. A trick to get an even round shape in the middle is to bake the cake around an upside-down turned ramekin (or any round ovenproof bowl). Be sure to brush the bowl with a little oil, which makes it easier to remove it after baking.

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Daring Bakers: Doughnuts

Oh my, it's Daring Bakers time again, and wasn't my last post also for the Daring Bakers. Time really flies and I am sorry to say that I didn't have the time or muse to post anything in between. But these doughnuts were too good to just let them go.

I never made doughnuts before, but I always loved them. Here in Germany we have the "Berliner", which are just doughnuts without a hole and filled with jam. Sometimes during carnival or on New Years Eve, it can happen that somebody plays a joke on you and fills one with mustard.

I made a variety of the yeast doughnut recipe, regular doughnuts, Berliner filled with strawberry jam, and just some small round ones. Those I usually get during any summer fair or at the Christmas market. They were so good, I couldn't believe it. Unfortunately so good that all but a few of the little rounds didn't survive to the photo shoot.

I will definitely make this recipe again, but what I wouldn't recommend is to store the dough overnight in the fridge and fry another badge the next day. They didn't taste close as good as the first ones. I don't know if it was the used oil or the storing though.

In the meantime I have won third place with my "Berry Lovely Cake" picture in the September DMBLGIT Contest. I am very happy that I won two times in a row, and the submissions were again awesome. Thank you SunshineMom for hosting.

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge DBers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann and Epicurious.

Fig and Walnut Loaf

I really like to bake with fresh yeast. I think it's not only easier to work with than dried yeast, but I also like the taste of the baked goods better. In Germany every supermarket carries little cubes of fresh yeast, enough for one recipe. Unfortunately, as I have learned, it is really difficult to find fresh yeast in North America. 

One trick I have figured out is to ask your neighborhood bakery. If you ask nicely and don't ask too often they usually would sell it to you. You can also try the bakery department at your local gourmet supermarket. The problem is that you will usually get a whole pound, because that is how the fresh yeast is packaged here. That means you have to do a lot of baking for the next two weeks, because the yeast is perishable and also it cannot be frozen. But the good news is that a lot of yeast doughs can be frozen, so you can bake them later.

Just before I bought my block of fresh yeast I borrowed the wonderful book "Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins and More" by Carole Walter from the library. I already marked several recipes I wanted to try and couldn't wait to start. I can really recommend this book. All the recipes I made turned out wonderful, and I immediately bought a copy of the book for myself. In the first week I made Sticky Buns, Cherry Crumble Cake, Brioche and Fig and Walnut Loaf, which is pictured here. I also made some doughs to freeze for later use. The next thing I would like to try is croissants. Besides the yeast breads and cakes there are also a lot of nice recipes for quick breads, muffins, pound cakes, scones and more.

Poppy Seed - Marzipan Stollen

Stollen is the typical German "Christmas-Bread", actually it is more like a cake. It is made from a yeast dough and comes in many variations. Usual ingredients are dried fruit, nuts and marzipan. Most famous is the Dresdner Stollen. The stollen I made has a mixture of poppy seeds and marzipan in the middle and some nuts in the dough.

It is usually baked early in December and then let to rest for about two weeks, so all the flavors can infuse. It is perfect for an afternoon tea during Christmas time.