Apple-Frangipane Galettes

Baking with apples makes some of my most favorite pies and pastries. They are also easy available year round, although usually best in late fall. Here I made galettes, which are very easy to make pastries. They are free form and have a rustic look to them. That makes them also perfect picnic food.

The apples are arranged on top of a creamy frangipane layer, which is an almond cream, either made with marzipan or ground almonds. You should use tart apples, like Elstar or Golden Delicious to have a perfect match between the sweet and sour components.

Mango Chocolate Mousse Cake

This is the second cake I made for my Mom's birthday. At a German birthday party you usually can not have too many cakes. So, she even made another one herself. I wanted to make a mango-chocolate cake since I ate one in Vienna last year.

I made a decorative joconde to wrap around the cake, but I think next time I would do it without. The whole cake got a little bigger than I wanted it to be. It was really huge.

The cake still tasted delicious. I especially liked the chocolate mousse. I don't know if it was the use of the immersion blender, but it had a really nice consistency. Instead of the mango mousse, which was also very good, I want to try a passion fruit mousse next time. I think the tartness of passion fruit would go very well together with the chocolate mousse.

It takes some time and several steps to make this cake. Plan accordingly, since you have a few cooling cycles. I would recommend you bake the joconde (if using) and sponge the day before, and also make the chocolate mousse. Then you can start to assemble the cake. This way it has enough time to set overnight. The next day, when you serve the cake you have just the mango mousse and glaze to make.

Lemon Celebration Cake for my 100th post!

This is my 100th post! I can't believe I have written so many already, and it makes me a little proud that I stayed put. It is very rewarding to have you, my readers here and sharing my little baking and photography adventures. I am also very happy each time I see one of my picture showing up on sites like pinterest or other sites and see my work is recognized. So, for celebrating this occasion a great cake is in order.

But this is not the only special occasion. I made this cake for my Mom, who had a special birthday last Wednesday. She is a great baker herself, and I learned a lot from her. I have a picture from me as a toddler standing in the kitchen and helping her bake. Well, I was just licking the whisk, but I definitely inherited the baking gene from her.

I wanted to make a cake which I could decorate with a colorful bunting. This is such a cute trend, and I wanted to make it for some time now. My cousin gave me some beautiful fabric scraps from her sewing projects. I cut double triangles and glued them together over a ribbon band. Then I attached it on two tall lollipop sticks with a knot. Really easy!

For the cake I chose to make a four layer lemon cake. The cake is filled with a silky lemon cream and creamy caramel. The frosting is made from lemon cream and mascarpone, and is so delicious, that you could eat it with a spoon. There a quite a few components to be done, but everything can be made in advance. I made the cake and fillings the day before and just made the frosting on the day when I served it.

I found that beautiful petal frosting technique at "La Receta de la Felicidad", where you can also find detailed pictures on how to do it.

Rugelach [TWD]

This week of Tuesdays with Dorie/ Baking with Julia we made Rugelach. If you haven't heard of it before, rugelach is a jewish pastry usually crescent-shaped. It is made with a cream cheese dough and filled with different kinds of fruit preserves, dried fruit and nuts, sometimes also with chocolate.

I have eaten rugelach before at a jewish pastry store, but this recipe was even more delicious. I made the traditional crescent-shape and filled them with plum-butter, cinnamon-sugar, almonds, macadamia nuts and dried cranberries. I honestly just looked in my pantry and combined what I had and thought would be good together. They tasted best the first day, the dough was very flaky almost like puff pastry, but were still good two days later.

This week is hosted by Margaret of The Urban Hiker and Jessica of My Baking Heart. Please check out their pages, where you can also find the recipe of the rugelach.

Enjoy and Guten Appetit!