Poppy Seed Cheesecake with Rhubarb Topping

First of all I have to apologize for the long absence from my blog. I was moving back to Germany, which took a lot of time and organizing. So not so much time for baking, photographing and blogging.

I was happy to see that there was a lot of rhubarb ready to be picked in the garden. Rhubarb is one of my favourite ingredient for fruity desserts. I added some strawberries to the topping, as those two are always a great combo.

The cheesecake filling is made made from a mix of quark (which is a German type of fresh cheese, usually used in German cheesecakes) and cream cheese. You can easily make quark yourself, when not available where you are. Meeta posted a great recipe a while back, and I used it many times when I lived in Canada.

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.

Cranberry Poppy Seed Muffins

Last weekend we went to the annual Cranberry Festival in Fort Langley, BC. It is a perfect little village for this kind of events, it always reminds me of Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls. They sell all kinds of things cranberry from food related items to decoration and cosmetic products. And of course cranberries.

British Columbia is one of the biggest producers for cranberries and if you are lucky you can see them getting harvested. It is very interesting to see, since the fields are getting flooded and all the cranberries coming to the top and building up a huge carpet of red. Very beautiful.

I bought a huge bag of cranberries, and after making some cranberry sauce, I was looking for some recipes to bake something. I found the following muffin recipe in a German magazine, and they turned out really good. I remember a couple of years ago cranberries where almost unknown in Germany and I would bring some packages when I visit. Now, you can find them everywhere. I think what started the trend was the urge to make a real cosmopolitan as seen on "Sex and the City". Cranberry juice was a really exotic item and my girlfriends and I were browsing every supermarket to get it. Another reason for being so popular is that cranberries are really healthy and also have a good amount of vitamin C.