Yogurt Flan with Strawberry Sauce

I hope you all had a great weekend! I allowed myself to do absolutely nothing university or work-related for four days and mostly relaxed at my Mum's. However, I could not stop myself from taking over her kitchen - at least when it came to dessert, but I think she appreciated that :-) I came up with this flan on Saturday because I spotted yogurt and leftover strawberries in her fridge. We liked this dessert because it's easily and quickly prepared and light, almost refreshing even - perfect for summer.

Recipe:
(In German: www.saison.ch)

4 sheets of gelatine (I think, you could maybe also only use 3 sheets of Gelatine since it gets relatively firm with 4 already... but I will have to try that out first.)
200g strawberries
60g sugar
1 vanilla pod
1/2dl milk
400g plain yoghurt

Soak gelatine in cold water. Puree the strawberries with one third of the sugar and set aside. Slice the vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Put milk, vanille pod and seeds and the remaining sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Take away from the heat, remove the vanilla pod. Squeeze the gelatine and dissolve in the milk. Mix well with the yoghurt. Fill into 4 glasses and put them in the fridge for at least 2 hours. Pour the strawberry sauce over the flans before serving. I also made some brittle for decoration. For that, I roasted about two handfuls of mixed nuts and seeds a frying pan and then caramelized them in honey. I left it to cool on a parchment paper and then just broke it apart.

Happy Easter!

I haven't had much time to bake during the last two weeks, but I wanted to post something for Easter so I searched my photo archive and found this cake. I made it for Easter last year shortly before I started my blog. My family loved it. It will cost you some time to make it, but it's definitely worth the effort! I think this cake is very suitable for easter, but it will surely also make a nice dessert at any other time of the year :-)

I think I will bake another cake this weekend at Mum's and I hope that I can take some good pictures, so stay tuned. Happy Easter to all of you!

Rice Pudding Cake with Apricots:
(Original recipe in German: www.wildeisen.ch)

For the rice pudding:
5dl milk
20g butter
50g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
1 pinch of salt
200g rice (use rice which is suitable for rice pudding, Arborio for instance)

For the shortcrust pastry:
300g plain flour
1/4 tsp salt
100g sugar
200g butter, cold
1 egg
3 tbsp water, cold

For the filling:
1 can of compot apricots (about 250g, drained)
1 lemon
1 small orange
250g curd
4 egg yolks
4 egg whites
40g sugar
icing sugar, for decorating

At some point while preparing the cake, preheat your oven to 200°C.

In a middle size pan, boil up milk, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and salt while constantly stirring. Add the rice. Cover with a lid and cook for about 40 minutes until the rice is very soft, stir from time to time. Let cool.

In the mean time, mix flour, sugar and salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter in small pieces (you can also grate it with your Rösti grater) and rub everything together with your fingers until you got a crumbly mass.Whisk together egg and water, add to this crumbly mass and quickly form a smooth dough. Wrap in wrapping film and leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

For the filling drain the compote apricots and dice them, put aside. Grate orange and lemon zest and put in a bowl. Squeeze the orange and the lemon and add the juice. Add curd and egg yolks and mik well. Then add the slightly cooled rice pudding.

Line the bottom of a 26 diameter springform pan with parchment paper and butter the bottom and the edge. Roll out 2/3 of the dough so that it is bigger than the bottom of your springform pan. Line the springform pan with the dough and form an edge which is about 5cm high. Put in the fridge again for some time.

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Little by little, add the sugar and beat until you have a firm and gleamy mass. Add this and the apricot dices to the rice pudding mass and mix. Fill into your perpared springform pan.

The original recipe suggests that you form some sort of strings out of the rest of the dough which are laid out on the rice pudding mass for decoration. I left that out.

Bake on the lowest level of your oven for about 50 minutes. Let cool. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

Sour Cream and Honey Ice Cream with Walnuts

The sun is shining! It's time for ice cream! Instead of buying it, why don't you make it yourself?! This one even works without an ice cream machine!

Recipe:
(Original recipe in German on www.saison.ch)

60g walnuts, coarsly chopped
120g runny honey
400g sour cream ("saurer Halbrahm")
1dl cream

Put the walnuts into a frying pan with about 1/4 of the honey and heat it up until they are caramelized. Pour onto a baking sheet and let cool. Put some of the nuts aside for decoration.

Mix sour cream with the honey and the walnuts. Beat cream until stiff and fold into the batter. Freeze for about 4 hours. If you don't have an ice cream machine, you should stir the ice cream well with a fork about every 30 minutes or so (about 4 or 5 times).

Take out of the freezer about 15 minutes before serving.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I have a confession to make... I cheated on chocolate... with peanut butter :-) Ever since my friend Melissa introduced me to peanut butter, I can't resist it anymore. Seriously, I don't think I would have managed to finish my thesis without my daily peanut butter sandwich!

Of course, I was looking out for yummie peanut butter recipes - and I found one! These cookies are scrumptious, let me tell you!! If you are a peanut butter addict as well, these cookies are heaven on earth! And (I know I say this very often, but it's true) veeery easy to make! So get your peanut butter jar out of your cupboard and put it to good use :-)

Recipe:
(I nicked the recipe from Technicolor Kitchen. Check out Patricia's blog! It is fabulous, one of my absolute favourite foodblogs!)

100g butter, softened
140g crunchy peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
218g light brown sugar
1 egg
185g all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon baking soda
100g brown sugar, for rolling

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line two large baking trays with parchment paper.

Put the butter, peanut butter, vanilla and brown sugar into a bowl. Mix with an electric mixer for 8-10 minutes or until well combined. Add the egg and beat for 2-3 minutes or until light and fluffy. Sift the flour and baking soda over the mixture and beat in low speed until you got a smooth dough. Roll one leveled tablespoon of dough into a ball at a time and roll in brown sugar. Place on prepared trays, leave enough room between the cookies (5cm). Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are golden. Let cool on wire racks.

Be careful not to overbake the cookies! I always worry when I bake cookies because I don't kow whether they are still too soft, but they continue to bake even when taken out of the oven and they will get firmer when cooling down.

I got about 26 cookies in the end.