Pancake Talk

As I seem to be enjoying cooking and baking quite a lot lately, I still wanted to sneak in tiny little "recipe" that I made up on the go this morning.

Since my body does not really enjoy too much flour, I just mashed a banana, added an egg and then put in some stevia, cinnamon and a couple of blueberries. I topped it off with a tiiiiiiny bit of sugar-beets-syrup to add some sweetness. I always make my coffee with almond milk and add a little of white chocolate spread.

Soooo, while snacking on my pancakes I read up on the bachelor drama that happened monday night. Whoa, what a finale. I have to say I tried to believe in Juan Pablo as much as I could until then, but when the "glad I didn't choose her" came out of his mouth, I was shocked. We obviously don't get to see everything that's going on, so I try to keep an open mind and I still don't think he is a bad person and who cares what I think about him anyway (at least he shouldn't). The one thing I kept thinking was how ironic it is for the network to have taken a leap of faith with Juan, since viewers never got to see much of him before he became the bachelor, yet he let them down so much. Let's just hope that all of the women participating (including Nikki), came out of the process well and healthy-hearted.

On a different and much more important note. Our lawyer is sending out our last package concerning the immigration today. MAN! About time we get some good news! This means for us that we're gonna get an appointment at the consulate very soooon (I am hoping I will have the interview by the end of this month). That would mean I could probably fly to my husband early April and celebrate easter with his family! We had so much fun last year, I really want to go back there bad! At the same time though, it is getting harder for me to say goodbye to my family here, especially my mom. We've become so close over the past couple of months (moving and renovating DOES really bring you closer together). She moved into her new house (including a vacation apartment, check it out here) and is really happy here. I feel like moving into a place that she loves, in a city that she loves has changed her so much; it has always been her dream to live in a house and she can finally feel like she achieved this dream. I'm so proud of her! And the vacation apartment looks great!

I am hoping all of your weeks are going well!

xx Juli

Recipe: Lemon Meringue Blueberry Cake

For my grandma's* birthday I wanted to make something really special, so I skimmed through one of her baking recipe books and found this awesome recipe for a really impressive looking layered cake.
The recipe was really confusing, but it worked after all. I cannot not share this with you guys, so here's the recipe (in my altered version). Enjoy :)

What you need:

Batter:
2 (big) egg yolks
3/10 cups sugar (60g)
1/4 cup margarine (60g)
1/2 cups flour (60g)
2 tbsp wheat starch (15g)
1 tsp baking powder

Meringue:
5 egg whites
1 pinch salt
1 cup sugar (200g)
1 cup almond slices (100g)

Sponge Cake:
4 eggs
3/5 cup sugar (120g)
1/2 cup flour (60g)
1/4 cup wheat starch (25g)
1/3 cup cornstarch (40g)
2 tsp baking powder

Cream:
2 3/4 cups cream (650g)
1 tbsp powdered sugar
1 pack lemon drink powder

Other: 
1 glass blueberries
1 pack vanilla pudding
1 lemon
1 cake ring
1 or 2 or 3 springform pans

Preheat your oven to 320° (160 Celsius)

Soooo, you wanna start with your batter by whipping margarine and sugar until nice and creamy, then add your eggs. Add baking powder and flour. Pour into an 11 inch (28cm) springform pan. (I secretly used a 10 inch one, that's why the cake got 'thicker'. Also, I put a sheet of baking paper on the bottom of every springform used).

Now for your meringue, add your salt to the egg whites, then whisk until stiff. Slowly start adding the sugar (not all at once) until the mass becomes shiny. Pour onto your batter, spread your almonds on top (I think it looks nicer when it's messy) and bake for 35 minutes. When taking your meringue out pay attention to the temperature in your kitchen. If it's too cold it will slump a little.

While your batter is in the oven, you can prepare the sponge cake. Separate the eggs, beat your eggs with salt until stiff and combine with 2 tbsp sugar. Whisk egg yolks with the rest off your sugar until creamy. Pour egg white mass onto egg yolk mix. Sift your flour, wheat starch, cornstarch and baking powder onto mix and whisk carefully. Pour into your springform pan and bake for 25 minutes. After it cooled down you can separate your sponge horizontally into 2 separate sponges (I absolutely cheated and just poured the mix into two separate springforms because I know I suck at cutting).

Take one of your sponges and surround with a cake ring.  Heat up the blueberries on your stove, add the pudding powder and whisk until it starts to thicken, then pour onto sponge. While everything is cooling, whip your cream and add your powdered sugar and lemon drink powder (I used the ones you can make hot lemon drinks with).  When the blueberries have cooled down, spread half your cream unto the blueberries, take your second sponge and lay onto cream. Spread the rest of the cream onto that and lastly carefully put the meringue/batter on top.

To decorate I made little whip cream mountains, thinly sliced a lemon and neatly put the fruit on top of those little mountains. Voilá.

Everyone really enjoyed this cake and while it took me some time to make it (I swear, those instructions were really weird) it was totally worth seeing the look on my grandma's face. Priceless :)


xx Juli

*(Max and I have a family really close to us, and we consider them family, so don't get confused if I call people "grandma" instead of "the mother of my mother's best friend who I see almost every day".)

Recipe: Apple Crumb Pie

For my brother's birthday I wanted to bake something special. I remember every time we would go to the bakery together he would choose an apple sheet pie, so I tried to alter it a little bit, yet make it the best tasting pie possible. I stumbled upon this recipe for apple crumb pie, and let me tell you, everyone was talking about this pie!

I served it still warm with melting vanilla ice cream on top, which tasted like a dream come true (my mom is still talking about this pie, that's how good it was :D).

I won't post the recipe myself since it is already in American quantity units, but go check it out through the link above, and don't miss their recipe for a perfect pie crust as well :)

xx Juli

Before the crumbs go on top 

Before Baking

After Baking

Valentines Gift Idea - Magnetic Pinboard

I actually made this tutorial a while ago but ever found the time or want to finish editing it. I really hit a low point at this time - being overwhelmed by all my emotions missing Max so bad. But, I finally got to it! 

There's plenty of ways to do them and I feel this would be a great gift for almost anyone. Girls, guys, Dads, Moms, friends, teachers, whoever you wanna give this to! Just switch up the fabric or magnet decor, choose a cork board or picture frame - you can go whatever direction you want to go. 

Just click the video below to find the tutorial, maybe it's not too late for Valentines Day with some love notes and pictures stuck to it :)

xx Juli

Baking with Juli - Double Chocolate Caramel Cheese Cake

Today, I have a not so healthy treat for you :) My friend Alex turned 39 this week, so I decided to make her something special that she could indulge in.

The cake was not the prettiest of them all, but I've never eaten cheesecake, as good as this one! Here's the recipe:

You need:

7inch Springform Cakepan
1 larger cake pan
Water
1 Baking sheet
Aluminium Foil

Case:
4oz Peanut Cookies
1 half stick Butter

Caramel:
1/3 cup Sugar
1/4 cup Whipping Cream
1 tbsp Butter

Batter:
1.2 lbs Cream Cheese
0.8 lbs Cocoa
2 Eggs
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Whipping Cream

Chocolate:
2.5 lbs Chocolate
1/3 cup Whipping Cream

1. Case: Shred your cookies until floury. Melt your butter and mix together. Cover the bottom of your springform cake pan with the baking sheet, grease the sides and pour the mix into the pan. Tighten with your hands and let cool for 15 minutes in your freezer.

2. Preheat your oven to 350.

3. Caramel: Pour in pot and heat until brown, mix in your butter and cream. Pour onto your cake case. Let cool again.

4. Cake: Whip your cream and set aside. Mix together cream cheese, eggs and sugar. Separate 1/3 of the batter. Pour cocoa into the 1/3 and mix together. Divide whipped cream equally in both batters.
Pour dark mixture in first, then light mixture on top and smoothen it out.

5. Make your springform waterproof with aluminum foil. Cover all the sides and the bottom, pour water into your larger cake pan (until half of your smaller cake pan is covered if set into water) and put springform in water. Put in the oven for about 50-60 minutes.

(AFTER your cake is done, do NOT take it out of the oven. Let it sit in there for 30 more minutes without any heat)

6. Let cool over night (put in fridge).

7. Chocolate: Let chocolate melt in whip cream on your stove. Pour over your cake and voilá :)
Serve after cooling!

xx Juli

How do I know he (or she) is the right one?

I've been talking to Max about this quite a lot lately. Mostly, because we consider ourselves so lucky to have fond each other! I will try to summarize some of the things we talked about below, just keep in mind that those are our opinions - not laws that we intend to push on you -  if you feel different about it in any way you can comment and share your opinion or just think 'weirdos' to yourself.

1. You are purely and utterly in love
You might be losing your appetite, not being able to sleep, you might wanna run down the street and shout out that you're in love, or hide in your bedroom and stare at the phone for hours until HE/SHE finally texts you back. Those are good signs that you miiiight be in love. What's important is, don't lie to yourself. Don't force feelings on yourself that are just not there. It takes some people a while to fall for someone, while some people fall right away (I'm looking at you Max :D). I remember myself wanting to scream out that I loved Max before we ever 'officially' said it to each other. I think that's the feeling your supposed to have :)

2. You're in love with yourself more than with the other person 
I know it sounds weird, but you have to protect yourself! If you're in love but your partner is hurting you - physically and/or emotionally - you have to get out of that situation. That is NOT the right person for you, nor will they ever be. Who hurt you once destroyed not only trust but also proved that they don't care for you as much as they should!
If you need help getting out of an abusive relationship visit loveisrespect.org. You can also message us, but we are no professionals and can only be there as friends. You are not alone! We've been there too! 

3. You don't have secret doubts 
Max and I have both been in relationships in which we knew something wasn't quite right and it turned out it wasn't. I've actually been in a situation before where I got together with someone and even remember thinking 'I don't really want this, it doesn't feel right' - but I just lied to myself and tried to ignore those feelings throughout the whole relationship. Mostly, those doubts come from insecurities about whether you are, in fact, compatible or not. If you have to tell yourself that all those flaws that your partner has will probably go away and he/she will change soon - you should probably move on.

Max and I both realized how we were lying to ourselves when it came to our ex partners. How they would (in the future) treat us better, love us more, make more time, make it official, stop hurting us etc. I think deep down inside you you know if you can see a future that makes you happy with your partner. If there's things you want to change about the other person you probably haven't found the right one yet.

For me, there is and was not one single thing about Max I would want to change. Even the things that might be annoying I really love, I just start grinning and thin 'yup, this is my Max' ;)

4. You learn from mistakes
I'm not a big believer in changing people - but I do believe that you can learn from your mistakes and change SOME of your behavior. For instance, I'm very good at becoming creative when it comes to imagining why Max did something the way he did. Instead of asking, I used to just assume - and that was simply WRONG. It was very annoying for Max, but after a fight (I'm talking healthy fighting here - no yelling, no throwing things, a simple discussion with maaaaybe a hint of blame here and there) I just kept asking him about every single thing he said just to make sure I understood where he was coming from. That way I tried to make sure I would be able to recognize and deal with a situation like that better next time.

5. You trust each other
I get a lot of people asking me if I'm afraid that Max is cheating on me or doing naughty things back home and the answer is NOOOO. Never. I trust my husband a million percent. I know him. And to be honest, I worry far more about if his planes are gonna make it back home without shattering on the earth, whether the roads are to icy for him to drive on, or armageddon (I seriously worry about all those things though). If I had to worry about Max wanting other women I don't think we would be right for each other - especially considering the long distance thing right now. It would also be the cause of a lot of trouble and doubts and that is not healthy in any relationship. You have to be trusting enough that your partner can hang out with their group of friends or go to the bar without you having to call every two minutes. Way too much stress on yourself and your partner!

6. You don't get sick of each other and still can do stuff apart
What I really like about our relationship is that we can be in the same room and do different things. We're not attached at each others hips all the time - and to be honest - I like way cooler tv shows than Max does and enjoy sitting in my chair, watching my show and have my husband play xbox in the same room. It gives me the weird feeling of how comfortable we are with each other. We don't have to pretend to like something we don't and at the same time are still willing to sacrifice ourselves and maybe watch something we wouldn't reeeeaaaallyyyy wanna watch by ourselves. Of course, this should not be the standard time spent together, but every once in a while - do something for yourself, go out with your friends, start learning an instrument, or put your headphones in and watch a show :)

6. You just know...
It is the weirdest thing but it is true for Max and I. For some reason, we just knew we're meant to be together. However cheesy that sounds but we never really had to talk about it - it was always a given that we would be and stay together, even after I went back to Germany. I remember Max telling me once that he was gonna be loyal to me while I'm gone. I'm pretty sure I said 'ok' and that was it. We never had doubts about our future or even had to say that we would wanna be together forever (although we did, trust me). I can see our future bright ahead and we're both on the same page about it.

If all of the above are true - congratulations - you got yourself a potential husband/wife/partner in crime - whatever you want to do. Haha, just kidding, I just like sharing our experience with things - but everyone's different and of course - opinions are different too! I hope you enjoyed this anyway :)

xx Juli

On The Healthy Side Of Yummy - Red Beets Pasta

I know, I know - it sounds weird. But I promise this meal is delicious and packed with nutrition!

So yummy!

What you need:
7 ts   Low Fat Crème Fraîche (You could probably substitute with sour cream)
1 lb  Pasta
1      Scallion
1 lb  Red beets
1 ts  Olive Oil
3 1/2 oz Vegetable Broth
1 splash of Apple Vinegar

To your liking:
Salt & Pepper 
Parmesan
Pine Nuts


How to:
Peel the beets and shred them. Cut the scallion into little dices and glaze them in the oil, add beets and sauté. Pour in vegetable broth and bring to a boil. Season with vinegar, salt and pepper. Covere over low heat for about 25 minutes until al dente. Meanwhile cook the pasta in salted water. Mix the veggies with your crème fraîche and roast those pine nuts (careful here - they burn really fast - no additional oil needed!). Top pasta with beets mix, pine nuts, and parmesan. Voilá :)

This should feed about 4 people. Hope your tastebuds enjoy!

xx Juli