Cucumber Sandwiches

• Step 1: Toast
  Ingredients:
  • 100 ml water
  • 12 g fresh yeast
  • 18 g salt
  • 250 ml milk
  • 500 g flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 20 g sugar
  • 20 g starch
  • 30 g butter
  
  Directions:
  
  1. In a small bowl mix water, yeast and salt. Stir well and leave for at least 30 minutes. I usually leave it overnight.
  2. Add the milk to the yeast mixture.
  3. In a large bowl mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, starch and butter. Add the yeast mixture and knead well. The dough is somewhat sticky and very soft.
  4. Place the dough in a bread pan and leave to rise for 2-3 hours.
  5. Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
  6. Place toast onto the middle rack and bake for 35-40 minutes. The toast should sound hollow when tapped with a wooden implement.


• Step 2: Cucumbers
Ingredients:
• 1 cucumber
• 2 tsp. dried dill or 30 g fresh, chopped dill
• 125 ml mayonnaise
• salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Cut the cucumber into very thin slices.
2. Mix the dill and the mayonnaise.
3. Cut the toast into slices and remove the crust.
4. Spread mayonnaise on the toast silces and lay cucumber slices on top. Sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper.


• Step 3: ...
• Step 4: Profit!

Spiced Soy Granulate for Tacos

Spices:

• 1 tsp oil
  
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 small onion
  
• 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp cumin
  
• 1/2 tsp oregano

Other Ingredients:

• 1/2 l vegetable broth
• 300 g soy granulate
  

or (carnivorous version):

• 500 g ground meat
  

Directions:

1. Soak the soy granulate in the broth for half an hour. Meanwhile:
2. Chop the onion and garlic.
3. Heat oil in a pan and fry the onion and garlic briefly.
4. Add the spices and mix well.
5. Drain the granulate and add it to the pan. (Or: add the meat here)
6. Fry for 2-3 minutes. (Or: until the meat is done)

The picture shows the soy granulate version.

Rosemary Rolls

Ingredients:

• 250 ml milk
• 1 tsp sugar
• 10 g fresh yeast
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 tbsp margarine
• rosemary
  
• sea salt
  

Directions:

1. Mix the milk, yeast and sugar in small bowl and leave for about 30 minutes.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Add the yeast-mixture and stir well. Add the oil and knead the dough until it is smooth and does not stick to your hands anymore.
3. Butter a spring form (26 cm diameter). Alternatively one can use a large cast iron pan.
   
4. Divide the dough into 7 pieces and place into the spring form. Leave to rise for about 1 hour. I left mine to rise about 3 hours and it rose so much that one could no longer distinguish the individual rolls, as you can see in the pictures.
5. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
6. Melt the margarine in a small bowl.
7. Carefully spoon the margarine over the rolls. Sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt.
8. Place into the oven for about 12 minutes until they are nice and brown.
9. Om nom nom.

Chocolate Lava Cake

I accidentally stumbled across this recipe the other day and had to try it:
Chocolate Lava Cake
It tastes wonderful. I want to make it again, but I probably shouldn't.

Kumquat Muffins

I usually make muffins using butter milk. I did not have any and wanted to make muffins so I tried using cream cheese instead. It worked very well.

I think one could easily replace the kumquats with any other type of fruit or leave them out altogether.



Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100 g cream cheese
• 150 g kumquat

Directions:

1. Chop the kumquats including peel, I used a food processor to do this.
2. Whisk together the margarine and sugar until smooth. Add the eggs one by one, whisking each time until you can't see any trace of egg.
3. Preheat the oven to 180°C
4. Whisk in the cream cheese and kumquat.
   
5. Mix the flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar. Add the flour mixture to the cream cheese mixture slowly.
6. Either line the muffin cups with paper liners or butter you muffin cups well. The batter should make about 12 muffins. I fill the muffin cups until they are 3/4 full.
7. Place the muffins in the oven for 18-20 minutes.
   

Marzipan Lemmings

On my birthday I decided to make a lemming cake, so I made these cute figures out of marzipan.
I'm not quite happy with the way the hair turned out, it looks sort of like a helmet.
The next few pictures show the lemmings on the cake. Yum.

Avocado Wasabi Salad

We found this delicious recipe for a salad:
Avocado Wasabi Salad
We didn't have any broccoli the first time we made it, but it was still great. The amount of dressing is a bit much and we still have some in the fridge, so next time we're probably only going to make half the dressing.