Tag Archives: baking

A Love Letter to Sourdough Bread

Posted in Homemade Meals by

ACS_0066

Sourdough bread, I have been postponing this letter for quite a while now, but this doesn’t mean that I love you less. On the contrary, my love for you grows stronger and stronger, like the wild yeast that lives inside you. No store bought bread can be compared with you, you are unique, powerful and yet simple. Simple by origin, but a bit tricky to know and understand you. After some time being acquainted with you, one cannot turn his back nor forget you, because what you offer is truly life changing. You show us how life can be simple, but it takes knowledge, patience and persistence to earn the big revelation. It is a privilege to have you in my daily life, and I really do wish that with this letter, I will incite the minds of others, to come back to a simpler, yet extraordinary time.

Continue reading →

Upside down Pineapple Cake

Posted in Treat of the Week by

IMG_0094

TGIF!! This week was a slow one, does anybody else think that?! Managed to wake up early monday and tuesday, but from wednesday on it was so hard getting out of bed…ugh! It was so warm under the covers, and it was grey and rainy outside…sleeping should not feel so good! hahahaha other than that, I did a lot of cooking and baking this week, spent almost the whole morning and afternoons in the kitchen. My life seriously revolves around eating, and I’m very happy about that!! haha I love to browse the web, book and magazines for new recipes, and this week I found one really good! I follow a lot of people on IG, I guess most of them have blogs, but I always forget to check it out when I’m on the computer. I’ve been following Yossy Arefi’s IG for some time now, and I’m always amazed by her food pics, they are so beautiful and mouth watering…these days she posted a photo of a pineapple cake that gave me serious cravings, I love pineapple!!! Until that post, I think I had never noticed that she has a blog, Apt. 2B Baking Co. so I finally entered her blog to see the recipe, and apparently it was easy…I little bit odd for me, because I never put crème fraîche in a cake before, but hey there’s a first time for everything, right?! So I went to the supermarket last friday, to bake the cake during the weekend, but in the end I wasn’t feeling so good due to cramps (that time of month…). I ended up doing the cake on tuesday, by then, my pineapple was very ripe, I almost lost it, but I managed to save it to do the cake…yay!!!

Continue reading →

Bergamote-Sablés

Posted in Recipes by

photo 3 (3)

Hello lovelies!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, filled with good food, family, friends and lots of love! We had an amazing Christmas around here, we made a dinner for our friends, and it was so much fun! Even if we woke up 6 am on Christmas eve to spend the entire day cooking and baking, it was totally worth it! For the first time we cooked a whole Turkey, we were a little bit afraid of doing it, because our oven is small and weren’t sure if we could fit the bird in….so we managed to find a “small” turkey, around 4 kilos and it fit just fine! YAY! We followed a Jamie Oliver recipe for it, and the turkey came out perfectly, juicy and tasty! We were really afraid that it would come out dry, but talk about beginners luck! hahaha Other than that, I only managed to take one picture of the night, it’s impossible to keep taking pictures of the food when you are dying to eat…priorities people! hahahaha

Anyway, it is too late to share a recipe of Christmas cookies I baked last week and the week before that?! haha I wanted so much to share this before Christmas, but I didn’t find the time to do it…but I swear that you can bake this throughout the year, because they are so crazy delicious!!! Buttery, lemony bites of heaven…hahaha This was actually the first time that I baked these cookies, I found the recipe at a supermarket food magazine called Mit Liebe, I really like this magazine, they have so many good recipes! I always get it at the Edeka supermarket when it comes out, plus, it’s free!! I’m getting pretty good at learning to read recipes in german, sometimes it can be a bit confusing, but google translator is a blessing! hahahaha Baking Christmas cookies it a huge thing around here, and this is the second year I do it (last year’s cookies here), I hope it will become a tradition in our house 🙂 but to tell you the truth, I enjoy much more baking them, than eating them! We are not big sugar fans around here, and since the recipes come in big batches, I decided to give them as a little Christmas gift to our friends that came to our Christmas dinner 😀

Continue reading →

My First Bread! Brazil’s Australian Bread

Posted in Recipes by

IMG_8585

I don’t know exactly how long it’s been since I said that I wanted to bake my own bread, the first time I said that, I was still in University, and that my friends, was ten years ago 😮 but hey, who’s counting?! am I right?! haha and what do I say a lot around here, better late than never! So last weekend I decided to try my luck….I went to the kitchen and started all from scratch! To tell you the truth, this is not foreign land to me, when I was in my teens and living with my aunt, I would help her to bake breads all the time, I was always in charge of the kneading! And if I would have continued baking bread even after I moved out, I would surely not have struggled as I did this time by kneading a bread for fifteen minutes, talk about weak arms…hahaha It was hard choosing a recipe, I didn’t want an american recipe because sometimes I just don’t wanna do the measurements conversions, its annoying sometimes (couldn’t we just all use the same measurements for everything?!). So I ended up searching for a brazilian recipe, and chose this one! We, Brazilians, know this bread as “Australian Bread”, but I am almost positive that this bread does not exist in Australia! hahaha it has that name because this bread is served at the famous “Outback” restaurants in Brazil…funny right?! hahaha So to make it simple, it’s a black bread! (but I’ll always call it australian bread! haha).

Continue reading →

Tarte au Citron

Posted in Treat of the Week by

photo 2 (3)-2

Despite our very messy house because of the renovation (seriously, we are living in the bedroom, but no complaints here!), I’m trying to cook as much as I can, because eating out everyday can be expensive, and also confusing, like where are we gonna eat today?! And as much as I complain from time to time for cooking every single day, I really miss my food! hahaha Now, I’m craving my rice and beans, the most traditional brazilian food ever! I’m a big rice addict, and it’s been a week that I haven’t made it, we’ve been eating a lot of different style pasta lately. During the weekend, I managed to squeeze a little dessert, because I already had the pastry in the freezer, which I did a few weeks ago, and I don’t want them to go bad, I’ll probably use the last one this weekend. Rafael saw me browsing for desserts a while ago, and asked me to do this whole lemon tart. I’m a big fan o lemon sweets, a love key lime pie, and also a lemon merengue pie that my cousin does in Brazil. If you know me, you already know that I’m not that crazy for sweet stuff, and with lemon you can get that perfect bittersweet balance, that I love!

Continue reading →

Blueberry Cheesecake

Posted in Treat of the Week by

photo 5 (2)-2

Tuesday, cloudy and windy day in Berlin, I’m sitting at my living room table. Rafael is sitting across me having a meeting through skype, and a construction worker is in our little hall starting our apartment renovation…YAY!!! To tell you the truth, it’s not a big renovation, the apartment doesn’t need that much work…there are some walls that need to be smoothed out (hall, kitchen and living room) and the floors in our bedroom and living room will be changed, can’t wait to get rid of this green laminate! hahahaha I took some photos earlier today of the apartment, because I want to share the before and after 🙂 at least I hope that in the end everything will be good…haha I want to buy more plants for the living room and also a nice carpet, I have never bought a carpet in my entire life, let’s see how this goes, just hope that Rafael and I can come to a mutual decision when choosing one! We also want to change the furniture display, today our wardrobe stays in the living (weird right?!), our bedroom is kinda small and squared, we are going to move the bed in order to fit the wardrobe. Rafael also wants to buy a proper table for work…you can see that we want to change a lot of things around here, let’s see how it goes, especially with the $$$$!

In spite of all of that, I’m really here today to share a recipe that I did recently. As a matter of fact, I did it for Rafael, he requested a dessert for a “just dudes” dinner and since the market is exploding with berries, I decided to do this blueberry cheesecake 🙂 In my head, I always thought that cheesecakes were hard to do, but they aren’t! For me, it’s harder to find the right baking point, I made a cranberry cheesecake last Christmas, but I ended up under baking it. Minutes later after I took it out of the oven, the filling cracked in two places in the middle, and it was also a bit jiggly. So this time I made sure that it came out a bit golden brown, and think that it worked!

Continue reading →

Treat of the week: Fudgy Double-Chocolate Brownies!

Posted in Treat of the Week by

IMG_8105

Second post of 2017, I’m on fire! hahahaha Honestly though, I’m trying at least to write one post per week, let’s see how that turns out! I don’t know if I have already said this on the blog (probably yes, but short memory over here…haha), I am not a big chocolate fan, crazy right?! Even more for being a girl (I know maybe three guys tops who love chocolate hahaha), what if I also told you that I don’t like Nutella?! That’s right, I don’t! You can call me crazy,  I am that person who always runs away from Nutella crepes, I don’t know…for me it’s just too sweet! And even if I found the golden ticket, I would probably never be selected by Willy Wonka to take care of his chocolate factory….haha But do not lose your hope, I do have a weakness….they are called brownies!!

Continue reading →

Gingerbread Cookies

Posted in Treat of the Week by

img_8160

Why, hello December! It seems like  you just started yesterday, and here we are, already in the middle of the month 😮 Time sure is flying around here, is it like this everywhere?! We are pretty busy around here lately, especially with holiday things (we are hosting dinner for 8 this year on Christmas eve, yay!!!) and also trying to figure out all the things we need for the apartment for when our friends and family come to visit.

It has been a long time since I wanted to bake gingerbread cookies. In Brazil we don’t have this kind of tradition, I only remember eating them when I was a child, living in the US. But gladly, we moved to a country where there are big Christmas traditions that we like, and one of them is baking cookies! I bought a few Christmas cookie cutters last month, and couldn’t wait to use them. I decided to try my luck two Sundays ago with this recipe. You already know how I get nervous baking sweets, and since it was my first time making this cookie, I sure thought that something was going to go wrong….I’ll explain with the photos…hahahaha

Continue reading →

Treat of the Week

Posted in Recipes, Treat of the Week by

IMG_7774

This week was a very special one, Tuesday was Rafa’s birthday!! I wanted to surprise him, since I wasn’t able to give him the present that I had in mind, so I decided to bake him a cake! Some of you may be thinking…really, a cake?! Yes! I do not have a great history with cakes, I cook a lot of good things around here, but I always had trouble with cakes…some of then didn’t grow, some weren’t baked right…so you can imagine the level of anxiety I was feeling when I decided to bake a cake, it couldn’t go wrong! And guess what, it didn’t! A big HOORAY for me!! hahaha

Continue reading →

Treat of the Week

Posted in Treat of the Week by

IMG_7601

I’ve been cooking a lot lately, not just everyday meals, but also baking. A few weekends ago, Rafa and I went to IKEA to buy some things for our apartment, and I bought some kitchen items that I wanted for a long time. Now that we have our 3 year residence visa to stay in Germany (thank you so much, God and Rafael, for all your hard work!), we can buy things without being afraid that it won’t fit in our luggage, let’s forget about moving back to Brazil for at least this period of time. Returning to the subject, since last year I wanted to try and make muffins, I’ve been craving them since I don’t know when…haha One of the things I finally bought, was a muffin pan, so I decided to try my luck and make my first batch last Sunday!

Continue reading →