Swabian Cheese Cake

After living 'abroad' for 2 years, the first thing my son wanted when he came home was a real typical swabian cheese cake.  Guess he has not lost the perspective for the swabian culture. 

Portugal - Porto

While in Porto, I wanted to experience the local cuisine as much as possible.  That, of course, includes breakfast.  One early morning, I went breakfast hunting and spotted this 'hole-in-corner' bakery.  It looked very much like a kopitiam including music.

Christmas Bakes

 
Christmasy decos were out since September,
magazines stuffed full of receipes for Christmas
dinner, lunch, breakfast; not forgetting 'after dinner'
morning cocktails to sober up.
Everyone driven into a frenzy of shopping
and baking when December came..
  
I did not bake much this year as I was away for much of December.  Here are my traditional bakes, simple and very much liked by family.   The receipes are from a book printed in the early 1900.

Linzertorte - raspbery jam (above)



Black currant jam.

  Vanilla crescent- before baking












Vanilla crescent - after baking.

was not watching :-(  

Filled with black currant and apricot jam.

Apple Tart with Pumpkin Butter

Surprise !  Surprise !
Have a visitor in 45 minutes.
Grumble grumble...such short notice !!

Pumpkin Butter

PUMPKIN BUTTER

While on holiday in New York, I went to the Union Square Green Market.  Stuffed myself silly with all 'samples' of organic and traditonal food.  In one stall, there were various types of pumpkins and pumpkin butter. There were no 'samples' so I didn't know how it taste and I didn't buy any because my luggage was already way over 30 kgs.
When Peng and Lily mentioned it, it brought back memories and I still have a few pumpkins practically sitting around.   Decided to sacrifice one. 

Glasgow & Edinburgh - Scotland

END SEPTEMBER 2010

I was suppose to post this article in October.  There were too many priorities and somehow it got forgoten,
lost in the 'To Do' list.    It was a comment from Lily that reminded me and since I 'm in 'travelling' mood, this article is now open.  Please, please, do not be offended - I intend to visit Scotland again in the near future, under different conditions.

There was an exhibition in Glasgow and there were some people to meet so I grabbed the opportunity to hop over to Edinburgh for the weekend. Why not ?  The return flight was cheaper than a train ticket to Munich. The train ticket from Edinburgh to Glasgow was costing as much as renting a car for the whole weekend, so we picked up a rented car from Edinburgh airport.  Needed almost an hour just to pick up the car because the car centre is almost a walking mile away :-(    

Weather was kind, no rain but no sunshine either.

Autumn or Fall has its beauties.  Tree leaves turning into rich array of colours, the cool weather, sounds and smells.  Well, I was greeted with fog the whole time.  Very depressing welcome.  I didn't see much of Glasgow but I managed to make shots of the only bright colours around - the Taxis.

These are the only shots of Glasgow I took.....

Christmas Market (Update) - Esslingen

Christmas market - Stuttgart.

Stuttgart is the largest city of this ethnically flourishing state of Baden Württemberg.  It has immensely speckled tourist attractions like the low man thick (romantic) black forest, the spas of Baden-Baden and the convenient borders to Switzerland (lake of Constance) and  France (towards Straßburg). There are many more attractions and I will post more about places of interest in this region  in time to come.   

Typical German Cakes (2) (FEINE KUCHEN/SONNTAGSKUCHEN)

FEINE SONNTAGSKUCHEN



There was a course being conducted by a
swabian confectionery SIFU (master)
and I couldn't resist gatecrashing.

With his full permission, he allowed 
me to make these photos .....

The Master

Typical German Cakes (1) (FEINE KUCHEN/SONNTAGSKUCHEN)

FEINE SONNTAGSKUCHEN







Träubeleskuchen

Swabia is a part of southern Germany.  It's people has a long history but I'm not going into that now.
Today, they are famous for their cars Mercedes and Porsche and their dialect which is always being teased.
One of their beer tent sing-a-long/chant goes like this............

ZICKE  ZACKE  ZICKE  ZACKE,
   HOI  HOI  HOI  !!

Christmas Market

Christmas Markets all over Germany
started last weekend.

Winter 2010 - Update

It's artic temperature now.
Expecting more snow....time for furcoats  !!