Just a perfect day

Today we were cycling to the Kahlenberg - Vienna's landmark mountain. Afterwards we enjoyed the sunny afternoon sitting in a vineyard (http://www.4winzer.at/about.htm) drinking wine and eating bread with bacon. What to say: Just a perfect day.

My first time

Today I have baked cupcakes for my very first time - on the fotos you see the result.

One part are chocolate cupcakes with a cream made of white chocolate and fresh raspberries. And the other part are almond-buttermilk cupcakes, also with white chocolate/raspberry-cream.

As the cupcakes taste very good - I have to sing my own praises - I want to share the recipe with you. Here it is:

Ingredients for 12 chocolate cupcakes:

For the cupcakes:

140 g black couverture

140 g butter

140 g sugar

2 eggs

140 g flour

For the cream:

200 g white couverture

40 g butter

200 g cream cheese (double cream)

125 g raspberries

Dough: Melt black couverture and butter in a boiling water bath and mix it. Stir sugar and eggs foamily, then add flour and mix it with the couverture mix.

Put the dough into cupcake pans and bake it in the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes (175 degree Celsius).

Cream: Melt the white couverture in a boiling water bath and then cool it down for 10 to 15 minutes. Mix butter and cream cheese foamily, then add the lukewarm white couverture and the fresh raspberries.

Put the cream on the chilled cupcakes and sprinkle it e.g. with chocolate flakes. Ready! Enjoy it.

But I do have to warn you: It is a very heavy desert ;-)

candy doc

For my traditional Oster-FIC I was looking for a nice gift and I found it yesterday at the candy doc shop in Vienna (www.candydoc.com).

The shop offers a large range of sweets that you can fill in bottles or as you see on the photo in a box. Then you can choose from a also large range of labels for your bottle/box. A really nice gift for many occasions and for everyone who love sweets.

New ideas for cooking

I love cookbooks. I think I have more than 30 at home. This week I bought two new cookbooks which I want to introduce to you because I like them and the recipes sounds very good to me.

The first book is from Haya Molcho and it is called "Neni Kochbuch. Lust auf fremde Küche". NENI is a restaurant at the Vienna "Naschmarkt" and offers traditional oriental food in a new way. And so is the cookbook - above all you get informed about oriental food. Besides the book includes also hints and a little bit about the family story of Haya Molcho who is born in Tel Aviv and married to the well known pantomime Samy Molcho.

The second book is from Sophie Dahl, a model and writer, and it is called "Verführerisch Kochen mit Sophie Dahl" (Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights). She writes about her favorite recipes. The book is departed into the four seasons and then into recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also Sophie Dahl let us know about private things from her early childhood.

In the next weeks I will let you know how the recipes of both books run in the kitchen.

Back to USA

Two years ago I was three weeks in California (and also in Arizona and Nevada) - these tree weeks were the best holiday ever. I would like to spend some weeks again in California. But unfortunately I have neither the time nor the money for a long trip through California. So I will spend my holidays in Austria this (cycling holidays) and maybe go to Berlin in summer with my then 1-year-old niece Katharina and her parents.

Nostalgic

Do you know the so called "Lilienporzellan"? It is probably the mostly sold tableware in the sixties and seventies in Austria. I think nearly everbody knows the coloured porcelain here in Austria. I know it since I was a little girl as my both grandmothers had also some Lilienporzellan tableware. One grandmother passed it to me and so I own some of this wonderful cups.

This weekend I found the adequate sugar bowl (left one) in my grandmothers former house. And at a flea market I found a sweet sugar bowl (right one). It is not from the Lilienporzellan collection but I think it fits very good to the cups.

I have seen the Easter bunny!

Today this bunny was sitting in front of our house for some minutes. I guess it was the Easter bunny ;-)

Happy Easter!

I wish you all a happy easter and a relaxing weekend!