I’m still not sure if those are really the right ones. But almost. (Deutsche Version.)

Anyway, picking out photos is great. I love to go over my whole year in an hour. I always have to laugh because I remember so many things I almost forgot. They are not the best ones, but the ones that I love because they are connected to great memories. The first one is connected to great parties and concerts. And here is the rest.

I think it was the first thing I baked in 2011. A poppy seed strudel. Everytime I see this photo, I really really want to make it again.

I found out that baking bread is addictive.

I went to Amsterdam and I had fun.

I still love the cat’s paws so much.

Mum and I had so much great time in Hamburg.

And I made my first layer cake, a black forest cake, for her birthday.

After that, I went to Stockholm. It is pretty.

And after all that sightseeing, I made a rest in Berlin.

After summer, I got my own kitchen and now I can cook everything I want. Like Chickpea Pot. Yummy.

That’s my 2011 in fast-forward.

As I have already mentioned last year, Violets and Cardamom and onepinkmacaroon have nominated me for two different blog awards. Thank you so much! The first one is the Versatile Blogger Award. Here, I now have to 1) thank the person who nominated me and link back to them in my post; and 2) share 7 things about myself and 3) pass the award on to 15 more bloggers that I enjoy.
The other one is the Liebster Blog Award(from German Liebster = sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, …), given to up coming bloggers who have less than 200 followers. Here, I have to  1) thank my Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog, 2) link back to the blogger who awarded me, 3) copy & paste the blog award on my blog and 4) reveal my 5 blog picks.

Well, I guess my ten photos are enough to say 7 things about myself. And now I’ll just mix both awards up and give you 10 of my favourite bloggers. Alright? (Don’t be upset if some already have a lot of followers, I don’t really have that much English blogs on my list and don’t really know the little ones.)
So please have a look at these blogs, they’re always enjoyable!

1. Food Is My Life

2. Wee eats

3. IamSimplyTia

4. Eat Now Talk Later

5. My Lucky Town

6. Pretty Pretty Yum Yum

7. The SGK

8. Delicious Days

9. Healthy. Delicious.

10. kiss my spatula

Dear nominees, you don’t have to comment or pass the award on, if you don’t want to. It’s just me telling you I like your blog.

I will see some friends this evening. But right now, I’m still sitting here with hair curlers and preparing myself mentally to go out. It’s so loud out there.

I’ll bring bread and Lucky Piglets.

Just have as much fun as you would have if it wasn’t New Year’s Eve. See your friends. See your family. Do that the whole year. Change your life tomorrow it you want to. And if you want to change it in the middle of June, do that then.

I love my new Christmas tree decoration. It’s from Stockholm. It was the last thing to hang on the tree. I’m ready… (Deutsche Version.)

Mum and I have already decorated gingerbread for the tree days ago.

I think they turned out pretty nice this year.

My presents are wrapped and labelled.

Dessert is prepared.

Warm little chocolate cakes with spiced orange sauce and vanilla ice cream. Oh yum.

Now four candles are burning and the tree is ready.

And as every year, the cat thinks it’s all hers and watches over the Christmas tree.

Have a merry, merry Christmas and great days with your loved ones! Give presents! Enjoy good food! Do what you want to do and don’t stress out. It’s all good. It’s Christmas.

PS: Violets and Cardamom and onepinkmacaroon, thanks for considering me a Versatile Blogger and nominating me in Liebster Blog Awards! I’m still thinking about which blogs to pass the award on. As you both said, there are sooo many good ones. I won’t forget!

For wine and biscuits. (Deutsche Version.)

This means lightning candles.

Preparing a nice plate full of biscuits.

And maybe roasting some chestnuts.

And when you love your friends very much, give them a bag full of biscuits to take home.

Just have a great Christmas time. Less than a week left!

I have a lovely filled biscuit tin. Interested in our biscuit varieties? Be prepared for a whole lot of yummy biscuit photos. (Deutsche Version.)

Maybe you have seen our Biscuit Baking Orgy last year. Or the year before. It’s officially tradition now.

Baking Cinnamon Stars is also tradition on those days.

We made a lot of them with glaze.

But since we do not really like to eat the glaze – It just looks pretty -, we also made some plain cinnamon stars. Yummy.

In between, we drank a lot of tea. (And ate cheese. We needed that with all that sweet smell in the air.)

Then, we made Linzer Biscuits. Also tradition.

But they still need some snow on top, right?

With the little parts, we created Jam Stars.

So tiny. So scrumptious.

Then, we tried something new. We made Chocolate Marzipan Sticks.

They melt in your mouth.

And something else with chocolate: Chocolate Fingerprints.

Just like thumbprints, but chocolate-y. If you have good jam, they turn out absolutely great. And we did have delicious, home-made jam. Apricot and red currant.

With some of the chocolate dough, we made Piped Chocolate Biscuits.

And in the end, we made something simple. Something just to roll, bake and dip: Our lovely Chestnuts.

And then, there was a table full of biscuits.

But this was only one of our tables. We had to put plates on the TV because there wasn’t any space.

A great result! And now I don’t want to bake Christmas biscuits anymore. Well, maybe some more Vanilla crescents? Or some coconut maracoons? We’ll see… Have a lovely third Sunday of Advent!

I’m pretty sure you won’t find any frozen pizza in the grocery store which is as tasty as those little gems. (Deutsche Version.)

I found the original recipe here. But actually, I only prepared half of the really nice and smooth dough with dry yeast instead of fresh one, made my own filling and left out the garlic oil. (Which I am sure is really good, but who wants to smell like garlic at university?)

For the dough, you need:

250 g wheat dough
150 g cold water
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 g dry yeast
7 g salt

Knead a normal yeast dough. I do that by hand – I know some people use the mixer, but I don’t. Papa taught me to knead yeast dough and I do that and it’s always great. Let it rise for about 3 hours. (Punch it down in between.)
Divide it in 4 to 5 dough balls and let them rise again for some minutes.

Roll every single dough ball out and top it with everything you like on pizza. I made two different toppings. But you always need tomato sauce and oregano.

Wouldn’t be a pizza without it.

And then, how about tomatoes and mozzarella?

Really simple.
But this is my favourite: Spinach.

And feta. And, really important, freshly grated pepper.

And olives, of course.

I already told you about the best pizza in this world here. But now the best of all pizzas is a sandwich – Brilliant!

Now, you can fold your focaccine.

Oh, and preheat your oven to 200° C. (390° F)

Brush the focaccine with olive oil.

And then, bake them. For about 15 minutes until pretty and brown.

That’s it. Unfortunately, I can’t show you the baked inside because after cooling, I immediately froze them. Now they are waiting to be my yummy packed lunch. And that’s how you can make yourself look forward to a long day of university courses.

Since we’re living apart now, we celebrated Dad’s birthday on Sunday. (Deutsche Version.) So, there wasn’t only the first candle on the Advent wreath burning.

Malakoff cake is a very Austrian cake. It’s not that difficult to make. You don’t even need an oven. I made a small one in my mini springform with 18 cm diameter. You just have to make a cream of

2 egg yolks
75 g ground peeled almonds
65 ml cream
100 g powdered sugar
75 g margarine

by first beating the margarine creamy and then slowly adding sugar, egg yolks, almonds and cream. It should be really stiff.
You also need a pack of ladyfingers and about a cup of strong coffee mixed with quite a bit of rum.

Lay out the springform with parchment paper. And then, you can layer the cake. I love layering cakes, it’s fun. First a layer of ladyfingers, dipped in the coffee-rum. (Really just dipped! They will soak enough of it up. If you put them in too long, the whole cake will be slobbery.) Also make the edge of the cake with unhalved ladyfingers, but don’t dip them.

And then, about a centimeter cream on that. Then, dipped ladyfingers again. And cream. And finish with dipped ladyfingers again.
The cake should rest over night in the fridge. Then, you can turn the cake out. And put whipped cream on top, if you want. And eat it!

Those creamy cakes are definitely not my cup of tea, but a tiny piece was very yummy. And I’m glad Dad liked it a lot.

But this wasn’t the only present, of course! Guess what this is.

Dad knew immediately. Of course! A lovely, yummy, crunchy farmhouse sourdough bread.

Daddy, I hope you have a great day. I love you. Thanks for putting every piece of furniture together with me. Thanks for bringing me home so often. Thanks for letting me know I can always call. Thanks for your great cooking. And for your great genes! (We do have great genes, my brother and I. A great mixture of genes.) Thanks for everything!

(You can find a better printable version of the recipe here.)

Vanilla crescents are simple. Plain vanilla biscuits. (Deutsche Version.)

I prepared shortcrust…

… and after it rested some hours in the fridge, Mum came over after work. And we had some relaxing hours of simple crescent shaping, crescent baking…

… and bathing crescents in vanilla sugar.

And then, we had our beautiful and yummy Vanilla Crescents. With tea and candles and a lovely smelling flat.

Now it’s officially Christmas time for me. Right in time! Because tomorrow, it’s the first Sunday in Advent. Did you almost miss it, too? We only have a month of Christmas time left. Make use of it! Decorate your flat, go to Christmas markets, drink tea with your loved ones and just enjoy it. Don’t be stressed. Have a great month.

Doesn’t sound good? Oh, believe me, it is. (Deutsche Version.)

It was great to invite them officially for lunch. I made my flat pretty and put some candles and nice napkins on the table. I put on a vintage skirt and a cute apron to make me look a bit Mad Men-y. I was pretty excited. And I hoped that my food would be great – I made this dish for the first time.

For Krautfleckerl, you need a head of white cabbage.

You have to clean it and cut it in nice fine stripes. Then, put those in a bowl and salt them – They “sweat” a bit. After 15 minutes, you can squeeze a bit of liquid out.

Meanwhile, dice an onion and melt quite a bit of butter in a big pan.

Before you throw in the onion dices, put in about 10 grammes of sugar and let it caramelise.

Now you can throw the onion in and roast it. Then, put the cabbage strips in the pan. Also, put a bit of caraway in.
Cover the pan and let it cook for about an hour. Stir once in a while!

When the cabbage is cooked and browned…

…you can cook the pasta. You don’t really get Fleckerl outside of Austria. (Google them if you want to know how they look.) Farfalle (or bow tie pasta) are great for this dish, too.

When they’re cooked al dente, let them drain and put them in the pan with the cabbage. Stir and season with salt and quite a bit of pepper. And serve! Best with a fresh green salad.

I have always liked Krautfleckerl, but it was so yummy even I was surprised. Tasted like eating in a ski hut after a long day in the snow.

And Mum and Dad liked it, too. Dad is absolutely no fan of cabbage, but he refilled his plate twice! I have to admit, I was pretty proud. And so happy!

Afterwards, we had a nice and warm punch at the christmas market.

Great day. Best parents in the world. I hope we can repeat that soon.

And oh, it was great. (Deutsche Version.)

Here you can find the German recipe. If you don’t understand it, I’ll translate it for you – And I’ll add what I changed. For this recipe, you have to grate pumpkin. And that’s definitely not nice work. But you know what I’ve got at home? A Moulinette – Which is a little kitchen machine that chops and mixes and grates stuff. So I just had to roughly dice about 500 g of a Hokkaido pumpkin…

…and my little machine grated it.

Also, chop 2 onions and add it to the pumpkin.

Then, beat 3 eggs and crumble in 150-200 g feta cheese. (I took 200 g because I don’t like to have small leftovers.)

Stir it in the grated pumpkin. Season with salt and pepper.

Grease a casserole dish with olive oil and fill the pumpkin mix in.

I had this lovely leek in my fridge, so I topped it with that.

Bake in a preheated oven with 200° C for about 1 hour.

When baked, the top is a bit crunchy and the leek crispy. But the inside is so soft and moist.

Makes 2-3 servings. For good and hungry eaters definitely 2. But I’m never that hungry when I cooked, so for me: 3. One to eat immediately. One for work. And one for the freezer.

And oh, I can tell you, this pumpkin bake is awesome when re-heated! There are dishes I am definitely sure they get better when re-heated. This pumpkin bake. Mum’s lasagna. Dad’s goulash.
But anyway. I’ll definitely make this bake again. And re-heat it again. Yum.