Let’s just call it Vancouver Mountains.

I had a little problem with this cake yesterday. It just didn’t want to come out of the cake tin – although I had it floured really thoroughly! In the end, I got it out. But it was a bit … uhm..uneven. So I decided I’ll call this really tasty Orange Marble Bundt Cake just Vancouver Mountains.

Okay, you don’t really see that in this picture. But whatever, the mountains were really good – uneven or even. And I think it’s a nice name since the Olympic Winter Games are over tomorrow.

Mum and I decorated for the Easter holidays today!
I think we may have the largest collection of Easter bunnies.

Oh no, these are not all of them by far!

These are my favourite pieces of decoration:

The pastel-coloured chicken and cock.

I love how they look at you when you come round the corner in the flat.

The straw bunny.

It’s big. And cute.

And now my favourite piece of them all: The Little Stork.

It’s a piece of decoration for our Easter pussy willow.

Tomorrow, it’s the last day of holidays and university starts again. I’ve decided to learn Italian now! Yay, I’m really looking forward to it. Italian sounds awesome.

What I love…

Want to know what I love?

I love making lists. I especially love making lists about the things that I love. It’s like putting my world on a piece of paper. Just more organised.

I love baking. (Good to know, huh?)
I especially love to bake for others. It’s not because I’m really charitable or anything – I mean, I love if people are happy when I bake for them. It’s like Christmas, I love picking presents and seeing people’s faces when they open it. I also love picking recipes and thinking about who would like it. But baking for others isn’t a totally unselfish act. Because I love getting feedback, especially if it’s good one.
So, today I made Chocolate Muffins. For others.

Mum (who I love, too – A lot, actually.) asked me to make some chocolate muffins for her office. (By the way: I love chocolate.) So, I did. It was a good distraction from studying. (I also love my studies. But not the ones I’m cramming in my head right now.)

You may wonder, what the funny toothpicks are doing in those two muffins. (Actually, there’s even a third one in pink.) There are three special muffins. One was for me. (The yellow one.) And two are given away. They contain a yummy surprise. (It’s something very high up on the list of eatable things I love.)

But I have to admit, I’m not a muffin lover. I don’t know, I’ve just never had a muffin that blew me over. (Neither self-made nor bought.) I tried one of those warm and I didn’t really know if I like them – but as I said, I’m not a real muffin lover. Mum tried one by night, when they were already chilled, and she loved it. (Then I tried a piece, too, and yes, they were actually better than before.) She was even tempted to leave them at home instead of bringing them into the office.

But of course, she won’t.

I already put them in their box and they will be on their way in about 7 hours from now. (I love calculating in how many days and hours something will happen.)

I love that it’s getting finally warm. Hooray! The cold isn’t fun anymore when Christmas is over. Oh, I love Christmas.
I also love sleep. This is what I’m going to do now. And I love my huge bed. That got a new neighbour today: a small red rack called Lack. I love Ikea. (I seem to love the word “love”, too. And yes, this post is a bit cheesy.)

I liked my weekend, but my camera didn’t.

This weekend, I stayed at my Grandma’s in lower Austria. Gosh, I did have a lot of beautiful sights – birds in the birdhouse on the balcony, a snowy landscape glittering in the sun, my cousin’s lovely dog. But my camera hates me. All weekend, it turned itself off after a second whenever I turned it on. Now that I’m back home, it’s working again. ???

Well. If you stay at my Grandma’s, you come back home with food. She loves to give me sweets and I can’t say No. And I don’t want to. Would you say No to this apple strudel?

Yum. I don’t like puff pastry a lot, but if it is apple strudel, I’m all in. Also, I always get a lot of chocolate.

I love those Milka Strawberry-Cream-chocolate hearts. The filling is so good!

And, I got 5 more jars of jam.

Added to my jam jar collection in the storeroom. I get jam from Grandma every time I visit her. It doesn’t matter if I say I can’t eat that much jam, she just says “It doesn’t get bad”. I can’t say No to her, because I love her jam and I love when she’s happy that I want some and I don’t want her to be sad. That’s just it. I won’t stop taking her jam with me if she wants me to. (Could anyone tell me how to make a better photo of jam jars?)

By the way, I drove to Grandma by myself – all alone! I’m a bit proud because I never drove alone for more than 10 minutes – and the trip to Grandma takes me 1 and 1/2 hour! But because I still have to concentrate a lot while driving, it makes me really tired – I could go right to bed now, but I don’t want to. I’m glad I started studying on Friday because I’m not in a hurry now and I don’t really have to study today. So I can sit on the sofa now and watch giant slalom in Vancouver.

Enjoying chocolate with my loved ones.

Have a happy Valentine’s Day! We started the day with a tasty Chocolate Cake.

My weekend is awesome. There is no way to spoil it. Because Friday night, I finally got my exam grade and I passed! I finished my first semester! This is so cool I can’t even tell. Every time I think about it I start grinning. Yes!!!
Since I still had a voucher for a breakfast with Mum, I used it to celebrate with her on Saturday. We went to a really nice Turkish café next to my university – I’ve always wanted to try it because they have that typical Turkish pastry called Simit.

The breakfast there was really good. We had those Simits with Turkish cheese called Kaschkawal (very mild), slices of Turkish sausage called Sucuk (I don’t like sausage at all, so I didn’t try it), home-made orange jam (very good with the Kaschkawal!), yummy olives (they tasted like holidays!), tomatoes, Feta cheese, cucumber and butter. They also had Belgish waffles there, so we tried one with fruits – apples, bananas and kiwi! It was soo tasty. And we were almost the only ones sitting there, so there was this lovely old lady that served us and acted like a Grandma, always asking if we wanted anything else. Really nice, we’ll definitely go there again.

Friday night, I baked this chocolate cake, so that it would taste really chocolatey this morning. This is it just plain.

Of course, I couldn’t let it like this, I wanted to decorate it for Valentine’s Day!

So, I cut out marzipan hearts and it put pink sugar icing (made with raspberry juice) on them.

Sweet! Then, I put sprinkles on those.

Sweeter! Since I made a bit too many, this morning Mum, Dad and my brother got their own marzipan heart each.

And we like the cake!

Enjoy Valentine’s Day and tell your loved one how happy you are to have them.

Good week.

Oooh, I had a pretty eventful week. Finally, almost everbody’s done with exams. That means: Celebrating!

I was in the mood for baking, too. And an Apple Cheese Pie it was!

This pie was pretty much work and needed a lot of dish-washing. But I love the composition between cheesecake and apple-pie. The apples are caramelised and it’s a wholemeal pie crust.

Yummy! Interested in the recipe? End of the post!