Easter Lamb.

Happy Easter everyone! If you are still looking for something great to bake, I’ve got something for you: Have a look at my Easter Lamb.

It’s a black lamb with great poppy seed filling. You could also use white filling. Or no filling. It looks great any way. And it’s so easy to make! (Deutsche Version.)

Bunny Buns.

Dear all,
Happy Easter!

(Deutsche Version.)

Cinnaddiction

Mum and I baked today. Cinnamon Bakery.

It’s cold outside. And cinnamon is the best smell you can have in your nose when it’s cold outside.

Happy Easter!

This is what I made today. It will sit in all the Easter baskets of the family.

You don’t recognise what that is? Let me help you out.

Bunny Buns! As you can see, I had a problem with the sugar icing (it’s not chocolate) – gravity was against me. But we packed them in plastic wrap anyway.

I followed this instruction: Click me! If you don’t speak German, never mind, it’s only about the photos anyway.

Bunny buns ready to go with us to the family visits!

I’m really looking forward to Easter and hope for good weather. Enjoy your Easter, too!

A swirl of cinnamon

Come sit with me. There’s “10 Things I Hate About You” on TV. Let’s drink a cup of coffee. Have a Cinnamon Swirl with it.

Awesome swirl. Tasty. Moist in the middle. Cinnamon! Oh how do I love cinnamon. And I love this film. How cute is the scene in which Heath Ledger is singing! (Oh, I miss him.) And Joseph Gordon-Levitt! He’s awesome, too. I’m glad that he also could make other really good movies after this one. Often, the actors starring in such popular romantic comedies never get a good film again, even though they’re really good.

Since not everybody loves cinnamon (and Heath Ledger) as much as I – let’s say my Dad and my brother – I also made our family Sweet Buns.

And then we had two little baskets full of sweet and tasty treats. They’re almost gone already!

And since it’s Easter time, have a look at another one of our little decoration bunnies.

Sweet cinnamon swirls and cute Easter bunny look like a perfect team. With a cup of coffee, they’re a perfect threesome! And now add “10 Things I Hate About You” aka the film to which I always have to squeal “Aaaaaawww!”. Most perfect foursome!

When I saw those cute cute cute chocolate figures in a store last week, I squealed a bit, too. (In my mind.) They’re awesome! They come from Frey and there were chocolate figures like:

Captain John Rabbit!

A Chocolate Duck!

Aaaaand, cutest of them all: Calimero!!!

Sorry for the a bit blurry photos – phone cam.
Now I got to go, Heath Ledger just gave Julia Stiles a Fender and… kind of bought her back. (That’s kind of strange, I think. Well, but he loves her.) End Kiss!
(By the way, I also watch really good films. Rear Window is in my DVD player right now! But I just love love love 10 Things I Hate About You once in a while.)

Studying and a cat, a cake and a never-ending chocolate Santa, honey and ice. Pick your favourite. Or read the whole one.

(Maybe, I should just change the title in “Too long title”.)

At the moment, when I look in the mirrow, I see someone tired staring back at me. I need holidays! Right now, my agenda says “studying, studying, exam, studying, exam”. But hey, soon, it’s going to be over and then, I’ll have holidays for a whole month! That’s right, a month!!

Right now, my bed often looks like that.

Yes, I’m studying in bed. Who doesn’t? And yes, the cat loves to sit on my papers.

She also loves to sleep on them.

And to stare into my laptop.

She’s like: What are you doing on the Internet? Don’t read blogs or look at facebook! (Yes, facebook is addicting.)

Baking is not on the agenda right now. But I’m already thinking about what I’ll make when I’m finally done with exams. I can’t decide! Right now, I’m thinking about muffins.
Mum took over the baking for me yesterday and made marble bundt cake. When I finally had time to have a piece (today, with the obligatory cup of coffee, to celebrate the completion of my second exam), they had already eaten almost the whole cake! My piece was thin.

Maybe one day I’ll tell her my secret ingredient to make the cake more moist. (No offence, Mum’s an awesome baker and I learned everything from her, but there’s this special thing. And I didn’t even get it from the internet.)

And yes, I know, in the photo, the piece of cake looks huge. I don’t know what’s up with my camera lately, I have to make really close shots to get it to focus on what I want. I hope it’s just the low battery and not the cam.

Well. As you can imagine, there just did not happen a lot in the past week.

I still didn’t finish that chocolate Santa.

Told you I need a lot of time to finish one.

You know what I love? I love rolls with low fat quark and honey.

Low fat quark is the perfect basis for honey, jam and Nutella. It’s sourly and it’s the perfect opposition to the really sweet topping. Gosh, I love that.

You know what I hate? I hate that icy weather. It’s not cold, it’s icy. There’s no snow outside, it’s ice. Every time I step out of the underground train I can’t breathe for a moment because it’s so cold. I love winter. You know I do. But it’s no fun if it’s so cold. Winter should be over after Christmas.
It try to do something against the cold by wrapping up as warm as I can.

I love that hat. I’m glad I have a soft spot for winter hats and scarves in all different colours. And of course my perfect winter jacket. But sometimes, I feel it’s enough. I want to put the jacket in the closet and go outside in just a sweater.

Since I have already spent way too much time with blogging, I’ll stop now and go study. I can decide between movie history and media studies. Media studies is about YouTube – yes, I have a lecture about YouTube. I know that’s cool. But I like movie history a lot more, it’s the lecture that tells me that that’s exactly what I want to study. I always looked forward to going to this one. I’m really sad, it’s over, actually. The prof was really cool, too. He’s only a visiting professor at my university, so I hope he’ll stay long, then I could do another one of his lectures someday.

Those are the two exams that are left. The other two that are already behind me (and will be because I passed, I hope) were about the obligatory lectures I had to take. They were hard. But because of them, I often met my study group, which are really nice people, which is good. We sometimes go out altogether and it would be nice to keep that going.

Grab your luck at the tail fin!

Have a happy new year! And watch out – I’m always afraid of getting some banger at my head.

To give away as lucky charms, I baked those Lucky Fish.

They’re actually the same sweet buns I presented you here, but in fish shape. I don’t know if eating fish is traditional elsewhere, but here, in my family, it’s tradition to eat those Manner Lucky Fish at New Year’s Day. I think it comes from the tradition to eat a real fish for dinner on New Year’s Eve. You have to start eating at the tail fin (because your luck can’t swim away, then).
This year, I made lucky fish myself – they’re a perfect lucky charm to give away. I don’t like lucky charms that have no use – they’re just something I put somewhere for two months and then throw away. But I like them when you can eat them like chocolate ladybirds or marzipan pigs or when they’re a plant, that’s nice, too.

That’s why I made my own lucky charms that you can eat – they’re tasty and nice and look how cute they are!

Go have a nice party tonight. Actually, I don’t like New Year’s Eve, it’s too loud, people are too drunk, there’s too much going on in the streets and you are kind of obligated to go out (to see drunk people being too loud and too many). But, well – because of my obligation to go out I’ll try to forget about this and have fun.
2010 is going to be awesome – I feel it. Hope you do, too.

Pizza Pizza! And a lot of other tasty things.

This is Dad’s and mine home-made pizza.

I do know it looks a bit gross – but I’ve never seen a photograph of a pizza that doesn’t, actually. But never mind the photo, it’s tasty – we often have self-made pizza for lunch at home, it’s quick and easy and you can eat the rest of it in the evening cold. I think it’s cold even better than warm.

We’ve been to the Christkindlmarkt again yesterday! Yaay! (Yes, I do other things than going to Christmas markets too, but they’re not that much fun.) It was Spittelberg again. I tried a mug full of hot cinnamon-apple juice – yum!

Today, we’ve got visitors. Mum is really talented at table-decorating. Today’s table is still in autumn-style, not winter. The little sticks in the middle are improvised because we didn’t have fitting flowers. I think it’s beautiful, but Mum says, she’s been better.

This is today’s dessert – yum! Rasperries with cream and sugar on top! And with pieces of my gingerbread that tastes today even better than freshly made. Perfectly fitting together!

And right now, I’m totally waiting for these babies to be enjoyed with my coffee: Sweet buns!

(Alright, I already pinched one for breakfast.)

Happy Halloween!

I know, strange, but I didn’t bake anything containing pumpkin today. (I ate a spaghetti pumpkin for lunch, however!) Mum and I made traditional Sweet Buns today.

These babies are family tradition. They have been made lots of times before I was born and loads of times after. Visitors have already eaten them dozens of times over the years, but they NEVER, never ever grow tired of them. No! They even ask for more of our Sweet Buns. They tried them at home for themselves, but these ones are never as good as the ones my Mum and I make – not even with the same recipe. Believe me – I have witnesses. I don’t know why it is like that. We just have the talent for these ones.

Mum loves them with butter and jam. I eat them “pure”.

Happy Halloween to all of you that celebrate this day. This year, I don’t. Not because it’s not tradition here – I don’t care about that. I’m not one of these “Halloween is a commercial import”-people. I think it’s a festivity with a great history and has totally nice traditions. I also went trick-or-treating when I was younger, it’s so much fun. Once, I made a halloween party with my neighbour, Mum and I made caramel apples (that were too hard to bite, you had to lick them), we ate pumpkin soup (the beginning of my pumpkin soup career, I think) and played all the games that we got introduced to in our English books, like Apple Bobbing. Those were the days.

This year, I’m not in the mood for going to a Halloween party. There is no good one – my friends go to a club I don’t like, so I’ll join some fellow students in the Burgtheater – there’s an open stage party tonight, nothing connected to Halloween. If that’s boring, I can join those others anyway, but not in a costume. I hate dressing up. I planned to just wear a nice petticoat skirt and put on a magic hat – and then I was going to be a witch. Unfortunately, I misplaced my hat. I don’t find it. That makes me moody. And in this club, you only come in for free if wearing a costume. … I found a lilac feather boa in my closet. … If I go there, I’ll just put this around my neck and pretend to be… whatever. Anything, hoping they let me in without having to pay – wish me luck!

Dear October,

I’m so glad to see you! You know, September was a boring month. (I don’t want to talk bad about September, but this year: boooring.) But you, October, you are bringing me my totally new life stage. On Monday, I’ll be sitting in my first university lecture ever. Also, you bring pumpkins, apples and nice weather.

Stay for a while! Do you want a cup of coffee? I made some tasty Apple Cinnamon Buns to welcome you.

I know, they don’t look like buns. The dough was totally sticky and I made a complete mess out of the kitchen. Also, I now have a blister from a burn on my finger. But – apples! and cinnamon! They’re gooood – believe me.

I like you, October. It’s lovely you’re here.