Apple Cake (Apfelkuchen sehr fein)

This is yet another traditional German Apple cake. It can easily be prepared ahead of time. Elstar apples are most often used for this cake, but they are a little difficult to find in the US. However, any crisp apple on the sweeter side (e.g. Gala, Golden Delicious) works great at well.

Ingredients:

Springform (26 cm or 11 inches in diameter)

Some grease

Topping:

750 g apples (about four medium-sized)

25 g (1/2 tablespoon) butter

40 g raisins

Glaze:

2 tablespoons apricot jam

1 tablespoon water

Cake Batter:

125 g (1 stick) butter or margarine

125 g (113 g) sugar

1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

1 pinch of salt

3 eggs

200 g flour

2 leveled teaspoons baking powder

1-2 tablespoons milk

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease bottom of springform.

2. Peel apples, cut into quarters and remove core. Cut outside of apples lengthwise several times without fully cutting through!

3. Using an electric hand mixer beat butter or margarine until soft. Add sugar, vanilla sugar or vanilla aroma, and salt while stirring until well mixed.

4. Add one egg at a time, and mix each egg into batter for about 1/2 minute. In a separate bowl mix 

flour and baking powder, then add flour mixture in two portions to cake batter, alternating with milk. Pour cake batter into springform and level. Put apples in circles on top of batter. Melt 1/2 tablespoon butter in microwave or stovetop pot, brush butter on top of apples. Sprinkle raisins over cake.

5. Bake cake at 180 degrees Celsius for about 45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

6. Squeeze apricot jam through a fine mesh, mix with water, and while stirring bring to a boil. Brush apricot-water mix over cake immediately after baking.

7. Remove springform edge, and let cake cool on springform bottom on a cooling rack.

Comments:

1. This cake can be prepared 1-2 days ahead of time, and even better, this cake can also be frozen, so you can always have a cake ready in minutes when guests unexpectedly make a visit.

2. You don't have to add raisins, this cake also works really well without.

3. Some people like to sprinkle some cinnamon over the apples before baking.

4. I used Gala apples, but other apples work well, too. I would use a crisp and sweet apple, though, nothing tart like Granny Smith. If you use sour apples it'll alter the taste of this cake, certainly possible, but not necessarily along the German tradition of this cake.

Chocolate-Cherry Cake

This cake is a very easy and quick bread-like cake (only the baking time is longer). The cherries give it some nice taste, and what can go wrong with the combination of chocolate and cherries? Just don't use Marachino cherries for this cake! They are candied, and too sweet, not good for this recipe!

In contrast to many breads, this one uses oil and buttermilk/milk, and is an all-in-batter. An all-in-batter is more liquid, and doesn't have to be stirred as much as a traditional sweet bread batter. It's more like a muffin batter. Although the recipe says to use an electric hand mixer to mix the ingredients, oil and milk make it liquid enough, so you could just stir it by hand.

Ingredients:

One baking pan (8 x 8 Pyrex form) or 10 x 5 (25 x 11 cm, Kastenform) baking pan

Some grease and flour for the pan

For the batter:

One jar sour cherries (Morello Cherries, Trader Joe's)

200 g flour

2 packages chocolate pudding (Dr. Oetker) or JELL-O cook and serve (1.5 oz)

2 leveled teaspoons baking powder

100 g sugar

1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

5 eggs

150 ml oil

125 ml buttermilk (I used regular milk)

100 g chocolate, finely ground

For the topping:

100 g chocolate

1 teaspoon oil

Or

150 g powdered sugar

2 tablespoons of the cherry juice

Or

Powdered sugar

Preparation:

1. Grease baking pan, coat with some flour. Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius (350 F).

2. Drain cherries well, collect juice. Mix flour, pudding powder and baking powder in a bowl. Add sugar, vanilla sugar or vanilla aroma, eggs, oil, and milk and beat with an electric hand mixer until mixed. 

3. Carefully fold in sour cherries and ground chocolate. Pour batter into pan and bake in preheated oven at 180 degree Celsius (350 F) for about one hour or until toothpick comes out clean.

4. Remove cake from oven and let cool for about 10 min, remove from pan and put on a cooling rack.

5. For the topping: Melt chocolate with oil on top of a stovetop pot filled with water while constantly stirring or melt chocolate in microwave, then stir in oil. Coat cake with chocolate, let cool then serve. Alternatively, mix powdered sugar with two tablespoons of cherry juice, then coat cake or just sift some powdered sugar on top of cake.

Comments:

1. I recently tried a brownie made with coconut flour, which I didn't even know could be used for baking. The coconut and chocolate flavor went very well together, and I think it might work well with this recipe, too. Since coconut flour is gluten-free, one might very well make a gluten-free version of this cake, something I will certainly try in the near future.

2. I made this cake recently and used 20% of coconut flour. Exchanging that amount of wheat for coconut flour is easy and doesn't require any adjustments to the recipe. I found the modified cake to be very moist, but the coconut flavor was not as strong as I was hoping for, so I need to try the cake with more coconut flour, but then the recipe will need to be adjusted to make up for the loss of gluten.

Poppyseed-Yeast Bread (Mohnstriezel)

This yeast bread is filled with poppy seeds and is a very traditional German baked good. One can frequently find it in bakeries where it is sold in slices.

Ingredients:

Baking sheet

Parchment paper

Yeast dough:

200 ml milk or water

50 g butter or margarine

500 g wheat flour

1 package dry yeast

75 g sugar (50 g when milk is used)

1 package vanilla sugar or some vanilla aroma

Some extra flour for kneading

Filling:

300 g poppy seeds

400 ml milk

1 package vanilla pudding powder or JELL-O cook and serve

100 ml milk

2 eggs

75 g sugar (no sugar needed when JELL-O is used because JELL-O already contains sugar)

75 g cornflakes (or Zwieback)

Crumble:

100 g wheat flour

75 g sliced almonds

75 g sugar

75 g soft butter

Glaze:

4 tablespoons apricot jam

1 tablespoon water

100 g powdered sugar

2-3 tablespoons water

Preparation:

1. Heat up water or milk in a stovetop pot or in the microwave until lukewarm. Melt butter or margarine in warm liquid.

2. Add flour to a medium sized bowl, and mix with dry yeast. Add remaining ingredients including the warm liquid and with the knead hooks of an electric hand mixer mix dough until a soft dough has formed (about 5 minutes). Cover dough and let rise in a warm place until about doubled in size.

3. Prepare the filling: Bring poppy seeds and 400 ml milk to a boil in a stovetop pot. Remove pot from heat and let sit for 10 minutes to soften poppy seeds. Mix 100 ml milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla pudding powder, add to poppy seeds and while stirring bring to a brief boil, then remove from heat and cool down. Add cornflakes or Zwieback to a plastic bag, seal the bag and crush into small pieces with a rolling pin. Stir crushed cornflakes or Zwieback under poppy seeds.

4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F).

5. Sprinkle some flour on yeast dough, and knead thoroughly on a floured surface. Roll dough out flat to a rectangle of about 40 x 30 cm (15 x 12 inches).

6. Spread poppy seed mixture onto dough leaving 1 cm or 1/2 inch of the edge free. Starting from the longer side roll dough up. Don't roll it too tight! Put rolled up dough with the facing up onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

7. Prepare crumble: Add flour, sugar, almonds and soft butter to a bowl. Using an electric hand mixer mix until crumbles of desired size have formed.

8. Coat surface of yeast bread with some water, then cover with crumbles, slightly pushing the crumbles into the yeast dough to make them stick.

9. Let yeast bread rise at a warm place until its size has significantly increased, then bake yeast bread at 180 degrees Celsius (350 F) for about 1 hour.

10. Apricot glaze: Push apricot jam through a fine mesh, mix in water and coat the yeast bread immediately after removing it from the oven. Let bread cool. Mix powdered sugar and water until a thick liquid has formed, and sprinkle over bread.

Comments:

1. This yeast bread is a great breakfast or afternoon treat. This recipe is enough for one very large or two smaller loafs. It freezes well, and when reheated in a toaster oven it tastes as it had been prepared just minutes ago.

Gluten-free Almond Cake

Ingredients

Springform 26 cm or 10 inches in diameter

Parchment paper

Some grease

Batter:

6 eggs

500 g almond flour (1 pound)

250 g sugar (225 g)

A pinch of salt

Zest of one lemon

Decoration:

2-3 tablespoons powdered sugar

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius (300 F). Grease bottom and edges of springform. Line springform with parchment paper.

2. Using an electric hand mixer beat eggs until very fluffy. Add sugar and keep beating until sugar is completely dissolved and batter starts to stiffen.

3. Mix in salt and lemon zest. Lastly, in three portions stir almonds into batter. Pour batter into springform and bake at 150 degrees Celsius (300 F) for about 1 hour or until toothpick comes out clean.

4. Remove cake from oven, let cool for about 10 min, the remove springform edge. Turn cake upside down on a wire rack, remove parchment paper from bottom. Flip cake back, let fully cool down.

5. Before serving, sift powdered sugar on top of cake.

Comments:

1. For some extra almond taste I added one tablespoon Amaretto.

2. Because this cake doesn't contain any baking powder, it is fairly dense inside. Thus, next time I would separate the eggs, beat the egg whites stiff, prepare the cake as described with the egg yolks only, and fold the stiff egg whites at the end under the prepared cake. This should help to make this cake a little more fluffy.

Custard Snail Buns (Puddingschnecken)

As I recently learned these buns are not called Custard Snail Buns, even though this is close to their German name, but rather Custard Chelsea Buns. They are related to Cinnamon Buns, but are filled with raisins and custard and lack the frosting of the cinnamon buns. These types of buns start with a yeast dough that is rolled out flat, filled and then rolled together into a long tube. The rolled in dough forms a snail shell pattern inside, which is made visible when the long tube is sliced, and the slices are placed flat on a baking sheet.

Ingredients:

Parchment paper

For the yeast dough:

125 ml milk

50 g butter or margarine

500 g flour

1 package dry yeast

50 g sugar

2 eggs

For the custard:

2 packages vanilla pudding powder

750 ml milk

80 g sugar

100 g raisins

For the glaze:

4 tablespoons apricot jam

2 tablespoons water

Preparation:

1. Heat milk in a stovetop pot or in the microwave until warm, not hot. Dissolve butter or margarine in warm milk.

2. Mix flour and dry yeast in a bowl. Add remaining ingredients for the yeast dough and warm milk-fat mixture. Using an electric hand mixer (knead hooks) mix until a smooth dough has formed. Cover bowl and let dough rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

3. Prepare the filling: Add sugar and vanilla pudding powder to milk and bring to a boil. Boil for 1 min, then pour into a bowl. To prevent any milk skin from forming cover the custard with plastic wrap, but making sure the plastic wrap is directly on top and touching the custard. Let cool down to room temperature, then stir in raisins.

4. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F).

5. Sprinkle flour on yeast dough, remove from bowl, and briefly knead on a flour-covered surface. Roll dough out to a rectangle of 60 cm x 40 cm (24 inches x 15 inches). If necessary or easier, divide dough in half before rolling to to a rectangle half the size.

6. Spread custard on dough. Starting from the longer end form a roll with the dough. This will make the snail pattern. Cut 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick slices and put these slices on the baking sheet covered with parchment paper or additional parchment paper. Leave enough space between the slices.

7. Let slices rise at a warm place until visibly increased in size, them bake in preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius (350 F) for about 15 minutes.

In the meantime, spread apricot jam through a fine mesh, then mix with water, and heat until volume starts to reduce. Spread glaze over hot buns and let buns fully cool down.

Comments:

1. Custard Filling: For this recipe I actually used German Vanilla Pudding powder. Each package usually calls for 500 ml milk each, but to make a stiffer custard I only used 3/4 liter milk. In exchange for German Vanilla Pudding powder you can also use vanilla-flavored Cook and Serve JELLO, but make sure to reduce the amount of milk. However, because JELLO is already sweetened I would recommend to leave out the sugar added here. Alternatively, in exchange for the German Vanilla Pudding powder one can also make the filling from scratch using 74 g potato starch, some vanilla aroma and sugar and milk and prepare as described above.

2. I found that the amount of custard filling was actually a little more than what I needed. If using too much filling it starts to squeeze out the sides when cutting the slices. 500 ml milk might be sufficient, but then it gets more difficult with the amount of pudding powder. One package makes the custard too runny, two is too much and makes it too stiff.

3. I didn't have enough raisins, but I had dried apricots at home, so I used half each. I had soaked the fruit in rum for some extra flavor, but the downside of this is that the custard turned slightly brown because of the dark rum I had used. Doesn't look as inviting as with a bright custard.