Pistachio, Coffee & Marscapone Cake

Good day monday dwellers!

Despite some washing machine issues, this weekend was full of fabulousness – my friends Nixon and Dada are visiting at the moment.. which of course meant lots of baked goods, lots of food in general and watching Austin Powers.  After so many years of not having seen it, I was laughing my ass off. The best line is – surely – when Dr. Evil talks about his parents and says that his father often “accused chestnuts of being lazy” – pure hilarity.

So I baked this coffee and pistachio cake with mascarpone, yoghurt and honey in the middle and on top. It isn’t an overwhelmingly coffee flavoured cake, but rather a subtle hint of coffee. It doesn’t have any of the bitterness of coffee. For those coffee lovers who don’t think coffee is bitter.. it just is. Not necessarily in a bad way.. but even when its as freshly ground as the day is young, I still get a hint of bitter!

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Chicken and Pesto Pasties

When it’s a Sunday in Berlin… and you have completely forgotten that supermarkets don’t open, the first thing you want to do is scream expletives. However, believe it or not,  this approach doesn’t actually help. So instead I scrambled around the kitchen finding anything useful (and luckily some chicken I had bought on friday… sneaky!). With the right ingredients to make shortcrust pastry, some chicken, pesto, garlic, onions and parmesen I decided to make some open pasties.

The photo above is the uncooked version… it was just my favourite photo which is why I used it first! below, you can see the baked version. I added some balsamic vinegar to give it that tang!

Marmalade Madeleines

Madeleines are a veritable french delight but I thought I would anglicize them a bit by adding some of the delicious bitter sweet orange marmalade that my mum bought me. I come from a family of marmalade makers & eaters.. although it has never been my personal first choice to spread on a slice of warm toast…it does taste fab in cakes. It gives that caramelized rich sweetness to these madeleines and makes them nice and crispy on the outside.

I am currently lying on my bed thinking about how far away monday still is… wooo… hooooooo! My nails are chipping, my hair is destroyed by over bleaching the ends to create an “ombre” effect and my skin is like an old prune. You know what that means… MAJOR PAMPERING SESSION. I have the face mask at the ready… so enjoy your sunday! And if you have a madeleine pan, give these a go. If you don’t you can just use cupcake cases

Candied Almonds for Autumn

So, there is no more denying it in Berlin, Autumn has arrived and I’m trying to enjoy it. It isn’t hard, because I have been munching on these delicious candied almonds which are sinfully easy to make. I won’t even be including a recipe! This is going to be a very short post… just to get those Autumn taste buds tingling.

Cookie Mania

hello Monday… it’s dreary and grey over here… and I am glad. Nothing is worse than being stuck in a concrete box of an office box and watched the last days of Summer pass you by. Over the weekend I made yet more cookies.. if I’m honest the peanut sandwich cookies tasted amazing.. but visually I felt they were kind of wack. So, I got back on the cookie horse and made these delicious chocolate and hazelnut cookies.

I spent the weekend being a bit sick and watching some Harry Potter… may sound sad but it was pretty awesome and chilled. Harry Potter and the Half blood Prince… the one where Dumbledore dies. Makes me tear up everytime. Ergh, stupid deatheaters. A favourite scene is when Ron absolutely kills it in the Quidditch trials. ahhh. good times!

For this recipe, rather than using cooking chocolate I used some old chocolate bars I had left over, but I think cooking chocolate is always the juiciest and gooeist when it comes to cookies, so I have substituted chocolate bars with cooking chocolate in the recipe.

 

Peanut Sandwich Biscuits with Custard Cream

Happy Friday 13th lovelies! I hope you had a good week… I am finally recovering from my cold. I am such a weakling! And I still sound slightly like an old man who smokes a pipe… but hey, don’t people say croaky voices are sexy or something?

So, after a long time of not posting any baked goodness, I thought the combination of peanut butter cookies and custard cream was too good to pass up. Last night I went for waffles at a place called Cassonade on Oranianstrasse in Berlin and had an amazing Lutticher waffle with apple sauce and nutella. Some people think that’s a disgusting combo, but those who think that haven’t tried it! While I am trying to cut down on my insanely high sugar intake.. yesterday was a treat day and I thought… why end there. so I baked these at about 11 pm last night and then watched some breaking bad. Thrilling!

These sandwich biscuits are actually pretty easy but after making the dough you do need to cool it in the fridge for about an hour to get it nice and stiff.

Delicious Magazine Bake off Winner

Hi guys,

Sorry for two things – the terrible quality of these photos… I wanted to post about it.. but my camera is awful at showing the text clearly… and 2 sorry that I haven’t posted a recipe since last week… I have been sick. Nothing serious, just one of those fluey coldy heady body-encompassing things, which makes you want to cry when you see food. Also… didn’t want to infect anyone with it, and eating a whole cake could have been a bit much!

Anyway, I am almost back to full health – I will know I am healthy again when I fancy a glass of wine. At the moment any form of alcohol is most unappealing, which is very unlike me!

I thought I would write about winning the delicious. magazine bake off because 1. I am pretty proud of this achievement 2. It was the thing that gave me the confidence that really go for it with the blog. 3. It was so much fun and the delicious. team and the other contestants Maria-Theresa and Nora’s cake were both amazingly delicious so I am going to try and get in contact with them and get the recipes for those. Nora made a traditional Hungarian Christmas cake and Maria Theresa made this luxurious hazelnut and chocolate layer cake.

Family Traits: Mum’s Lime and Coriander prawns

So, I am trying to introduce more savory cooking to Sugar Thumb – firstly because all this baking is making me into a bit of a chubster and secondly because I cook a lot so it seems a waste not to photograph it all! I am trying to be a bit healthier, but have no fear… I will never cut baking out and the majority of posts will still have sweet treats in mind.  I am going to start including some of my favourite meals from my childhood in a series called “Family Traits”. Many of which I will take from my mum, dad, grandmas and family friends… I hope it’s interesting and I think it will be a wonderful trip down memory lane for me!

My mother, Kala, has a real skill for throwing things together when she is busy and has little time to make something elaborate. And it still looks and tastes like a dream! This is one of her classic quick recipes – lemon and coriander prawns it takes about 15 minutes and its great to have in a wrap. It has a beautiful tang from the lemon and coriander which is smoothened by the use of butter instead of oil to fry the shallots in.

Double Chocolate and Berry Lamingtons

I know Lamingtons have been absolutely EVERYWHERE in the blogosphere, but I couldn’t help jumping on the baking bandwagon (*toot toot beep beep*). I had never ever seen or heard of these coconut covered delights until about a month ago… and so I just had to make them. They are so simple to make but so wonderfully effectiv visually for a party… not to mention DELICIOUS!

On Saturday my friends came round for a good old english style tea and cakes session! I made double chocolate lamingtons with berry jam and they went down a treat. My friend Irma said they were “juicy”.

Now, while it is a very easy process – there are many steps to it and so it can take a bit of a while! I have provided a wealth of images to help you understand each step! You can also make vanilla lamingtons by using a vanilla sponge recipe – but I always recommend adding a dollop of plain yoghurt and a quarter tbsp of bicarbonate of soda in addition to a normal vanilla sponge recipe – it makes it more moist and fluffy!

Mmmmmm – this photo really demonstrates how wonderfully moist and flavoursome lamingtons can be with a bit of jam sandwiched in the middle. MMMmmm MMMMmmm MMMMMMmmmmm! This is my plate after approximately 1 second of the lamingtons being ready.