Recipe: The world fastest cake

When you short of time and still want to give your loved ones a dessert after a meal, why not trying this recipe.
Its the world fastest cake, and it tastes actually pretty good if you consider that it only bakes for a few minutes.
This is what you need for one portion:
4 Table Spoon flour
4 Table Spoon cacao powder
4 Table Spoon sugar
1 Table Spoon vanilla sugar
3 Table Spoon milk
3 Table Spoon vegetable oil
1 egg
1 pinch of baking powder

Mix all the ingredients together and fill it in a greased form, i used my crème brule forms for it.
To avoid a mess cover it with some cling film. Dont fill the form completely since the cake will rise.
Place the forms in the micro wave and turn in on at the highest setting for 4 minutes.

After let it rest for half a minute or so, be careful when removing it from the microwave, its extremely hot. Let it cool down a bit, before serving you can give some chocolate cream or powder sugar on top.

Enjoy !

Time change this weekend

Many people seem to have Issues each year with the time change,
therefore I help you now, next Sunday we switch back !

Ireland/UK:   


When local daylight time is about to reach
Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 2:00:00 AM clocks are turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, October 28, 2012 at 1:00:00 AM local standard time instead

There will be a week until 4th of November where the time difference will be 6 hours between the US East coast and Europe, rather than 5 hours normally.

US:

When local daylight time is about to reach
Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 2:00:00 AM clocks are turned backward 1 hour to
Sunday, November 4, 2012 at 1:00:00 AM local standard time instead

Most people have phones and computers who automatically switch over,
but I for Example need to change manually the following. Kitchen Clock, Oven Clock, Microwave Clock, Car Clocks and my Watch. Happy Changing !

My new toy, a mincer

Life is great, and since I like to try out new stuff, I got myself a new toy. A mincer !
At the moment I have troubles to find cheap meat I can mince, since in the supermarket the minced meat is actually cheaper per Kilo than any other pieces of meat I can find to mince.

At my local butcher i got a kilo of good pork I could mince for a very good price, but I am not as much used any more to pork mince than I thought. I think I will try next time a combination of pork and beef.

Next step would be to produce my own sausages, that will be a interesting adventure, I hope a friend can help me to accelerate my learning since i think its complicated to make a good sausage.

I keep you posted !

Garlic Spaghetti butter

Out of laziness, I didn't want to wait for the butter to melt to make garlic butter, I just used the garlic press and made some spaghetti like garlic butter as you can see here in the picture.

Simple idea, looks great.

Clonfavour favour fyre

I had huge fun last Sunday with the first ever Clonfavour favour fyre, swapping my own produce with others. I ended up with fresh fish, apples, Swiss chard, etc. a full menu :-)

Checkout more pictures and Infos about Clonfavour here.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Gnocchi in Tomato Sauce

A recipe I wanted to try for a long time is sweet potato Gnocchi . I found several recipes on-line but all contained peanut butter for the sauce, or almonds. Since I am allergic to nuts I needed to modify the recipes to be able to enjoy it myself.

To be honest, I didn't like the result, maybe because the Austrian version of Gnocchi is fried, and not boiled in butter.

My wife and my au pair however loved it, so here it comes, my simplified recipe.

Ingredients:
1 kg sweet potato
1 egg
250 gram plain flour
250 ml water
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of salt

for sauce:
tomato chopped
garlic fine chopped
honey
1 onion fine chopped
1-2 teaspoon of sugar

heat your oven to 200 degree C and cut the potatoes in slices as shown on the picture above.With a bit of oil place them in the oven so they get soft. In meantime prepare the sauce. Chop onion and a toe of garlic and fry them in a pot. Once nice roasted add the sugar, than the chopped tomatoes. (you can use the ones out of the tin) Add a spoon of honey and salt to taste. bring to boil and than keep it warm. Making the sauce really depends on the taste you like to have, you can vary this.

Remove the potato from the oven, they should be easy to skin now, than using a blender make a smooth paste, add the water, flour, nutmeg, salt and egg and mix well. I used a kitchen machine but you can do it also with your hands. You should get a sticky dough.
Bring a put of water with a pinch of salt to cook. Using 2 spoons you form little dumplings which you let fall into the boiling water. Once they are cooked they rise up to the surface.Keep them warm untill you have made all, than serve with the tomato sauce you made.

Voila, Sweet Potato Gnocchi. A lovely vegetarian dish witch tastes good according to my wife.
I will soon try the fried version and will let you know if I liked that better.

Recipe: Black Berry infused Vodka

Its not to late yet, at least here in Ireland, get out there quick to get a handful or two of the last remaining black berries you can find.
Clean them well, put them in a bottle and squeeze a few. Top it up with the vodka of your choice and let it stand for 2 weeks, turning it once or twice a day.

After 2 weeks you should be able to taste the first drop and you hopefully will have a nice flavoured shot. I keep you posted how it goes, and if the result tastes as good as it looks.

Greetings, your Master of long sentences (my wife calls me that)
Christian

The egg trick

So, its October, my little blog break seems to be over,
however I decided to move on in a bit a slower pace since I plan to finish my cookbook before Xmas there is a lot of work to be done.

I will however try to post 3 times a week about my ongoing projects or interesting stuff I find around my favourite topics.
Lets start with this video I found on the web, isnt it exciting what kind of stuff people come up with ?
http://vimeo.com/49708691