Three-cheese-loaf

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I nearly forgot it, the recipe for the really delicious loaf baked with three sorts of cheese. I’ll catch up on it today. It’s nice as a side dish with salad but a real indulgence too when savoured with some spicy herb butter.

Ingredients:

200 g Limburger cheese
200 g sheep’s or feta cheese
500 g flour
1 bag of dry yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
appr. 1 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika powder moderately spicy
150 ml lukewarm water
200 g cream cheese
some milk for brushing the loaf

Preparation:

Preheat oven at 220°C, cover tray with baking sheet

Slice the Limburger and sheep’s or feta chees.
Mix flour with remaining ingredients and cheese slices in the bowl of your food processor and knead until you get a soft dough. Leave the mixture at a warm place to rise. Then knead the dough again on a lightly floured work surface and form a loaf of 30cm. Sprinkle the surface with some water and score diagonally with a sharp knife. Leave again for rising. Then put the baking tray in the oven (lower third) and reduce temperature to 180°C. To get a golden brown crust spread some milk on the top of of the loaf just 10 minutes before the end of baking time.

Baking time: 50 – 60 minutes
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For a party I simply formed two loafs so that the slices were much smaller. Put the herb butter in silicone muffin cups. Thus you can easily place several cups on a large table.

Mother’s Day

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Dear Mothers, have a nice day with your families.

Hearts for Mother’s Day

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This post is for all those who just found out that we’ll have Mother’s Day already this week and that they still need a nice idea for  breakfast. Simply make some shortcrust heart shaped cookies and join two of them with some straw- or raspberry jam. Therefore heat the jam in your microwave for some seconds and stir afterwards. Disperse jam on one heart and place a second on top. Store in a cookie box, spread icing sugar on top just before serving and put them on a heart shaped napkin.
Mum surely will be very surprised seeing a stamped cookie balancing on the edge of her tea cup. With cookie stamp letters all kinds of names and messages can be printed. If you hurry up to order them right now or tomorrow at the latest you’ll probably get them delivered on Friday so that you can start with cooking on Saturday.
Take some lilies of the valley and place them in small glass vases as a center piece. If you don’t have any colored vases just dye their water with some food coloring matching with your decoration.

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Strawberry roses for Mother’s Day

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Only a week left until we’ll celebrate Mother’s Day next sunday. Most of all mothers don’t expect gifts or anything else but just wish their families to think of them and maybe prepare a nice day.
What about a very special bouquet of roses for breakfast? You only have to buy some fresh strawberries which are not too small the day before. With a very pointy knife petals are carefully cut into the strawberries. I found a very detailed instruction on the site of onelittleproject.com. They look very nice in a little vase.

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Another possibility is it to place the roses in a mini muffin paper cup and put it directly on Mum’s plate. Just add a little bow and a paper banner and here you are with a very nice table setting for Mother’s Day.

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If you want something more you can even make a little paper purse containing a small chocolate candy. You’ll find a free purse template here. It looks very cute if you choose cardstock matching with your dishes.

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It’s best to fix the candy on the bottom of your purse with a small stripe of double sided adhesive tape. Thus the purse can be moved without losing its candy.

 

1st of May

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Lots of customs and fairytales are referred to the night between 30th of April and 1st of May.  In Germany we’re “Dancing towards May”, in France people celebrate “Beltaine” on 1st of May. Beltane, Beltaine or Beletene is the beginning of summer in the Irish calendar. All over Europe people are talking about the night of witches. (Walpurgisnacht in German, referring to an english abbot living form 710-779 called Walpurga who was canonized on 1st of May) In many places people put up a maypole. It’s cut in the forest and put up in the center of town or village thus symbolizing nature’s fertility coming to mankind. In Rhineland young men put up a ribbon decorated birch tree in front of the house their seetheart’s living in.
Browsing the web I found a lovely custom mostly celebrated in the USA. A cardstock cornet is filled with flowers and attached to a neighbour’s door knob without beeing noticed. If the neighbour catches you red-handed he’s a allowed to ask for a kiss from you. Well, even if you don’t have a neighbour you’d like to kiss when caught I liked the idea and immediately made such a cornet. I’ll hang it up either at the door of a neighbour I don’t know that well yet or at a good friend’s entry. You may even offer it personally as a gift because it looks quite well at a room or cupboard door.

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It’s quite easy to make such a cornet. Take a rectangular card stock and twist a cornet beginning at one corner of a long side. Fix both, the inner and outer corner with a drop of glue. Punch two holes into the upper tip to pull through a ribbon to attach the cornet at the door knob. Decorate your cornet with paper stripes, doily, stickers or other accessories. Using the same card stock I made a nice label to write down my greetings. For my “showcase” I cut some flowers in my garden and placed them in a small plastic cup filled with water. The cup’s completely hidden in the cornet but the water prevents my flowers from shrivelling. If you want to attach a cornet to your neighbour’s door you may very well take a bouquet and put it in the cornet after watering the stalks. The recipient will surely place them in a vase and probably use the cornet lateron.

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