Bastelesel

Does this happen to you too? You’re cooking some pancakes for lunch because due to a lack of time and in the end there’s always a small leftover of batter. It doesn’t matter whether you’re preparing it for yourself, for two or more persons – the leftover will always be there and nobody feels hungry any more. We now solved this problem in a very pleasant way. We’ll cook this little pancake, spread some nutella and roll it. Wrapped in foil it stays in our fridge sor several hours. Then cut it diagonally into 1 inch wide rolls. They’re a nice side dish for dinner or even a full one when served with a coulis and a fresh smoothie. Today we had a mango coulis going with an apple-mango-smoothie. Therefore peal mango and cut into chunks. Take one third to be blended for the coulis. The remaining mango chunks, an apple cut into chunks too, one banana and 3-4 tbsp of yoghurt are to be blended together until smooth. Pour in glasses (2-3) and serve with the pancake rolls.
Instead of nutella you may take any jam for filling as well and the coulis is to be made with all kinds of fruit that can be pureed. For a salty version simply spread some creme cheese on your pancake and put some smoke salmon on top before rolling it. Then you don’t even need a dip to go with.

The Rhineland is celebrating carnival and that means lots of parties with lots of food. Fingerfood and other light snacks are best to be prepared . The mini-pizza rounds and the pizza baguette are my favourites.

With a dough of 400g flour you’ll get 30 mini-pizza rounds and a loaf of about 45cm length.

Ingeredients for the dough:
400g flour, 1 bag of dry yeast, 1 tsp salt, appr. 200ml lukewarm water, 1-2 tsp cooking oil

Ingredients for the topping:
2 bell peppers, 1 small tin of corn, 1 hand full of rocket leaves, 100g parma ham diced, 200g sour cream , 1-2 tbsp of milk or cream, 1 tbsp corn starch, 1/2 ts salt, pepper, oregano, 100g grated  Emmental, Parmesan torn

Method:
Cover baking tray with parchment paper and preheat oven at 180°C convection oven or 200°C top-bottom heat.
Add flour, salt, yeast and some water to a bowl. Start kneading on a low speed with your food processor or the hook of your hand mixer. Add more water and cooking oil until dough is smooth. Cover bowl with a damp cloth and leave to rise for at least 20 minutes.
In the meantime wash bell pepper and rocket. Cut both into chunks. Drain corn and mix with pepper in a bowl. Mix rocket and diced parma ham in a bowl too.
Add sour cream, corn starch, milk or cream and spices to a bowl and stir well. Fold in half of the Emmental.

Kneed dough again after resting and roll out thinly. With a dessert ring of 6cm cut out 30 rounds and place them on 2 baking trays. Kneed remaining dough again and roll out a piece of 45 x 15 cm. Spread sour cream on rounds and rectangle. Give pepper-corn or rocket-ham-mixture on pizza rounds alternately. Spread remaining pepper-corn mixture together with remaining ham dice on the rectangle and spread some Emmental on top. Roll into a baguette shape and place on a baking tray.
Bake pizza rolls together in convection oven or successively with top-bottom heat for 15-20 minutes. Shortyl before the end of baking time give some Emmental on pepper-corn rounds and some Parmesan on rocket-ham rounds and finish baking. Remove from oven and place on wire rack with parchment paper.
Score pizza baguette with a sharp knife diagonally and bake for about 20 minutes.
Both are to be served warm but we do like them cold too when it comes far into the night.