Bastelesel

27 Sep 2016

For our last barbecue I was asked to make a potato salad, one of the Germans’ favorites. There’s still home-grown rocket and radish available. That’s why I chose this recipe from a Dr. Oetker’s book with potato and pasta salads. Thanks to marinating the potatoes over night you may prepare this salad the previous day.

Four servings will need:

Marinade: 125ml vegetable stock, 2 tbsp vinegar, 2 tbsp olive oil
Salad: 750g small potatoes boiled in the skin, 1 rocket bunch, 1 radish bunch, 50g walnuts
Horseradish creme: 1 can of crème fraîche, 2 tsp creamy horseradish, salt, sugar

Cook vegetable stock and put aside to cool. Pour in vinegar and fold in olive oil.
Cook potatoes in their skin. Cool them, peel them and slice them before giving them in a large bowl. Mix potatoes with vegetable stock and marinate over night.
Wash radish and rocket. Slice radish and cut rocket into bite-sized pieces and give both to the marinated potatoes.
Mix crème fraîche and horseradish, season with salt and sugar and add to potato salad. Fold it in carefully an hour before serving. Finally chop the walnuts and disperse them on top of the salad. Serve it immediately then.

06 Sep 2016

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by Elke

Lavender

Lavender in your garden or on your terrace will keep away midges or other insects. You won’t like to put a whole pot of lavender on your table and you won’t like cutting them all neither. A single hydrangea flower, it’s the second generation for me this summer, will make the perfect stand for single lavender stalks. To create a quite natural look just place the hydrangea flower in a little glass filled with water and wrap your glass with a sandwich bag that you scrunched before. Twist some twine around and make a bow. Now you just have to add the lavender stalks and here you are with a late summer center piece. I put it on a wooden board with a tea light holder made of corrugated cardboard.

I like to try new things and therefore I took some further pictures in two different ways. If you don’t dispose of a photoshop software or special filters then simply use things everybody has at home. For the first picture I simply put some plastic wrap in front of my lens and for the second one I wrapped the foil around the edge of the lens just leaving some free space in the middle.

This way I didn’t only get some nice pictures for my blog but also some more for making lovely greeting cards.

13 Aug 2016

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by Elke

Sorbet

All you need for this lovely summer feeling is two ingredients. Two ingredients to get a soft and creamy sorbet without any additional sugar. I took one banana and about 250g of fresh strawberries to prepare two small sundaes. Wash strawberries, take off their green and cut large ones in halves. Cut banana in half lengthwise and cut the halves into thin slices then. Put fruit in a freezer can and freeze for at least two hours. Then crush them with a hand blender until creamy. Pour in a sundae bowl and serve immediately. If you made a bit more than you need instantly you may freeze the sorbet again. It won’t be that creamy any more afterwards but still delicious. You may assemble bananas with other fruit like peaches, nectarines or apricots as well.

02 Aug 2016

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by Elke

Driftbottle landed

Week after week we’re waiting for our summer holidays and then, like every year, they’re over way too fast. My seaside decoration reminds me of the wonderful days spent at the sea and by the way make me think about new destinations for next year.
Take a small wooden tray and fill it with sand and little pebbles. Small tealights will be framed by sea shells offering a play of light and shadow in the dark.

The lights are accompanied by a driftbottle washed ashore and now lying in a fisher net. Some drift wood sticks and a bit of sand will prevent the “widely traveled message” from rolling up and down the table.

08 Jul 2016

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by Elke

Lemon dream

First technical problems, then I nice trip to the North of our country and I simply forgo to translate the instructions for the lovely lemon cake. Only make this kind of sponge to get three different layers. The first one like a custard, the second one a bit softer and on top a fluffy, lightly crumbling layer. The ingredients need a small mold or baking frame of max. 30×30 cm.

Ingredients:
125 g soft unsalted butter
1 big lemon
4 eggs size M
150 g caster sugar
vanilla pulp of 1/4 vanilla bean
115 g all purpose flour
350 ml milk luke warm

Preheat the oven at 160°C, grease your baking tray and seal your baking frame with some foil – the cake’s rather fluid.
Melt butter in a pan and cool down a bit. Abrade lemon zest and squeeze afterwards. Seperate the eggs and whisk egg whites.
Combine egg yolk with sugar until frothy and pour in vanilla pulp and butter. Add flour and lemon zest, mix well and pour in lemon juice. Then step by step stir in the milk and finally fold in the beaten egg whites. There still should be some white egg flakes visible.

Fill baking frame or mold with cake and bake for 45-50 minutes until the surface is firm and lightly brown. Remove from the oven and leave on a rack to cool. Cut into squares then and dust with some powdered sugar before serving.
My selected mold was too flat so that I had to take a second one. If I had taken that one directly my cake would have been a bit higher.