Ah, the mid-afternoon coffee and cake ritual. Look up “Oma Kaffee und Kuchen” on google images and you see what I’m talking about. Mounds of cake usually triple the amount to serve those sitting at the table are piled in the middle and there is a friendly expectation that the plate of goodies should be near clear at the end of the visit. Such cake rituals are pretty foreign for this Zugereisterin. Instead of cake, we ate Cuban sandwiches.

German cakes tend to be drier than their American counterparts. I’m not a fan of dry cake unless it is a twice-baked biscotti but I do appreciate the fact that German cakes are not too heavy on the sugar side and not generally pilled with dyed icing. Cakes sweetened with Streusel are a special favorite of mine. Something about little balls of buttery cinnamon and sugar are totally happiness. I’m working on a Streuselkuchen recipe made with a yeast batter (perhaps from my natural starter), hopefully I can share this soon.

In the meantime, I’ve been playing with a recipe that marriages the best from German and American cakes deliciously. For this I must thank the Italians and their ricotta cheese. There are many versions of this ricotta coffeecake with Streusel on the web so let this open your imagination to explore other options.

My tips: There is a lot of moisture in this batter so I find this recipe more suitable for cupcakes but it might work with a bundt pan (something I’ll try in the future) or in a shallow sheet pan. If you do make a rectangular cake, the top may brown before the center has set. When the cake reaches this stage, just cover the cake with aluminum foil until it is done. This recipe is probably more appropriate for the summer season but I can find strawberries and blueberries most of the year. I have even used apricots and raspberries with success. Cherries and plums are also an option. Never use previously frozen fruit. The Streusel topping is more of a crunchy candy consistency than sweet bready beads so I use it sparingly. For the bready variation the flour:butter:sugar mass ratio is 2:1:1 with the addition of egg yolk (1 yolk per 150 g sugar) and pinch of cinnamon. Adding a pinch of ground cardamom to the topping mix is also an aromatic option. When calories are not a concern, you can make a truly dense cake by replacing the ricotta with mascarpone but go lighter on the sour cream.

Summerberry Coffeecake Cups

Preheat oven to 175 °C (350 °F) and grease a 12-cup muffin pan or use cupcake liners. If you aren’t filling all the cups with batter, fill the empty cups with water half way up. You’ll need about 5 bowls: 2 medium, 2 small, and 1 large.

Mix together the topping ingredients in a small bowl with your fingers until they have a bread crumb-like consistency and set aside in a cold place.

Mix together the ricotta, sour cream and milk until incorporated. Then in a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and baking powder. Trim the strawberries and cut them into slices. In a small bowl, toss the strawberries with a few tablespoons of the flour mixture. (This prevents the strawberries from sinking to the bottom of the cupcake.)

Cream together the butter and white sugar in a large bowl. Next add salt and eggs one at a time. Make sure the egg is incorporated and the mixture creamy before adding the next egg, mix again.

Alternate blending the flour mixture and the ricotta mixture into the butter mixture. Mix until combined. Gently fold in the strawberry slices. Save a few to place on top of the cupcakes. Careful not to mix too much or the whole batter turns pink or purple from the fruit juice.

Pour the batter up half way into the muffin pan cups. Sprinkle the crumb topping over the batter and bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven. It will be done if a toothpick stuck into the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Enjoy!

Sommerberren Streusel Cupcakes

Backform: Ein 12-Loch Muffin-Form mit Butter ausfetten und 2-3 EL Mehl bestäuben oder Papier-backförmchen nutzen.
Backzeit: Im vorgeheiztem Ofen bei 175 °C ca.10 bis 15 Minuten backen.
Zubereitung:
Die Zutaten sollten Zimmertemperatur haben.

Für die Streusel Melassesirup, Butter, Zucker und Zimt in einer Rührschüssel glatt rühren. Das Mehl in der Schüssel geben zu einem festen Teig verkneten. Den Teig zwischen den Finger in Krümel zerreiben und kaltstellen.

Die Milch mit dem Ricotta und sauren Sahne in einer Schüssel verrühren. Das Mehl, Back-Natron und Backpulver in einer anderen Schüssel mischen.

Die Erdbeeren in Scheiben schneiden und mit 2 EL Mehlmischung bestreuen. (Das Wenden der Erdberren in Mehl verhindert das Absacken der Früchte im Teig.)

In einer großen Schüssel, die Butter, Zucker und Salz glatt rühren. Dann die Eier zugeben und gut verquirlen. Die schaumige Masse mit der Milchmischung und Mehlmischung wechselnd zugeben und zu einer glatten Masse rühren.

3/4 die Erdberren vorsichtig unter den Teig unterheben. Die Masse in die vorbereitete Muffin-form füllen. Die übrige Erdberren auf dem Teig verteilen. Die Streusel auf dem Cupcake verteilen und die Cupcakes backen.

[Before I get to the beets.. Still in the midst of getting the coding for the not-so-public stuff in order, it's taking longer than I thought. In the shuffling for some archived code, I found a vector I had worked on a year ago and figured it was now or never. It's been bouncing on the header left and right for the last hour but I think it will stay put. If you don't see it, it's embedded in some java.]

This post and hopefully posts to come will document an earnest effort to liberate my eating habits. I will always have a place in my belly for Hamburger Helper, Stoffer’s and Chef Boyardee and their paper weight meals. A part of me still holds on to the wishful thinking that such garbage food isn’t all that bad. We live, don’t we? We save time, don’t we? We save money, don’t we?

Well, I’m not so sure these days and this is why I’ve got red beets in my kitchen.

So beets. so random, you say. Never once did I pay attention to them. They were never in our refrigerator and a canned beet was suspect. I wonder what my dad thinks of them. He always has some strange and intriguing explanation for waging the blech-food finger. My favorite: “Cilantro tastes like dish water!” he’d proclaim. The only beet I saw for a long time was at a Pizza Hut salad bar, cold and previously canned, it would stain my sunflower seed covered, cottage cheese a brilliant pink.

Tom Robbins wrote that the beet is a serious vegetable. I haven’t finished the book yet but I already disagree. After watching A’s 3 year old nephew paint himself a wide clown smile with a plateful of beets, it’s clear the beet is laughably simple and sweet.

1 kilogram of organic beets costs 1.88€. Trim the ends and put them in boiling water with a little bit of vinegar to preserve the color. Cooking them whole will preserve the flavor but large ones will take about 1 hour to cook in a traditional pot. I used a pressure cooker for 20 minutes on the highest ring setting and they came out fabulous. Afterwards I put the beets in a bowl of cold water, while I rubbed the skin off with my fingers. It comes off easily and I didn’t notice any finger staining during the process.

There is tons of information on the health benefits of red beets brimming on the net but now that I have these health gems, what to do with them? Besides boil them and tossing them onto a salad, I’m starving for better beet eating ideas. Any suggestions?

 
Last week we headed back to Vinschgau for more mountain biking adventures. We managed to work up an appetite and the above photo collage provides a few highlights. We tried to be better prepared and bought the regional food guide, Genießen in Südtirol: Gastronomieführer Vinschgau. It helped a bit especially for discovering the hidden Biergarten nestled in the woods in Latsch and scoring a sweet bowl of fresh picked strawberries in Martell.

The opening hours of most restaurants are a lot of times hit and miss for crazies like us who spend hours pedaling up a mountain just for the thrill to speed downhill in 20 minutes. Often times we arrived in town around 3pm to discover kitchens were closed until dinner. Lunch sometimes included a heaping bowl of gelato. Since I’m not a big souvenir collector bought the cookbook, Südtiroler Leibgerichte by Hanna Perwanger, hopefully this Oma’s mad cooking skills will rub off on me.

And we so dined…

Gasthaus Krone
Jausenstation Bierkeller
Pension Gasthof Zufritt

At our last Asian Cooking Olympics party. I made lumpia to represent my pacific islander side. Since our group consists of a large number of vegetarians I had to make a deviation to the typical fried variant and explore a meat-less version.

In the past I’ve used tofu or a vegetable meal to make the fried version but I’ve been disappointed every time with the result. It’s going to be vegetarian–it should be fresh. That’s when I discovered the Sariwa version. There isn’t an exact science to it. The filling can be what your heart desires. The critical thing to make it Filipino should be some use of patis and the wrappers should be authentic.

If you want fried lumpia then you can get away with using the store-bought Chinese wrappers but to eat them fresh you must use a Filipino lumpia wrapper. I can’t find them in any of the dozen Asian stores in Munich so I made them from scratch. Crazy, I know. But so worth it. I tried out several recipes, pouring the batter into the pan and all of them turned out to be too thick, pancake like–this is a no go.

The trick, surprisingly, is a paint brush. I image the numerous recipes on the web will do but the technique you have to really get down. Here’s the one I used and will use in the future:

This simple recipe makes about 28 pieces:

250 ml of flour
1 egg white
300 ml water

Mix all the ingredients until very smooth. You may have to adjust this mixture with more water after you experiment with it.

Heat a non-stick pan to about medium heat. BRUSH a light mixture onto the pan. A thinner mixture works best if you brush one layer quickly in varying brush strokes in sections at a time and then add a second coating. When the dough starts to come away from the pan, lift the wrapper out carefully and flip it over. Don’t over cook it or it will be too crispy. It will take a will of experimentation but you’ll find a method to works best.

TIP: The wrapper will NOT lift off the pan easily if the mixture is not fully cooked.

Adapted from Babyc at kitakitz