Apple strudel - 'Apfelstrudel'

Apple strudel is an Austrian specialty that is also very popular in southern Germany (and in many other European countries). Unfortunately, all kinds of baked goods containing apples are passed off as apple strudels these days. What makes a strudel a strudel, however, are not the apples (you can also get them filled with quark or other fruit, as well as savoury strudels filled with meat and/or vegetables). Instead, the very particular paper-thin pastry enveloping the filling gives a strudel its character. So Masterchef contestants take note (I have seen this on this favourite TV show of mine before): a bit of chopped apple wrapped and baked in some ready-rolled puff pastry is just that: a bit of chopped apple wrapped and baked in some ready-rolled puff pastry. But it certainly is not an apple strudel! 

The strudel pastry is versatile and actually quite easy to make and use. All it takes is a bit of patience and (as we call it in German) ‘fingertip feel’ to roll and pull the pastry carefully until it is paper-thin. The recipe below makes one strudel that cuts into about 6 thick slices. The filling in my recipe is fairly classical, but endless variations are possible (other good fruit to use are pears, cherries and apricots. You can also add some sweetened quark or rum raisins or you could replace the breadcrumbs with ground nuts of your choice). Traditionally the strudel is served hot with chilled vanilla sauce (like custard just thinner). Whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or Greek yogurt is also great, but decent hot custard would also do very well!

For the strudel pastry:

3 tablespoons melted butter or sunflower oil

125 g flour

1 egg

For the filling:

About 50 g melted butter

3 tablespoons fine dried breadcrumbs

3 large apples

Sugar to taste mixed with cinnamon

A handful of chopped almonds

A handful of raisins

For the pastry combine the flour, butter and egg and then knead vigorously on the kitchen surface for at least 10 minutes. This is very important to ensure that the pastry is elastic enough later to be rolled out and pulled as thinly as possible. Once the pastry is quite elastic cover it in clingfilm and leave to rest in a warm place for about 1 hour. A good way of doing this is to heat up a ceramic bowl with hot water and then dry it and place it upside down on top of the wrapped pastry.

In the meantime prepare the filling. Peel and core the apples and cut them into very thin slices. Roughly chop the almonds and melt the butter.

When the pastry is ready to go sprinkle a large dishtowel with flour and put the ball of pastry in the middle. Roll out the pastry as thinly as possible with a rolling pin on top of the dishtowel. Then use your hands and carefully pull the pastry in all directions until it is so thin that you can see the pattern of the dishtowel through the pastry.  The sheet of pastry should be about 40 by 30 cm big and not much thicker than 1 mm. Now brush the pastry with the melted butter and add the filling. Start with the breadcrumbs and then add the apples. Sprinkle with as much sugar and cinnamon as you like (I use about 80 g of sugar with about half a teaspoon of cinnamon) and add the raisins and nuts. Leave about a 2 cm edge without any filling on the short sides and on one of the long sides of the pastry. Fold the edges of the short sides over the filling to prevent this from spilling out later.

Now roll up the strudel. This is very easily done by just carefully lifting the dishtowel on the long side of the pastry without the edge and the strudel will more or less roll itself up. Transfer the strudel onto a baking sheet (it is best to lift it onto the baking sheet with the dishtowel and then to carefully remove this) covered in baking paper and bake in the preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for about 40 minutes.

When the strudel is golden brown remove it from the oven and leave to cool slightly. Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve with vanilla sauce or anything else you fancy.

Redcurrant cake - "Träubleskuchen"

The Träubleskuchen is a great Swabian summer tradition. It’s called Johannisbeerkuchen in non-dialect German and translates as redcurrant cake. This cake – like the rhubarb cake I posted a few weeks ago -  is what I would call an ‘adult cake’. I didn’t like it as a child, probably because its moist texture with the currants and almond meringue and its tartness are too complex for the childish palate. I quite like it now, many years later (although I continue to have a fondness for sponge cakes decorated with chocolate and smarties). Unfortunately, our two currant bushes in the garden did not yield enough fruit for an entire cake this year. I therefore waited until English-grown redcurrants were available in the supermarket. They have now arrived and the season is short, so I had to act quickly. I baked this recipe in a 24 cm round tin. It would also be enough, I think, for 25 or 30 cm square. 

For the pastry:

250 g plain flour

125 g butter

70 g caster sugar

1 egg yolk

For the filling:

About 400 g redcurrants

3 egg whites

3 egg yolks

150 g caster sugar plus one tablespoon of sugar

Some vanilla extract or seeds, if you like

100 g ground almonds

A handful of sliced almonds and breadcrumbs each

Quickly combine the pastry ingredients and knead until you have a firm ball of dough. Line a greased cake tin of your choice and prick the base with a fork in a few places. Put in the fridge and leave to rest for about 30 minutes.

 

When making the filling start by whisking the egg whites until stiff. Add the sugar spoon by spoon and continue whisking until the mixture is firm and silky. Add the ground almonds and vanilla and mix in well.

In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks with a tablespoon of sugar until creamy. Then fold in two thirds of the almond meringue mix and the redcurrants. Combine well. Remove the pastry shell from the oven and sprinkle the base with the breadcrumbs and sliced almonds. This prevents the base from getting soggy. Add the redcurrant mix and top with the rest of the almond meringue. Smooth the surface and bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 50 minutes. Check periodically so the top does not get too brown. If it does, cover with some aluminium foil. 

Leave to cool in the tin, but remove the cake when it is cold to avoid it from ‘sweating’ and getting soggy. This cake should be eaten fairly fresh. It is very moist and no amount of breadcrumbs can stop it from getting soggy after a couple of days. It tastes particularly good with whipped cream.

PS: A nice reader of the blog just pointed out that my blog so far did not offer a 'follow' option. I hadn't realised that this was the case. The 'follow this blog' function is now enabled and it is located on the left of the screen under the blog archive!

Summer fruit cake - 'Obstkuchen'

This cake evokes a lot of childhood memories of coffee and cake afternoons with friends and relatives. Fresh fruit cakes or tarts are hugely popular in Germany, especially in the summer. Almost any soft fruit of your choice can be used to top the cake (fresh is best, of course, but tinned apricots, peaches or pineapples are also a common sight). I love using fresh local berries at the moment. I even got to harvest 5 (five) strawberries and an entire 21 blackcurrants in my own garden earlier today: all the hard work is starting to pay off... For the cake in the picture I added some very non-regional (and probably not very seasonal) organic kiwi for a bit of a colour contrast.

This specific recipe is not exactly traditional. The most common base for a fresh fruit cake is the plain ‘Bisquit’ I used for my strawberry cake a few weeks ago. This is also the more low-calorie option, if you are so inclined. The cake in the picture consists of a nutty chocolate base and the fruit is stuck onto the cake with melted milk chocolate. I recommend it – the combination of chocolate and nuts with fresh fruit is divine. I don’t really know where the recipe has come from, but my mother used to (and still does) bake this very often.  I get the feeling that this comes from my auntie Klara, who also is the source of my nutty triangles recipe.

I baked the cake in a 24 cm round tin, but a larger tin (up to about 28 cm) can also be used if you prefer a thinner base. The base freezes well and the final product is actually assembled fairly quickly.

For the chocolate base:

100 g butter

3 eggs

100 g sugar

100 g almonds – partially ground and partially chopped

100 g dark chocolate, chopped into chunks

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

8 pieces of crisp bread or crispy bakes (in Germany this is called ‘Zwieback’ – bread twice baked. The nearest equivalent in the UK would be melba toast or rusks. I bought ‘crispy bakes’ in Sainsbury’s, which come in a round paper packet. These were perfect. But biscuits or anything fairly neutral tasting and crunchy can also be used).

1 teaspoon baking powder

For the topping:

100 g milk chocolate

Fresh or tinned fruit of your choice

For the glaze:

1 tablespoon corn flour or potato starch

2 tablespoons sugar

250 ml water or fruit juice

For the cake batter, whisk the butter with the eggs and the sugar until fairly fluffy.  Crush up the crisp bread/crispy bakes. I crush half of them to fine ‘dust’ and keep the other half as small chunks. Stir these and the rest of the ingredients into the butter, mixing well. Bake in a greased tin for about 20 – 25 minutes at 200 degrees. Leave to cool.

To assemble the cake: carefully melt the milk chocolate. Spread this evenly and thinly on top of the cooled cake. Now arrange the fruit on top of the melted chocolate. For the glaze, combine the starch flour and sugar and mix well with some of the liquid. Bring the rest of the liquid to the boil and gradually add the flour mix. Boil for a few seconds until it starts to thicken. Immediately spread this on top of the cake with the help of a spoon, starting from the middle. I place the cake in the fridge for a few minutes to allow the chocolate to harden and the glaze to set. 

 

Rhubarb cake with meringue - 'Rhabarberkuchen'

Yesterday I made an incredibly sour rhubarb crumble. I didn’t add enough sugar and there wasn’t any sweet custard, either, so it was barely edible. Today I gave rhubarb another go and I didn’t skimp on the sugar this time. This recipe is for a very traditional German summer cake. The rhubarb is baked in a sweet vanilla sponge and then topped with meringue for a bit of crunch and some extra sweetness. With some whipped cream it tastes particularly good. The recipe makes a 24cm round cake – it can easily be doubled for a larger square tin.

For the sponge:

125 g butter

125 g sugar

Seeds from one vanilla pod or some vanilla essence

1 egg and two egg yolks

125 g plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

300 – 400 g rhubarb, peeled and cut into chunks

For the meringue:

2 egg whites

125 g sugar

For the sponge cake, mix the butter (at room temperature), sugar, eggs and vanilla until fairly fluffy. Combine the flour and the baking powder and fold into the batter. Spoon the batter into a greased cake tin and smooth the surface. Then add the rhubarb chunks. Bake this at about 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

In the meantime make the meringue. Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and then slowly add the sugar. Continue whisking until the mixture is shiny and stiff. 

When the cake is baked remove it from the oven and add the meringue topping. You can just spoon it on top and swirl the surface with a fork, or you can pipe it on in a pattern of your choice. Return to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes or so at 200 degrees. The meringue should turn slightly golden, but it should not turn brown.

Strawberry cake - 'Erdbeerkuchen'

It’s been a quite while since I have posted my last cake on my blog. Two months in fact! It’s not that I haven’t done any baking at all, but the day job got in the way, alas, and I mainly kept to baking quick cakes and my sourdough bread. Things are a bit quieter now and I am excited about all the summery fruit that is now available (in spite of the less than summery weather). Following the long winter months with a fairly restricted selection of fruit (at least for those like me using mainly seasonal and regional ingredients) a whole new world of recipes has now become possible. I love all sorts of berries and summer fruit and I am hoping to bake as many cakes with these fresh ingredients while they last. In Germany the Erdbeerkuchen – strawberry cake – is a great summer favourite. There are lots of variations on the strawberry cake, of course, but this recipe is fairly traditional. The base, in German, is called ‘Bisquit’ and it is made mainly of eggs and flour. Unlike other sponge batters this does not contain butter or any other fat and it is therefore particularly light and fluffy. The Bisquit base is very versatile – it can be used with all kinds of other fruit (in the 1980s cakes with colourful tinned fruit – peaches, pineapples and mandarins – were all the rage) and it is also the recipe used for the famous Black Forest Gateaux. For the latter, 25 g of the corn flour is exchanged with cocoa powder to make it dark and chocolaty.

I baked the Bisquit base in a round springform tin 28 cm in size. When baked the base is about 6-7 cm high so it can be cut in half with a sharp knife. This means that the recipe is enough for two cakes – I usually wrap one in tin foil and freeze it for another cake.

For the base:

6 eggs

200 g sugar

Seeds of one vanilla pod or some vanilla extract

100 g flour

125 g corn flour

For the cream base:

2 heaped tablespoons of corn flour

2 heaped tablespoons of sugar

500 ml milk

For the glaze (this keeps the strawberries on the cake and also keeps the fruit fresh for longer):

1 tablespoon corn flour

2 tablespoons of sugar

250 ml water or fruit juice

About three punnets of strawberries

Some sliced almonds to decorate

For the Bisquit base divide the egg whites from the yolks. Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and then slowly add the sugar. Continue whisking until creamy and shiny. Add the vanilla and the egg yolks one by one and combine well. Finally, mix the flour and corn flour and thoroughly fold into the egg mixture. Grease the bottom of a springform tin (do not grease the sides, because this makes the cake rise unevenly) and add the batter. Smooth the surface and bake at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes. Leave to cool. Cut the base in half horizontally with a sharp serrated knife (if the cake is very high and you prefer a thinner base you can also cut it into three rounds).

For the cream base mix the corn flour and sugar. Add some vanilla if you like. Pour about 100 ml of the milk into the flour and mix well – make sure there are no lumps. Bring the rest of the milk to the boil and then add the corn flour mix. Boil for about 2-3 minutes whisking continually. Leave to cool slightly (stirring every once in a while to prevent a skin from forming). 

Evenly smooth the cream onto the Bisquit base. This should not be too thick – you can eat the rest as a dessert, mixed with any leftover strawberries. Now top the cake with the strawberries. You can use small strawberries whole and cut the larger ones in half. 

Finally, prepare the glaze. Mix the corn flour and sugar with 250 ml cold water or juice and bring to the boil. Immediately pour this on the cake (starting in the middle) to cover the strawberries. This sets very quickly. Immediately decorate the edges of the cake with the sliced almonds.

The cream base can be replaced simply with whipped cream or clotted cream. If you do this I would not use the glaze (it would melt the cream) and I would eat the cake on the same day.

 

Cherry cake with semolina – 'Kirsch-Grieß Kuchen'

This is a very simple and traditional southern German recipe. Semolina, cherries and cinnamon are a classic combination and most German children will have grown up eating semolina pudding with cherries and a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon on a regular basis. The flavours of this typical ‘comfort food’ are replicated in this cake. As discussed in my Donauwellen recipe a few months ago, morello cherries (called sour-cherries in Germany) can be bought in large jars in Lidl or Aldi in the UK. Of course, in summer the cake should be made with fresh cherries instead! This recipe is enough for a smallish (24 cm max) round baking tin. I baked it in a 20 cm x 30 cm rectangular tin.

100g semolina

100 g sugar

375 ml milk

80 g butter

3 egg yolks and 3 egg whites

80 g ground almonds

1 tsp cinnamon (or more, if you like)

1 jar morello cherries or a few hands full of fresh, pitted cherries

Put the semolina, sugar and milk in a pan, bring to the boil and cook for a few minutes until the semolina has absorbed all the liquid (the mixture should have the consistency of thick porridge). Add the butter, which will melt in the hot mixture. Once the butter has melted, stir in the three egg yolks and combine well. Leave the mixture to cool down.

Add the ground almonds and cinnamon and combine well, then mix in the cherries. If you are using a jar of cherries make sure you drain them well to stop the cake from going soggy (I dry them off on a few pieces of kitchen towel before adding them to the mixture). Finally, whisk the egg whites and carefully fold them in. Pour the batter into a well greased baking tin, smooth the surface and bake at 200 degrees for about 60 minutes. 

'Sunken' apple cake - 'Versunkener Apfelkuchen'

There is a ridiculous number of recipes for apple cakes in Germany. It’s a very popular type of cake and it is kind of odd, admittedly, that I have not yet posted a single one on my blog. As apples are one of the few local fruits available in the UK at the moment, I intend to make up for this. I am starting off with one of the quickest recipes for an apple cake – the famous sunken apple cake. This consists of a simple sponge base with apples, scored in a nice pattern and cut in half, making it moist and flavoursome. The cake does not take long to make and it usually doesn’t hang around the kitchen for long, because it goes down very well. Variations of the recipe below are possible. In particular, the flavour can be changed by replacing some of the flour with ground nuts. Hazelnuts, I find, are particularly tasty in this cake. 

This makes one large, round cake (I used a tin with a 28 cm diameter), but it can also be baked in a square tin.

250 g butter, soft at room temperature

130 g sugar

3 eggs

Some vanilla seeds or extract (optional)

200g plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

50 ml milk (or some milk and some rum)

4-5 eating apples, depending on their size

Cream the butter and the sugar and whisk until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and continue whisking. Add the vanilla, if using. Mix the flour and the baking powder and blend into the butter mixture. Add the milk as required – the batter should not be liquid, but it should not be too dry either (it needs to be firm enough for the apples not to sink before you put the cake in the oven).

Grease a baking tin, add the batter and smooth the surface. Peel the apples, cut them in half and remove the core. Slice the surface of the apples with a sharp knife without cutting through the apple (the photo of the baked cake above shows best how this should be done). Place the apple halves on top of the batter and bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for 40-50 minutes. 

Spiced Apple Bread - 'Apfelbrot'

 

Yes, this looks suspiciously like a Christmas recipe already with its nuts and fruit and cinnamon. With apples as its main ingredient, though, this seems to me seasonal enough even at the beginning of November (subconsciously, of course, this might well be part of the build-up to the excessive Christmas baking I and many of my fellow country folk traditionally engage in from about the middle of November). Apfelbrot is a very old German recipe. This particular combination is my mother’s favourite and in my view it is the best there is. My feelings about dried fruit and raisins have always been ambivalent, but this recipe is the great exception. The bread is juicy and flavourful with none of this sticky toughness of raisins that I usually object to. Whether it should be classified as bread or cake is a matter of perception. There are no added eggs, milk or butter (which means that this bread is vegan) and it is certainly more wholesome than most cakes. Having said this, the Apfelbrot is sweet and rich and goes very well with coffee and tea. It can be eaten as it is, but it tastes particularly good spread with butter.

This makes one very large tin loaf or two smaller breads:

750 g apples, peeled and chopped

250 g Demerara sugar

250g raisins or chopped, mixed fruit

100 g ground almonds

100g roughly chopped hazelnuts

1 large tbsp dark rum

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1 pinch of ground cloves

500 g plain flour

20 g baking powder

Mix the chopped apples with the sugar and raisins. Cover with a lid or with cling film and leave to stand overnight or for at least 8 hours. The sugar encourages the apples to release some of their juice so this period of rest is essential – there has to be enough liquid to absorb the rest of the ingredients.

Add the nuts, rum, cocoa and spices to the apple mixture and stir. Finally add the flour and baking powder and mix until all the flour has been absorbed. The juiciness of apples can vary – add some extra liquid (water, rum or apple juice) if the batter is too tough. The batter should be fairly firm and not runny.

Spoon the batter into one large or two smaller loaf tins. Bake at 180 degrees for about one hour or until a stick inserted into the bread comes out clean. The apple bread keeps fresh for a couple of weeks, but it should not be stored in plastic (tin foil or a tin is best).

Fruity crumble cake - 'Streuselkuchen'

Streuselkuchen – cakes with a crumbly topping – are a great favourite in Germany and they come in many shapes and forms. A tasty and traditional variation is a sweet yeast-based cake topped with rich, buttery crumble. In bakeries this type of Streuselkuchen is often sold in big slabs or as individual round pastries that are plain or filled with a custard cream, poppy seeds and/or fruit. 

My favourite Streuselkuchen is a quick version without yeast that can be thrown together in only a few minutes. The recipe and the ingredients are simple, but its combination of flavour and texture has made this one of my favourite cakes. The cake can be baked in a round spring form (24-26 cm) or in a rectangular tin (30 by 20 cm). The basic mix can be combined with different fillings depending on what you like best and what is available. For the cake in the picture I used a tin of apricots (drained) and a tub of quark mixed with an egg, some sugar and vanilla.

For the base and crumble topping:

250g butter softened

200g sugar (or more if you like)

450 g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 pinch of salt

1 egg

Seeds of one vanilla pod

For the filling:

100g flaked almonds

Fruit of your choice (for example, apricots fresh or tinned; cherries fresh or tinned; raspberries fresh or frozen; sliced apples or pears or even a few tablespoons of fruit jam)

Optional: one tub of quark or curd cheese or mascarpone (suitable especially if you could do with putting on a few pounds), mixed with an egg and flavoured with sugar, vanilla or grated lemon zest.

Combine all ingredients for the base and crumble topping until well combined. The mixture should be in coarse crumbs. Press half of the mix into your greased cake tin. Top the base with half of the flaked almonds. This prevents the base from becoming soggy from the fruit. If using, spread the quark or mascarpone mixture on top of the almonds and/or top with your choice of fruit. Add the rest of the flaked almonds and crumble mix to cover the fruit. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 35-45 minutes.

Danube Waves - "Donauwellen"

This cake is an all-time favourite at German coffee afternoons and children’s birthday parties. For some reason unbeknown to me this cake was not part of my mum’s baking repertoire, so for me it has the air of being something ‘extra special’ that I only got to eat on rare occasions. Of course, now as an adult with my own stash of baking ingredients and kitchen I can eat anything I like and whenever I want to (unfortunately I have to tidy up after myself these days, too). So I made this Donauwelle on a random Saturday afternoon, just because I fancied it. This cake is a tasty combination of buttery vanilla and chocolate sponge laced with juicy morello cherries and topped with a light butter cream and glossy chocolate icing. Morello cherries, also called sour cherries (or Sauerkirschen) in Germany, can be purchased in glass jars in those German bargain basement supermarkets that have sprung up all over the UK in recent years (for all their sins). Fresh or regular tinned cherries are also fine. However, morello are best as their acidity makes for a nice contrast with the sweet sponge and toppings. Traditionally, this cake is baked in a large, square tin and cut it into rectangular servings (if you go for this option double the recipe below). I used a 28cm round spring form for a more ‘festive’ gateaux shape.

For the sponge:

125 g butter

125 g sugar

3 eggs

Seeds of one vanilla pod

180g flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp cocoa powder

A dash of brandy, rum or kirsch (or milk if you don’t want to use alcohol)

Half a jar of morello cherries, or one tin of cherries, or two good hands full of fresh cherries

For the buttercream:

125 g butter

250 ml milk

25g sugar

25g corn flour

1 vanilla pod

Finely grated zest of ½ organic lemon and a dash of the juice

For the chocolate icing:

150 g good quality dark chocolate

50 g single cream (double cream or whipping cream will also work)

1 tbsp honey

A knob of butter

Whisk the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and also the vanilla. Mix the flour with the baking powder and thoroughly fold this into the egg and butter mixture – but do not over-mix. Smooth half of the batter into the greased and floured baking tin (it might seem like there isn’t enough, but it will rise). Add the cocoa powder and alcohol or milk to the rest of the batter, mix, and evenly smooth the dark batter on top of the vanilla layer. Swirl the mix with a fork for a marble effect. Top the batter with the cherries, slightly pushing them down. Bake for about 30 minutes at 175 degrees. Remove from the tin and allow to cool.

For the buttercream mix the sugar and corn flour in a small bowl with a few splashes of the milk. Whisk and make sure there aren’t any lumps. Bring the rest of the milk to the boil with the seeds from the vanilla pod and add pod to infuse, too. When the milk boils pour in the corn flour mix. Bring back to the boil and cook for about 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Discard the vanilla pod and allow this thick custard to cool. In order to avoid a skin from forming you can place a piece of cling film directly onto the surface of the custard. Whisk the butter until fluffy then gradually add the custard until everything is light and creamy. The butter and the custard should be at the same temperature to avoid curdling. Add the lemon zest and juice. Evenly smooth the buttercream on top of the cake and refrigerate.

For the chocolate icing carefully melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or in the microwave at low wattage and in short, 30 second bursts. Make sure the chocolate does not get too hot. Gradually add the cream, honey and butter and stir until glossy and smooth. Wait until the icing starts to firm up (if you refrigerate it this will happen faster), then poor on top of the buttercream and smooth all over the cake with a spatula. You can make a wave-like (Danube waves) pattern with a fork if you like.

The cake will keep for a few days, preferably well covered and in the fridge. I actually think it tastes best on the second day when all flavours have had the chance to mingle. However, it usually doesn’t last for very long...