Granatsplitter

My boyfriend just told me that these little cakes are his favourite from all the things I have ever baked. OK, I have to admit that they taste and look very nice (even if I say so myself). However, they are very quick to make (unlike my 5-day sourdough adventures and other more complicated recipes) and the recipe was invented (not by me, but by German bakeries) for using up leftover cakes, biscuits and cream fillings. I didn’t add an English translation for the cakes in the title, because it is a bit weird. Literally translated, Granatsplitter denotes ‘shrapnel’, presumably to indicate their content of leftover cakes. But never mind. I have yet to meet somebody who doesn’t enjoy these.

Granatsplitter are a creamy cake mixture placed on a biscuit and covered in chocolate icing. The ingredients for the creamy mixture can be varied with whatever is available. The idea is to use up leftover cake or other sweet baked goods (sponge cake that has gone a bit hard, muffins, cheap or broken biscuits, fruit cake, pastry shells...) and to mix these with butter cream and any other ingredients that take your fancy or that you would like to get rid of (berries, jam, nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, et cetera). I previously made them with some of the butter cream, sponge cake and cherries leftover from my Donauwellen cake. The variations are endless, but here is the basic recipe I used for the cakes in the picture. It makes about 15 Granatsplitter.

15 small, round biscuits of your choice (ginger nuts are good, for example)

For the butter cream (alternatively, you can use leftover icing or butter cream, if you have it):

 20 g corn flour

3 tbsp sugar

Some vanilla extract (or seeds from one vanilla pod)

250 ml (1/4 litre) milk

125 g butter at room temperature

For the chocolate covering:

150 g chocolate of your choice (I used dark chocolate on the picture)

1 tbsp sunflower oil or 1 tbsp butter/margarine

Other ingredients for the filling:

Volume equivalent of about 5 thick slices of sponge cake and a few biscuits, if you like.

I also added some frozen raspberries

For the butter cream, mix the corn flour with the sugar and vanilla. Mix this with about half a glass of the milk (make sure there are no lumps). Bring the rest of the milk to the boil. Add the corn flour mix, whisk continuously, and boil for about 2 minutes. Leave this ‘custard’ to cool down to room temperature. When the butter and the custard have the same temperature (this is important, otherwise the mixture might curdle) whisk the butter with an electric whisk until light and fluffy. Add the custard spoon by spoon and mix until you have smooth butter cream.

Crumble up the cake and/or biscuits you are using. Mix these with the butter cream and add any other ingredients you would like to use. For the Granatsplitter in the picture I added some frozen raspberries (the cream can be flavoured with cocoa powder of with a few spoons of rum, brandy or amaretto, if you want).

Now shape the mixture into balls to fit the diameter of the round biscuits you are using as a base. It is easiest to do this with an ice-cream scoop or with two large spoons. Place these balls on top of the biscuits and slightly press down.

Melt the chocolate (in a bain-marie or carefully in the microwave) and add the oil or butter (this is not essential, but I find that it makes the chocolate covering a bit softer and it is also less likely to go white). Dip each Granatsplitter in the chocolate to cover it completely. Leave the chocolate to set and keep in a tin in the fridge.

Little Bethmanns marzipan bites – ‘Bethmännchen’

Researching and translating my recipes for this blog I keep coming across some interesting facts. For example, I found that German bakers are considerably more daring when it comes to ingredients than their English counterparts. I first realised this when I was unable to purchase food-grade caustic soda for my Pretzels, because the English use this for drain cleaning only. Now I found out that bitter almonds, a basic ingredient in almond paste and marzipan, are actually illegal in the United States (and, judging by extensive googling, they are unavailable in the UK as well). And why? Just because they contain hydrogen cyanide. This is a shame, because at the end of the day there won't be homemade marzipan without bitter almonds (I also think that a bit of cyanide makes Christmas just that bit more exciting). 

Maybe it is just as well that I could not get my hands on bitter almonds this week and I had to resort to shop-bought marzipan. When I was about 13 or 14, I baked Bethmännchen from scratch. This involved the blanching and peeling of a whole pound of almonds (in addition to two bitter almonds, which I managed to process without poisoning myself). It took me almost an entire day to peel the nuts, make the almond paste and to shape, decorate and bake the biscuits. When I got up the next morning my dad had eaten every single one of them. Rather than taking this as a compliment I was not pleased and never baked them again. This is, until now, when I decided to give the recipe another go with readymade marzipan. This version certainly is a lot quicker. If the fast Bethmanns taste different or worse than the original recipe I couldn’t tell. I never even got to try a single on that fateful day about 20 years ago.

This recipe is for about 40 little Bethmanns. Legend has it that these biscuits were invented by a French pastry chef, who worked for a rich German bankers’ family in Frankfurt – the Bethmanns – at the beginning of the 19^th century. Initially, four almonds symbolised the family’s four sons. When one of them died only three almonds were used for decoration from then on.

400 g good quality marzipan

120 g ground, blanched almonds

150 g icing sugar

1 egg white

About 100 g blanched almonds, cut in half, to decorate

Mix all the ingredients bar the halved almonds in a food processor or by hand. Roll into a sausage about 2 cm thick and cut off pieces the size of a cherry. Decorate with three half almonds and bake at about 150 degrees for 15-20 minutes. These burn easily and they should turn only slightly golden, so keep an eye on them!

Hazelnut cake - 'Nusskuchen'

This is a very simple sponge cake and I can’t really think of any interesting facts or anecdotes to go with it. It is just a classic and very popular recipe that I have already liked as a child and I still love now. The combination of roasted hazelnuts and a dash of brandy is a winner and absolutely delicious. This is another one of those things that I like for breakfast (yes, I like my breakfasts and no, I see nothing wrong with eating cake first thing in the morning). For this reason I tend to leave the cake plain as in the picture and I do not cover it with a nice milk-chocolate icing, which also makes a very good match. The cake is light and moist and keeps fresh for about a week in a tin. All ingredients should be at room temperature before the baking commences. I like baking this in a large loaf tin, but two smaller tins and other shapes also work.

 250g butter

200g sugar

Seeds from one vanilla pod

4 eggs

1 large dash of brandy

350g plain flour

2 heaped teaspoons baking powder

200g roasted hazelnuts, ground

150 ml milk

Whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla for several minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and continue whisking. Add the brandy. Mix the flour, baking powder and hazelnuts. Alternate adding portions of the flour and the milk to the whisked butter and eggs. Combine well, but do not overwork the batter. Pour into a greased tin and bake at 180 degrees for about an hour.

Marble cake - Marmorkuchen

Marble cake is an absolute classic in Germany, and for good reason. I must have baked this for the first time when I was about 10 years old and I have made it hundreds of times since. One memorable occasion was my 18^th birthday when I started baking this cake not long before my guests arrived. I somehow managed to get my hair tangled up in the electric whisk, which destroyed my carefully styled hair. My mother, inexplicably, found this very funny and struggled to help me detach the whisk from my head for she was laughing so hard.  In my family opinions on the marble cake are divided. For me, and also for my dad, marble cake has been a firm and constant favourite and we would pick this over elaborate cream cakes or fruit tarts any day. We particularly like eating large slices of this for breakfast. Some people, including my mother, think that marble cake is a bit basic – boring, even. I can assure you that they are mistaken.

In Germany marble cakes tend to be baked in a ring-shaped tin as shown on the photo. However, they can also be baked in a regular square or rectangular cake tin. The recipe makes one large cake.

250g butter

280g sugar

4 eggs

Seeds from one vanilla pod

500g plain flour

2 heaped tsp baking powder

170 ml milk

4 tbsp cocoa powder

A good swig of dark rum or amaretto (or extra milk)

Whisk the butter with the sugar for about 10 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one and keep whisking. Mix in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix the flour with the baking powder. Alternate adding flour and milk to the egg mixture, whisking slowly. Once all the flour and milk have been added pour two thirds of the batter into a greased cake tin. Add the cocoa powder and rum (or other liquid) to the remaining batter and mix well. Pour the chocolate batter on top of the white batter and swirl carefully with a fork for a marble effect.

Bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees for about 45 minutes. Prick the cake with a match or toothpick – if it comes out clean the cake is done.

Leave to cool for a few minutes then turn out of the tin. It can be served as it is, dusted with icing sugar, or covered with chocolate icing. It keeps fresh in a tin for several days and also freezes very well.

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.