chocolate cake in a jar // baking for valentine’s day

As I wrote last week, I keep on eating a bit more sweet stuff during February, ’cause it’s cold and mostly gray here and I like to be comforted by cake and cookies and pies. And chocolate.

The first time I had this tiny chocolate cake with a liquid core was at Café Cantona and it became my favorite dessert really quick. I like the combination of hot liquid chocolate and a crispy crust. Not to forget that it tastes best with pure vanilla ice cream.

And then, recently, in one of my favorite cooking shows on TV (yeah, I am doing that…) they prepared this little cake in a jar, which already had become a classic. But I never made it before and so I watched carefully and prepared it right away. And then I was thinking, why not sharing it for all of you who need a last minute gift for Valentines Day, ’cause since it’s made in a jar you can store it easily in the fridge a couple of days or even freeze it and bake and serve it when you like.

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CHOCOLATE CAKE IN A JAR

You will need – for 2 portions:

30 g flour

30 g sugar

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

90 g dark chocolate

90 g butter

1 lemon

2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar for greasing the jars

And here is how to make the Chocolate Cake In A Jar – in 20 minutes:

Grease the jars (or cupcake baking cups) with butter and sprinkle them with brown sugar. Add the chocolate and butter in a small bowl and put them on the stove over a water bath to melt.
Stir the eggs and the yolks in another bowl well with a whisk, add sugar and flour and mix briefly with a blender. Add the melted chocolate to the egg mixture and add a pinch of lemon zest.

Then fill the batter into the prepared jars (they fill only about two-thirds since the dough comes up during baking) and bake in preheated oven at 180 degrees for about ten minutes. You can see when the cake is ready, ’cause it will form an even surface coming from the edge while still having a little pit of liquid chocolate in the middle. Then serve immediately (and don’t forget to sprinkle some hearts on top).

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So with the saying The way to someone’s heart is trough his stomach I can assure you’re on the right path with this cake. ;-)

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PS: Because I didn’t have enough jars, I made my little cakes in cupcake baking cups (that’s why the crust has these little grooves).

PPS: For a vegan version I would replace the eggs and egg yolks with maybe 50 ml oil and the butter with vegan butter, but I am not sure if that will work, since I didn’t test it yet.

PPS: So this cake is an adaptation from here.

klieben // a sweet breakfast, lunch or dinner from west pomerania

My dear readers, I am very sorry for the lack of posts in January. But you may have heard it in the news, there are a lot of not so pleasant things going on over here in my lovely city called LEipzig right now, so I decided to rather join the protests for a liberal-minded and refugee-friendly city instead of keeping you updated with the improvement of my cooking skills. The demonstrations (I wrote about it here) unfortunately are going on, but the protests as well and I am very much hoping for a solution sometime soon.

So here we go again with my actually first food post of this new year. I know some people might be in fasting mode right now or maybe on an early spring sugar cleanse, but in LEipzig it has been pretty cold and grey and snow-ish this past few weeks. So therefore I was thinking to fill my fouryoursoul category in February with some heart warming dishes that let you just feel good. Not super fit, not super healthy, but oh so good. ;-)

Like my dad felt on his birthday a couple of weeks ago when I made this Klieben soup for him. Yeap, I made him this soup. No fancy meal, no visit at a restaurant. Just soup. But he was so so happy and smiled all the time. Because… this soup reminded him so much of his childhood. He was born in a small town called Schlenzig, which now belongs to Poland (I wrote about that here) and is located in West Pomerania. And my grandma used to cook this soup very often for breakfast for my father, his two brothers and my grandpa just before he went off to work on a farm.

So how to prepare Klieben. Well, I made this dish a few years ago for the first time, when I still had a cookbook with recipes from this region. But then there was an accident with my cats and the book and so I am very glad I found an easy version of Klieben soup on the net (which is in German). I changed nothing because I wanted to keep it very simple and original.

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KLIEBEN SOUP

You will need – for 4 portions:

100 g flour

2 eggs

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoons of water

1/2 vanilla bean

1 liter of milk

1 piece of lemon peel

a bit salt, sugar and cinnemon to taste

And here is how to make the Klieben soup – in 11 minutes:

Mix the flour, eggs and sugar with the salt and the water. The dough should be thick, so you may want to add some water. Then cut the vanilla bean and bring the milk with the lemon peel and vanilla bean in a saucepan gently to boil. Let the dough drop into the boiling milk and cook it over low heat for about 5 minutes. Finally, sprinkle the Klieben soup with sugar and cinnamon and serve in 4 plates immediately.

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Well, on my dad’s birthday there were only the two of us, my dad and I. And even if my dad enjoyed a second round, there was still something left in the pot. So I asked him, if he remembers how long this soup can be stored in the fridge. And then he smiled and said: “I don’t know, we never had leftovers.”

Hah! ;-)

So, what are you waiting for? Go get an impression of West Pomeranias sweet kitchen. You will love it, not only for breakfast, it’s a nice sweet lunch or even dinner too! :-)

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PS: This recipe is not sugar-free, not gluten-free, not dairy free and therefore not situated for vegans or any other diets at all. Since it was my dad’s birthday, I wanted it to be perfect and real for him. But I am sure you vegan cook out there will find a way to cook that soup that fits for you. I considered creating a vegan version as well, but I am always stumbling upon how to substitute the eggs. So if anyone of you has an idea of a vegan version of this soup, I’d be happy to hear about in the comments! :-)

PPS: I was thinking the word Klieben would mean something like kleben in German, which means sticking. What makes sense to me, ’cause dough is sticking. But my Low German dictionary says it means something like splitting or… cleaving (which now brings us to the fact that Low German is close to English). I am not sure about that, but now I think it’s called Klieben because the dough separates from a homogeneous mass into these little crumbles. But if there is a language expert reading this, I welcome your knowledge. :-)

vegan food challenge – 2nd dish: rice filled savoy rolls

Last Sunday I woke up having an idea of my second vegan challenge dish. So I spent the morning in my experimental vegan kitchen…

…cooking rice, mixing it with tomato paste and little pieces of red pepper and carrot, salt and pepper to taste. Then I made little rolls out of this mixture and savoy.

I seared the rolls in olive oil, shallots, thyme and rosemary. A bit later I added mushrooms and vegetable stock.

And this is what I’ve got. ;-)

Since I wanted to taste the difference, I made another round of veggie rolls. I replaced tomato paste with an egg and black olive gouda.

And I made a sauce out of mushrooms, parsley and creme cheese.

The vegan ones turned out more seared and red, ’cause I used the upper leaves, that usually are thinner. And I only used one leave per roll. For the veggie ones I used two leaves, because the inner ones were really small. So with the egg-cheese-filling they turned out more yellow.

I cannot say, which one I liked more. The taste was different, but each one was really delicious. A sauce was really needed, ’cause with the filling it was a bit dry.

I used one savoy, a cup of basmati rice, a half red pepper, a half carrot, a handful mushrooms. And I got 16 rolls out of that. So that was a lunch for four people (or in our case lunch and dinner.) ;-) Even if it was organic food, I would say, I didn’t spend more than 5 Euro. So this is a great deal for two people, two meals out of organic, partly vegan food.

To round it up, Ro made a smoothie out of kiwi, peach and plum (so this is not bad wine). ;-)

Actually, at the end of cooking I got the most excited about the little decoration idea I have had. ;-)

So I think, my cooking-vegan-once-a-week-journey is going well so far.

Besides that, I bought a vegan hotdog (instead of the usual one) here on Monday, ate this soup on Tuesday, made Ro’s pasta a là Corina on Wednesday, had Poutine on Thursday (to celebrate our Canadian friend’s birthday from far away), a mixed veggie salad with goat cheese at home and a vegan steak here on Saturday. Friday was cheating day. I was invited for breakfast and found myself sitting in front of a huge sausage plate. I couldn’t resist having a piece of salami and beef and pork loaf. Later that day I was thinking it doesn’t matter anyway and so I had a currywurst with french fries (eating out).

So I learned last week, that I need to find more vegan places for eating out (and I mean real places, not a barbecue somewhere, I want to have a range of different meals). And I also need to buy some vegan sausages that will help me to cheat on the real ones. ;-)

But, dear vegans among my dear readers, I have a question: What can I use instead of creme cheese or eggs or gouda or tomato paste to keep rice wet and kinda sticky? What do you use? I really need your help, please! :-)

mustard eggs – almost traditional

Another traditional recipe here, but slightly different.

Actually, it’s cooked potatoes – I mashed them with a tiny bit of butter, milk, salt and nutmeg to taste.

Actually, the base sauce is roux. But I don’t like that. So for my sauce follow these steps:

1. Heat the pan.

2. Add a piece of butter.

3. Add two teaspoons of well cutted onions.

4. Put a teaspoon vegetable stock in a coffee cup, add hot water, mix it and add it to the pan.

5. Add half a coup of mustard to the pan. I mixed sweet and spicy mustard. Stir it.

6. And here comes the difference: To thicken the sauce, I added some spoons of creme cheese. It depends on your taste, how much you’ll add, ’cause the more creme cheese, the less of spiciness. Stir it until it is homogeneous.

Actually, the eggs are… No, the eggs are right. ;-)

So, that’s it. Pretty easy and without flour for those who doesn’t like it like me or are allergic to it.

PS: Another easy done food is here to find.