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. :-)

wraps: lettuce, mushrooms and tomatoes

Happy last Monday of November! So right before the holiday season begins (and with it all the feasting), I was thinking to share my lettuce-mushroom-tomato-wrap recipe that might be a good appetizer in a menu with multiple courses as well as a snack all by itself.

You will need (serves 2):

4 flatbreads

2 tomatoes

4 pieces of lettuce

500 g mushrooms

1 onion

some parsley

1 tablespoon (vegan) fresh cheese

100 ml veggie broth

olive oil

salt, pepper and chili to taste, maybe garlic as well

And here is how to make these lettuce-mushroom-tomato wraps:

Clean the mushrooms and cut them and the onion as well into slices. Give some olive oil into a pan, add the onion and after a minute the mushrooms. After a few minutes add the broth. Let everything cook for about 5 minutes, add the fresh cheese and the parsley. Lower the temperature to a minimum. Cut the tomatoes, wash the lettuce. Now put first to lettuce onto the flatbread, then the tomatoes and at the end the warm mushrooms including the sauce. Seasoning with salt, pepper and chili. Wrap it up and enjoy!

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PS: I also made the wraps by myself using flour, a bit of salt and water. Unfortunately I cannot share a recipe, cause the amounts of the ingredients always change with the type of flour you use. So you just have to figure it out by yourself. At least I can say that it is important to have a soft dough similar to a bread dough you bake in the oven. Form little balls in the size of a snowball and roll them out. Then fry them in a hot pan without any oil or butter. Just the flat dough. After there were dough bubbles and the surface starts to get brown (like it does while frying a pan cake), flip it to the other side. Let it fry as long as you prefer.