Gone with the Wind ...

Right this very moment Gone with the Wind is running on television ... not that I am watching ...
As looking at the year 2013, it is almost gone ... gone as the wind and no matter how hard you try, you don't get it back. Even while moments where there you couldn't catch them and keep them ... as with the wind. You never really can catch it.
Before we go on rambling any further into the realm of Philosophy and the like I rather like to focus on Cooking Around the World. Was the almost past year a good one? You never know. What do you think? Did you enjoy it? And if so, what was it in particular you liked?
As you wish you might tell me ...
From the actual process of carrying out something I guess I have to say I liked my Hawaiian luau most.

It was really fun, digging in the garden and cooking under the ground.
What then seemed to be most popular on the blog in 2013 apart from guest posts and round-ups?
By the way, the Bloggers Around the World: India was quite successful. However, in the months after the participation declined ... a lot. Still, I will continue with Bloggers Around the World in 2014 even if I'm just participating alone, which in fact could already happen this very month still. Ah, no worries!
Let's head into the top five of 2013 ...

Catch my Drift - Surfer Cake

Have you seen the 2012 Australian movie Drift? Well, it's about surfing and ... hm ... also about courage and the will to survive against all odds.
Hm, at least the last part is fitting: "survive against all odds". So far I am doing good. About surfing, no I can't do it. No matter which direction I choose, there is no coast nearby, where I could even think about learning to surf. No, not the internet, that's not so much fun.
Anyway, doing some kind of sports in the water would be good for me, I suppose. Unless ...

Maybe I really should think about a change of location some day ... at least one can dream. Yes, it has been there for already quite some time. That could be a reason, why I watch such movies.
Anyway, we are not here for surfing today, but for baking. I hope, you catch my drift on that cake ...

Apples and Marzipan once more ... Stuffed!

These days it can be a bit hard to do things. Somehow my motivation is somewhere else. Maybe it was tired of winter and went South to a place with a more temperate climate. I wouldn't mind joining myself, but somehow I have to stay due to ... a lack of motivation. Oh, that sounds like a vicious circle.
Yesterday I had set my mind on braking the circle. I wanted to do some extended and lovely cooking. Therefore I went shopping and came home with five items, of which I needed two already anyway. To me that sounds already like ... eh ... not working. Rightly so, no special and tasty cooking.
However, I don't want to leave you with nothing.
A few days ago I brought you a chicken soup with apple compote in it. Now I bring you back the apples (not the same as in that apple compote). Last year I posted about an apple cake with marzipan in it. Today, I bring back the marzipan (also not the same one as in that cake).
The marzipan goes into the apples. How? We shall see ...

Ingredients:
3 apples
3 tsp apricot jam
about 50-100 g marzipan, depending on the size of the apples
2 walnuts, if you are good at opening them flawlessly
Splash of amaretto
A wee bit of brown sugar

Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 180 °C. Mine has a speed heating function, so I could do that later as well, after preparing the apples.
Here we go then. We start by coring those apples. I start with a knife and then go in with a spoon to scoop things out. Said and done!
Give one tsp of apricot jam into each apple. 

After that you fill the apples with the marzipan to the brim making sure the apricot jam doesn't come out again whilst pushing in the marzipan.
If you have whole walnuts it would be time to crack them open. If you are good at it you get three undamaged halves of walnut easily. Otherwise, you just eat the not so nice looking parts. Should you manage flawlessly, you get only one excess part for eating right away. On the other hand you could also use pre-opened walnuts and ...
Whatever, push a half walnut into the marzipan in each apple.
Pour a splash of amaretto over each apple and then sprinkle a wee bit of brown sugar over the apples.

Finally add a little bit of water to the bowl and transfer it for about 35 minutes to the oven.
I hope you enjoy them afterwards for pudding.
I guess then, as far as I am concerned, the apple season is over for me. I also tried to bake some apple cookies, but they were not that spectacular.
What do I do know? I'm not sure. Maybe relax a bit, go to bed ... it doesn't matter, I'm not overly motivated ...

Am I lazy or crazy? Ginger-Marzipan-Chocolate-Pralines

Sometimes I have to ask myself, am I lazy? I just hang around and do nothing in particular, although there would be plenty to do. However, I simply don't want to.
Then again, I could be crazy - kind of - that is if you want to use such harsh words. On the other hand (apart from four fingers and a thump) it could be quite helpful at times to be lazy and crazy. Not only once that has led to new inventions in the past.
While I don't want to suggest that the now following would be a great invention, you still could have a go at these Ginger-Marzipan-Chocolate-Pralines ...

Please, have one ... 

What you need:
100 g marzipan
About 40 g candied ginger
A few tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
Some almond slices

How you do it:
Get a small piece of marzipan and wrap an about 1 cm long piece of candied ginger in it. Make sure the ginger is surrounded by marzipan on all sides. Repeat this until all the marzipan is gone and ... it might look like this.

Put the cocoa powder (I still got some chocolate orange one from Sugar and Crumbs) in a small bowl and roll the marzipan ... eh ... rolls in it, so that it gets all nicely coated with cocoa powder. How does that look (be careful with your imagination)?

Well, I would have said now, that's all, folks! But somehow we need to distract a bit from that look. So I decided to stick a sliced almond piece into each one.

That already makes a difference. Now ... that's all, folks! We only need to transfer them to another plate for looks.

Just last week while visiting a friend, I got a surprise gift. He is an artist and 'paints' pictures with metal pieces. He goes all over and collects all kind of metal objects to use them in his pictures. Some pictures he sells and others just stay in his place. Maybe he will do an exhibition with them one day. 
Anyway, he also got some old silverware, which you can see now in my picture. I was going to destroy those pieces to use them for painting, but he thought I might appreciate them more.
How do you like them?
Now the question still remains, whether I'm lazy or crazy.
While hanging around - at the computer - I noticed that I didn't take part in We  Should Cocoa for a while. In fact the last post I could find on my blog was from June 2012: Galway Irish Coffee Tiramisu.

 

I thought it would be about time to have a go again. Here, though comes the lazy problem again. The person who invented the We Should Cocoa challenge had me already kept busy with one of her last posts: Chocolate Log Blog: Chocolate Walnut Pastries. I tried to bake some from memory after reading this post once.
So I didn't want to do baking of any kind again this time. Therefore I went for the Ginger-Marzipan-Chocolate-Pralines. This month theme of We Should Cocoa is 'Ginger' and it is hosted by Jen from Blue Kitchen Bakes.
Now bit by bit a bit more about being crazy ...
This recipe was kind of a low cost one. I didn't use any further energy apart what came from my body. So it could work for ...

... this month. Camilla from Fab Food 4 All wanted to see something for dessert this month. Hey, you could use the pralines as well for that. Camilla is doing this challenge together with Helen from Fuss Free Flavours.
In order to further demonstrate that this recipe is frugal, I'm going to enter this post as well to Recipe of the week from A Mummy Too.

And finally, I add this as well to Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays and, hey, this time it's really Monday.

If that's not crazy, orinally I just wanted to take part in one challenge and I was lazy and now ... I end up with entering in multiple challenges.
Above that, ff you know any further challenges these pralines would fit into this month, let me know! Then we got a nice collection of challenges other can take part in as well.

The Marzipator strikes back - Dorset Apple Cake with Marzipan

Somehow, it could not be avoided. The marzipator strikes back. How could get things get that far again?
Well it didn't start so bad. I ended up with several tons (note: exaggeration) of apples. They came in from different sides. It's the time for apples.
There are many lovely things you can do with them ... that is apart from just eating them as they are. The saying goes: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away!" That would mean I don't see the doctor for quite some time. I don't know whether that works. As far as I know, apples can't prevent accidents.
Anyway, you could use your apples for apple sauce, apple crumble, apple pancakes, apple porridge, many many other things and ... apple cake.
Now things are as follows. For quite some time there is a blog challenge going on. It's about the Best of British food and every month, there is a different region covered. The challenge is sponsored by The Face of New World Appliances and this month it is hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage with the theme Dorset. Have a look at London Unattached from Fiona as well.
Consequently this leaves me no chance as to bake a Dorset Apple Cake. I had a look at a few recipes and they all have some basic things in common. Apple is the obvious, but usually there are also some ground almonds in it.
That is the point were the marzipator and therefore the marzipan comes into play. It has to do with almonds anyway. So why not add some of it to the cake.

See for yourself!

Ingredients:
450 g of apples, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces (more or less)
Juice of 1 lemon
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
250 g butter (I was too lazy to measure, so I decided for a whole package)
150 g brown sugar
50 g ground almonds
100 g marzipan
2 eggs
Some extra sugar mixed together with ground cinnamon

Method (if you want to call it that way):
Well, what to do now. I could simply tell you to just throw all ingredients into a big bowl and mix thoroughly, but ...
Toss the pieces of apple in the juice and let them sit in it.
Sift the flour and the baking powder into a big bowl. Then start kneading in the butter and create some crumbles.
Add the sugar, the ground almonds and the marzipan. Crack open the eggs and release the content into the bowl, not bothering about separating and beating egg whites.
Now is the time to mix or knead it through thorougly. Do it as you want it. I used only my bare hands and did it as messy as possible. However, if you should decide to do the same, make sure you have the usual round (about 25 cm) cake tin greased and ready and the oven going at 180°C.
Naturally, the content of the bowl moves over to the cake tin.

Once managed, it goes into the oven for 50 minutes until it gets nicely browned.
By the way, this is now two cakes in a row, since my last post was about a cake as well. Should I rename to Baking Around the World?
When the cake is ready and you removed it from the oven, let it cool down a bit and then try your best to move it over to a plate without falling apart. I managed kind of.

After the cake was sitting safely on the plate, I simply couldn't resist to sprinkle some magic cinnamon-sugar on top.
I hope you enjoy the cake. If you have some nice clotted cream available, that would give it another boost. So ... go for it!
Otherwise, you may have the chance to get to Dorset and get a piece of Dorset Apple Cake in a nice tearoom (of course it will be without marzipan).

Near this place I know a nice tearoom. Whatsoever, there are many other nice things to see in Dorset along the Jurassic Coast and beyond. I want to come to an end of this post and leave you with some impressions of Dorset ...

Chocolate in disguise - chocolate marzipan cake

Maybe you have heard about the terminator. But do you know the marzipator? Well, when you love marzipan so much that you have to eliminate it by eating it all up, then you are getting at a rough idea of the concept. I have a friend - we used to travel to France together - he liked French nougat so much I ended up calling him nougat.
Anyway, since I like marzipan so much, although I fight hard to behave myself, I came up with this combination for one of my favourite cakes:

French Chocolate gateau (now with marzipan cover - that is in disguise)

Ingredients (in order of appearance):
125 g butter
125 g dark chocolate
4 eggs
150 g sugar
100 g ground almonds
1 tablespoon of corn starch
icing sugar (that is only if you don't want to have the marzipan cover)
ready marzipan cover or even better
200 g of marzipan (tweaked with icing sugar and amaretto - rolled out)
some nuts for decorating

Method:
Melt the butter in a bowl above hot water. Melt the chocolate as well. Separate the eggs (egg white from yolk - not two eggs to the left and two to the right). Beat the yolks together with the sugar until well mixed and add the ground almonds. Then mix in the butter and the chocolate.
Now it's time to beat the egg white - go for it - exert yourself, or use a hand-mixer. To test whether the egg white is ready, hold the bowl upside down over your head. When you have done well, you're safe. If not, let the others enjoy the sight and get yourself new egg whites. But better be careful, I hate the waste of food.
I heard about this test with the beaten egg whites in one of Jamie Oliver's shows (or was it a book - I can't remember). However, since then I test the beaten egg whites like this - but carefully.
Where did we stop? Right, fold the beaten egg whites carefully into the dough.
Then sift in the corn starch and once again mix everything through - carefully.
Have a spring form tin ready, greased with butter. Insert, no - fill the cake dough into the tin and bake it for 40 minutes at 200°C.

When the cake is ready, remove it from the oven and let it cool down a bit before you add the icing or the marzipan cover.

That is what it looks like with the icing sugar. The marzipan version you see somewhere to the beginning of the post.

I like this chocolate cake very much. So I think, it would be a nice contribution for We Should Cocoa, which is run by  Choclette. This time it is hosted by how to cook good food. I hope you like this cake. I once did a version with white chocolate, but it's better with dark chocolate.
Also have a look here: Choclate Log Blog.