Travelling to St. Louis and Gooey Butter Cake

Now that went well, did it? Rather not! Or did it? Anyway, a lot depends on your attitude. As to that I rather have a negative one, although I am trying my best  to get rid of it. On that thought, as long as you are still alive and well, you should be happy and consider things to be well.
As to the global picture ... well, this isn't the place nor the time to expound this. After all, this blog isn't called "Problems Around the World", but rather "Cooking Around the World". For that, right here, right now, I am not available for talking about what is going on in this crazy world ... and I don't mean good crazy.
Talking about good crazy would bring us a bit closer to the style of this blog. You haven't read anything good crazy lately around here. Well, that's not my fault, is it?
That won't get us anywhere, looking for the guilty one, who's fault it is. Rather we want to look ahead and concentrate on getting out something positive.
On that note, let me ask about your opinion regarding butter. Do you like it? How would you care for extensive use of it in a cake and then ... call it gooey butter cake?
I don't know about you, but for my ears this has a quite positive ring to it
Now it seems that the US city of St. Louis, Missouri, seems to be a bit famous for its gooey butter cake. Well, there is only one way to find out about it. Does this already sound like bullwhip and fedora hat again to you?
So come along as we not only cook (or rather bake) around the world, but as we actually travel around the world ...

F-Game Toad in a Hole

Lately, around here I am not giving my a-game. I’m not sure, what it would be like, though. No worries!

Anyway, life is like this: sometimes you loose and sometimes the others win. Nah, it's not that bad. Sometimes you simply have other things to do.

Therefore we go right away into food, for at least here we know, that it will go to a meal. Leftovers! There were those pork sausages in my fridge, those tiny ones. Here they are called Nürnberger. I used some of them for my English breakfast some time ago, but what to do with the rest of them.

Now I know, why I put all those knowledge into my head. At some point a bell will ring and I know what to do. So, toad in the hole. I never had. Therefore I never made it before. I now, it involves sausages and … something else.

Now I give you my F-game Toad in the Hole …

 Well, the F-game in this recipe doesn’t refer to it being rubbish. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even think about putting it up here.

No! It’s time for Lord Feta to strike back …

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 tsp mustard powder
120 g flour
100 ml milk
Some parsley, finely chopped
Some sage, finely chopped
Salt, pepper
100 g bacon, preferably 10 slices
10 small pork sausages
200g feta

Method:Heat up your oven to 180 °C.

Get yourself an ovenproof dish, 20 x 20 cm will do for this amount of ingredients. Put it aside.

Now get a bowl and mix in it the eggs, mustard powder, flour, milk, parsley and sage. Season with salt and pepper. Pour that mixture into the ovenproof dish.

What a coincidence, the amount of bacon was just enough for the number of sausages I had left. Go for it and wrap one slice of bacon around one little sausages and arrange in the batter in the ovenproof dish.

All done? Proceed with the feta. You can either crumble it into the ovenproof dish or cut it into cubes and scatter them over the sausages in the dish.

Anyhow, put into the oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you have sufficient time to whip up your onion gravy and get whatever vegetables you want to put on the side ready.

For sure, you have a good recipe for onion gravy and know quite perfectly well how to do it. No?

I took a pan and melted some butter at low heat, tossed in the onion rings of a large onion and let things go until the toad in the hole is almost finish.

To complete the sauce, season with salt and pepper, add a tablespoon of flour and a generous splash of sherry. Briefly cook so the sauce thickens.

The finished dish from the oven could look somewhat like that or when you have a closer look, it will look a bit like this …

Ah, that wasn’t really that much closer. Anyway, plate up. With the right amount of vegetables you could even manage to satisfy four people with that, but than you can’t be as generous with the onion gravy as I have …

However, that was only, because I wanted to have fresh gravy for the leftovers another day and maybe enhance the gravy with some mushrooms then.

If, though, you don’t have four people for tea and decide to have a second go, you can have less or no gravy at all …

You could always have some more peas, though.

Whatsoever, I enjoyed it very much. If you want to have a more traditional version of toad in the hole, I guess, you just have to omit the feta.

In case you want to have a vegetarian version, you could omit the bacon and use veggie sausages or use something completely different, but then again, you might get a totally different dish here. So, why then, not cook something completely different.

Beware of the Dark Side ... Raspberry Chocolate Tart

"Is the dark side stronger?" "No! No ... no. Quicker. Easier. More seductive."

A long long time ago in a kitchen far far away ...

In fact, it wasn't so long ago and not far far away. Well, the kitchen might be just around the corner, but still ... you have to beware of the dark side, for it is very seductive ... eh ... this raspberry chocolate cake is very seductive and if you don't beware and have more pieces of it than you reasonably should, you can imagine what can happen.

Well, I show you anyway ...

This Raspberry chocolate tart is based on a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Cook with Jamie.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

150 g butter

100 g sugar

A pinch of salt

250 g flour

1 egg

30 g cocoa powder

For the filling:

100 ml full fat milk

400 ml cream

250 g dark chocolate

2 eggs

... and raspberries

Method:

First of all, we go for the pastry, naturally, for it has to rest in the fridge for at least an hour. So, cream together the butter and the sugar. Then add the pinch of salt, flour, egg and cocoa powder. Carefully bring all the ingredients together to form the dough.

After the hour, get the pastry into a greased loose-bottomed tart tin (you knew that would be coming one day again). Blind bake the pastry for 12 minutes at 180 ºC.

Now you can already prepare the filling. Add the milk, cream and sugar to a suitable sized pot and carefully bring to the boil. Stir once in a while. Then take the pot from the heat and add the chocolate. Stir it until the chocolate has melted away and you have a smooth mixture. Then whisk in the eggs one by one.

Pour the filling onto the blind baked pastry case and get it back into the oven at 170 ºC for 15 minutes. After that leave the raspberry chocolate tart some time to cool. Wait? Why raspberry chocolate tart? Fine, after a while, place the raspberries on top of the tart, pushing them into the chocolate filling. Use as many raspberries as you wish. Are you satisfied now?

When you go for it, you can even add a dollop of whipped cream, crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream., but ... beware of the dark side ... and May the 4th be with you ...

Now I have added this post also to Bake of the Week at Casa Costello.

While we still have time for thing, it's good as well to add this to May's Calendar Cakes, which is being hosted by Rachel at Dolly Bakes.

French Toast with Sheep Milk Mousse and Balsamic Strawberry Jam

I survived another day. Things can be quite dangerous ... especially when you race down the road as a lightning with your bicycle. At least I knew there would have been people nearby for first aid. Luckily the car did see me coming and all this wasn't necessary.
The other day, though, something was necessary ... and that was to have French toast, but ... not to have it in a simple way. I wanted it to look a bit more than it actually was.

Finally I decided I wanted to support the bakery across the road ... or at least give it a try ... and got a loaf of white bread, not something of that pre-sliced stuff.
Accordingly a few days later, I used the bread to have some French toast. 
I went for two thick slices of the bread and removed the rind. So I had a few little snacks before starting with the French toast.
On the side I had a bowl ready, which received an egg, about 200 ml of milk, a tablespoon of sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla extract ... all beaten nicely together.
On the stove top a pan was getting ready ... the use of butter is apparent.
Well, the slices of bread get properly soaked in the egg and milk mix before they get fried in the pan. Is there enough time to get something ready to go with for the French toast while it is getting fried in the pan?
Luckily, I had some sheep milk mousse in the fridge. For sure you won't have. Consequently I would advise a bit of vanilla ice cream or some mascarpone mixed with sugar and vanilla. 
What about something fruity or a sauce, too. There was some strawberry jam lingering in the fridge. That wouldn't do. So I put a few teaspoons of the jam into a small bowl and added a splash of balsamic vinegar. Off the bowl went into the microwave for a minute.

So, get your French toast onto a plate, add the ice cream, mousse or vanilla mascarpone, spoon over the balsamic strawberry jam and add some toasted nuts or almond slices for texture.
Well, I think the thicker slices of the bread and the added balsamic vinegar to the strawberry jam did really do a good job to lift this pudding. I enjoyed it very much. 
What do you think of it?

No matter what you decide, I think it's a delicious and dead easy dessert. That's the reason why I also enter it to Sarah's Dead Easy Desserts challenge at Maison Cupcake.

Have a go ...

... and while I'm at it, this post goes as well to Recipe of the Week Emily is doing at A Mummy Too ...

It Can't Always Be Caviar ... why not ... Blini with Caviar and with Smoked Salmon

Did you know that you use a lot less than 1 % of the capacity of your brain? Or that the brain processes about 100 million bits of information every second? Or that the brain makes up only 2 % of the body's weight (of course only if you are not excessively over-weighted)? Or that the billions upon billions of nerve cells in your brain make about as many as a quadrillion connections?
For sure you do know, that oh so very often that you are not able to find things in your brain, although you know it has to be there. What about finding things you didn't know they were there?
Before this month is over, I have another post for Bloggers Around the World: Russia ... although the Olympics are over by now. I recently made some blini and topped them with caviar and smoked salmon respectively.

Now I was looking for a title for my blog post ...

Lord of the Cupcakes ... Peanut and Bacon Cupcakes

As strangely as you know me, I had an idea for a blog post. It was supposed to go somehow like this ...

Three Cupcakes for the gluten-free under the sky.

Seven for the chocolate-lovers in their halls of stone,

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to eat,

One for the Dark Baker in his dark kitchen

In the Land of Sugar where the Calories lies.

One Cupcake to rule them all,

One Cupcake to find them,

One Cupcake to bring them all,

and in the sweetness bind them

In the Land of Sugar where the Calories lie.

Well, well, well, that was about the idea. Logically there were supposed to be baked goods on it. Here we go ...

Now, the question would have been, totally hypothetical, of course,whether that would be the one cupcake for you ...

Ready for challenges? Floating Islands

Have you ever thought about applying for The Great British Bake Off or for MasterChef or any other cooking contest? Have I? Ha ha ha ha ... oh ... would I really be able to pass any of those challenges? Would I be ready for the challenge?
Well, I reckon I would never apply, but ... there would be no harm in checking, whether I can do certain things they have done on these shows. Let's pick something they did on The Great British Bake Off: Floating Islands or as you would say in French îles flottante ...

South African Dinner: Bobotie with Yellow Rice and Tomato & Onion Sambal

Finally I safe one hour travelling time for every day I go to  work. That is even the case when I use my bike to go to work. So I get some exercise, although up to know it's quite exhausting to get back home after work, and I get more time at home.
One thing I can do with that, is concentrate more on cooking and baking. I even might have the chance to work some of the puddings and cakes off with my exercises. Then maybe not, but I should do more sweet stuff anyway.
Today, though, I am not focusing on the sweet side ... although ... hm ... there might be a slightly sweet touch in the dish for today. It's for Bloggers Around the World: South Africa.

So I am having some Bobotie with Yellow Rice and Tomato & Onion Sambal. I did a little bit of research for that, so I reckon, that's the way to have it ...

Now we have to see how to do it ...

Welcome Back - Spinach, Goat's Cheese and Ham Pasta Roulade

Welcome back! I reckon I have to do it and welcome myself back to the kitchen, since no one else is going to do it. Eh, well, how could possibly anyone else but me do this without knowing that I  am actually back in my new flat cooking? I haven't told anyone, have I?
Of course, I mentioned that I am going to move to a new flat and that I didn't have a kitchen to do some proper cooking anymore. Anyway, everything went well with the moving, just two dead and one injured. A friend, who helped, kept on knocking some pieces of furniture against his shinbone. So he had a little bit pain there afterwards, but nothing serious. As to the two dead one ... a clock went to the bin, because I was split in two halves. Then the plastic sign "Maltese on board" in my car broke to pieces. In fact the latter happened after the actual moving day - two days later - when I decided, for what reasons whatsoever, I needed a new bed. So I had no other choice as to transport it in my small sized car. Imagine for yourself ...
Otherwise, things went so well, that actually I didn't need to take a day off from work. However, I  already did. So, apart from getting a dentist appointment at the new dentist, acquainting myself with a new doctor and doing some shopping, I had ample of time to do some proper cooking again ...



For that we are going to make some fresh pasta dough, a spinach, goat's cheese and ham filling, a tomato salsa and a béchamel sauce ...

Cake au salami avec pignon et prunes

It is over when it is over. Therefore I have the honour to tell you, it isn't. I still got some plum deals for you. As I told you before, I checked some of my cookbooks for inspiration and nearly missed this one ...

It's from the book The little Paris kitchen by Rachel Khoo. I tried to do a similar setup for the picture as was in the book, but I didn't dare to take the photo outside in the garden on the lawn, because it was too cold for my taste at that time. I suppose that won't improve for a while.
Now to the recipe. I had to do a few adjustments, since I didn't have French smoked sausages and pistachios. Let's see ...

Till Death do us Part: Federweisser & Zwiebelkuchen

"I take you to be my lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."
Does this sound familiar? Sometimes you hear such a vow or a similar one at  a wedding. These days, sadly, things turn out differently with the "until death do us part". Well, you know. There is no chance in denying. That's the reality of life.
However, there are other things, which are impossible to separate. No chance. When you hear about one, you automatically think about the other. For some it even applies beyond death, like Romeo and Juliet, or David and Goliath, or Bonnie and Clyde. What about nitro and glycerin, Paris and the Eiffel Tower, Rome and the Colloseum.
Now we could go on for ages like that, but we like to talk food here. What comes to your mind in connection with food and inseparable? I have a try: Hamburger and chips (or fries). Oh, I have a triple one (at least for me): baguette, cheese and red wine.
Today, though, I want to go for something you might not be so familiar with: Federweisser and Zwiebelkuchen. 

Oh, that's German. What is it all about?

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 ...

Go Swedish with Pickled Herrings, Köttbullar and Äggkaka

I'm having my Swedish days right now. I started by buying some Daim chocolate. Right now I am well stocked on it. I only need to be careful not too start eating from it in a non-self-controlled manner. So far things are working well.
In fact, I didn't just go and buy chocolate. Right while I was writing down the Bloggers Around the World post for Sweden, I knew what I was going to cook and, of course, bought things for that, too.
Somehow I had a travel brochure from 2011 about Sweden in my possession. Today I have no idea, how I came to have it. Blank, no idea at all. Anyway, there was a picture of Äggkaka in it and I thought ... I am going to have it ... whatever it is. What is it then? 

What Really Matters Strawberry Chocolate Muffins

Yes, it is really true, today I have some muffins for you, which I like to call "What Really Matters Strawberry Chocolate Muffins". Indeed, this is quite a long name, but in a minute or so I will tell you why it had to be.
It's time to go adventuring again. However (some might be disappointed), this time we have to do without hat and whip. Now I have the chance again to particpate in a lovely blog hop: Sweet Adventures Blog Hop (short SABH). It is run by 84th & 3rd, Dining with a Stud, The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader and occasional guest hostesses (hm?). The latter one is the case now in July, where Swah from the blog "Love Swah" is hosting.
Here comes the theme: Sweet Surprise. Right away, then, here is my sweet surprise: What Really Matters Strawberry Chocolate Muffins (short WRMSCM, but ... eh ... who cares).

Where is the surprise? 

Christine & Christian - Episode 6: Dal, Naan and beyond

I need a plan ... again. Or I simply need to be careful. There is no way I am going to buy new clothing just to have it comfortably fitting. Loosening the belt from time to time isn't what I want to imagine.
Since I've started Christine & Christian, I had quite some Indian food not meaning I didn't have anything else as you can see from my previous posts. After 17 days of cooking from Tasting India I managed 22 recipes so far. I didn't have so much help with eating things up, but still I cope.
What did we have on the menu then last week? Maybe you remember the white dal from the last post. The leftovers were taking some time to be dealt with. Therefore I just made some naan bread to go with it and got any idea as well.
The dough for naan bread is quite easy to make, similar like your familiar yeast dough you might use for pizza. For the naan there was just some yogurt added, roughly spoken.
I made dough that would go for four average sized naan breads. they tasted quite good. I was satisfied. The dough for one bread, though, I decided to turn into something else ...

White dal stuff! Hm, let's rather say naan bread stuffed with white dal, almost like an Indian calzone, if there would be something like that. Samosas are prepared slightly differently. You most probably will read something about that at another time on this blog.
What else was on the menu?

There was this spiced eggplant (aubergine) salad served at room temperature. It was spicy, so it was fine.

Potatoes in curd, also a rather colder dish. That doesn't mean, though, there wasn't any chilli in there in some way.

Another quick one, sweet and sour tomatoes. While they were sweet, I couldn't detect so much the sour part in it. There was, however, something else apart from the sweetness. Oh, sure, the recipe mentioned to use chilli powder in it. Sweet and spicy would be fine.

I go on with eating more fish after I just had this Italian-style tuna, poached in tomato sauce, this time it's Indian-style fish fry. Very nicely you get the taste of ginger with a hint of lime beneath that breadcrust. Besides that the marinade included mustard and garlic. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? Yes, it tasted lovely and ... there was no chilli included.
There also was no chilli in the last dish for today ...

Do you know how long it takes to cook 1 litre milk so that it thickens? Well, it was okay in the end, although the rice pudding was a bit sweet. I guess 150 g sugar would do as well. Maybe one or to pistachio and almond more wouldn't hurt, either. At least it wouldn't hurt me. I know others, who cannot even eat a single piece of almond.
Anyway, I like to take this rice pudding along on our food trip around the world for Bloggers Around the World for as you might know, our current stop is India.

 

 
Do you notice another ingredient from the rice pudding picture? Have a guess and tell me. It shouldn't be so difficult.
In the meantime hang on and keep cooking!

Creamy Smoked Pork Chops Hawaiian ... sorry, no Hula

There is quite some Indian cooking going on in my kitchen right this moment, but that doesn't mean I can't write you some other things, too.
Do you like Hawaiian pizza or Hawaiian toast? Strangely I can't see the direct connection to Hawaii here ... must be the pineapple. However, it was invented or made popular in Germany in the 1950s according to Wikipedia. Didn't give that much thought to that before and I most likely will forget about again tomorrow or one or two days later.
However we want to use that idea now on some smoked pork chops.

Once more, it's no big deal putting it together ...

Ingredients:
600 g smoked pork chops
6 slices of pineapple
200 g crème fraîche
200 ml full fat milk
Black pepper
Olive Oil

Preparation (or call it assembling):
Start heating up your oven to 200 °C. The preparation won't take too long.
Mix the milk and the crème fraîche together. Unintentionally I ended up with a version of crème fraîche that included herbs ... no worries ... if you like that. Season with pepper.
Now get your oven proof dish and put in the smoked pork chops and pineapple ... chop, slice of pineapple, chop, slice of pineapple and so forth.

Then pour the milk and crème over it and add a few little splashes of olive oil.

Transfer to the oven for 40 minutes and ... do something else in that time. You could ready a book for a change.

Eat it with some nice bread for mopping the lovely cream sauce. It would be nice to have a salad with it as well. You will get some ideas. Whatever suits you.

Dig in! Well, since this is not reall to do with Hawaii, there will also be no hula right now, although we might try that another time ... as soon as I figure out ...

Too Many Secrets ... Cappuccino Muffins Covered with Dulce de Leche

What do you make of this?

Any clue? What about this?

Is that already better? Do you know any movies, in which Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix and Ben Kingsley played a role?
If so, that might take you to one of my favourite films. It was released in 1992. Got it? Yes, the film is called "Sneakers". It has a bit to do with hacking into computer systems. There are not too many effects and bloodshed, but rather cleverly made.
What, though, does it have to do with us and cooking and this blog?
No, I'm not a hacker, although ...
Well, simply move on with another picture ...

Lovely Manu from Cooking Manu came up with a brilliant idea for this month: "L'ingrediente Segreto/The Secret Ingredient". That's were we get to the 'secret'. Two participants were kind of randomly assigned to each other to send over a secret ingredient to prepare something with.
Therefore ... 'no more secrets' ... the ingredient I received was: Latte intero concentrato zuccherato ... that is: sweetened condensed milk. 
What to do with it?
I had only one answer: Dulce de Leche. How to do this without blowing up your kitchen or making a real mess, you get some instructions here.
Whatsoever, simply doing this wouldn't suffice ...
... so I combined it with some Cappuccino Muffins.

Let's have a look on how to do that.

Cappucino Muffins with Dulce de Leche

Ingredients:
50 g chopped hazelnuts
100 g sugar
200 g flour (I used wholegrain wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbs instant cappuccino powder
Pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract (or one vanilla pod)
200 ml milk
50 ml oil
1 egg
180 ml dulce de leche
Some chocolate sprinkles, if you care

Method:
We assume that you have your dulce de leche ready. I had just prepared mine in 90 minutes.
Right then, combine the dry ingredients, that is the hazelnuts, sugar, flour, baking powder, cappuccino powder, and salt. Shuffle it through.
Then to the liquidish ingredients in another bowl: the vanilla extract, milk, oil, and egg. Combine it as well, give it a good whisk.
Afterwards, join the dry and the liquidish in one of the bowls and make the muffin batter.
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Divide your batter for the muffins between 12 muffin 'molds' - whatever you favour to use.
Bake it for about 25 minutes - you know when they are ready.
Allow the muffins to cool down a bit after you removed them from the oven and before you spread on them the dulce de leche.
Finish them with some chocolate sprinkles, if you care.

That's it! No more secrets! I don't know what else you expected in this post ..., whatever secrets to be revealed. Well, honestly? It's not going to happen. It's not the time to reveal any further secrets ... not yet, not yet!

Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake

I was thinking ... yes, for a change ... and it came to my mind ... right, I haven't lost it completely ... that there was this lovely blog hop I used to join in once in a while. It is called The Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, in short SABH.
The SABH is presented by Delicieux, The Hungry Australian, Dining With a Stud, The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader, and 84th & 3rd. I had a look and ... the theme for this month is cake and three veg.
Here I am now, somehow I have to bake a cake with veg in it. The only things that come to my mind are carrots and beetroot in a cake ... that is, a sweet cake. If you have a look at the other blogs later (as would be recommended) you see how inventive others have been.
After some research through various books and taken the ingredients I have at home I came to this: Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake.

Well, lemongrass is used as a herb in the Asian cuisine and you for sure wouldn't call it a veg. What about the veg then? I used carrots. In fact you could call this cake also: Lemongrass-Lime-Ginger-Carrot-Chocolate-Cheesecake.
However, that would not sound as intriguing as the name I came up with friends from the net. I try this cake exclusively for this Blog Hop. I have no experiences with it, as I never did it before. We will see, how things end up. So, let's do Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake. 
Ready, set, bake ...

Ingredients, here they come:
Cake base:
300 g flour
14 g baking powder
Pinch of salt 
1 tbs cocoa powder
50 g brown sugar
100 g of carrots
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger
150 g yogurt
2 tbs of vegetable oil
2 eggs or 4 egg whites

Cheese topping:
400 g cream cheese
100 g sugar
2 eggs
2 tbs milk
1 stalk of lemongrass
Zest of one lime

Chocolate topping:
100 g 25 g of chocolate (I thought I needed more, but I didn't)

How the experimenting went:
First of all we like to concentrate on the cake dough.
I mixed all dry ingredients together in one bowl, that is sifted the flour with the baking powder in, added the brown sugar and cocoa powder, and, not to forget, the pinch of salt.
Then I concentrated on the other ingredients with a different bowl. I put in the yogurt and the oil. Time for grating ...
The carrots and the ginger were grated to the yogurt. The oil and the eggs (or egg whites) joined. A little bit of mixing was due then.
It's time for the contents of both bowls to join forces together. Therefore I added the yogurt mixture to the flour mixture and ... of course ... mixed everything together into a brown and sticky dough.
Already before all that, I had a spring tin form greased. This was ready now to receive the dough ... sometimes, though, I wish afterwards I had used baking paper, but ... I didn't.
With a rubber spatula I tried to level things out and once that was accomplished more or less, the cake went to the oven for 10 minutes at 200°C.

That 10 minutes is exactly the time I wanted to use to prepare the cheese topping.
No need to panic! Really?
We just have to mix all the ingredients for the cheese topping together. Well, not exactly. The lemongrass needs chopping up, as fine as possible. Of course, I didn't forget to grate in the zest of the lime.
10 minutes over. I made it!

I removed the cake from the oven and turned up the heat to 225°C.
Now the cheese topping goes onto the cake ... on top. Oh, oh, it seems quite liquidish. Will it set properly? No worries, we will see.
Back goes the cake into the oven for 15 minutes. Then the heat is reduced to 125°C and the cake stays in the oven for another 30 minutes.

After that the cake needs cooling down and somehow we have to figure out to remove it from the tin without destroying it again ... hard job.
Anyway, I couldn't even wait properly for the cake to cool down. It was getting late. I wanted to eat the cake at a proper cake time ... what nonsense am I talking ... cake time could be anytime.
Whatsoever, I grated some chocolate over the cake. Somehow it melted partways, but i wasn't bothered. After all I had to take some pictures and have cake.

What would you say? Will such a cake taste nice, delicious, wonderful, or whatever good?
It did! You will not be disappointed.
Although now, it was the first time I tried this cake, I can only say, it's worth a try ...

 Now back to the SABH ...

I hope you enjoyed the Hanoi Lemongrass Cheesecake!

For sure you will enjoy the other entries ...

Crash! Boom! Cake!

To start with, this is not the 'Cos every time I seem to fall in love - Crash! Boom! Bang! I find the heart but then I hit the wall - Crash! Boom! Bang!' kind of post. Nor is it a 'Hello, you fool, i love you, C'mon join the joyride' thing, although I hope this ride will bring you some joy.

That's what is all about: a cake! However, as you may know - that is if you are an avid reader of this very blog - it's not all smooth sailing.
The past - solidly nailed in the plank of time - it can not be changed, unless you have a flying Delorean, which you most probably don't have. It has been quite some time until I came very close to one the last time.
Whatsoever, the past is back there and at times it may come to the fore in your mind - hopefully not to haunt you. Things that happened your past may come back as nice memories, or they give you new ideas, or they may help you to avoid bad situations, or ... who knows what ... maybe bake a cake?
Anyway, let's talk about 'Crash!' first of all. I don't think that the fact that I was hit by a car after school and the car sent me flying through the air. Nor did it have any effect when a car hit me while I was on my bike - well it was not so bad. The car wasn't even broken, nor was the bike, nor was I. About the effects of the third incidence when I was travelling with someone else in the car (I wasn't driving) I'm not so sure. The car was totally ruined. After all what would you expect, when being hit by a lorry at more or less full speed. I was only one night in intensive care.
Hm, that wasn't the plan at the outset of this post, to ponder over such things ...
I rather wanted to focus on 'Boom!' and 'Cake!'. So, have a bit of patience waiting for the cake, while we go through 'Boom!'
Maybe I can help you with another cake photo.

I'm not sure whether that helped, but let's go on.
As a child - somewhere between the first two and the last crash - I had a chemistry set. It even made me want to pursue a career in chemistry. But things happened differently and continue to happen quite differently again.
Anyhow, with some experimenting you can do funny and interesting things ... and not just growing crystals with magnesium sulphate. I won't talk about setting the stairs on fire and I will not disclose the recipe of gunpowder either at this point, although we had our share with that as well in the past.
Rather, I must say, we nearly made it to the cake. Once I nearly took all the chemicals I had in my chemistry set and mixed them all together. This resulted in a gooey brown substance, which didn't bring any joy at all.
'Bang!' Here we are! How much more joy do brown gooey substances bring in the field of cooking or better say baking.
Therefore, let's talk about that gooey substance on that cake and, of course, about the cake itself, that is, the thing beneath the brown gooey substance, which, as we know it, is nothing else but chocolate.
While experimenting in the kitchen with some ingredients I wanted to ... eh ... get rid off (obviously not the chocolate), I came up with this chocolate almond kind of cake.

Ingredients (if you please so):
100 g sugar
150 g sour cream (I needed to get rid of this for sure)
1 tsp vanilla extract (or similar)
100 g flour
200 g ground almonds
50 ml milk
6 egg whites (it's just a guess ... I had frozen some unspecified numbers of them over the course of the last weeks or months)
Salt
200 g of chocolate (half of the one I used was with Daim pieces)

Preparation (if you dare):
Now that we know what ingredients we have we can use them. Briefly scan over it.
If I would have taken a slightly different direction, this could have been a giant macaron cake, but now it's a bit closer to a Swedish almond tart.
Start with mixing the sour cream, the sugar and the vanilla extract. Then continue with the flour and the ground almonds.
As you can imagine, this is quite dry. No chance, I had to add some liquid. So I took the milk. Maybe it was even a slightly bit more, maybe just 10 ml.
Already things look a bit better.
Now to the egg whites ... I really could have gone for macarons. However, at that point, time and patience didn't allow for that. So I just went on with beating the egg whites together with a pinch of salt until it got to where all beaten egg whites have to go.
Following that rough beating, I tried my best to be gentle while incorporating the beaten egg whites into the cake dough.

All that went into the cake tin in order to be baked at 180°C for 40 minutes. You have to watch it as you most probably know your oven best.
After baking it needed a bit of time to cool down.
Meanwhile, that was a good opportunity to melt the chocolate. Said and done!
The last thing that remains is then too pour the chocolate over the cake. Of course, you can put the cake into the fridge afterwards or ... just use your imagination.

So ... 'every time I seem to bake with love - Crash! Boom! Cake!'