30-MINUTE RICOTTA CHEESE FROM SCRATCH

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Make your own creamy cheese within 30 minutes!!

Try my RICOTTA recipe:
(modified from a Martha Stewart Living recipe)

1 L milk (also try it with goat milk)
250 ml heavy cream
½ Tsp Salt
Juice from 1 lemon

1. Heat milk, cream and salt in a large pot to 90 °C (check with a thermometer).
2. When milk has reached desired temperature, remove from heat and add lemon juice. Stir until just combined.
3. Let stand for 5 minutes. At this time point the milk will curd and separate into soft protein curds and cloudy whey.
4. In a large bowl place a sieve and line with a new linen baby dipper or cheese cloth
5. Slowly pour curdled cheese into cloth.
6. Let stand or hang for 20 minutes for a soft creamy cheese and 1,5 hours for a more dense cheese.

Honestly, this is easier than cooking spaghetti, isn’t it?
You can use goats milk and add garlic or herbs to make a great bread spread or add it to pasta or make a typical Italian ricotta cake!

I am currently trying to figure out a low fat version too…so, stay tuned!

 

40-MINUTE HAMBURGER BUNS

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Burger Buns

 

I just love hamburgers! They are the kind of fun food that just everybody likes. Eating with your hands is a very grounding experience that especially grownups should do once in a while. However, in Europe it is almost impossible to by good buns that taste like the real thing. That is why I found this ultra-quick recipe at Taste of Home. I was skeptical at first, but after a few adjustments I made to the original recipe they come out just PERFECT!!

40-MINUTE HAMBURGER BUNS

Makes 4 buns:
1 Tsp dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (30°)
1/6 cup vegetable oil
1/8 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 Tsp salt
About 2 cups all-purpose flour (more if needed)
2 Tbsp Milk

Preheat oven to 180°C. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water let stand for 5 minutes. In a large bowl heap flour and make a hole in the middle. Add yeast mixture, oil, sugar, egg and salt and enough flour to form a soft dough that is not sticky.
Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 3 minutes. Do not let rise. Divide into 4 pieces; shape each into a ball and press them flat. Place 6 cm apart on lined baking sheets.
Cover with a clean dishtowel and let rest for 10-30 minutes (I let it rest for 30 minutes. The dough doesn’t rise a lot, but that is ok.) Bake at 180° for 8-12 minutes or until golden brown. The buns rise a lot in this time. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. While still hot brush the buns with milk. This way they will shine as they do at the diner.

SPICY TOMATO SALSA

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Party time with my quickly prepared and spicy:

SPICY TOMATO SALSA

3 tomatoes
2 scallions
1 small red hot chili (as much as you can take)
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tsbp apple vinegar
Salt, pepper

Puree all ingredients in a blender. Done!!
When friends are over the salsa is mostly gone before I can open the taco chips bag….

MY 5 ELEMENTS CARROT-GINGER SOUP

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carrot soup

A heartwarming soup is good for your soul!

MY 5 ELEMENTS CARROT-GINGER SOUP

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 onion, chopped

4 carrots, peeled and chopped into small cubes

2 cm ginger, peeled and chopped

½ chicken bullion cube

½ hand full fresh parsley

Salt, pepper

In a heavy pot heat the olive oil and shortly fry onion, garlic and carrots. Fill with water to cover and add bullion cube, parsley and pepper.  Cook until carrots are tender about 15 minutes, depending on the size of the carrots. Blend with an immersion blender and add water to obtain the desired consistence.  Heat up one more time and add salt and pepper to taste.

AWESOME – RASPBERRY BANANA MELISSA JAM

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Marmelade

 

This jam is just amazing. It never reaches my toast because I can’t stop spooning it right out of the glass! I keep on going back to the fridge. Standing there licking the last bit out of another glass of jam, it catapults me directly back to my childhood. Summer kissing my skin, a light summer wind breezing in by face while swinging on a swing hung up in a tree….I don’t know why, but this jam just makes me feel happy!

2000 g raspberries
500 g ripe bananas
500 g 3:1 gelling sugar
2 Tsp citric acid
1 handful fresh melissa

Mix all ingredients in a big pot. Puree fruit-sugar mixture with an immersion blender. Cook for 7 minutes. Fill into sterile jars, close with lid and turn onto lid for 5 minutes in order to generate a vacuum.

GUINNESS CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

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Close your eyes and imagine falling back into a whirl of liquid dark-black chocolate, so moist and munchy that it covers you like a warm duvet and so soft that you feel surrounded by silk and cotton.
This is the almost erotic feeling you get while first trying this magnificent and perfected cake, a duet of bittersweet Guinnessand rick chocolate modified from a brilliant recipe of Nigella Lawson.

for the cake

250 ml Guinness
250 g butter
75 g unsweetened dark cocoa powder
400 g confectioners’ sugar
142 ml sour cream
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
275 g all-purpose flour
2 ½ Tsp baking powder

for the topping

300 g cream cheese or curd cheese
150 g confectioners’ sugar
125 ml whipped cream or low-fat yoghurt

Preheat the oven to gas mark 180°C, and butter and line a 23cm / 9 inch springform tin.

Pour the Guinness into a pot, add the butter – in spoons or slices – and heat until the butter’s melted, at which time you should whisk in the cocoa and sugar. Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then slowly pour Guinness mixture in, constantly stirring. Finally whisk in the flour and baking powder.

Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the tin on a cooling rack, as it is quite a damp cake.

When the cake’s cold, sit it on a flat platter or cake stand and get on with the icing. Lightly whip the cream cheese until smooth, sieve over the icing sugar and then beat them both together. Or do this in a processor, putting the unsieved icing sugar in first and blitz to remove lumps before adding the cheese.

Add the cream and beat again until it makes a spreadable consistency. Ice the top of the black cake so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

TYROLEAN KNOEDEL SOUP

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I just love all kinds of soups. This is a typical Austrian heartwarming spring soup.

TYROLEAN KNOEDEL SOUP

(for 10 small Knoedels)

120 g diced dry white bread (Semmelwuerfel)
2 eggs
80 g ham (cut in 3mm large dices)
50 g onion (diced)
2 Tbsp oil (or butter)
100 ml warm milk
1 Tbsp parsley (chopped)
Salt, marjoram
Good beef broth

In a pan heat oil (butter) and fry ham and onions. In a bowl mix all ingredients together and let sit for 10 minutes. Meanwhile bring 3 L salted water to a boil. With wet hands form small Knoedels by rolling and pressing 2 Tbsp Knoedel-mass between your hands. The Knoedels should have a slightly creamy and smooth surface. Put the Knoedels in the boiling saltwater and simmer for about 12 minutes. Take the Knoedels out of the water and place them on plates. Pour hor soup over the Knoedels and garnish with chives.

THIS is a soup!!

The Nici Farm Goes CRONUTS!!

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Cronuts

Cronuts, cronuts, cronuts..Everybody is crazy for this new New Yorker treat invented by Dominique Ansel. A hybrid between a croissant and a doughnut.

Hey, but how is the rest of the world supposed to get to taste this wonderful deliciousness?

This is why I made it my personal mission:

I thought it would be a really good sweet treat….but honestly, this is insane!! If you follow these steps you will bite into a sugary, creamy, crunchy, mushy mind-blowing heaven which makes your heart glow in gratefulness.

NICI’S CRONUTS

(makes 2 cronuts)

1 readymade croissant dough (Plunderteig)

1 cup Vanilla pudding (Landliebe)

1 cup sugar

2 L sun flour oil

 

In a large pot and heat oil to 180°C (use a oil thermometer). Meanwhile unroll dough brush lightly with water and fold in half. Pat together lightly (but do not press). Repeat this 3 times until the dough has 8 layers. With a sharp knife cut dough in half and cut out 2 cronuts. Do not punch them out or else the dough will not rise in the oil. Carefully place dough into the hot oil and fry first on one side until browned and then turn over to fry the other side. This will take about 1 ½ minutes per side. Carefully take the cronuts out of the oil and place on a paper towel. Immediately turn the hot cronuts in sugar and let cool on a plate. With a syringe fill cronuts with the vanilla pudding. Top with vanilla pudding or sugar frosting.

 

This is a realy easy way how to make cronuts at home!! The DIY Cronuts!

SUNNY APRICOT CAKE (LOW FAT)

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I just love apricots! They are just the perfect balance of sweetness and fresh fruity sourness. While biting into an apricot I can literally feel the sun energy the apricot has absorbed. This is why I feel this cake shouldn’t be too heavy.

SUNNY APRICOT CAKE (LOW FAT)

300 g apple sauce
2 Tbsp vanilla sugar
½ Tsp salt
Grated lemon zest from 1 lemon
5 eggs
300g all-purpose flour
2 Tsp baking powder
Apricots (halved and pitted)
Apricot jam

Preheat oven to 160 °C. Line a baking pan with a baking sheet or butter and flour a baking pan of approximately the same size. Mix applesauce, sugars, salt and lemon zest. Add eggs one by one stirring in-between. Mix with flour and baking powder until just combined. Pour into pan and spread evenly (about 2 cm high). Arrange apricots on patter in pan. Bake for 40 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Glaze cake with heated apricot jam. Let cool and cut into squares.

This feels so yummy in my tummy!