Karamell und Kranz

Vanilla, caramel, walnuts, softness, that’s the crown of the party, the Kranz.
Largely inspired by Frankfurter Kranz (Frankfurt crown cake). The original seems to contain large amounts of butter, and this one is butter free, so the crown is lighter to wear. It’s still decadent. I doubt any German cake can ever become diet food.

A very vanilla chiffon cake with lots of vanilla powder added to blond cane sugar.

The cake is very fluffy. A real chiffon, so let’s garnish delicately :

The frosting is simply coconut cream (chilled) with a little dark rum, no sugar. There is enough sweetness from the biscuit, the raspberry jam and caramelized walnuts.

I’ve added water to the caramel left in the bottom of pan for the walnuts, and when that was cooled, poured on the cake just before serving.

Eat while it’s cold…

… with hot coffee.

A vanilla scone pause

Take a freshly baked fluffy vanilla scone, break it open…

Add a little butter and raspberry jam… Mmmmmmmmm….

Classic scones with a generous pinch of vanilla powder in the dough.

Yep, the shape is not very regular, but that doesn’t matter.
Scone recipe here.

Brew tea.

It’s my home-blend Thé de Noël (Christmas tea, recipe here).

Ding, ding… tea time !

Nonnettes et flocons de neige, fluffy December sweets

Double dessert, but so light that they could fly…

Plain nonnettes, the soft ginger bread. (recipe here).
These are not filled, only glazed in a syrup of kurozato black sugar.

Mini Flockensahne tortes, topped with sesame seed streusel. It’s light low-fat plant based cream and vanilla for the whip.

Baked matcha donuts with silky mocha

Sweet time. In Winter in Spain, they serve their churros with a thick chocolate. That was the idea. My drink is a mocha, with coffee in it. And I baked matcha green tea donuts. Both are very quick and simple to make, vegan, dairy free and more important : warm and yummy !

Matcha baked donuts :
A cup of flour, baking powder, 2 tbs of sweetened green tea powder, a generous drip of olive oil, water… Baked at 120 degrees C, till they get firm on the top. They stay very soft

You see them naked on the right. On the left, when warm, I painted them with olive oil and shook in a bag with a ts of tea powder.

A real donut texture, rich, moist, soft, sweet. The green teea sweetness is very pleasant and a perfect companion for dark chocolate.

Silky mocha. Coffee, lots of pure cocoa powder, potato starch, a few seconds in the micro-wave… It gets silky. Creamy. Well I nearly had pudding.

Let’s dip in the donuts…

Ananas-chocolat, simple cup cakes

Ananas-chocolat. Pineapple-chocolate. A perfect match in heaven.

For melting mini-cakes…
Roughly like the brownies :
1/2 block of tofu (200 gr) into the mortar, lots of non sweet cocoa powder, 2 tbs cane sugar, 1 tbs of instant coffee, 3 or 4 tablespoons of flour, 2 tbs of tahin (sesame butter), 2 tbs of rum, enough water to get a cream texture.