Chocolate with salt

It was my fathers in law birthday last Sunday and since he doesn't want us to buy him anything, I decided to bake him at least a birthday cake. Or let's better say, I baked two, but about that later.

First I was thinking of a "Death by chocolate" cake, but it's summer and lately extremely hot, so I preferred to make something else. The outcome was very similar to a Black forest cake, just lighter and fresher. And sugar free. At least the first one...

Why sugar free? We are working on our diet or let's better say on our healthy living and started cutting out all the sugar. I got hold of dextrose and rice syrup as a substitute and am trying to use only those from now on. I will post the whole story about changing our diet to sugar free some time soon.

Back to the cake(s). As I already mentioned, I used dextrose for the first cake instead of sugar and the cake turned out as sweet as any other cake I ever ate. The recipes I sourced for the sponge cake and the filling were both with sugar, so I just had to adjust the quantity, as dextrose is less sweet than sugar. According to an experienced blogger, the conversion from sugar to dextrose is 1:1.5 and I was more than happy with that. At the end, you have to find out for yourself. I also got the feeling, that depending on the manufacturer the dextrose is more or less sweet, but always less sweet than sugar. More about that in the next post.

First of all, dextrose reacts differently than sugar. By whisking the eggs up with the dextrose and later with sugar, the sugar - egg mix was definitely more fluffy and didn't collapse as quick, after I sifted the flour in. All in all I had to bake four sponge cakes. Yes, four.
My first sponge cake didn't rise as I hoped. I stuck to the recipe (in Polish language), but already while reading I had my doubts. I was wondering, why I was supposed to whisk the eggs up, only to take the whole air out by mixing in the flour. I waved scruples and rather conformed to the recipe.
My mixture collapsed immediately and I was wondering, how on earth that dough will ever rise.
My gut feeling was right and the dough hardly rose and only on one site. The taste was nice though and the final result was enjoyable, so it ended up in the freezer for future desserts.
With the second sponge cake, I sifted the flour in again and instead of mixing, I carefully folded it in. That looked more like an airy sponge cake dough. It came out fantastic.
So why did I make two cakes in first place? Definitely not to see the difference between sugar and dextrose, or to groove my sponge cake baking skills. It's more simple - we just couldn't resist to try the first cake and ended up eating it all.
But four sponge cakes? The third one and first with sugar, stuck to my silicon cake mould, and because it was very airy, it completely crumbled in my fingers. So there went my second sponge cake into the freezer and I had to bake again. Yay.

Some time back I bought agar agar, actually in order to make jam without sugar. Agar agar is a vegetarian/vegan gelatine obtained from algae. I wanted to use it for the cake, but had to discover, that it's unsuitable to bind cold fluids, as it has to be heated in order to start the binding process.
I've read, that for cold fluids you can use carob gum as a vegetarian alternative and I will try to get that. Not that I actually need to find an alternative to gelatine, as we are definitely not turning vegetarian, I'm just curious, if I could get it here in Namibia.
I used agar agar just to thicken up the cherry juice, only to finally try out how it works, but if you don't have agar agar, simply use the gelatine for it as well.

The cake has to rest for at least 6 hours to set properly.

I already announced on my FB-page, that my next post will be about that fantastic bread. I had saved the recipe for quite a long time and was just waiting for the right moment to bake it. I found it here (in German language) and it was advertised as the perfect bread for braais (BBQ). Last Saturday we were invited for a braai and I thought, it's the ideal time to give it a try. That way I also had a small present. 
I halved the ingredients as I thought it would be too much. Well, stupid me, I didn't expect the bread to be that good and I ended up baking the next day again.
I knew, I took a risk baking a bread I never did before, especially because it took me longer then I thought and the bread was just ready as we had to drive. But the recipe was described  as  easy to make, so I thought I will take my chance.
Luckily I had sour dough in my fridge. I wasn't sure if I can still use it, as I've made it month ago. But all went well and the bread turned out "divine" as my friends remarked. And it has been proven, that my sour dough turned out nice and potent, so I "fed" it with 100 g flour and 100 g lukewarm water immediately in order to make sure, I can use it again. I read in bread baking forums, that people use their sour doughs or mother doughs for 20! years by only feeding them on a regular base. That's so spectacular.

Beside that, I think the fact, that all the herbs and the tomatoes were home grown, made the bread even more special.

Maybe you remember the quick and delicious spelt-curd-bread I presented in February, possibly one or the other even tried it out. As for me, it became my favourite bread and I'm baking it almost every week, alternating the seeds I'm putting in. 


So why revamping it? Well, I had the problem, that with the given quantity of ingredients, my bread either overflowed the baking dish 
or if I separated it in two baking tins, the breads turned out to flat, because there wasn't enough dough. At least with backing two loaf, I've been able to find out, that the bread is staying fresh and fluffy for a really long time. Even after 5 days in my cupboard, wrapped in a kitchen towel, the inside was almost as good as on the second day. Not that its very important to us, because normally we eat that bread within two days, but still good to know.
So last time I was baking with my original recipe, I've put the dough in only one baking tin again and my bread rose so much, that the thin crust broke and the still fluid dough flowed out all over the oven. I almost started to cry.
So that week I decided to reduce the amount of flour and adjust the other ingredients. But I didn't adjust consequently, because I wanted to experiment a bit. The idea of baking a smaller bread was initially grounded in getting hold of smaller packages of instant yeast; instead of 10 g they are only 7 g now. I wasn't sure, how the bread will come out, but as you can already guess, it turned up just better than the previous. Even my husband asked, if I changed something.

So here comes my revamped and improved Spelt-curd-bread with sunflower seeds

The first time I've made that dish, we were growing beetroot in our garden and all the beetroot was ready at the same time, so I was looking for different dishes I could work with. I love beetroot, but the only dishes I could come up with, were salad or soup. I wasn't in the mood for either of those. I knew, I will cook some beetroot and preserve for later, but there was still plenty left. So I stumbled upon that recipe, but decided to use a tart I knew from another recipe I've made several times already. I love that dough recipe, as it's really quickly done and doesn't contain half a cube of butter (as you maybe remember, I'm trying to lose some weight). Also I'm not a fan of puff pastry tarts - I guess it's also the butter content. Don't get me wrong, I love puff pastry, but not in that kind of dishes. Beside, there are so many fantastic tart doughs and using puff pastry is kind of boring, to me at least.
Why am I telling all this, because every time I've made that tart, I thought, it must taste great with goats cheese. So that time my inspiration came from the goats cheese lying in my fridge and of course the glass of ready-to-eat beetroot in my pantry. As I said, the very first time, I've made the tart with fresh beetroot and wasn't that stoked about the outcome. Since I'm using jarred beetroot, I like the taste much more. And that's really rare, as I normally prefer fresh products.
By the way, we don't grow beetroot in our garden anymore, because we are way too impatient and somehow the bugs in our garden seemed to love the beetroot at least as much as we do. So no beetroot anymore, we tried carrots instead. But that's another story.

Let's start with my Beetroot tart with red onion confit, goats cheese and walnuts

We ran out of bread yesterday and our shopping day is still a few days away. I haven't baked bread for months, so I didn't have any starter/motherdough  to bake my usual bread. I baked already bread without a starter, but they aren't as tasty, additionaly they also don't stay fresh longer then one or two days. I've set my starter immediately, but was still sitting with the problem of not having any bread at home. I decided to give it a try and find a new recipe for a quick bread.

I intended to find a recipe for a spelt or full corn bread, considering us trying to eat as healthy as possible since new year. Christmas time was a killer, we haven't watched our figure at all and since it was as hot as I mentioned already, we had lots and lots of ice cream. Now we are back on track and trying to avoid white flour, too much fat and of course ice cream. I know, my apple - kefir pancakes haven't been really diet food, but one day a week we are allowed to sin - it makes it definitely easer to stick to our plan.

By the way, for our Namibian followers, you get spelt flour only under the German name Dinkelmehl, at least I haven't found it otherwise yet. Please contact me, if you could buy it differently.

Anyway, I discovered this very interesting bread recipe I couldn't wait to try out. I should mention at the beginning, it's not meant to be kneaded by hands, because the dough is too runny.

As promised in my last post, I want to show you, how to do a starter for a sour dough and the sour dough itself. It's very time intensive, but worth the work. I love my sour dough breads, they are so fluffy and stay fresh way longer, then breads without the sour dough or sponge. I sourced the classic way of preparing  der-Sauerteig. The idea for the regular sponge came up by reading that article and I adjusted it to my needs.

One of the first things I started doing myself in Namibia, was bread. And not, because you don't get good bread in Namibia, you do. With the German past and still present influence, you will hardly miss the German culinary world. There are not only plenty German restaurants in Namibia, but also the typical occupations like baker and butcher, the Germans are famous for, are either influenced by or in hand of Germans. Beside Namibia importing wast of German products for the "feel at home" sensation. 
But it was a new challenge. I asked myself, is it possible to bake bread at home as good as you can buy at the bakery or even better? Well, I don't know, if it's better, but at least as good as and I know, what ingredients I'm using. The main motive for me cooking, was being aware of the ingredients I'm using. After the birth of our daughter even more than ever.
I remember I baked my first breads without a yeast sponge or sour dough. They are tasty, the day you bake them and if you're lucky even the day after. But we need mostly a bit longer, to finish a bread. I remember reading millions of recipes and various websites about baking bread, one of them very helpful from a German baker (Bäcker Süpke's Welt). 
The preparation of bread spread to two days or more kind of scared me off. And to be honest, when I was baking bread, then I needed it now or never, always somehow last minute. But after throwing away, I don't remember how many halves of breads, me, who is very aware of being poor and having nothing to eat and of the poverty in our country, I realised, that I have to change my bread baking behaviour. And I did and was rewarded with fantastic bread, sometimes even ready in only one day. 
My first sour dough I made from a ready to buy sachet. It was a German product, I don't know if you can buy ready sour dough all over the world. You can always do your starter yourself.

The linseed-sesame bread was again part of my birthday gift for my mum in law. I know, I'm late with my publishing, but I was sick and not really in the mood of writing. No excuse. 

So let's start, we don't want to waste any more time. One more thing, I only bake small breads, as I like eating them as fresh as possible. Please join me!