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.

It's amazing how time flies. I didn't even realise, so much time passed already, since my last post.
First, my whole family was fighting a severe stomach bug and it took me a solid week to recover. My baby son just kept on getting sick, we then went on a short holiday and here we go, two months passed.
I must admit, I have veneration for bloggers. who manage to write frequently, some even several times a week. How are you mange to do it?
With my two little kids, my hands are quite full. And I must admit, my family is definitely my priority.
Additionally I'm constantly tiered lately; the lack of sleep from the last weeks is taking its tall and in the evenings I'm mostly way to tiered to have one straight thought, much less writing a post. But as usual I'm not holding back with excuses, shame on me.

The stomach bug was definitely a horrible time, especially when our weekly delivery of the fantastic organic fresh food from our Namibian farmers came and I saw it all, but felt nothing but nausea.
Additionally I won an ice cream competition, where you had to suggest a new summer taste. My idea was inspired by my favourite cake, the black forest cake - vanilla with cherries and chocolate chip. To my surprise I was one of the lucky winners and they delivered exact that ice cream to my house and I had to suffer for many days longing for it to taste, but fighting my nausea at the same time. I can't remember, when the last time I was so badly off.


I'm back with, what I would say, is my all Namibian dish, since all ingredients can be sourced here in Namibia. Parsley roots and pomegranates I'm even growing in my very own garden, although not the one I used here - they're just not ready yet to be used.



Oryx is THE Namibian game, we served it already at our wedding and we just love the taste of it. The one we've had this time, was, I suppose, from an older animal and had a very intensive odour and a very "gamy" taste. Maybe not to everybody's liking, but for me it worked extremely well with the delicate sweetness of the pomegranate sauce.
The parsley root with its natural sweetness, made it a perfect side dish to the game. And since I need a salad with almost every dish, apart from soups, I also had to dish up a small leafy salad.

Not only am I late this week once again, it's also beetroot again, but in my defence, it's that time of the year and I still had some left in the fridge. Beside, I just love beetroot.
I had to promise my husband though, I wouldn't dish up beetroot for a while, especially after I presented him a fresh squeezed beetroot-apple juice the next morning and I must admit, I kind of overdid it. A bit.

I also promise, I will get better with my writing. It's not like I'm not cooking or baking, I just can't find the time to actually sit down and write. I vow to improve.

I have to share this dish with you, as it was a superb combination with the hake and I can imagine it to be the perfect partner for many fish species.

I found the recipe here, in one of my favourite German recipe databases and followed the recipe almost as is.   And as much as I like to adjust recipes to my liking or just take them as an inspiration, much the same I'm happy to find a recipe I can go with.

To freshen it all up, I served the Hake on a beetroot purée with some leafy greens in a tasty vinaigrette.

Lately I struggle to find the time and leisure to write. I don't know if I should blame it on the sleepless nights due to my baby boy or the famous springtime lethargy.
Yes, it's springtime in Windhoek and it's nice and warm and just beautiful. It's my favourite time of the year, with very nice temperatures, it's already hot, but not too hot and there are no mosquitoes, bees, moths, cockroaches and any other crawling stuff yet.
We are also busy preparing our veggie garden. This winter we decided on throwing everything out, feeding the soil and starting from the beginning and I promised myself to learn from my mistakes made the last years and hope we will have a bigger yield this year. I would also like to invest more time in my garden and I'm really looking forward to it.
With the beginning of the spring and the temperatures rising, our appetite for salads is back. What a better way of saying goodbye to the winter than with a combination of winter salad with fresh and young beetroot.
I must honestly admit, that I wasn't sure, if beetroot is edible raw. Only when I started researching for that matter I realised, that I was drinking beetroot juice for ages without giving it a thought for once. So the obvious answer is, yes, beetroot is edible raw and very healthy.
To make the salad substantial, I added my gratinated goats cheese croutons was a match made in heaven  with the sweetness of the beetroot and the fruitiness of the pear.

I'm so late this week and apologizing for the delay. We have winter holidays and the kindergarten is closed; after almost 2 weeks at home, my three year old is missing her friends and is noticeably bored. I just hear her calling me all day and she wants to be carried around all day long. I'm so thankful for my husband being home and helping out, but both our patience is spent.
That's the best time for takeaways, but if it comes to takeaways here in Windhoek, the choice is very poor, beside the unsatisfying taste.
We have lots of different chicken and burger takeaways, Italian and Chinese and that's mostly it. There is a new place, that just opened a few weeks ago and is actually selling Döner Kebabs, but the last time we were there to try it out, the whole shop was full of smoke. I'm sure, we will give it an other try, but for now we decided on homemade.
This are moments, I really miss Berlin or Cape Town and the fabulous takeaway places, where you can get Döner, Shawarma and Co.
Berlin of course, as the hometown of the famous Döner Kebab, had the most amazing places you can imagine. Additionally I was living in Tiergarten Moabit, a suburb with mainly Turkish and Arabic population, so needless to say I was sitting at the source. From greengrocer, baker to the butcher, I had the best culinary experience from the Middle-east world right on my doorstep.

But that's far away now and I decided to try it myself. I'm not sure I can call them Shawarmas though, but let say it's my take.


We had them actually twice that week, once with lamb and once with beef.
Lamb was definitely the big winner. Even though I took lamb chops, not the best cut for that purpose, but it was more than delicious. And the dogs were happy about the leftovers hanging on the bones.
The beef was o k a y, but somehow it wasn't as satisfying as the lamb. I don't know, if the meat seasoning didn't work that well, or maybe I've cut the meat to thick, somehow we were missing something.

The pita bread was the second time head and shoulders better, for one thing because I managed to overbake them the first time by not sticking to the recommended backing time, for another thing the dough was resting for four days in the fridge and the flour had enough time to develop.

We'll definitely have that dish more often and next time, I will try to stick more to the original ingredients like tabbouleh and hummus (chickpeas are already bought).
But for now, we were more than happy about the outcome of my first homemade Shawarmas.