Banana bread with chocolate chips

IMG_4008At the moment I am finding out what it means to be an adult. I´m doing an internship and that means getting up early. And being gone for most of the day. And not having that much time left for baking and even less desire to make something complex and fancy once I get home. Seriously, kudos to everyone who is blogging on top of their full time job! How do you manage that? I am already looking forward to the free time and flexibility college life offers.

In college I already noticed that I am not a huge canteen fan. Most of the ones at college do offer a great variety and try to be as fresh and organic as possible. And the one at my Internship is not bad either. I just prefer to cook at home or bring my own stuff to work. Before I started this internship I was imagining all the yummy things I would take to work but reality is me frantically searching for stuff to throw together the night before. Maybe I should reconsider the whole grown-up-responsibility-thing.

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Strawberry cake with white chocolate

IMG_4630Sooo, here comes the birthday cake number two. Because March is the month where I get to live out all my cake making dreams. This one is a delicious strawberry cake with a lot of white chocolate and whipped cream. Oh, and a vanilla bean. Because vanilla beans make everything better. I know that strawberries are not really in season right now but what am I supposed to do when my sister dearly wants strawberries for her birthday? But if you wait until summer to make this cake, you won´t regret it. It´s delicious!

IMG_4526The recipe is a mixture of combining two recipes and adding my own ideas. I´ve tried both recipes before and both were really good. But each felt like there was a small thing missing. So I decided to take the best from both recipes and create something new. The result was perfect! I used the dough from the German recipe because I love sponge cake (is that really the correct translation?). Anyway, here in Germany, cakes are usually made with a dough called “Biskuit” which is really soft and fluffy. I´ve tried other recipes that used a rather normal cake dough for the layering and they were good but just a bit to firm and stiff for me. Then I added a lot of strawberries, mascarpone, whipped cream and white chocolate. The best thing about the white chocolate decoration is that you don´t have to worry about messing up the frosting of the cake. Just add little pieces of white chocolate and everybody will think you´re a cake-decorating expert.

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Oreo cake

IMG_4220March is a good month. Mostly because three out of the six family members celebrate their birthday in March and you know what that means right? Cake! Lots of it. When I was younger, my mom would always make our traditional birthday cake with lots of chocolate and M&Ms on top. But when my baking addiction kicked in it was my responsibility to make something special for each birthday boy or girl. And since my brother loves Oreo cookies, it was obvious that I had to make something involving chocolate and Oreos.

IMG_4224I´ve tried different recipes for Oreo cakes before. If found this recipe in the new edition of Sweet Paul and I knew I just had to try it. It was similar to the recipes I´ve made before but just a little bit fancier. And as you can see, the result was stunning. Doesn´t it look beautiful? Well, I have to admit that the cake only lasted that way for 10 Minutes. Then, as I was trying to get a good picture, the background collapsed and smashed half of the cake. It was a bit cricked afterwards and since I didn´t have much frosting left, the end result looked a bit different from what I am presenting to you. Oh well, nobody´s perfect. It still tasted great!

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Bulgur salad

IMG_3833I think there are two very different persons living inside me. One is the inner fat kid that is constantly craving for cookies, cake and ice cream. The other one is a health-junkie, obsessed with fresh and healthy food. If I eat to much cake, bread and pizza, my body desperetaly longs for salad and vegetables. If I try to stick to an all-healthy diet, my body wants cake. The two balance each other out I guess. The health junkie in me makes sure I eat well and take care of myself. The inner fat kid helps me not to take everything to seriously and enjoy life and sugar every once in a while. Maybe it´s not the worst system after all.

IMG_3859So since I can´t be living off of cookies and cupcakes, my daily cooking consists of a lot of salad (technically speaking…is that even cooking?) Anyway, I love salad. I tried a bunch of different recipes and ingredients throughout the years and at the moment, my all time favourite ingredients for salad are avocado, tomatoes, green onion and feta cheese. These are the basics for almost all of my salads and from there I start adding things I like, like nuts, chickpeas, cucumber or corn.

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