Tag Archives: cinnamon

The British

Posted in Cake / Cupcakes, Dessert by

This post is dedicated to all recent Cupcake & Prosecco indulgers (because birthday cupcakes win over birthday cakes). Thank you again for making the event what it was and for eating so many cupcakes! You know who you are ;-). And I think you enjoyed it, as did your taste buds. Especially The British, they seemed to go down very well. So did The Classic, but that recipe is already published.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about: The British =  Apple Crumble Cupcakes (obviously…… the most British dessert ever), adapted from an Apple Crumble/Streusel Cake recipe. As almost always, the secret ingredient is cinnamon, lots of it. But you need to make sure it is good quality. For example, if you happen to live in London ❤ and surroundings, Whole Foods stocks the best! Now, once you have succeeded in finding such cinnamon, everything you bake will be heavenly, including this cake/these cupcakes. Enough blabbing, below you’ll find the cake recipe which can be easily changed into cupcakes. One quantity of the ingredients makes 20-24 cupcakes. Good luck and dig in!

Apple Streusel Cake (or Cupcakes)

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adapted from The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days

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HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY!

Posted in Cake / Cupcakes, Dessert by

HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY to me!!! It’s like I have two birthdays worth celebrating annually from now on – exciting:-) I cannot believe a year has passed since I spent hours with my other half in my tiny flat in Chelsea trying to figure out how to best take a picture that would adequately represent the medical gourmet. Good times.  Good memories. Didn’t turn out too bad right?

In celebration of this day – a small sweet treat for a spring and late summer culinary sin which reminds the palate of Christmas. Served with bubblies, obviously. No birthday of mine could go without!

Apple and Red Currant Crumble Bars

Apple Currant Crumble Bars

adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery

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Swedish Cardamom Buns/Rolls

Posted in Breakfast by

HAPPY EASTER!!!!

I hope you all spent the past few days indulging in ridiculous amounts of chocolate eggs, hot cross buns and tasty roast lamb. If not, don’t worry, you still have one day left to catch up;-). And congratulations to everyone who successfully completed Lent yesterday – now go and do or eat whatever you have been painfully missing out on these past 46 days!

This year’s Easter has been, apart from spending some of the days surrounded by IV-drips, syringes and wounds, all dressed up in scrubs (yes – some people actually have to work on bank holidays), an unhealthy brunch crawl for me. Nothing wrong with brunching 4 days in a row is there?

For the final brunch of the lot I decided to bake something slightly different than your usual, with a Scandinavian touch – Cardamom Rolls. NOM! As I already mentioned in a previous post – Cardamom is the new Cinnamon. If I haven’t won you over yet, I’m sure baking these will. I’m also sure half of you have been invited to yet another an Easter brunch for today, said they would bring something and popped into M&S for some hot cross buns. If so – tut tut tut – freeze your bought buns and make these! Everyone will love them!!

Swedish Cardamom Rolls

Cardamom Rolls 1

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Duck Breast with a Cassis – Thyme Sauce, Homemade Spätzli, Sprouts, Cinnamon Poached Apples and Cranberries

Posted in Mains by

Apologies for my failing at posting – I spent the last few weeks lost in Asia. Burma to be precise. Correction – Myanmar as they now call it (which is actually disliked by most locals). WOW, what a beautifully, diverse and extremely interesting place. A country with over 130 ethnic groups, multiple different climates, unique landscapes, thousands of pagodas (I am completely “pagoda’d” out by this point, I might even start having nightmares about them…), welcoming people, Buddha!, and so much more. Definitely worth a visit. Of course I ended the trip, like every trip to south east Asia, on a high in Bangkok – also a city worth visiting if you have not yet made it to that corner of the world. The sunset and nighttime views from the various sky bars are priceless.

However, after all this dining on asian food, I started craving a hearty homey dish. Honestly, I never thought I’d need a break from asian food, how wrong I was. So, after having arrived safely on Swiss soil, I decided to satisfy my craving asap. And this is the result. Delish – craving successfully satisfied.

Duck Breast with a Cassis – Thyme Sauce, Homemade Spätzli, Sprouts, Cinnamon Poached Apples and Cranberries

Duck, spätzli, cassis sauce

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The Medical Gourmet’s (Perfect) Cinnamon Rolls

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Here is a post for all you nocturnal readers out there. Working hours in the surgical profession aren’t your standard 9 to 5 with a one hour lunch break. They are more like 7 to 7 with a 15 minute lunch break (if you’re lucky). Or the even better (not) shifts are the night shifts – 8pm to 8am with ha, wait for it, officially no calculated break – which normal functioning human being could survive that? This past week I had my first night shift after two night free years – dear god does your body protest. You’re tired all the time no matter how much sleep you get. You have the hugest eye bags all the time – make up resistant might I add. You’re hungry all the time – literally, I never thought waking up from hunger is a thing…. trust me… it is and it sucks! Additionally, ER’s attract strange people after dark…. who shows up at 2 am with a painful wrist 5 weeks post falling on it?? Seriously. Well, at least these people are kind enough to keep me busy 🙂

Anyways, to combat my constant hunger whilst on nights I decided to pre-make a batch of cinnamon rolls. In the past I have tried many recipes but none were satisfying enough. Until now. Just in time for my week of nocturnal binge eating I managed to create the perfect combination of doughy fluffyness with a heavenly cinnamony filling. Nom.

Cinnamon Rolls

cinnamon pecan rolls with lemon creamcheese frosting

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Menemen

Posted in Breakfast by

The best meal of the day in my opinion is breakfast. I could eat breakfast food 24/7 – from cinnamon rolls to fresh bread with nutella to müsli with yoghurt to eggs with bacon to smoked salmon with avocado to pancakes….. Although if we are being honest, since the introduction of “brunch” almost anything classifies as breakfast food…. but that’s not the point;-). Nonetheless, it still remains epic. Especially lazy weekends – nothing beats sleeping in and waking up to the smell of bacon, eggs or whatever your loved one has fancied treating you with. Bearing that in mind, I thought I’d inspire you just in time for Sunday breakfast/brunch with a savoury turkish dish. Looks impressive and tastes just as good. Enjoy!

Menemen

Menemen

adapted from bbcgoodfood
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Koeksisters

Posted in Dessert by

I cannot believe 2 years have passed since my time in Cape Town. Crazy. Such great memories, lots of wine tasting, not so much hospital-work, lots of eating, beaching, exploring and more wine tasting. Best. Elective. Ever. My liver must not have been happy. To reminisce, a friend and I got together one evening this past week. We drank wine from the Peter Falke vineyard (in Stellenbosch), which she still had in her cellar from our trip, and made Koeksisters (finally, this had been our plan for the past two years but somehow…..2 years later there we were). Koeksisters are the unhealthiest but most rewarding small spiced balls of fried dough. The first time we ever tasted them was in the Bo-Kaap neighbourhood of Cape Town, from a small corner shop that sells fresh ones only once or twice a week, usually on a Sunday. They were delish.

BoKaap

A house in Bo Kaap

But just to clarify – there are two types of Koeksisters, the most common ones are shiny braided looking things drenched in syrup or honey, the ones we had in Bo-Kaap which are harder to find, (and tastier in my opinion) are of malay origin. An essential ingredient is ground cardamom, which I knew would be a challenge to find in Switzerland, so a while ago, with this plan on the back of my mind, I seized the opportunity at a local indian shop in Shepherd’s Bush :-). No excuses now – Koeksisters had to be made!! The recipe we used is from a b&b owner we met along the way, so no guarantee for its accuracy – I feel it is more a cross between the shiny braided version and the malay version. In any case, whatever it is we ended up with was tasty 🙂

Koeksisters

Koeksisters1

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Bringing Out Your British Side

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Essential British Experiences:

  1. Afternoon tea – nothing beats fresh scones
  2. Sunday roast – but not on the same day as afternoon tea….that would make you vomit
  3. Spending a weekend in the country in wellies and barbour jackets
  4. Queueing half naked for a club in the middle of winter
  5. Horse riding
  6. For all you Londoners: Secret Cinema is a must!
  7. Clay pigeon shooting – be sure to rest the gun correctly on your shoulder, otherwise you may end up with painful bruises… not that I’m speaking from my own experience
  8. Sunday brunch – one of my favourite things about the brits – eggs benedict, royale, pancakes, bacon, sausages… you need to try them all!
  9. Stand up comedy
  10. Watch a musical – a must see for everyone: Book of Mormon
  11. Have a drink at Aqua Shard – the view is priceless
  12. Renting a barclays boris bike and trying to look all cool while removing it from the docking station as an attempt not to look like a tourist…. I clearly failed at this
  13. Running/walking for charity
  14. Up your drinking to british level for one week and see how your liver responds
  15. Watching a Premier League football game – if you’re lucky you might learn a new word or two if you’re sat next to intellectuals with a rather broad vocabulary of swear words…highly entertaining.
  16. Acting all upperclass and watching a horse-race, merely as an excuse to dress up in one of those fancy hats
  17. Watch the Oxford-Cambridge boat race
  18. Picnic on Primrose Hill with strawberries and Pimm’s
  19. Renting a pedalo in Hyde Park after having wandered around Kensington Gardens
  20. Hunting with horses and hounds
  21. Experiencing a tube strike…. London just wouldn’t be the same without one of these fun days
  22. I’m not even going to start on art, restaurant, bar and drinking experiences… the list would be miles long… but the above should keep nouveau brits busy for a while

This recipe ties in perfectly with the above as, in my eyes, it is an english classic. No dessert is simpler or better than a good old crumble with custard. It is hearty, warming and a perfect finish for any menu. Funnily enough, just as I served this crumble, my mother called me. I told her I had made crumble with custard for some guests….. I have never had anyone with so much food envy and excitement on the other side of the phone: she was ecstatic about the custard.  At least I now know what dessert I shall be making when she comes to visit ;-).

Apple Crumble with Cinnamon Custard

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Number 3/5

Posted in Breakfast, Cake / Cupcakes by

With spring finally having arrived, spending time outside seems to have won priority over slaving away in the kitchen. But here is a recipe which is definitely a keeper. After having played around with multiple banana loaf recipes resulting in quite a few failures (somehow loaf cakes and myself are not friends, they either don’t rise, don’t have enough banana flavour, or I undercook them with the fear of having dry cake, subsequently breaking them upon removal from the tin), I finally managed to create a loaf which not only rose adequately but was also moist, perfectly bananaey and scrumptious :-). This one was also baked for the previously mentioned birthday festivities. It can be made up to a day in advance and turns out best if one uses overripe bananas for the ultimate banana flavour.

Banana Pecan Loaf

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Batch 17.5

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Do you remember the episode of Friends in Season 7 where Monica bakes a ridiculous amount of chocolate chip cookies in an attempt to decipher Phoebe’s grandma’s lost recipe? Batch 17 was almost perfect, but the last cookie disappears before Monica could use it to work from……. after all those cookies and all that effort I would have gone mental! (Ok, actually before she decides to use cookie 17 for further creations, she finds out “grandma’s” recipe for the cookies they are all raving about was the exact one on each packet of Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels. She flipped out Monica style. But that’s irrelevant.)

Over the past months I have been through a similar, not quite as crazy, process with oat and raisin cookies: my “healthy”, satisfying comfort cookies. My already elevated cholesterol levels would certainly not have been happy had my cookie-craze been related to peanut butter and chocolate chips. Granted, oat and raisin cookies aren’t the healthiest out there, but doesn’t the name alone imply that there is some healthy aspect to them…? Health and all aside, occasional cravings have to be satisfied. Finally I managed to create near perfection, batch 17.5:

Ultimate Oat and Raisin Cookies

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