Watalappam

Watalappam is my Dad's favorite dessert and is usually made once a year for his birthday. The pudding containing palm sugar and coconut milk probably originated in Malaysia, but has grown very famous all over Sri Lanka by now.
Its most exotic ingredient is "Jaggery", a very dark brown sugar made from date palms. It is sold in half sphere shaped lumps, usually only in Indian Asia Shops as opposed to Thai Shops.
Cashew nuts are a classic accompaniment to Watalappan, but sliced Mango also worked very well.  According to the Internet where I found this recipe (which I changed a bit), you can substitute Jaggery with brown sugar but I haven't tried that yet ;-)

Cinnamon Buns with Hermann Sourdough (Swedish Kanelbullar)

My clever sister has discovered something great once again: the Hermann sourdough! The English Wikipedia calls it Amish Friendship Bread. When we were kids, we used to have it, a fun combination of chain letter and Tamagotchi ("I have to go home and feed my Hermann"), but back then, we didn't know the delicious recipe for Cinnamon Buns (German) yet. I like these Cinnamon Buns better than all the other Hermann cakes - it may be due to the cardamom, which is typical for original Swedish Kanelbullar. For the Hermann base dough, there are recipes without yeast, with yeast, or a recipe for cross-breeding a different sourdough (all German).
I follow the recipe rather closely, I just take a bit more of the Hermann and use milk instead of an egg to brush the buns. I also don't sprinkle the buns on the tray with cinnamon and sugar, but I have tried to add the traditional Swedish sugar crystals with great succes!

Bits und so 300 - "Club Mate" Cake with Gelatin Fondant

My good friend Timo has a very successful German Podcast about technical gimmicks called Bits und so. Yesterday, they had a big event for Episode 300 of the podcast, which was recorded live in Munich, and I thought a matching cake for such an event shouldn't be missing!

Contrary to popular prejudices, these circles have progressed to drink Club Mate instead of Coke - that's why I found, test baked and adapted this recipe (German).

The cake doesn't taste strongly like Club Mate, but it's very tasty nevertheless and harmonizes nicely with the Ganache made with dark chocolate and the sweetness of the fondant. Matching the event logo, a pixelated 300, I could open up my green food coloring (even though pixelating a 0 was very difficult in this analog world, and with white instead of black) and make some Gelatin Fondant again, and whilst looking for the candles, I found my beloved letter stamps again! For those of you who aren't computer scientists: the candles aren't broken, but have to be read in binary format ;-)

1*256+0*128+0*64+1*32+0*16+1*8+1*4+0*2+0*1= 300 or 100101100

Gelatin Fondant

I made my first decorations with marzipan, powdered sugar and food coloring, then I discovered Marshmallow Fondant and finally this fantastic Gelatin Fondant (German recipe). Wikipedia says: "Fondant (UK: /ˈfɒndənt/, US: /ˈfɑndənt/ or /ˈfɑndɑnt/, from the French: /fɔ̃.dɑ̃/) is one of several kinds of icing-like substance used to decorate or sculpt pastries." In the comments to the recipe, they talk about a caramel syrup, but since I couldn't find it in Munich and since I tried very unsuccessfully to use "Grafschafter Rübensirup", I settled on using this easily made Glucose Syrup (German recipe). Since I am preparing a cake with gelatin fondant, I made the fondant today to use it tomorrow. Gelatin Fondant is less tough than Marshmallow Fondant, it can be kept for quite a while in the fridge or frozen and doesn't taste too sweet (for fondant, anyway). I can really recommend it!

A Recipe for Marriage - Yin-Yang Gateau with Light and Dark Chocolate Mousse

I created this gateau especially for the wedding of our friends Raphaela und Martin - my best whishes for you two! The YinYang                 symbol stands for the union of complements or opposites to harmony, for man and woman, dark and light. You can prepare this gateau perfectly as a couple - each person just chooses a color, prepares the sponge cake and the mousse and in the end, everything is combined in perfect harmony. :-) You can also combine the gateau diffently in order to exploit the opposites: since the white mousse is a bit sweeter, it also tastes very well with the dark sponge cake!