Elderberry Syrup

Since both my elderflower syrup and my lilac syrup have been emptied or given away for a long time now, I was happy to realize that nature has cleverly built the elder in such a way that you get your second chance and can make elderberry syrup from August to October! Like the other syrups,  elderberry syrup is excellent with  sparkling wine, prosecco, mineral water, ice cream and other desserts. 
I still knew the elder picking places, thus I set out to collect some berries on a sunny bike ride home. Well. Turns out that the biggest and ripest elderberry clusters are hanging high up, where it's nice and sunny and impossible to get there for the picking them. I managed to get some, and even experimented with different methods of juicing and made ​​two batches of elderberry syrup... because  elderberries are healthy, high in vitamin C, boost the immune system, and can even be used to reduce fever, says the Internet - I will test that some time!

Sweet Pesto of Mint und Lemon Balm - and Chalkboard Lids!

Hurrah! I have found a very effective way to use my tide of mints and lemon balm from my herb garden, and at the same time, to preserve them in a very tasty way: Pesto! Pesto can also be sweet and makes an excellent contrast to desserts such as panna cotta, crème brûlée, ice-cream, and more or less everything! 
I also tried a new technique for labeling glass jar lids: painting them with chalkboard paint! It is very simple and even dishwasher-proof!

Stick bread with herbs

Lately, it seems that stick bread has gotten very popular again, and since I missed this trend as a child, I really wanted to try it! Last weekend, we were invited for a barbecue and our gift in addition to the lemon meringue cupcakes was dough for bread on a stick. 

Unfortunately, I had not thought ahead to ask the host about the type of grill, which was in fact the sort of grill  which has to be covered with a lid while grilling - so no stick bread heat source! And since it was a barbecue party, something is on the grill at all times! Thus, I made 2/3 of dough as "oven bread" and only 2 stick breads to try it out - and considerung that everyone was already stuffed from all the other delicious barbecued stuff, the stick bread was remarkably popular! ;-)

Cookies of Death - NOTFUNNY Lemmings and Death

Today is my best friend Fabian's birthday, and since he loves the Notfunny Comics by Joscha Sauer and always likes to present us with a Notfunny book or postcard calendar, my sister had the idea to bake him cookies and to send them together with a Notfunny postcard. And because I always love to stay in theme, I wanted to bake Notfunny cookies! 

From the notfunny characters, the death and the lemmings suited best from a cookie perspective - because they are brown and fairly simple to make. So I wanted to bake lemmings and made an almond pastry dough with a little cocoa. My sister wanted to make sweet Pretzels from peanut-chocolate pastry dough, but offered me half of that dough for the Death biscuits, such that the colors match the original's closely - even if the proportions do not quite fit ;-)

Pineappe Sage Tea with Lemon

Since the summer seemed to be over for a while, I started into the tea-season. In addition, my pineapple sage just grows and grows, taking resources from the other herbs, such that I'm trying to use a lot of it right now. ;-) Apparently, it really likes my herb garden, much more than the other herbs, which grow normally and much slower!
Just like from mint, lemon balm, or sage,
you can make a delicions tea from pineapple sage, which even tastes much better than sage tea - but it's also not as healthy as sage tea. I won't use it up all, though (apart from the fact that I won't be able to drink THAT much tea) - the red flowers of the sage are supposed to be very pretty!

Mail/Post from my Pâtisserie

As I proudly announced in the previous Post, I participated for the first time in Post aus meiner Küche - I think the idea is great! You get assigned an exchange partner, whom you can clarify food allergies with, and then mails each other parcels with self-made delicacies. Also, photos of the delicacies get pinned onto the matching board on Pinterest, which reflects the motto and visualizes a virtual picnic meadow. Genius! Check it out, there are great things to see and a lot of inspiration to be found. And it's all packed so prettily!

Blueberry-Chocolate Cake-Pops...or Truffles

For the picnic exchange of "Post aus meiner Küche" (Mail/Post from my kitchen), I wanted to create a new and fancy recipe. Since my exchange partner said that she loves the Blueberry Tarte in my blog and blueberries in general, I wanted to make something including blueberries. And as I've  wanted to try cake pops for a while, and thought they were nice and small and compact and well suited to mail them, I created this recipe. I was very excited to find wooden popsicle sticks in my DIY cupboard as well as a coated wooden board in the perfect size which already had 4 holes in it and serves perfectly as a cake pop holder!