Chocolatey Tartelettes d'Orange

Since I have seen the Tarte au Citron at "The Great British Bake Off", I have wanted to bake it. However, last weekend at my parents' house, I discovered that the little orange tree was full of very cute little baby oranges. They taste pretty sour, but smell absolutely delicious and orangey and because they are so small and the zest is so thin, you can eat them whole like kumquats. 
I had just read about how someone candied lilac flowers, and had the idea that sour oranges would be the perfect candidate for being candied - I usually find candied fruits way too sweet! So the baby oranges came to Munich with me and were candied here. When I also found some juice oranges in my organic delivery box, I spontaneously started the project "Tarte à l'Orange". Because I wanted to try different decorations, I baked 4 small tartlets rather than one large tart. The dough for the pastry base is from my rhubarb chocolate tart, the filling from Mary Berry's Tarte au Citron, only with oranges instead of lemons. Next time I might use a little less sugar, because the oranges are sweeter than lemons of course. But that did not bother anyone except me ;-)

Pain Paillasse

This  recipe  is from Silvia by Candid Moments. Since the penultimate  # PAMK, I had planned to bake it, and got around to it recently ​​quite spontaneously when I made it for a wine tasting session with a friend. A French colleague of mine said she knows no bread with that name, which really surprised me, since it sounds so French! Meanwhile, Google has solved the mystery: it is a Swiss bread, not a French one! The name seems to come from braided  straw baskets, which were once used to store and transport the bread. In German we call this kind of bread "root bread" due to its appearance. I used dry yeast instead of fresh yeast as in Silvia's recipe and would use a little less salt next time. It was delicious!

Rhubarb Syrup

Dear Silvia from Candid Moments recently posted images of lilac syrup, which has made ​​me very envious, because I discovered lilac syrup last year and would love to make it again, only here in Munich, there is still no lilac blooming! Not to mention elder, my reference elder on my biking trail to work will need a lot more time, only the stupid snowball is in bloom. But there is rhubarb! A few years ago, I'd made a rhubarb syrup from a chefoch.de recipe and found it perfect to replenish all my lovely and lovingly collected bottles again! Every time I make syrup, I wonder again how much sugar it must contain in order to ensure good preservation. My  lilac syrup , the elderflower syrup and elderberry syrup always keep very well, at least a year, with a sugar-liquid ratio of about 1:1 or less sugar. The citric acid naturally helps preservation, too!

Swedish Arrack rolls (Punschrullar)

In northern Sweden, more precisely in a great hotel near the Abisko National Park, Ingrid and I made ​​the acquaintance of Swedish Arrack rolls. We were thrilled! We had four different local sweets in the test (the others were called Chocolate Kiss, Chokladböllar and Cloudberry-Kiss) and Lanka the punch role was the best. Punch is a Swedish liqueur based on  Arrack, hence the different names. While I was researching that, I've learned that in addition to the Sri Lankan coconut-based Arrack which I know, there is another anise-based Arak, which is produced in some Arab countries! I'm not a big fan of anise, so I have not missed anything by my ignorance ;-) But with Arrack, I will certainly bake more often in the future!

Sri Lanka Black Tea Macarons with Lemon Ganache

For the Sri Lankan New Year's Party this year, I wanted to do something different and yet typical. When I last made the macarons in Easter Egg shape, it occurred to me that the shape of the island of Sri Lanka actually looks a bit like an egg and that more precise contours couldn't be much harder to do than, say, the bear macarons, so I just tried it! Sri Lanka (Ceylon), is the home of black tea among other things, so I thought of macarons with black tea and a white lemon ganache as filling. Of course, I was not the first person to make tea macarons, so I knew that it works and even looks very nice with the small black dots :-)
I also thought it was a good idea to make the macaron filling with a custard from the remaining egg yolks and some honey, as this video describes, I'll try that next time! A dark chocolate ganache would fit well, too, but I was not sure if that wouldn't overpower the lemon...

TEXUS-50 Sponge-Roulade

So the "main attraction" for my business trip to the Arctic Circle were the planned launches of the sounding rockets TEXUS 50 and 51. TEXUS 50 was successfully launched on april 12, 2013, but TEXUS 51 unfortunately had to be postponed. So there was only a TEXUS 50 sponge roulade ;-)

Initially I had planned to bake a single roulade, but it soon became clear that this would grotesquely distort the proportions - after all, the rocket, a VSB-30, about 12 meters long with a diameter of less than half a meter!

 Image: Rainer Kirchhartz, DLR

My solution to bake four biscuit roulades and arrange them side by side came already closer to the original, but still was not really to scale. Anyway, all the project participants were able have some of it and 8 sponge roulades instead of 4 would have been just a little extreme... ;-)

The payload was painted in pretty white lettering with a golden 50.

The next picture shows the respective first and second stage for TEXUS 50 and 51. Note the differently colored fins!

Foto: Klaus Lohn, DLR

Here, the two stages already wear their "war paint" - which I didn't manage to copy on my cake due to time restrictions ;-)

Foto: Nadine Perera, DLR

That's how it looks when the two stages are already in the launcher and the payload is lifted on top of them. As with my cake, it is not easy to get the original rocket in one picture in full length!

Foto: Klaus Lohn, DLR

The fact that the payload (the red part) is thinner than the stages (the two orange parts with the fins), I solved, as I think, very practically by rolling up one roulade from the long side of the baking tray, resulting in a long, narrow roll, by rolling up two sponge roulades from the short side of the tray, which resulted in two shorter, thicker roulades. 

Image: Rainer Kirchhartz, DLR

Just as with the real rocket, I needed an engine adapter which connects the two parts, which I made by rolling up a part of the fourth roulade diagonally. The other part of the fourth roulade, I rolled and cut diagonally to form the top. The fins, the nozzle and tip are molded from marzipan.

Zuerst die Finnen, Düse und Spitze aus Marzipan herstellen, damit diese über Nacht trocknen können. 
Bei diesen kleinen Teilen funktionierte die Weinflasche als Wellholz noch ganz gut, für die große Fläche später hat eine (verschlossene) Bierdose noch besser funktioniert. Die Finnen aus dünn ausgerollten Marzipan ausschneiden, einen dünnen Streifen als Finnschuhe um die untere Kante biegen, über Nacht trocknen lassen. Die Düse und die Spitze habe ich erst am nächsten Tag geformt, die wurden auch noch einigermaßen formstabil!