Why not bake something, with heart and love and muscle-power!

The task was clear, it had to be cupcakes! A birthday cake is so 2004, and cupcakes are just nicer for a party, especially if the birthday boy is a bachelor and you can bet he hasn’t got one cake/dessert plate

So I got into the kitchen, and I went all the way.

Banana-Cherry-Chocolate muffins? Check.

Cherry muffins filled with a dollop of nutella? Check.

Cocoa muffins with chocolate chips? Check.

Regular muffins with red food colouring and chocolate chips? Check.

Once those beauties were out of the oven I let them cool and went on a quest for cupcake cream.

Harder than it sounds, but I have some trusted baking-blogs that I can rely on for recipes. In the end, Bakerella did the trick with her recipe for “Creamy Cream Cheese Frosting”.

I must admit, mixing this huge amount of confectioner’s sugar with the cream cheese felt kinda wrong. But the outcome, oh, the outcome!

It was creamy, vanilla-y, buttery goodness. But a tad too sweet, I think in the future I’ll decrease the amount of sugar. But the red food-colouring was a heaven-sent, it gave some of the cupcakes a lovely pink hue.

Ch-ch-check them out:

In the end I covered some muffins in chocolate, in case the frosting scared someone off.

When they were standing in the birthday boy’s kitchen everyone was like “Wow! Who made those?”.

My cupcakes brings all the boys in the yard kitchen ,
And they’re like
It’s better than yours,
Damn right it’s better than your’s…

At least that’s what the boys looked like:

And the birthday boy himself? He liked!

Awesomeness found here.

I mean, cute colors, simple designs and clever use of space? What’s not to like?

First off: quilts. They’re pretty, soft and have tradition. They keep the cathair off your linen and probably even smell good

Then the pillows. Their message is still up-to-date: Make love, not war. Make fun of me, I don’t care. I want those. And looking at that dove, I think she wants to live with me, too.

I’m a sucker for dots. They’re round and small and perky. Perfect! It’s like these sheets are saying: One dot for you, one dot  for me, one for you, one for me…

Upon looking at this sleeping bag, I want a sleep-over. Now. With cookies, bad 80ies romances and soda-pops.

They even stitch your name into them!

Does “Liz is Sparta” fit, I wonder?

Last, but definetely not least: those bookshelves.

We have a cool, three-sided mediatower at home, too.

It is seriously stylish.

But this here? My-oh-my.

Seeing those I disclaimed something I wouldn’t repeat in front of my parents.

Just for you I will say: Looking at those I felt seriously great!

It is a 360° shelf with differently sized compartments. And you can put all the lovely things in it that make a flat cozy: books, pictures, the stone sculpture you did in 8th grade and your wedding bouquet. Siiiigh.

———————————————————————————-

All items found at Pottery Barn Teen, PBteen.

I can’t get away from her, can’t seem to get from under her spell.

She’s just so enticing! I’m on a fence, I can’t decide whether to leave her or not to.

She’s supposed to be good for my heart, but so bad for my hips.

Every time I’ve had her I can’t get a good night’s sleep.

I wake up a dozen times,  with a scorching throat and an aching heart, knowing that I have to stop her.

And I’ve tried before and gone weeks without her.

Oh, but I can’t quit her, not with her looking all gorgeous and yummi like this:

One of them is a French Chocolate Tarte and the other one Dr. Oetkers “Maulwurfkuchen” (Mole-Cake).

Named after its appearance, it looks like a mole-hill. It consists of fluffy chocolate cake with a creamy filling. I usually pimp the filling with bananas and cherry. In my book, it doesn’t get much better than cherry-banana-chocolate!

Now, I wanted to bake that cake today, but my fridge didn’t really have enough free space to take it in. And with mole-cake, not only does it have to cool in the fridge for two hours, it usually lasts several days, so it’ll have to be kept in there, too.

So last night, lying in bed and contemplating about today’s baking, I asked myself “Why don’t you just bake mole-cupcakes?”. And why not, indeed.

So I mixed the dry ingredients with a bit of milk, two eggs and butter and filled the batter into my newest muffin-liners. If you want to try it, don’t fill the liners to the brim because the dough rises quite a lot during baking.

I then proceeded to whip some cream and mixed it with the water-and-stuff creme from the cake-mix. Two hours into the fridge, and then onto the cupcakes. But first I put some banana slices on top, yummi!

For decorating the creme I used a freezer bag with a corner cut off. Worked quite well, but I’ll definately have to work on my topping-decoration-skillz.

They were yummi, but I think if I’d made them from scratch they would’ve been even better.

My parents used to read to my big brother and me every night before bed. We would snuggle up to my mom or dad, listen to Janosch, Astrid Lindgren or the Brothers Grimm and always demand “one more”.

The favourite pastime I shared with my grandfathers was when they cradled me on their laps, reading for me the biggest fairytalebooks they could find.

When I was about four my family spent its summer vacation in Hungary, near Lake Balaton. On a hot summerday my parents and their best friends, the K’s, decided to visit a nearby castle. Us kids were less than thrilled with their choice, longingly thinking about the cool lake. Then we were surprised about the huge felt-slippers we had to slide into. But several rooms later a door opened to what I felt must be paradise:

A gigantic room with bookshelves covering every wall, from ground to ceiling. Antique chandeliers glistening over the backs of books with their titles long gone after generations of Hungarian prince’s and princesse’s fingers.

And that was what I longed to be: A princess, reigning over this marvellous room with no duties on hand but to read every book in this room from cover to cover.

Only a few years later, in 1991, I was catapulted back to that Hungarian scene. Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” hit the cinemas and not only provided me with the first Disney princess I could identify with, it also boasted what seemed to me like a complete replica of the Hungarian library.

Thinking about that library, even now, gives me goosebumps and sends shivers down my spine.

My love for books never left me and nowadays I read about 45 per year. Good thing I don’t smoke or drink, this is my one vice and drug of choice.

In early July Hubby and I made a roadtrip through England and Scotland. Thanks to the Lonely Planet we made a stop in Alnwick to visit Barter Books, one of the largest second-hand bookstores in Europe.

It was beautiful. A former trainstation with racks and racks of books from whatever category you could wish for. And a little coffee corner. And cake.

And a miniature train choo-choo-ing over the racks.

What a blissful place.

I will probably take that love for books to the grave, but I’m already sure it will be passed on in my family.

Why, doesn’t my three year-old nephew already unplug his babyphone so he can stealthily continue reading at night?

Like the company says:

“The Tetran has the special power of preventing pesky earphones tying themselves in knots, it accomplishes this by the use of it special ability magical nobles. The earphones will also be so scared by the colossal mouth of the Tetran that they won’t dare even think about getting knotted”

Hasn’t everyone had this problem before? Heading out of the house, late for the bus and NOW losing time over the disentangling of earphone-cables?

Not anymore, with these darling monsters.

Just too bad they’re sold out at the moment, I think they would’ve loved my Philips in-ears.

I’ve seen you while out shopping, and I wasn’t even looking for a crush.

But there you were, the incarnation of spring. Flowery, but with class.

I told myself that there was no space for you in my life, that I could not afford you.

But you kept creeping up on me, being all charming and sophisticated.  And momma-help-me, you’re Swedish!

I bet you’re the only fling my husband wouldn’t begrudge me.

Won’t you move in with me, please?

You wouldn’t even be lonely, your cousins are already here

“Let’s face it: some names just have better songs than others. If you’re a “Sue” or a “Caroline,” there are endless ballads to your beauty and badass-ness. If your name happens to be “Jebediah,” you’re out of luck, unless you like hymns.”

So, in the world of Rock’n'Roll, what does my name reveal?

Flavorwire found out that I’m supposed to be “Alternately sad and nasty, object of Rivers Cuomo’s lust, need[s] to be alone at night”
According to: Prince, Weezer, The Velvet Underground

Isn’t there more to it?

In my youth I failed to infatuate members of the local Rockscene enough to have them write odes about me. My friend then, named Lisa as well, at least got the King of Pain to sing a few lines about her, involving a dry dock and a skirt with bells. That song never made it to stage though…

Come to think of it, the same King dedicated a song to me on a gig, calling my name the “most metal” in town.

But darn it, he meant my last name.  Still I’m no further on my quest to find out what reputation I have in the rockosphere.

Certainly Rock’n'Roll, if a bit yellow, are the Simpsons, in whose mind I’m a gift of a little sister. They’ve got that one right.

Cat Stevens, before he lost some of his marbles, thought Lisa is sad and lost in the dark.

Marius Müller Westernhagen deems me a great dancer.

The Sugarplum Fairy boys feel insecure when Lisa’s walking down the street but they never want to dance with no other.

Lisa is everything to Ben Folds, even if she’s “so sensitive”.

Lisa Loeb sings:

“Lisa, won’t you listen?
The moon shines for you:
You’re tipsy and turning, you’ve got one foot on the floor.
You’re alive, you are burning.
You always wanted more.”

I haven’t been drunk once in the last five years.

Lisa stole Bowling For Soup’s heart “when Eddie Vedder was king”.  I was in primary school then and didn’t steal many hearts.

The attentive reader guesses right when he thinks I’m not truly represented in the Rock’n'Roll hall of fame.

If anyone wants to change that, be my guest. Biffy Clyro perhaps? That would be swell…

]]> http://www.lisa-prosch.de/?feed=rss2&p=616 4 http://www.lisa-prosch.de/?p=591 http://www.lisa-prosch.de/?p=591#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:30:24 +0000 lisa http://www.lisa-prosch.de/?p=591 Hubby’s last birthday brought about the opportunity to try something new in the baking department. After consulting my favourite recipe-magazine “lecker” I knew I just had to try Cynthia Barcomi’s cinnamon rolls. The pictures were awesome. May admittedly didn’t call for recipes using cinnamon, but the rolls also have raisins in them. At least one guest, Zuckerneffe, loooves raisins, so I went for it.

First I had to cook 125 g potatoes.

After squishing them I added 60 g soft butter

and squished some more. Then I added an egg, 1/8 l milk, 1/8 l buttermilk and 21 g yeast (I used dry yeast).

I took my big bowl and put 650g flour, 35g sugar and 3/4 teaspoon salt into it. The recipe then calls for 40g raisins, which the whole family thought of as not enough.

I then added the potatomix to the dry ingredients and blended them.

Now came the fun part! I had to knead the dough with bare hands for 5 minutes til it was smooth. Back with it in a buttered bowl and covered it with a damp towel so I could wait an hour for the dough to rise, giving me some time for reading .

You can bet that after an hour I couldn’t wait to lay my hands on that beautiful dough again, and lucky I was: I was allowed to punch it down!

Ever tried punching a dough and taking pictures of it at the same time? That takes mad skillz. And it feels oh-so-good!

After buttering my spring form I melted 2 spoons sugar-beet sirup and 60 g butter in the microwave. I then mixed 4 spoons sugar and 1 spoon cinnamon. Flour got sprinkled on my working-top and I rolled the dough to a 2 cm thickness. Finally using my new red rolling pin!

I proceeded to smother the dough rectangle with the butter-sirup and left some space at the edges. Then I sprinkled the cinnamon-sugar over it like a mad fairy-godmother.

Mouthwatering! Especially if seen up-close, yummi!

I then rolled the whole sticky mess up like “lecker” instructed: “like a carpet”.

A sharp Solingen knife helped me to cut it into 3-4 cm thick pieces, which I put into my spring-form and let rest for another 30 minutes.

Doesn’t that look like golden perfection? Look again:

After 30 minutes they were snuggled close like Kindergarteners on their first field-trip: A bit scared, but definitely excited for the things to come.

I baked them for about 30 minutes on 165° (air-circulation) and out they came: Smelling awesome and looking like a cake.

The texture was so fluffy that all three grandmas couldn’t believe I didn’t use “real” yeast and everyone came back for seconds. Especially Zuckerneffe and the birthdayboy.