Every Month Birthday Present

Hello you darling people,

last Sunday it was time to celebrate another birthday - mine in this case... ;)
I invited some friend over for brunch (which lasted for about 12 hours ;) ) and really had a fabulous day. For those of my guests who read this: THANK YOU again for joining me! It was a blast!
Of course I got some presents too and although all of them were pretty cool one stuck out especially for me. My oldest (and one of my best) friend Karin gave me an "Every Month Birthday"-present and as I liked the idea so much and guessed you might find it inspiring too I decided to share it here on the blog.

Chocolate Peach Crumble Cake

Hello you darling people,

today I wanna share another recipe for a delicious cake: a late summer chocolate peach crumble cake. Yummy!

Italian Dress meets French Hat in Vienna

Hi folks,

last week we had two lovely visitors from Canada - Mark and Ashley. We met them two years ago in London, where we stayed in the same hostel room and this year they found time for another trip to Europe.
Luckily, summer made a small comeback last weekend (just a short one unfortunately) and so David and I were able to show them all the beautiful Viennese sights in sunshine weather. A good opportunity for me to finally put on my new white dress and my favourite new straw hat and make some nice pictures using the fountains in front of the Hofburg as backdrop. Just later on I realised that the whole outfit was actually a subconcious hommage to our guests. How so? Well, the pants are from Ralph Lauren, hence North American, the hat is from France and Mark and Ashley are actually French Canadians and the dress comes from Italy and guess what, both have Italian families. I am delighted! :)

Spinach Cake with Peanuts

Hello everybody,

today I wanna share a recipe with you which works as well for breakfast, lunch and dinner and is quite easy to make: spinach cake with peanuts. What may seem unusual at first is actually one of the greatest combinations I've recently tried!

What you'll need

• ca. 75g spinach
• 2 spring onions
• 100g flour
• 1,5 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon mustard
• salt and pepper
• 50g peanuts

How it works

Roast the peanuts in a dry pan for a few minutes and preheat the oven to 160°C. Chop the spring onions and the spinach.

Mix the flour and the baking powder in a bowl. Stir in the eggs, the sour cream, the olive oil, the mustard as well as salt and pepper. Then slowly incorporate the spinach, the spring onions and the roasted peanuts into the mixture.

Pour the batter into a lightly greased loaf pan and bake the cake for about 40 minutes.

Take the spinach cake out of the oven and let it cool down for about 5 minutes before you carefully separate it from the pan.

Enjoy!

Have a great day!

Yours,
Steffi 

All images by Steffi Reichl

Wishlist: Go Green Into Fall

Hello everybody,

as summer is almost over I thought it was time to take a (online) look at the current fall fashion. :) For me this year it's going to be a special autumn as I will go back to university to start a new master program in "Environmental and Sustainability Management". I'm already really looking forward to it! Fitting to the study program I decided to challenge myself a bit for this wishlist and only checked out online stores that offered environmentally friendly or "ethical" clothing. I put together two outfits - one a little bit more girly and the other one a little bit more sporty and I'm actually pretty pleased with the results... :)

1, 2 and 4: People Tree | 3: hessnatur | 5: Beyond Skin | 

1 and 3: People Tree | 2: hessnatur | 4 and 5: Veja | 

6: Kuyichi (over Greenality) 

 

Have a great day!

 

Yours,

Steffi

 

PS: All these sets were made with Polyvore and can also be found here.

Happy Birthday Tulip and Lily (plus Giveaway!)

Hello everybody,

I almost can't believe it but today it's this little blog's first birthday! :)
What started out as a little "I wanna try that"-sort of thing in the meantime became one of my most favourite pastimes and most important outlet for little creative projects and culinary experiments. Katja aka Lily found out, that instead of writing, she prefers to work behind the camera and now makes most of the outfit pictures in which I try to pose... ;)

GIVEAWAY!! To celebrate the day we need cake of course, which is why I'm going to share a recipe for heavenly chocolate-espresso-muffins today! In addition - because what would be a birthday without presents - I decided to put together three little, birthday-themed surprise packages for you, lovely readers, each including three recipes and ideas for a colour-themed birthday dinner and a little DIY. If you want to win, just leave a comment under this post until October 3rd (open for EU-citizens only. Sorry everybody else!). Winners will then be announced October 4th. :) 

But first things first - let's start with the muffins!

What you'll need

• 1 egg
• 90g sugar
• 125g butter
• 150ml butter milk
• 130ml espresso (cold)
• 100g dark chocolate (chopped)
• 240g spelt flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 package chocolate blancmange powder
• 100g dark chocolate with pistachios 

How it works

Preheat the oven to 180°C and prepare some muffin paper liners.

In a bowl cream together the egg and the sugar. Stir in the butter, the buttermilk and the espresso, then add the chopped chocolate. In another bowl whisk together the spelt flour, the baking powder and the chocolate blancmange powder. Then slowly incorporate the dry mixture into the creamy mixture.

Fill the paper liners, each 2/3 full with batter and bake them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

For the final touch melt the dark pistachios chocolate over a pot with boiling water and coat the muffins' top sides with it.

Blow the candle and enjoy! 

Have a great day!

Yours,
Steffi

All images by Steffi Reichl