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