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

Christmas Muffins

Hello everybody,

I think at Christmas time even the muffins should taste christmassy! Therefore I'm going to show you an easy and delicious Christmas muffins recipe with nuts and gingerbread spices. Yummy!

What you'll need

• 125g butter
• 80g raw cane sugar
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• a dash of salt
• 1 teaspoon gingerbread spice (coriander, cinnamon, allspice, clove, nutmeg, anise, cardamon)
• 3 eggs
• 125g flour (I used spelt flour)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 100g ground hazelnuts
• 100ml milk or soy milk
• baking forms

How it works

Stir the butter with the raw cane sugar, the maple syrup, the salt and the gingerbread spice.

 Gradually mix in the eggs.

Mix the flour with the cocoa powder, the baking powder and the the hazelnuts and stir this mixture in turns with the milk into the butter-sugar-syrup-egg-mixture.

Put the batter into your baking forms and bake the muffins at 175°C.

Done! :)

Yum-yum spelt muffins with banana and almonds

Hi there,

last weekend I tried a spelt muffin recipe out of the new healthy food cookbook I recently bought and I have to say they turned out deliciously. Fluffy and moist plus they were super easy to make (the whole preparation time took me about 15 minutes). So here comes the recipe!

What you'll need (for 6 normal muffins or ca. 12 small muffins)

• 1 egg
• 45g raw cane sugar
• 3/4 banana
• 50g grated almonds
• 100g spelt flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 15g vanilla sugar
• 40ml rape oil
• optional: 2 tablespoons cocoa powder

How it works 

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Peel the banana and cut it into pieces.

Batter the sugar and the egg. Afterwards add all the other ingredients and blend them with a hand-mixer. 

Fill 3/4 of your baking forms with batter and bake the muffins for about 25 minutes.

Enjoy! :)