Garfield’s favourite lasagna…

Ok, I fudged on the title. But when I cook lasagna I just have to think of Garfield, especially when it has the same colour as his coat. Did I watch too much TV when I was young, or do you have any food that reminds you of a cartoon hero as well?

Since I love lasagna, I tried a lot of vegetables and sauces. But my favourite version is with pumpkin (not surprising since pumpkin is my favourite vegetable ;) ).  I planned to post this recipe a few weeks ago, but since I started my new job, I realized how many time I had as a student! I hope you forgive me that I made myself rare in the last weeks!

pumpkin lasagna

1kg pumpkin

200g carrots

2 medium sized tomatoes

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 tablespoon olive oil

500ml strained tomatoes

200ml vegetable stock

100ml dry white wine

100g cream cheese

200g sour creme

3 tablespoons parsley

8 lasagna noodles (you need 4 layers)

cinnamon, curry, chilli powder, salt, pepper

1. Clean the pumpkin and carrots and cut them to palatable sizes. Chop the onion finely. Preheat the oven to 175°C/350°F.

2. Heat the olive oil in a pan and roast the onion in it. Deglaze the onion with the white wine and vegetable stock. Pour the strained tomatoes, pumpkins and carrots in the pan. Press the garlic glove in the pan and let it cook for about 10min. Let the cream cheese melt in the sauce. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, curry and chilli powder and a pinch of cinnamon. Mix the sour cream with the parsley and season it with salt to taste.

3. Cover the bottom of a casserole with pumpkin sauce. Then layer 2 lasagna noodles over the sauce (or as many noodles as you need to cover the sauce). Afterwards sauce, then noodles, and so on. Cover the last layer of noodles with the sour cream. Slice the tomatoes and put them on top of the sour cream and salt them.

4. Put the lasagna in the oven for 25min.

First glimpse of christmas…

I know, some people hate me for even mention this word in September. And I know that I was complaining about christmas candy in the supermarkets last week… BUT: I planned to bake a pumpkin pie forever and was enthused by the idea of using Spekulatius as the bottom, which I saw at Cherry Blossom’s Table. I just HAD to try this! Furthermore fall is showing his ugly face, dispersing all the summer feelings with a lot of rain.  I hope this is justification enough to buy christmas cookies in September (even the cashier at the supermarket gave me a funny look!)…

I used the filling from this recipe, because I wanted to bake a flat pie instead of a huge cake since I have to eat most of it myself. But I felt like I have to cut the sugar, because 180g seem to be a lot for a pie!

Pumpkin Pie

for the crust:

250g Spice Spekulatius (I guess in the US you get them under: Dutch Windmill Cookies)

50g butter

for the filling:

700g pumpkin

200g cream cheese

110g brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 pinch clove powder

butter for the form

1. At first you have to steam the pumpkin and puree it without water. Canned pumpkin should work as well.

2. Process the spekulatius cookies in a food processor until you have fine crumbs. Melt the butter and stir it with the crumbs.

3. Grease a spring form with some butter and press the cookie mass evenly at the bottom of the form.

4. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Mix the pumpkin puree with the cream cheese, sugar, spices and eggs. Put the filling evenly onto the spekulatius bottom and bake it for 60mins.

Little cinnamon gifts from the kitchen

This weekend I will visit my oldest (not literally!) friend in Berlin. I know her since I was 11 years old and managed to survive school together with her :). Afterwards I left my hometown with her to study in Munich. For 5 years we have been roomies and had an awesome time! Sadly this era had to end when she finished university and I moved in with my boyfriend. Now 585km (yes I looked it up!) are keeping us apart, because she lives in Berlin at the moment. Since I’ve never been to the capital of Germany – shame on me- and I have September off, this is just the perfect occasion to visit her.

I know that my friend enjoys homemade pastries and cakes. But I also know that she is allergic to most things that complete a yummy recipe (like all kinds of nuts, most kinds of fruit). So bringing her a something nice is a bit challenging. I looked through the web for some inspiration and found various recipes for cinnamon rolls which sounded promising. I took what I thought was the best out of them and created my own version. The dough is mostly from this recipe, the filling largely from here and the icing is my own all-time-favourite.

Cinnamon rolls

for the dough:

125g soft butter

50g brown sugar

50g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

200g whole wheat flour

for the filling:

1 egg white

50g granulated sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

for the icing:

50g icing sugar

~5 teaspoons Amaretto liquor

1. Start with the dough by creaming the butter with the sugar. Add the cinnamon and egg yolk. Add the baking powder and flour. Put the dough in the fridge for 10min. During this time you can mix the sugar and cinnamon for the filling.

2. Use 2 sheets of baking paper to roll the dough out to a rectangle of 20x30cm (~9x12inch):place the dough on 1 sheet and put the other one on top. With this method, the dough doesn’t stick to your rolling pin.

3. Remove the paper on the top and spread the egg white over the dough. Sprinkle the sugar-cinnamon mixture smoothly over it. Lift the baking paper from the bottom to roll the dough carefully (maybe the picture helps to illustrate what I mean). To make sure that the roll keeps its shape when you cut it,  put the roll into the freezer for 20-30min (Great idea Stephanie!).

4. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F). Carefully cut the roll into 1cm (1/2inch) circles and put them on a backing tray covered with backing paper. Make sure that you keep some space between the cookies, because they’ll rise! Bake them for 15-20min. The longer you let them stay in the oven, the crispier they get.

5. When the cookies have chilled a bit, start with the icing. Slowly mix spoon after spoon of the Amaretto liquor in the icing sugar, until it reaches the desired consistency. Sprinkle it over the cookies.