Hazelnut chocolate cake{ low carb}

After studying and trying a tons of sweet low carb recipes, i found out that my weight started to gain -.-
dahhh! yahh! ok it was like 2-3kg but I'm back on track of loosing weight! I was really happy of joining the sweet side of low carb.

It was important for me to try the variety of almonds/hazelnuts, which dough i could prepare, am I able to bake croissants with almonds or quiche dough???  My impression - it's easy to change the flour to almond flour, but the consistency is not the same, as flour cakes, but it tastes delicious.
So here's my first summer low carb chocolate cake!

So here we go!

Ingredients

cake
200 gr Almonds/Hazelnut flour
2 egg whites
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
30gr coco powder
4 tblsp xylit

butter cream frosting:

150gr butter
100gr coco powder
1-2 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp stevia (liquid)

1. beat the egg whites until foamy and preheat your oven up to 200°C
2. mix hazelnut flour with salt, baking and the coco powder until confirmed
3 now fold the egg whites into the hazelnut-coco mixture an fill into your baking form
4 now turn down your oven to 170° and bake the cake for 15-21 Min's
5 let the cake cool down and mix butter&sugar until combined and fluffy
6 add the coco powder, stevia and the vanilla extract
7 now decorate the cake with the butter cream and add the raspberries - voila!

Hope you'll love it as I do!

Cheers Chirs

Our Low carb Story

one year passed by since we started with low carb. 

We both were at a point were we haven't been happy with our weight.
May I mention before we lived in a flat share, all of them were boys and I joined that living.
It was quiet funny and relaxing, no big bitch fight etc..but i was used to cook every day... but I loved the new simple way of "fast-food-cooking"  in my new life in munich :).
My weight increased a lot and fast! I'm not a sport junkie so I searched for varieties to get in shape :)
Finally I found Atkins and read a lot about it. I was amazed and wanted to start immeadiately.

You got 4 phases.

I'll give you an short overview

Phase 1 brings your body to 0, also called ketose. It's hard to abdicate carbs (Rice, Potatoes, Flour...)
It feels like driving your car against a wall... a big outch!
You are allowed to eat a lot but you need to know what.. It was kinda hard to learn how many carbs every ingredient has... because in phase 1 your limit is 12- 15 carbs a day.

This is just a recommendation:

Breakfast (which I don't do)
egg & bacon and Tea, coffee, water

Lunch
Chicken Salad

Dinner
Steak with salad

We hadn't yet the chance to reach phase 3 because 8 weeks after starting, we went to Las Vegas for 2 weeks and it was kinda hard to abdicate the carbs... It wasn't possible for us to eat low carb so we decided to start after Vegas...yahhh.. then came Christmas.. and our Parents had no sympathies for low carb... nhaa.. so new year! We started from 0, it felt like 1000 times! But now we're on track and phase 2 is now on a high level. Phase 2 can go from 2 weeks up to 10 weeks or more. I'll write an extra Post about the Phases in detail.. and my impression. Phase 2 is now a forming phase, this phase will shape you and the carbs get an upgrade from 12-20, you'll ajust 5 carbs more every week. If you weight gains you'll need 2 downgrade untill you got you "goal-weight". So here's a small Photo collection from last year until now, hope you can see a little difference. :)

cheers Chris

Juli 2012 (before Low carb)

Christmas 2012

April 2013

Leberkäse meets Avocado {low carb appetizer}

Leberkäse is a type of meet in Bavaria/Austria. And it's yummie!
But the typical way to enjoy it, is in a Bun and some mustard.
But Buns aren't low carb ;) so you'll need to get creative.

I stood in the kitchen hungry as always and tried to experiment. I love Avocados and... could I compare them? Let's try! While mashing the Avocados I thought about giving them a new taste, how about some lemon juice and a bit of balsamic vinegar? The cream gets a bit of a fresh sourness you can spice it up with some chillies or some herbs. But I prefer it that way :)

Ingredients:

100 gr Leberkäse
1 Avocado
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 half Lemon

1 fry the meat until it's roasted
2 mash the avocado and mix all other ingredients
3 coat the avocado cream and layer the meat
4 enjoy!

hope you'd enjoyed my new low carb recipe.

cheers chris

vanilla tartes {low carb}

It's pretty amazing how good it went to bake low carb. There's one point it's much more expensively than "regular" ingredients. Xylit sugar costs about 10 more times than regular ones, even 200 gr Almonds compare to flour. I was pretty amazed of the taste even the topping went pretty well.  For some people it tasted a bit sweeter but I'm still trying to balance the sweetness ;)
My BF was sooo happy that he could try my cupcakes > his words "eating cupcakes and not falling into ketose again yaaaay! Keep on baking! Ok don't let me talk to much about it. Try it! You will love it as i do!

Ingredients:
Tartes

• 200gr almonds
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 egg white
• 50 gr xilit
• 1 teasp salt 
• 1 teasp bakingpowder 

Cream

• 200gr cream cheese
• 1 pck sugarfree pudding 

1 beat the egg whites until foamy

1.1 preheat your oven to 150°

2 beat in another bowl the sifted/grinded almons

3 put baking powder and 25 gr of xilit into your dry ingredients.

4 mix your almond mixture with the egg yolk

5 now fold savely the egg whites into the almond-egg mixture

6 fill up your muffin form and bake for 15 min.

7 beat the cream cheese and pudding powder until fluffy.

8 decorate & enjoy!

We love Pictures {Men}

Oh yes! I'm still on track! At first i want to say thank you to Jenny who made the pics while working :)

It's was a great idea to show how i work and to see the result! And I must say- I rock! <3

In my opinion it's not really easy capturing Men. The don't have a lot of sexy poses like women do.

But Istvan made a good job! Have a nice day!

white & red - strawberry Biskuit roll

Another sweet cake roll recipe. It's not low carb yet but I think we can switch easily between flour and almonds!
It's an peferct summer dessert or a cutey eye tea time pastry. You'll need to try that! I used for decorating strawberries and white chocolate. I couldn't resist trying it! mhhh!OMG!
But pshht! I'll keep doin low carb. Yah...I need to start from the beginning but I'm still trying new recipes. So stay tuned!
Ingredients:

4 eggs
100gr sugar
1/2 tsp salt
75 g flour
75 g corn starch
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
100gr white chocolate
250 gr heavy whipped cream

Recipe:

1 beat your egg whites until foamy. (+ preheat your oven to 170°C)

2 mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, corn starch & baking powder)

3 now mix in another bowl your egg yolks with the sugar until creamy and fluffy (3-4 min)

4 Mix your dry ingredients into the sugar-egg yolk batter until incorporated.

5 Now fold your egg whites careful under the batter.( You'll see it gets now fluffy)

6 line a parchment paper onto a baking sheet and share out the dough evenly.

7 now bake the dough for 17 min and place a wet dishtowel(for rolling the dough)

8 let your cake cool for 3 mins.

9 use the wet towel for rolling up the cake and let cool for 1-2h

10 meanwhile you can prepare the frosting & filling .

hope you'd enjoyed.

You're always welcome to leave a comment below or write me an email.

Cheers Chris

grilled cucumber loves serrano{ low carb appetizer}

Yay it's got asparagus time in Germany but i feel like i had it every day.
I love asparagus but i do love Serrano kinda more :) do you remember my post of Spain? It's 2 years ago. I enjoyed Anti Pasti in thousand ways! mhhhhhh yummie!

So here we go i peeled a cucumber and started grilling it. I remember I had a some grilled cucumber stripes in a restaurant and it was awesome. If you gill it it loses the origin taste, it's hard to describe how it tastes but it's worth! Then use some sel de mer and other spices and wrap it with the Serrano.
Now comes the best part we Filipinos love to drizzle some calamasi or lemon juice over savory dishes :) At least I peeled some Feta cheese on top - and we're done! Italian and Spanish people love to drizzle also some olive oil to refine. I hope you'd enjoyed.

Ingredienst:

1 cucumber
1 pck Serrano
3-4 tbsp Olive oil
Salt&pepper and other spices
1/2 lemon/calamansi
20gr Feta cheese

Rolled bacon eggs{low carb-appetizer}

The thing is if you do low carb you need to get creative, otherwise you'll eat the same dishes every day.
I got pretty soon fed up with eating salami stick between lunch and dinner and i really wanted to eat eggs..don't know why. But I stood in the kitchen and thought about what I could compare or upgrade or or or.. Bacon and eggs? They are usually seen on the breakfast table ... bahahahha but i don't really care. I think that's a nice appetizer which looks really great and tastes crunchy- let's call it crunchy delight - even there's another fact, if you prepare them you could take them to work and enjoy them there. We don't have a oven at work so I'll need to prepare my food for lunch, which is quiet ok, i love to cook ;) Do i need to explain you how it's made? There's no real recipe, just cook the eggs- peel it and roll the bacon around them and then fry it in a pan. You could adjust some mustard or mayo onto the egg, but I think if you fry it the mayo or mustard won't stick on the egg :)

Let's get Low Carb - Almond Cupcakes

I made an decision- my BF started low carb last year and it was really hard for me to bake all those nice "unhealthy" recipes (most of them without trying). yeahh I'm pretty supportive :( But here we go I'll started searching for low carb & gluten free recipes..you are welcome to follow me on my low carb journey.I was pretty happy to find gluten free and low carb recipes... so i started cooking & baking.
I was pretty surprised how good it went and of course it's easy to make.

So here's my first recipe.
I started with a almond chocolate Cupcake (of course cupcake! Can't live without) with a creamy vanilla frosting. Pretty easy pretty yummie! And a lot of low-carbs- wehehhehe


What you'll need:

Ingredients:

Cupcake

• 4 Eggs
• 1/2 tsp Natron
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 200 gr Almonds (grinded)
• 10 gr dark chocolate(100gr/19 carbs)(chopped)
• 100gr Butter(melted or softend)

Frosting

• 200ml cream cheese
• 1pck vanilla pudding/ vanilla bean
• 3tblsp milk/ cream

1 beat the egg whites until foamy. (preheat your oven to 175°C)
2 use an extra bowl and mix the eggs yolks with natron, salt & butter.
3 now mix the almonds with the egg yolk mixture and add the chopped chocolate.
4 now fold your egg whites savely into the batter otherwise it will deflate.
5 fill up the dough into your muffincups and bake for 17-20min.

white & green - pistacchio chocolate-roll

I love jelly rolls! They are spongie and delicious. There are a thousand types of decorating and fill. I love making a sponge dough because it's pretty easy to make and it's really fluffy. The cake dough melts on your tongue.

Todays recipe has a dark chocolate ganache with chopped pistachios and a colored frosting.

What you'll nedd for


Ingredients:

4 eggs
100gr sugar
1/2 tsp salt
75 g flour
75 g corn starch
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
100gr dark chocolate
250 gr heavy whipped cream

Recipe:

1 beat your egg whites until foamy. (+ preheat your oven to 170°C)

2 mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, corn starch & baking powder)

3 now mix in another bowl your egg yolks with the sugar until creamy and fluffy (3-4 min)

4 Mix your dry ingredients into the sugar-egg yolk batter until incorporated.

5 Now fold your egg whites careful under the batter.( You'll see it gets now fluffy)

6 line a parchment paper onto a baking sheet and share out the dough evenly.

7 now bake the dough for 17 min and place a wet dishtowel(for rolling the dough)

8 let your cake cool for 3 mins.

9 use the wet towel for rolling up the cake and let cool for 1-2h

10 meanwhile you can prepare the frosting & filling .

hope you'd enjoyed.

You're always welcome to leave a comment below or write me an email.

Cheers Chris

give me lemons- i give you salted tartes

Yay! I love lemon curd!
There's no better way to enjoy lemon curd on a toast, ok there are thousand ways to enjoy lemon curd but the easiest and fastest way is on a toast.
But how about a yummie salty mini tarte? served with cream cheese?
This time i used a salted dough / bread dough. Why shouldn't I turn my toast into a tarte? Because guests don't expect it ;) they think its a sweet lemon tarte and they're pretty amazed! Try it!
Ok here we go, what you'll need for the lemon curd. If you interested for the salted dough you'll find it here.

Ingredients:

• juice of 4 large lemons
• 4 eggs
• 320 gr sugar
• 220 gr butter
• spoon of corn flour

Recipe:

1 Whisk the eggs
Pour the eggs into a saucepan and lightly whisk.

2 Add remaining ingredients
Whisk in the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, butter and corn flour.

3 Make the lemon curd
Place the pan on a medium heat and whisk continuously for 7-9 minutes until all the ingredients melt and eventually thicken.
Once thickened lower the heat, whisk for one more minute and remove from the heat.

4 Store
Carefully pour the lemon curd into a sterilized jar and leave to cool. Store in a cool, dry place. It will keep for 2-4 weeks.

Hope you like it!
Cheers Chris

Bavarian bolognese with zucchini pasta

I'd love to present you a low carb recipe which is really delicious and pretty easy to cook. Actually he loves to cook the savory dishes, while I'm the sweet part :) bahaha but really it's true.

Do you want to know why it's called Bavarian bolognese?

My boyfriend was before our relationship a pretty wild guy. Partied all night long and this dish was a midnight snack for friends. The regular bolognese need tomatoes, and most of  the Bavarian meals use cream.
My Boyfriend the hobby chef loves to host friends with good drinks and delicious meal, so on night he decided to cook bolognese but he ran out of tomato sauce... so he needed to change the ingredients and started to be creative.... He combined the Italian dish with Bavaria :) that's the story.

I must say @ our first party night we'd enjoyed the meal pretty much. But I think you know me now more and I love or better we love to change meals & dishes ;)

We changed the pasta into vegetables, and abdicate which is not allowed for Atkins... it was at the starting pretty hard but hey you need a creative mind and if you got a clue of low carb you'll make it! ;)

My boyfriend decided last year to start with a low carb diet and it is really amazing how much weight he lost. I'm really really proud of him. Ok so here we go.



Ingredients:

2 zucchini
500gr mincemeat
5-6 mushrooms
20gr Jalapenos
Garlic
onion
50gr butter
200ml water
100 ml cream
cheese

Recipe:

1 Peel zucchini and put it aside.
2 Roast the onion, garlic and mincemeat
3 refine with herbs, jalapenos and Pepper
4 After 8 min of roasting fill 200ml of water and 100ml of cream into
5 Let it cook for 20 min.
6 Before serving roast the peeled zucchinis in an extra pan and serve it with the bolognese and some cheese on top.

Mini Tiramisu & Mini 3 tier cookie Cake

Yay it's time for  fruity mini Tartes!
Actually i wanted to bake some coffee muffins & donuts... but i couldn't resist to decorate ;) So it's not anymore an coffee cupcake it's a fruity tiramisu and a mini 3 tier cookie cake :)
I hope you'll love it as I do!
Happy Baking!

Cheers Chris


Let's head to the recipes:



Fruity Tiramisu Cupcake

• 2 large eggs
• 1 3/4 cups (175 grams) sifted cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup (200 grams) white sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) milk
• 1 espresso 

Recipe


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C)

1 In a mixing bowl sift the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of your electric mixer beat the butter until soft (about 1-2 minutes).

 Add 3/4 cup (150 grams) of the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.

2 Add egg yolks, one at a time, add in the vanilla extract & espresso.

3 fill the 12 muffin cups with the batter and bake for about 18 - 20 minutes or until nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into a cupcake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool completely.

Tipp
I decorated the cupcakes with heavy whipped, cream chocolate sprinkles and some strawberry jam for the middle.

 3 tier cookie cake

• 1 3/4 cups (230 grams) all purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• Royal Icing Using Egg Whites:
• 1 large egg white
• 1 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups (165 grams) confectioners (powdered or icing) sugar, sifted

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

2 beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and beat until combined. Add the flour mixture and beat until incorporated.

3 Divide the dough in half and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Let it cool for 30min to 2h.

4 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C).

5 Roll out the dough. Cut out cookies and place them on a baking sheets with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 10 to 15 minutes to chill the dough which prevents the cookies from spreading and losing their shape while baking.

6 Bake cookies for about 10 minutes.

I love Pictures "Models in a pure way" #2

Besides Portrait i love to photograph storylines. You might know I'm a graphic designer and I had to draw a lot of storyboards for clients.. ealier. So now i thought why should't i do that with my photoshoots? Pictures shouldn't be a only nice, my intention wants to tell a story.
May I present you Ellie? She's a real beauty! When I asked her what kind of pictures she wants, she said beautiful ones. It's like ordering a Pizza... what should be on top?
I always ask my models a lot of questions, to characterize and try to create my own story an pictures.
Here's a tip how a bout shooting the models in clothes which they don't own or which they don't wear but still hangs in the closet??? You got a new look! But don't forget they need to feel comfortable!
I really love to photograph people besides food blogging.. but it get's warmer in Germany and people are ready now for new Photos :) So here's my storyline Pump meets vintage! Enjoy.
If you have any question you are welcome to write me an email or write a comment below the post.
Until next time.

Cheers Chris