Sweet – Page 2 – Beary Strong

Pan De Mej

Corn bread the Italian way

Currently Milan is under quarantine: the SARS-CoV-2 has paralyzsed the city and I do not think I will see my home town for a long time. Fortunately my parents are here in Austria and my mother has baked one of the most traditional but less known sweets from Milan: pan de mej, a hybrid between corn bread and corn cookies. I can not visit her and therefore she gave me the recipe to bring a little bit of our city to Vienna. The recipe is a winner: it is incredibly easy and it turned out delicious. Soft, not too sweet and an incredible corn flavour. Give these cookies a try, I am sure you will like them!

Cranachan Cheesecake

The perfect, Scottish way to start your day.

Scotland loving lifting foodies, I have created the perfect breakfast for you! I took inspiration at the traditional Scottish dessert as well as from Chantal‘s favourite baker, Paul Holywood, and transformed it into a protein rich, calorie friendly breakfast. Curd, oats, eggs and berries make this the perfect pre-workout and generally a great way to start your day. Enjoy!

Apricot And Root Veggies Cake With Honey Curd Frosting

A delicious cake with unusual ingredients.

One of my favourite childhood desserts was “Ruebli Torte” which is Schwitzerdütsch (=Swiss German) for carrot cake. My mum was born in a small city near Zürich -Aarau- which is famous for its yellow and orange carrots. And as everyone in my family loves cake but not veggies, she smuggled them into this nutty and juicy very traditional cake. Sometimes we had a zucchini cake or pumpkin pie too, therefore the veggie and sweet pairing was never new to me. Years ago I’ve also baked a beetroot chocolate cake which even my very sceptical brother loved and since I first ate a parsnip cake at London Borough Market I wanted to reproduce this taste. As I discovered a mixed root veggies cake in an old Jamie Oliver paper magazine, I decided to make this as a dessert for a Magic The Gathering evening with our friend Alexa.

Mailänderli

Three generations of Christmas cookie-baking.

Our regular readers know that we are alternating a recipe and a fitness-related article every week but for Christmas we decided to give you one more recipe to have one more batch fresh cookies before Christmas. It is also a perfect match to the last week’s Hazelnut Kisses as you need only the yolks for this very traditonal Swiss recipe.

Hazelnut Kisses

Christmas cookies and childhood memories.

Like every year, it starts with a list. What christmas cookies are we going to bake? The choice is tough: family classics, personal favorites and something new to try out have all to make it to the list. After browsing books for recipes, we settle for a handful of cookies to bake. And this year I smuggled in one of my personal favorites: hazelnut kisses! An easy recipe, passed down to me by my mum, a treasure, almost a heirloom. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Poppy Crumble

A delicious Halloween-ish pudding.

If you did not already know it, I am half Italian (and half Suisse) and even if the Italian cuisine is fantastic, there is something we do not have. And that is warm puddings. I LOVE hot desserts and -besides Stefan – it did definitely play a role to choose Austria as my new homecountry 15 years ago 😉 . Kaiserschmarrn, Milchrahmstrudel, Scheiterhaufen…comfy, calorie-dense winter soulfood you can enjoy in some old-fashioned Viennese caffee and you should definitely indulge on it if you visit Austria. English speaking countries have also a nice variety of warm puddings and one of them turned to be easy to make and very customizable: crumble. We experimented a lot with it: rhubarb, strawberries, apples…and then it was pumpkin season and I rescued a lot of crushed poppy seeds from a local grocery store where the best before date was exceeded. We love pumpkin and we love poppy seeds. The Pumpkin Poppy Crumble was born.

Ruby Red Rhubarb Compote

An easy recipe turning a childhood nightmare into something delicious.

Rhubarb has always been one of the few things I refused to eat. In my kindergarden I was forced to eat the sour, tangy, completely overcooked mensa rhubarb compote full of stringy bits. This horrid dish was my early childhood nightmare. But now I am over it and I love rhubarb, especially in the following diet friendly dessert. Let me explain how I fell in love with rhubarb in my sweet and sour recipe.

Time for Pancakes

Two Pancake Recipes.

Pancakes are a delicious treat, quick and easy to prepare but they can quickly turn out in a great mess if you do not have a proper non-stick pan and some patience. We have two recipes here, which are very different one from another but both definitely worth sharing. And even if we are not the biggest fans of “high protein-low calories treats” sometimes you just want something nice to eat and the non-diet version doesn’t fit to your goals. Enough said, give our pancakes a try!

Chestnut Shortbread

Crumbly goodness and a bonus version.

Inspired by the Japanese love for chestnut, I am proud to present our chestnut shortbread cookies. There is nothing wrong having one of those in an overall healthy and balanced diet. They are crumbly, buttery and delicious. They make you happy. Probably, one of my favorite cookies of all time.

Honey Curd Ice Cream

One ice cream to hit your macros and please your inner bear.

If you are an ice cream aficionado like we are, autumn and winter can be a tough time for you. Yes, there are cookies and Stollen, but for some reason it’s almost impossible to find good ice cream in Vienna. All the shops are closed! I don’t get it, why wouldn’t you love some ice cream even on a cold winter day? Well, if no one does it for you, you have to make some yourself.