Advertisement / At Easter it has become a tradition for us to have a tart or cheesecake with your coffee. This year I developed a recipe for a wonderful New York cheesecake with rhubarb curd for the French specialist de Buyer. Here comes the recipe paired with decoration inspiration for your Easter gathering.

To celebrate the short season of the epic blood orange, I reinterpreted an orange cake recipe from my grandmother. Instead of oranges, I use blood oranges together with passion fruit. This ingenious couple conjures up absolute high spirits even on gray winter days. There is also a little bite from pistachios. And of course blood oranges should not be missing in the icing and as decoration.

I tried my first Galette des Rois when I was around 16 years old. To practice my French, I took part in a conversation class led by a French woman. The 1st meeting happened to be on January 6th. She brought a homemade Galette des Rois. As the youngest participant, I had the task of cutting this three kings cake and putting a piece on each plate. So I learned that this pastry is traditionally served at Epiphany. The specialty of this cake is that a “Fève” (a small figure made of porcelain) is hidden in the filling. Whoever finds this Fève in her/his piece of cake is called King for the day. That’s why a paper crown is part of this leafy tart.

Advertisement / The city where I live (Hanover, Germany) is an underrated city that even has a small heathlands. I was born near the Lüneburger Heide, a heathlands in northern Germany. So this beautiful purple blooming landscape belongs to autumn for me.

Werbung / Sommerzeit ist Grillzeit. Besonders jetzt im Spätsommer, wo die Temperaturen angenehmer sind, grillen wir besonders gerne. Dabei landet bei uns jede Menge Gemüse auf dem Grill. Die Aubergine ist hier ein ganz besonderer Liebling von uns, da sie durch das Grillen einen fantastischen, rauchigen Geschmack bekommt und ihr Fruchtfleisch besonders zart wird.

Advertisement / Summertime is barbecue time. We especially like to have a barbecue in late summer when the temperatures are more pleasant. We prefer to grill a lot of vegetables. The eggplant is a very special favourite of ours, because it gets a fantastic, smoky taste when it is grilled and its pulp becomes particularly tender.

Werbung / Advertisement/ /// One of my most important means of transport is my beloved bicycle. Not a day goes by that I don't use it. We don’t have a car. In our big city, a good parking space equates to winning the lottery. I cycle every day in wind and weather and use it to transport my shopping, my son, parcels, plants for the garden and much more.

Oh Boy! How I do love this time of the year! Everything is so fresh and green. The air smells amazing. This is due, among other things, to the fine scent of the delicate elderflower. As soon as these flowers bloom my heart leaps for joy. I love to use them to refine cakes, tarts and also hearty dishes. This year I made elderflower vinegar again. To do this, I simply put elderflowers in good red wine vinegar for 4 weeks. Then I filter the flowers from the vinegar. It gives salad a very special touch. Today I would like to finally share one of my absolute sweet favorite recipes with elderflower with you. The basis for this is a quickly made and eggless lemon curd. If the elderflower season is already over, you can omit the flowers if necessary. If you don’t get blackberries, this fluffy Swiss roll also tastes fantastic with raspberries.

The recipe for this incredibly decadent loaf cake is an "isolation creation" that actually waited in the drawer for a year to be released. It was in April 2020 for the first lockdown, where restaurants and cafés were only allowed to offer food and drinks to go. On a sunny Sunday we were with Leo on our way to a playground where sweet smelling sloes were in bloom. To make the most of the whole lockdown situation, we stopped by a café on the way there. We took good cappuccino and a very juicy macadamia cake with espresso and chocolate. We enjoyed both sitting under a sloe bush while Leo played with his excavator in the sand. Then I tried to recreate this cake. I was very happy with the result, but I didn't have the time to post the recipe. After all, I didn't want to post a spring-like cake in the fall. That's why the recipe waited so long and this time I even shot a VIDEO about it. I really hope you like and enjoy this cake too!

In February and March the winter can be very long. Especially when it's still very cold and grey outside and we're in a seemingly never-ending lockdown. That's why I was very happy that florists were allowed to reopen. There I chose the most beautiful poppies and tulips.

Here in Hanover it is a rarity that we have snow in winter. Most of the time there is only a little sleet. Last week we were really happy when we actually had a white “winter wonderland” on our doorstep. Our son had never seen snow before and so we went out a lot with the sledges. And of course we also built a magical little snowman.