Tiroler Nusskuchen - Tirolian Nutcake - and a simple pound cake recipe

 

Tirolian Nutcake

When I was a kid, I helped my mum in the kitchen. My special fields were salad dressings and cakes. Despite being around when she was cooking, I never really developed cooking skills. Beside some dishes I am quiet successful with, I prefer very much baking over cooking. For good reasons: the entire home smells better, the kitchen is less messy, and you enjoy a cake usually over a longer period of time meaning baking is a much more efficient process.

One of my usual cakes for the weekend was among others a plain "pound cake" (Sandkuchen) with lemon icing. That easy and quick cake can be varied and become a "marble cake" (Marmorkuchen) when adding chocolate powder (and icing sugar on top). Or it can become a "birthday cake" when adding chopped nuts and chocolate (and rum raisins for those who like it, together with a chocolate coat). But recently, I found a more elegant variation of the pound cake, a recipe that tops it all: it's the Tirolian Nutcake (Tiroler Nusskuchen).


ingredients:
200 gr butter
200 gr sugar
6 eggs (separate white and yolk)
250 gr almonds (1/2 roughly cut, 1/2 finely ground)
200 gr dark chocolate grated (rasped or finely cut)
125 gr flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
lemon skin grated


how to:
1) mix well butter, sugar and egg yolk
2) add flour, baking soda and cinnamon
3) add all almonds (fold in with wooden spoon)and lemon skin
4) mix well egg white until stiff (in separate bowl)
5) fold into dough with wooden spoon
6) at the end add the chocolate and fold in slowly
7) bake 1h at 180 degree (don't forget to preheat the oven)


Tips:
Bake the cake a day earlier as it will taste even better the next day(s).
You can also freeze the cake or part which makes it also yummy moistly later.
Instead of making a cake, you can make muffins.
Top the cake or muffins with icing sugar.
If you don't have icing sugar, make some by adding normal sugar in a mixer.

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My basic Pound Cake recipe, easy to remember, easy to vary:

ingredients:
250 gr butter
250 gr sugar
250 gr flour
4 eggs
1 pack of vanilla sugar (teaspoon)
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1 spoon of rum

how to:
1) mix butter, entire eggs and sugar well
2) add flour ad baking soda
3) add vanilla sugar and rum
4) bake 1h at 180 degree

Tips:
You can double the ingredients to use the heated oven more efficiently with two cakes, or one cake and muffins. You can freeze part of your bake.
Topping can be simple icing sugar, or lemon icing (lemon zest with icing sugar), or melted chocolate.
For the "marble cake" variation, take 1/3 of the dough in another bowl and add (sieved) dark chocolate powder (up to your taste). Into the cake pan add first one layer white dough, then a layer chocolate dough and the last layer again white dough. Dip with a fork gently up and down through the layers to achieve the marble effect.

Cantuccini - The Recipe

home made cantuccini

This is THE Cantuccini Recipe many friends have asked me about. Even a famous Italian ristoratore had asked details - which made me already consider to start a new business ... maybe I should become an Italian restaurant supplier of cantuccini?

Since I don't seem to follow that new career option anytime soon, I thought about revealing the secret. But will my cantuccini still be appreciated, when everyone can easily (yes, easily, that was my secret) bake them at home? - Well, finally, I decided to file and share the recipe here on my blog (and yes, filing and sharing was always a main purpose of blogging after all).

The recipe is of course from Tuscany (Toscana), but the signora who had thought me how to make cantuccini lives in Calabria - in Pizzo to be precise, and that's where I made them the first time, together with her (see photos below).


ingredients:
2 eggs
200 g almonds (with skin, natural, not roasted, not salted)
200 gr flour (00 or 405 type)
180 gr of sugar (90 gr per egg)
1 pack of vanilla sugar (teaspoon)
1 pinch of salt

The ingredients are for an oven tray of 60cm. The output is about 1/2 kg of cantuccini. If you have a larger oven, of 90 cm, you could just double the ingredients.


how to:
1) pre-heat the oven to 180 degree (C)
2) mix sugar and egg (long)
3) add (sieved) flour slowly and well
4) add almonds and fold in with a wooden spoon
5) cover tray with paper, make two strings of dough (see photo below)
6) bake 15 min in oven
7) take the tray out, chop the "bread" in finger thick cantuccini
8) lay chopped cantuccini flat on the tray and bake for another 15 min.


FAQ:
Q: do you need yeast or baking soda?  A: No, no need.
Q: do you use egg white on top for the meringue-effect?  A: No.
Q: how about butter or oil?  A: No!


Photos of my baking class in our kitchen in August 2012, with double ingredients for a 90 cm tray:

make two strings of "bread"

after baking 15 min take it our from oven and cut

lay them on the oven tray and bake again for 15 min

enjoy home made cantuccini!

Tip: Cantuccini can be served for breakfast with cappuccino o espresso café; they can be dipped in the coffee or even be dipped in sweet vino santo after a meal. And if you don't become a professional cantuccini yet, your home made bake will make nice little presents when packed in clear bags and wrapped with a ribbon. Just don't bring them when we are invited to the same party ;-)


Recipe credit: Yolanda Pezzo

Why Blogger is better for bloggers than Wordpress or Squarespace

Once every now and then I try to re-design my blog. And it's about time to have a real website that integrates this blog. Therefore, I did some massive research on the Internet, to find out the advantages and disadvantages between Bloger vs Wordpress vs Squarespace vs Wix vs Weebly and others ... 

The internet offers fantastic information on many tech blogs and youtube - but you need to be careful: Most comparisons between Blogger and Wordpress, or Wordpress and Squarespace are written by great IT experts who often happen to be affiliates of one of these sites - and then it can get biased. Or they claim everything is so complicated because they want to sell their own web development / web design skills.

What you cannot do, is to compare Blogger with Wordpress.org - because it is like comparing apples with oranges! You need to compare Blogger's free service with Wordpress's free-ish service at Wordpress.com (dot com). And then Wordpress(.com) looses and Blogger wins! At least that's what bloggers like me say, with blogs powered by Blogger for many years (me, now almost 8 years), and who know how to easily personalise your blog here at Blogger or BlogSpot, not even much HTML coding is required (but it is allowed).

To learn more about the blogging platform and features of Blogger vs Wordpress, and to be able to make a decision, you should read the most unbiased article I found on the internet by Make Use Of. I totally recommend to read Tim Brookes' post and also to read through the comments as he answeres all the questions of his readers and that might answer your questions too.

My short (2 days) experience with Wordpress allows me to say that freedom feels different. I couldn't believe that they shot down my new page (in the making, not even having content yet!). Although, another 2 days later they appologised for the mistake, and I am free to continue (and was asked to delete my cookies as they detected spam). But does that make me feel confident?

Wordpress(.com) can also shot your blog down when they detect any paid or affiliate links. BUT they are free to place any advertising into your posts! Don't like that? You can pay for an ad-free page. Want some small changes in your design? Pay some bugs extra! Videos? Only if you pay 60 USD per year! A favicon (small logo in the URL)? Costs extra! And pointing your own domain to yourname.wordpress.com page is possible, but you need to pay 13 USD per year (not including the registration)... Calculate, it adds up! That's why I say WordPress is "free-ish", as it is not really free.

In seven years with Blogger I had no single technical issue, and unlimited space for media, including videos, my own favicon and no charge for pointing my personalised domain name to my blog. So why I would think of changing after all?

Well, I wasn't a very active blogger (I never made the three posts per week rule). But although I blog less and less (our mission, the renovation and main content of this blog, is accomplished), I want to keep my little writing playround. And now, our beautiful guest residence requires some internet presence as well. - Before starting all over with a new website, I thought, it would be nice to have a professionally looking welcome page, a static landing page, instead of landing on the latest blog post.

My blog needs a static landingpage! 

I tried to tweak Blogger a bit in order to have a static landing page (and another page called "Blog" would feature the blog posts). I followed these intructions to create a static home page.  It is really simple and worked. The problem that I saw however, was a longer loading time. The redirecting worked fine on the PC and on the tablet, but did not work for the smart phone. The error message was about server cannot be loaded due to too many redirection. Also it did not look that great as your landing page shouldn't have a blogroll. With blogger however you cannot change the template design for single pages. There is one frame for all. And a blog needs a blogroll. Otherwise what is the point of blogging if you cannot engage your readers? 

On the internet there are many rumours that Google would close its blogging platform Blogger one day, as sudden as they closed Google Reader. It would be a pitty as Blogger is really easy to handle and you can make your blog look good with the "simple template" and then play around with the template in the advanced modus, or tweaking around with HTML and CSS - and it is all free! You are not even forced to use Google Adsense.

And then there is Squarespace. They are very, very good in martketing their platform! It seems like a hype (maybe their affiliate program is so attractive). They are already around since 10 years with 1,8 million websites/blogs. - They have a different approach. You need to pay a monthly fee. For that you get access to the web building software with top stylish templates and all seems easy to handle. And you have access to a 24/7 custmer support which is great in the beginning. They seem super nice and let you import your blog from Blogger (and others) and export your website to Wordpress, in case you want to terminate the hosting plan ... sounds fair enough.

Squarespace let you try out their templates 14 days for free and then you need to decide if you want to publish with them. I liked it. Their templates are clean and 'pretty'. Great for photographers and artist who want to show their work in galleries. Or for restaurant owners (there is a plug-in for a menue). BUT the features for a blog are very limited! As a blogger I would not choose this solution. I deem Squarespace is mainly for small businesses that do just a little bit of blogging on the side. There is no Html-CSS-fiddling-DIY-tweaking allowed.

Of coures there are many other platforms beside Blogger, Wordpress and Squarespace. A good overview and comparison can be visited here by the Website Builders. I checked Weebly and Wix as well, but they don't have the same good looking templates / themes as Wordpress or Squarespace, and furthermore they also cost some money for ads-free pages, favicon and domain pointing.

In the meantime, I returned to my blog powered by Blogger and have to say, it still looks okay. (I have now moved the blogroll(s) to the bottom of the layout). All these modern stylish minimalistic pages are maybe not even suitable for my love of the simple life in Southern Italy. And blogger is totally free - so best value!

For now, I will continue with Blogger. And one day I might either have a peaceful deal with Squarespace or my self-hosted website with Wordpress.org (dot org and NOT dot com).