It does look a lot like Christmas - 2nd advent Sunday

Do you remember the post for the first advent Sunday?
The first Christmas cookies came out from my oven, yummy yummy!
Last week I shared with you the recipe for the chocolate short bread cookies, this week it´s the whole wheat short bread stars with jam.

Ingredients: 

250 gr. butter

100 gr. whole wheat flour

70 gr. brown sugar
a teaspoon of cinnamon
your favourite jam

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy. Then add the flour, the sugar, and the cinnamon. Mix until combined and then chill the dough for 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll out the dough on a flat surface (with flour) about one centimetre thick and using a cookie cutter form your stars. Half of them must have a hole in the middle. Put them on an oven dish and bake for 7-10 minutes. Let the cookies cool down, then assemble them. The stars without the hole are the basis for the jam, the ones with the hole are the "lid". Sprinkle with powdered sugar, and enjoy!

♥ Martina ♥

P.S. don´t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY! 

Only 5 days left and more surprises are yet to come. . .

It´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas - 1st advent Sunday

Have you noticed the snow falling whilst you are reading this? And the lovely gingerbread man following you all over the blog? Yes, it´s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Today is the first Sunday of the Advent and I can finally feel the jolly atmosphere, which comes once a year. Just to get started I have made our Advent garland, decorated the Christmas tree, and baked cookies!!! Yes, lovely and tasty Christmas cookies; here´s the menu:

chocolate shortbread all shapes cookies

whole wheat shortbread stars with jam

whole wheat shortbread hearts dipped in chocolate

gingerbread snow flakes

Since there are 4 different types of cookies, I decided to post one recipe each Advent Sunday until Christmas. So here is the first one: chocolate shortbread all shapes cookies.

Ingredients: 

250 gr. butter

100 gr. flour

70 gr. sugar

3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180°C. With an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy. Then add the flour, the sugar, and the cocoa powder. Mix until combined and then chill the dough for 10 minutes in the refrigerator. Roll out the dough on a flat surface (with flour) about one centimetre thick and using a cookie cutter form your cookies. Put them on an oven dish and bake for 7-10 minutes. Let the cookies cool down, then sprinkle with powdered sugar, and enjoy!

♥ Martina ♥

P.S. don´t forget to enter the GIVEAWAY!

Brushing up traditions

Sachertorte! Sachertorte! Sachertorte!

Who has never had a slice of one of the most famous Viennese culinary specialties? This delicious cake was invented by chance by the Austrian Franz Sacher in 1832 for the Prince of Metternich in Vienna and has become a global success.  

I always loved it but since I moved to Austria I've had it so often I decided it was about time for me to learn how to make it myself. Furtehrmore I was recently sitting at the Hotel Sacher with a friend eating a slice of original Sachertorte whilst talking of how good his mother's Sachertorte is so... I decided to take out of my kitchen drawer an old book of traditional Austro-hungarian recipes from the end of the 19th century. I opened the yellow page to the recipe of the original Viennese Sachertorte and started baking. The result was impressive: easy to do and delicious to eat. With my brother, who is very critic, we compared my cake with the one of the Furst Konditorei and we both agreed that my Sacher tasted better. I'm a modest baker!
So let the contest begin ;)

And I'm sorry but this time I will not share the recipe... I'll keep it a secret!

Enjoy ♥

Martina

 

 

This last picture is so cute. This is my younger brother Egon with the famous Sacher boy. The picture was taken a couple of years ago durimg one of our first visits in Salzburg. My brother is now almost 1.90 m. tall... it'a probably thanks to all the Sachertorte he ate!