Schwarzwaelder [Cup,Micro]-Cakes
Let me start this Post with a familiar sentence:
Cakes, everyone LOVES Cakes.
"Uuuhm, sure, okay" - but hey, everyone does! So we made a few Schwarzwaelder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Gateau?) Mini-Cakes. For the ones who don't know, this is a German cake, actually, the most german of all Cakes. Coming from a mountain-region in the south-west it has whipped cream, some more whipped cream on some whipped cream with some whipped cream, cherries, some more whipped cream, a few cherries on top aaaand ... MORE whipped cream.
Happy Chinese New Year!
It's the year of the Tiger 
While everyone's busy with V-Day and all: Happy Chinese New Year! 
Gong xi fa cai!
Poring Plush
We've made two Porings and two Poporings already and this is a wonderful plushie for beginners. Having seen Ragnarok cosplayers run around with Porings at a convention, I was determined to buy one too until they told me the ones they were carrying were self-made. I wanted one myself at first but all Porings I've made so far have been given away and this one also had a home before it was made. If you want one as well, drop me a comment (or a mail) xD. I love making those and they come in green, dark blue, light blue or orange if pink doesn't suit you ~
From left to right: Pouring, Marin, Drops, Poporing, Poring
You'll find a lot of Poring plush tutorials on the net and I already forgot which inspired me. This is how it works best for me:
Random Image Post: No Smoked Cheese
For all the Mahjong players out there~ Others won't get the joke anyway. xD
Brought to you by Hatchune Miku and Churuya.
Companion Cube Plushie
So this is what I've been hiding for two months from NebuK (which was given to him as a birthday gift): a Weighted Companion Cube plushie from the game Portal. Literally everyone who has played that level is infatuated with this cube... I mean, it has pink hearts all over! And you have to carry it through the whole level. It just has to grow on you. Unfortunately, I don't have any progress pictures. It has been hard enough hiding and making it without someone noticing who lives in the same room. Hey, for once I'm proud that I managed. Couldn't help that our friends and maybe everyone in university knew about it since I did most of the work while lectures (NebuK was sick in bed at those two days ^^;).
Announcement: Many Tutorials and Gift Ideas AFTER Christmas!
Just dropping a note that we're busy making lots of stuff for everyone. Since a lot of our friends know our blog, we'll be posting them after Christmas Eve. Too bad we can't share our ideas with those of you for now who may be desperately looking for the last presents to buy and make but there's always another year (and there are birthdays too!)!
Look forward to it either way!
Backferment (special yeast) bread
Recently we've been into baking bread. Like, traditional easy bread thats tastey and available kinda quick after you've decided you wanted bread for dinner or supper. Anyhow those simple baguett-like yeast bread, even though they require quite some trying around to be able to properly handle the yeast properly to achieve a even fluffyer result have gotten somehow boring. So we thought we might give a tip by the Mum of a friend a try.
Thats a special kind of yeast thats harvested from natural yeasts in honey carried in by bees from various sources (yeasts exist all over the world, thats how beer and bread used to work in medieval ages). Its called "Backferment" (no translation found, sorry) and was developed by Hugo Erbe around the beginning of the century.
The making is somehow troublesome and similar to sourdough, you first need a quite fluid base which consists of:
- 150g flour type 405
- 150g freshly ground wholemeal flour
- 300-400g water
- 10g Backferment
and that needs to stand at ~28*C for a day. You should see quite some bubbles rising after that. After that you need yet another base, the breads sponge which is a bit less fluid (300g of any flour, 20-30g of the base and 5g Backferment) and yet again needs to stand a half day to swell and expand. Again bubbles should be clearly visible. The rest is easy, add another 700-800g of any flour, salt, oil and whatnot to your liking knead, let rest for 2 hours (or better: until it starts to collapse slightly again), bake until finished, thats it.
The result was astonishing, a slight, mild taste like sourdough, but not as harsh as real sourdough. It was super fluffy, but IMO with 1/3 freshly ground wholemeal flour it tasted a bit too solid, so 100% type 405 is my recommendation . In any case, Backferment is worth the trouble and produces a bread thats quite different from regular yeast white bread and sourdough bread. Its uniqueness is expressed in a mild, pleasant taste that reminds of sourdough.
For anyone whos eager to try some new breadmaking techniques and play around, Backferment is sure one of the ways to go . Be also sure to check back as we try out specific recipes for great breads. As soon as the look of the is up to a nice standard we'll also post pictures 
. Bon appetit!