Divergent Chocolate Cake

I'm not a fan of the Divergent movies and frankly, I do not plan to read the books, but when I came upon this Dauntless themed cake only days before Gaby's birthday, my hands itched to try it - such a simple but brilliant decoration idea!

This is the video you want to check out for the decoration, and for the ingredients I used the recipe in this Bulgarian blog.

The "ashes" are crumbs from the cake.

The logs are chocolate filled waffles:

The flames are caramel. I melted about 75 g of white sugar and poured the hot liquid caramel with a spoon on cooking paper and waited for it to cool.

And I added small brown sugar candies for the coal:

Amazingly, it not only looks cool, it's actually super delicious, it was a smashing success as a birthday cake. Yummy! :)))

Neuschwanstein and the Bavarian Alps Romantic Road

Finally I went through the dozens of pictures of Bavaria's Disney castle to choose a few to tell the story of our journey there. As expected, the site was packed with tourists, the day was hot and there was some surreal atmosphere in the air - high above our heads was visible the castle, so well known from pictures, puzzles, brochures and what not, that it's actual existence seemed a bit unnatural.

The view from the observation platform. The place of the castle is chosen brilliantly, 

hanging on the rocks above the gorgeous Alpine valley

Unfortunately, the Marienbrucke bridge was closed for repair works

The view from a terrace of the castle

A model of the castle

The castle of Ludwig II's parents - Hohenschwangau

The Museum of the Bavarian Kings - Gaby and I went through it, 

a bit in a hurry, as our time was quite limited

In the end of the day we cooled our feet (as plenty other tourists - 

the day was amazingly hot for the Alps) in the calm waters of the Alpsee

And just a few snaps through the windows of the bus - the Bavarian Romantic Road, which runs through green pastures and small pretty villages, absolutely amazing scenery

Borovetz, The Black Rock

I'm breaking my series of posts about the Bavarian Castles with a short report from yesterday's trip to Borovetz in the Rila mountains. Husband and I tried to escape from the heat in the city and hiked the popular track to the Black Rock formation in the mountain resort of Borovetz. It is a very easy level track, which runs through the pine forests of the resort and reaches the high rock over the spring of Maritza river, providing panoramic views over the valley.

We started the track from Rila hotel near the Sitnyakovo chair-lift. Though the path is popular and wide, it wasn't properly marked and we relied mostly on our GPS device.

The rowan trees with their beautiful orange 

and red berries stood out among the pine trees:

 We had our picnic lunch in this pavilion near the Black rock:

On our way back we stopped at Stork's Nest - 

a popular picnic area on the Iskar Reservoir