Easy Stollen

Stollen is a traditional German Christmas cake, which husband loves dearly. I had tried making it before, but found it too time-consuming and the result - underwhelming. However, last December we came upon a simplified recipe, which we liked very much and I've probably made already a dozen of these.

With every attempt I've moved slightly away from the original, so probably my version is now hardly a stollen, but who cares - it is delicious, we love it and I'd like to have it on the blog, so that I wouldn't loose the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 250 g flour
• 7 g fresh yeast
• 70 g warm milk
• 50 g melted butter
• 30 g sugar
  
• 1 egg
• 200 g dried fruit
• 25 g rum
• a pinch of salt and spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, star anise)
  

Preparation:

Put all the dry fruit in a bowl, add the rum, cover and let them sit for a few hours, preferably over night,  so that the fruit can soak up the rum.

Warm the milk and add the fresh yeast and the sugar in it. Melt the butter. Add the milk with the activated yeast, the melted butter, the egg and the spices and mix. Knead the dough until elastic and leave it to rest for a couple of hours in a warm space. In winter I put it covered in my oven with the light on.

Once the dough has doubled its size, it is time to add the dry fruit, which has soaked up the rum. Mix and knead thoroughly and leave to rest for another hour or two.

Spread the dough on a surface and flatten it into a rectangle. Fold one third of the rectangle, then fold the second third on top and press, giving the dough the traditional stollen form. I used to bake the stollen in free form on a baking tin, but lately I prefer to put it in a rectangular cake form and bake it like that. I know, it is not as per tradition, but it is easier to cut in slices.

 

Leave the stollen to rest for a final half an hour, preheat the oven at 180 C and bake until ready, for about 40 min.

Once the stollen is out of the oven, you can brush it with melted butter and cover it with powdered sugar. That is the traditional way and we do it sometimes, but frankly, I prefer it without the added sugar and usually skip the last step. 

Around Christmas I used to put candied orange and lemon peel and other Christmasy goodies in the dough, but lately it is only dried fruit of various sorts, these here are raisins, plums, dates and cranberries, a favourite combination of mine, which combines sweetness, sourness and flavour.

Polovrak January 2025

It had been three full weeks since our last hike and I was craving clear air and mountain views. The day was promised to be sunny and warm on Polovrak and we packed our backpacks and climbed in the car, although the morning in Sofia was dark, gloomy and foggy.

It got even more foggy towards the village of Lozen and we began to wonder, whether this would be one of those rare hikes in the fog with almost zero visibility.

But once we were high enough above the village at the parking lot, where the trail starts, the fog was left below and the sun was shining bright in the sky. That phenomenon of fog and smog in winter in the Sofia valley is really bothering me, as I am a sun-oriented person and the months under the blanket of smog are a real downer.

The first spring crocuses are out. The forecast for the beginning of February is for cold and snow, but today it felt, like spring was around the corner. I'm not a winter person, I can't wait for the sunnier and warmer months.

Hike info:

Date: 31 January 2025

Destination: peak Polovrak (1182 m)

Mountain: Lozen

Total length: 10 km

Elevation gain: 420 m

Total duration (plus picnic and rests): approx. 3 h

Average difficulty: 3 / 10

Me-made items, worn on this hike:

Husband: boxers, Burda cargo pants, Burda longsleeve, knitted socks, orange hat

I: lingerie, sweater, CC CopyCat hat, gloves

The thick cover of smog over Sofia

We had our pieces of freshly baked banitza and cups of hot herbal tea on the peak, looking at the ranges of mountains ahead and the Iskar dam in the distance and enjoying the warm January sun.

Sugarless Apple Muffins

Last year, on a whim, I decided to stop eating sugar. I love sweets and although I am certainly not overweight and have no health problems, related to sugar consumption, I thought it would be a beneficial experiment health-wise and I was also curious if I could do it. Initially it was only for a day, then a week and now it has been more than six months. 

I'm not religious about not eating sugar and my restrictions apply only to processed sugar, by which I mean that I eat a lot of fruits and dried fruits; it's not a carbohydrate restricting diet, just an abstinence from packed sugar as much as possible.

Even before summer last year, I rarely ate store-bought sweets, my morning coffee was accompanied mostly by home-made desserts. Lately I've been experimenting with my own recipes, replacing sugar with dried fruits. I should mention, that I am not a proponent of artificial sweeteners and I believe in reducing the craving and need for sweet taste by reducing the consumption of sweet taste. I can confirm, that my receptors for sweet have actually changed during these months and I can taste sweetness much more acutely.

I came up with these apple muffins last week and this is my second batch, husband polished most of the first one himself, and he hasn't been on my sugar-free regime, so it should be a testament, that they are delicious enough :)

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 40 g sunflower oil
• 100 g yogurt / sour cream
• 150 g / average apple chopped
• 100 g dried fruits (25 g of each raisins, cranberries, dates, plums)
• 120 g flour
• 5 g baking powder
• pinch of salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove

Preparation:

Beat slightly the egg, add the yogurt and vegetable oil, mix. Add the dried fruits (cut the dates and plums into small pieces) and the apple, chopped into small pieces. Finally mix in the flour with baking powder, pinch of salt and spices.

Distribute the batter into 12 muffin forms and bake in a preheated oven at 180 C for approx. 25 min. Serve with hot coffee or tea.

Razgrad in January 2025

Husband and I were last weekend in Razgrad for a family celebration. Like last month in Vienna, we were very lucky with the weather, especially on our free Sunday, when we got to roam through the sunny streets of the town and the park. The temperatures were in the 12-14 C range and we had a very pleasant and relaxed walk, it was hard to believe, that it was still January and the middle of winter.

The old mosque, which has been in repair for years, is finally free of the construction barriers, but the restoration works within seem to be still going on.

The old clock tower, one of Razgrad's architectural monuments.

After touring the center of the city, we went to the city park and took a long walk along its alleys.

The interior of the church in the old town 

Salty Cheesecake

I had been planning this cheese cake for New Year's Eve, but we kept eating one of the products or another, while I procrastinated with the preparation. 

I finally made it and it turned out to be an excellent appetizer, especially in combination with white wine. However, because I didn't want it too heavy, I reduced the butter and skipped the walnuts, so it came out more crumbly than it should be. It was completely fine and super delicious, but if I don't want it in crumbs, next time I should add more butter or nuts, to join the biscuits.

Ingredients:

• One pack (200 g) crackers
• 10 g butter (should be at least 50 g or 100 g walnuts)  
• 100 g cream cheese
• 200 g cottage cheese
• 200 g sour cream
• 2 teaspoons of chopped dill

Preparation:

Crumble the crackers in the chopper. Mix them with the butter and compact the biscuit layer in a cake form. Mix the cheeses and sour cream, add the dill and distribute evenly on top of the biscuit layer, Serve cold with white wine and enjoy!

The snowdrops in the garden behind our building are already in bloom. Can't wait for spring to be here already!

Four Years on Duolingo

 

So, today is the first day of my fifth year on Duolingo and of those four years I have about three years and four months of studying German. Of course, everybody knows, that period of time, per se, means nothing when it comes to learning, what matters is the method, intensity, actual time, spent with the language, passive learning( acquisition) vs active usage, etc.

If these three years and several months had been spent in an intensive German course, I should have been fairly fluent in the language. On the other hand, were it not for Duolingo, my knowledge of German, as it is, would be non-existent. 

Duolingo is firmly a part of my daily routine, and I can assuredly say, of the happiest of it - my morning coffee. I'm not a fan of sleeping, although I have a very strict sleeping routine, and my first thought when I go to sleep at night is "I can't wait for it to be morning!". The thought of drinking my first morning coffee and opening the Duolingo app makes the beginning of the day so welcome, whatever that day may bring :)

During my fourth year on Duolingo I finished completely the German course and the English course, which contained German translations. This was a bummer, as now my use of Duolingo is much less productive - the revision exercises, which the app provides, are extremely repetitive and I already know the limited set of sentences and stories by heart. 

I am pushing on with the English course, but it's a slog, as I have to consult with external apps, like Google translate and DeepL. Still, I think the effort is worth it, as it requires very intense active use of the knowledge of the language, instead of passive filling in of words or arranging a set of given words in a sentence, as is the intended use of the app. Actually, I believe a lot of people have little or barely noticeable progress with Duolingo, because they use it very passively and with an accent on the game and competition aspects of the app, and not so much as a teaching tool. For instance, instead of listening to a story in English, I turn off the sound, read the English sentences and translate every line of the story into German, checking with the hidden translation, which is revealed when you click on an English word. Meanwhile I write down all of the words and phrases I find interesting and new. Then I do the revision (Legendary level) of the story, without the translation. And I use this approach for every exercises on the app.

I also listen to a lot of German podcasts and audiobooks and I read books in German. I'm still behind on my vocabulary - both passive and active, I find German words very, very difficult to remember and distinguish. Some sources I could recommend:

Super German - a podcast with essays on various topics. I find it extremely useful, as the vocabulary is more or less at my current level, a lot of phrases are clearly explained and it provides a useful structure for expanding on a topic in German.

Matthias Zehnder - a Swiss author and media expert. I like listening to his book recommendations, but I should acknowledge, that the language level of his podcast is quite above my current level, so I grasp the general ideas, but miss the details, so far.

Learn German Relaxed with Gabriel - I think I recommended this channel earlier and I still enjoy listening to it, it is easy and understandable for me and has plenty of useful phrases and idioms in German

I recently heard that Duolingo is preparing the launch of the next part of the German tree, I can't wait for it! Meanwhile I continue with the English tree plus a lot of revisions of the previous levels. Maintaining the acquired vocabulary is a big part of going forward :) Language learning, especially past the childhood years, is a red queen race - you have to run as fast as you can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that. :)

Bagels

The weather in Sofia this week has been nasty, foggy and cold, for days the city was under a cover of clouds and smog and we couldn't see the sun. Nothing however cures January blues like warm kitchen and the smell of baking and cooking and I've been busy making all kinds of dishes and breads.

My latest baking experiment - bagels. I didn't research much, just took the first recipe I came upon and tried it for half a dozen of warm, aromatic round buns.

Ingredients:

• 380 g flour
• 7 g dry yeast
• 220 g warm milk
• 25 g butter
• 30 g sugar
• 5 g salt
• 1 egg white
  

 For the egg wash - 1 egg yoke, just a little water; sesame seeds

Preparation:

Mix the ingredients and make the dough. Leave it to rise in a warm oven (30C) for an hour. Cut it into 6 balls and leave them rise again for 30 min. Using your finger, make the balls into rings. Bring about a liter of water with a teaspoon of sugar to boil and drop each of the rings in it for about 30 sec.

Place the rings on a baking dish, glaze with egg wash and sprinkle with seeds. Put in a pre-heated oven at 200 C and bake for about 25 min.

As this is in fact a variation of pains au lait, you can serve them with cream cheese, butter, jam, anything you have in your fridge.

We tried them as deserts with home-made blueberry and quince jam, as h'ordeuvres with smoked cheese and butter,

but I liked them most warm with celery, carrots and potato cream soup.