Cherries at Obsthof Schröder

Hubby and me love cherries. Every year we waited patiently for summer and once the cherries hit the market, we drive to Altes Land - a suburb area of Hamburg, where the orchards are located. Usually we bought our cherries in a small shop called Im Apfelgarten. Last year we drive a bit farther away and found another orchard which offer cherries for picking. We were so excited and brought 6 months old Fitzie there. Fitzie just sat in her buggy and probably suffered from the heat. While we, the parents, ate and enjoyed cherries. 

This year we visit them again and Fitzie can walk around and even picked the cherries herself. She ate so much cherries that we were afraid her tummy will burst. Okay that's a joke but really her tummy was so firm and all my friends were astonish that she can eat continuously like that. 

Right the cherries, here they are; Ripe and plump, ready to be picked. 

Here's the yield of the day. We picked 12 kg of Cherries. There were five of us and we divided them equally at the end of the day. If you are curios how my foot looks like. the foot on top in a black canvas shoe is actually mine. 

The white bucket with the black cherries is the species called valeska. Very dark, very sweet and intense. 

Underneath them are Knupper Cherries which are lighter in colour, sweet with a hint of sourness, very fresh and have firm flesh. Needless to say our favourite type. Therefore four buckets full of these Cherries. 

The owner of this orchard. Herr Schröder and his family are very kind and friendly. If you visit with children, he kindly saw branches for the children so that the kiddies do not need to climb the ladder. You see, cherry trees can be quite high. And he always kindly invite his guests to snack on the cherries. He says don't just pick the cherries, you need to taste them too. And in the end, when we went out to weigh the cherries, they always give some extras, we actually picked 11,8kg but they just ignore the 800gr and ask us to pay 11kg. 

Their rustic and small shop is also so cute. They sell the freshest and most delicious apple juice ever and they also bake cakes and German sour dough bread directly in the shop in an old wood oven. You can imagine how heavenly their shop smells. They also sell jams, wines and various organic veggies from their garden. I bought a giant cucumber for 1 euro and a bucket of fresh summer potatoes for 3 euro. They are exactly my perfect family out of my childhood Enid Blyton's books. So if you are in Hamburg Area and want to find an idyllic getaway. This is the ideal place. 

Obsthof Schröder
Hinterbrack 6
21635 Jork

Lindt Dark Chocolate Souffle Cake

My dear neighbour, Ute, gave us 3 Lindt Gold Bunny this Easter. 

Fitzie loved to play with them, there're bells which chimed prettily and she loved to threw them onto the floor and picked them again. Surprisingly those bunnies are really robust. She played with them for three months until last Saturday. One of them broke. I thought, now it's the time to bake a cake with it. I've been saving the dark chocolate for this: 

Lindt Dark Chocolate Souffle Cake

200 gr high quality dark Chocolate (2 Lindt Easter Bunny 60% Dark Chocolate)

125 gr butter 

125 gr sugar 

2 Tsp almond flour (fine grounded almond)

6 eggs separated

Fresh strawberries and icing sugar for decoration 

Melt dark chocolate with butter in a double boiler. If you dare, heat them in the microwave or directly in the pot. I love to multi-task so it's easier for me to slowly melt them on top of hot water.  

Heat your oven to 190°C and butter a baking form. 

Boil water in a kettle and pour them into a baking sheet. Heat the water in the ofen. It's for a French baking method called Bain Marie. 

While waiting the chocolate and butter melts to cool off. Beat egg white till soft peaks form.

Once the chocolate and butter cools off, mixed in sugar, almond flour and egg yolks.

Gently fold in the egg white meringue to the chocolate mixture in three separate steps. 

Transfer the batter to the buttered form and bake bain marie for 40 minutes. You will see the cake rises.

After the cake is done, don't take them out directly but wait till it cools off a bit then take them out of the oven. Direct temperature change shocks the cake and will make them shrink. In the end the cake will shrink a bit too. But it will still have some volume. 

Decorate with strawberries and icing sugar.

The cake is dense with chocolate flavour, soft and fluffy. Hubby complained that the structure is almost similar to mousse au chocolat and he prefered cake which has more structure. But hey it's souffle cake. It should be creamy and fluffy. I love it the way it is. If not for the calories I'll eat half of the cake in one eating. 

French toast topped with strawberry and vanilla sauce

We picked strawberries last weekend. It was so much fun, we were so full after that and went home with almost 3 kg of strawberries. I made jars of jam out of it and eat the rest of it just like that. Nothing beats fresh strawberries directly out of the farm. Well maybe fresh cherries but it's stuff for next week. 

Anyway for breakfast I made this, French toast topped with fresh strawberries and a drizzle of vanilla sauce

French Toast

Slices of old bread, I had Ciabatta so I used them

1 egg

a splash of milk

1 Tbs sugar

1 Tbs butter

Strawberries

Vanilla sauce (My favourite is Matilde but this time I was testing the one from zum Dorfkrug, very yummy too) 

Beat egg, add in milk and sugar.

Soak slices of bread into the custard

Heat a pan and melt the butter, put in the mushy bread and pan fry them into golden brown.

Put half of strawberries on top and drizzle with vanilla sauce

Oh and that's Donald Duck Frühstücksbrett, which I bought at Butler's. I just love it, makes me smile every morning