Buttery secret muffins for a chilly evening

This month Secret Recipe Club has been brought you by Robin of Penny-Pinching Provisions.
When I got assigned Robin's blog as my monthly virtual cookbook, I started going through her posts to look for something that would make me want to cook right away. Can't deny that her Babka's recipes were pretty tempting (what about this Nutella Babka for instance??).

Chocolate, Butter, Strawberries and an unexpected guest

It/we are back!! Who? The Paperchefs naturally.
It has been quite some time since the last challenge was announced on the dedicated blog but as often happens, a temporary hiatus is a positive experience and something not to be feared. It helps clear up our minds and focus on part of our life that often we only perceive out of the corner of our eyes.

If you are new to this challenge, it is one of the nicest out there (except the Velveteers' one naturally). Out of a list of more than 100 ingredients, a random quartet is drawn and assigned for the monthly round. The creative time allotted for each challenge is rather short, from a weekend to up to a week on rare occasions. Thankfully this was one of the latter.
I have taken part to a few rounds and I can assure you that it is a lot of fun!

Sweet, Sweet Awards

Sugar; we all know this fella, don't we?
A mysterious substance able to give us pleasure; not guilt free unfortunately.
Coming in all the shades of brown, tawny to sparkling white we are used to sprinkle it on many of our food items to enhance their flavors. Present in many natural products it represents the way nature is able to store easily accessible energies; it won't come to any surprise then that it is made of just about the most abundant chemical elements present on Earth: Carbon, Oxygen and Hydrogen.
Since few years we have been coming accustomed to choose among different varieties of sugars. Being them of natural origins or artificial, the main reason driving research in this field is the delivery of guilt-free low caloric substitutes for saccharose.

If from one side we restrict our kids' sugar intake, we as society have been over-exposed to sweetness for the last century or so; the result is a sort of dependency on this chemical.
"A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down!" sang Mary Poppins to the whining kids and that's what we tell to ourselves often and again.

Walnuts cinnamon bread-rolls for a breakfast oversea

This is being a year full of lovely friends and travels.
All started in April when I had the chance to meet sweet Pamela of My Man's Belly and hubby. Luckily enough they were in Düsseldorf for some business and that means below 1h of train of distance from me.

After convincing them in meeting up in Bonn instead of Cologne, we enjoyed a very lovely day coffee hopping and belly filling; usual routine for when foodies get together, right? You might say that only one thing might be missing from the foodie-madness picture and that is actually the picture taking itself; do not despair we did also that! You see, one of the reasons (or baits) I used to lure them into my German lair were the lovely Japanese cherry trees planted along my street that were in full bloom in that period.


The weather wasn't perfect, we actually escaped quite a few strong showers while prophetically sipping on some coffee but the sun pierced through the thick layer of clouds and we got some pretty nice shots of the pinkiness around us.

Crispy pork belly gyros of many traditions

I guess somebody was in a street food mood lately, yeah I think so.


This round of Velveteers has been brought us by the eclectic mind of Asha from Fork Spoon Knife. Amidst her blog birthday and the plethora of guest posts she managed to put together for the occasion, she came up with the idea of challenging us in making Gyros ourselves....
What is Gyros? Come on, you know that! Oh wait, you might know it as Doner Kebab perhaps. In effect they are essentially the same thing and that is a huge conical pillar of meat roasted vertically on a skewer.
If you didn't know that Germany is famous for its sausages and sauerkraut, you would call Doner (contraction from Doener Kebab) the national dish. You find a "Doener Haus" almost every second corner around here and I would bet that 1/3 of the middle-aged to young part of the population almost entirely survives on it. If well done this fast-food item can be in effect quite a balanced meal.