Defeating Candy-Deficiency

You're at home on a nice Sunday afternoon, doing whatever you usually do - when suddenly a huge craving for candy hits you. There are three most likely ways this scenario could play out: If you're a very self-disciplined person you can ignore this hunger for chocolate and the likes, you don't have to read on anymore (maybe you should memorize them nevertheless, just for emergency cases ;) ).
More likely you'll want to satisfy your desire for sugary goods and look for something in your kitchen, where you'll
a) find something and everything is going to be alright, or
b) won't be able to discover anything and all the shops are closed (because it's either Sunday or too late)! Oh no, panic mode on, what are you supposed to do now?!


For those merciless moments I've put together a list of makeshift-sweets for which you only need ingredients you most likely have at home.




1) The Mug Cake

For the basic recipe mix together:
5 tablespoons flour (or substitute 2 with cocoa)
3 tablespoons sugar (or honey  )
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon oil
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 egg
a little bit of baking soda


To avoid lumps in your batter start with mixing together all the dry ingredients in your mug of choice, then add the milk and in the end the egg and the oil. If you wish to, you can add extra ingredients like raisins, cinnamon, chopped nuts, little apple-pieces, coconut flakes, basically whatever you think will taste best.
Stir thoroughly once more, put it into your microwave at about 900W and wait for 2-3 minutes (the cake should rise over the top of the mug for some time) - and it's all done! Now you can enjoy your home(microwave)baked goodies.




2) Fruit with sweet dips

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If an apple, orange, banana or whatever fruit you have at hand isn't already sweet enough for you, theres a possibility to turn them into delicious desserts.
Just dip them into different kinds of sweet bread spreads like chocolate cream, honey or jam. For the extra crunch cover the dipped fruit in some chopped nuts, cereal, pumpkin seeds, coconut chips, et cetera.
Another alternative would be to fry them in a mix of butter, honey and cinnamon.




3) Sometimes eating a spoon full of chocolate cream can be so overwhelmingly sweet that you'll have enough of it for the rest of the day, ever tried that out?




4) Cereal-Cookies

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For a baking tray full of cookies mix:
300g of your favorite cereal or muesli
150g sugar
2 eggs
then make small heaps of them with a spoon and let them bake for about 15 minutes at 180°C.




5) Yogurt
Mix some natural yogurt with oatmeal or muesli, sliced fruit and honey - enjoy!




6)Toast

Toast with either chocolate cream or honey topped with - again - fruit, coconut chips, chopped nuts and the likes tastes delicious!




7) If all else fails or you don't have any of the ingredients above... well, you could always just let a sugar cube melt in your mouth, though I wouldn't recommend that.




I hope I have saved some of you from a disastrous case of candy-deprivation.
If you have any further tips or recipes, I'd be happy if you post them in the comments :)

JAM-PACKED JARS OF JAM

I finally finished my last christmas gifts today: six jars of christmas jam. I found the very delicious recipe at Talisa's blog Blütenschimmer and immeadiately knew I had to try it out myself. And now six people that are very dear to me will get some tasty apple-marzipan-cinnamon-raisin-goodness for christmas, I hope they'll like it.

TEA WITH A TWIST

Lately I haven't ended or started the day without drinking a warm cup of tea. About two weeks ago I've suddenly discovered my love for tea with a bit of lavender-taste. Brewing any kind of tea together with a teaspoon of lavender buds gives it such a delightfully flowery taste. And with adding some freshly squeezed orange or lemon juice and a bit of honey it becomes even more delicious, you should try it out!

WHAT ELSE ARE PEOPLE INERESTED IN IF THEY LIKE...?

Hilary Mason, chief scientist at bitly (a webpage that shortens URLs for you), created an awesome interactive graphic for Scientific American that shows what kind of internet pages people visited after they've visited one about another topic.

You can view the interactive version here, and believe me, there are definitley some unexpected links between topics.

via Scientific American

SNOW

Unfortunately it hasn't snowed where I live yet, but I'm not giving up hope on a white Christmas.
If you too can't await the first flakes to float down on you, these links might help a little.

Do you want to learn a bit more about the fluffy-looking, ice-crystals? Then you should really check out Snowflake Physics.
It's an interactive page with information and videos from SnowCrystals.com, a website by Kenneth G. Libbrecht, a professor of physics at Caltech.

If you're bored and don't know what to do, you could always just Make-a-Flake.

Some really talented people make snow sculptures at different festivals each year, just look them up on Google!

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Feeling a bit crafty yourself? Here are some instructions on how to make snowflake origami.






I hope this shortened your time of waiting for snow a bit :)