Friday, May 20, 2011

Food Fun with Freya!!

Today is an exciting day at the Varner's! While the basement continues to be worked on, Freya baked four German cakes. One of the boys from church needs them for a 4-H project and so we had to taste some to make sure they were good. I decided to document the endeavour so as to have something to post on my blog. This first one is a chocolate and cherry cake.
Getting started with recipes and prepping the doughs.

Lena liked looking into the camera. And Henry and I were making pirate faces. Pirates have been very popular recently, due to one of the books we were reading.



And here is the cherry cake with the cherries and the Streusel. We decided Freya deserved the name "Master Crumble."
And here the Zitronenkuchen (lemon cake). It tasted very good.
And now to my personal favourite: the Zwiebelkuchen!!! (onion cake). First step was chopping onions. It definitely helps to be able to chop fast. Hut ab to Freya!
And finally the apricot cake. With parts containing chocolate and hazelnuts this was a very tasty treat!
Chopping more onions.
And the three "desert" cakes all baked and ready for consumption!
Henry had recieved a red balloon at the bank and so Freya had to take a little break to blow it up for him.
And back to the onions... (I'm sorry these are all a little out of order)
Lena liked to help as well and figured out how to avoid getting burnt by the pans. She also decided it would be fun to sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and read a book.


Finishing touches and the first cake is ready to be tested. Lena was eager to get some, too. And rightly so, since it tasted wonderful!

And now the Zwiebelkuchen is ready, too! It took me back to the Schwabenland and to memories of fun times!

An excited Max before the cake testing.
Needless to say, all the cakes tasted great! They were very German and it was so nice to have a good treat like that, so thank you Freya for putting your skills to use for us to enjoy as well!!

End of the Semester!

After spring break the first year has gone by in the blink of an eye :)
Here are just a few images from the end of this past semester. This is Leah and I right before the string studio concert. She was my accompanist for the semester and it was really fun working together with her. Check out the new dress I got for performing purposes. (You can kind of tell what it looks like).
This is the gym at school. I was inspired by the great achievements of some of you guys, to take up running in the last several weeks of the semester. Since it is "free" to use the facilities at school it was convinient to go any time I had a chance. Luckily I had a good friend, Kirsten, who joined me and had about the same pace I do. Now that it is the summer, I haven't been keeping up with running very well, but I hope to get started again when I'm back in school.