Daniela's Zwetschgenkuche aka German Plums Cake

One of my fond memories of living in Germany involved September in Stuttgart, when the hills slowly turned yellow, orange and red, the first pumpkins appeared on the farmer's market kiosks, and the bakeries took out of their ovens fragrant, juicy Zwetschgenkuche aka Plums cake. 

I love this sheet cake and Daniela's version is my favorite. Here her delicious recipe:

Ingredients:

Batter

4 eggs

1 & 1/2 cup sugar

4 cups All purpose Flour

4 teaspoons Backing powder

1 cup vegetable Oil (I prefer peanuts Oil)

1 cup milk (Kids version) or sweet sparkling wine!

Streusel

1 cup Sugar

1 cup all purpose Fluor

1 cup Butter

1 kg  Elongated Purple Plums - Cleaned and helved 

(More or less this quantity, but it depends how big they are. Consider you've to cover completely the pan surface).

www.michiganplum.com

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Butter and flour a large pan, or prepare a bake paper rectangle (Mine is 32cm x 24cm = 12.5 inch x 9.5inch).

 Put all the ingredients in a stand alone mixer and whisk all together for a couple of minutes.

Prepare the Streusel combining all the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until crumbly. Alternately, you can mash the ingredients together in a bowl using a fork, or just mix everything together with your fingers (I do this way ;P).

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and evenly arrange the halved plums on top of the batter, flesh side facing up. Sprinkle with the Streusel and bake for 45 min. - 1 hour.

Ta-daaa! Official Cover Reveal: Friends Without Benefits by Penny Reid

Official Cover Reveal: Friends Without Benefits by Penny Reid

Time to share ;)

Bad times good times. 

Definitively in the last couple of weeks I had very good moments reading and I scored three 5stars books in a row! Here my lucky strikes:

Sweetened With a Kiss by Lexxy Callahan
 

Fairy queen becomes Elves Queen, showing her claws, and Prince Charming chooses to be Prince Philip. No, it isn't a Once upon A time story! It's an amazing story about good changes and everlasting love. 

Message to the female MC: Go! Jen, go!
Message to the male MC: Hey, Mr. Sellers I'd the impulse to hit you with your caveman's club a couple of time but (As a reader I'd the privilege to have a look in your mind so I knew that your bossiness it was only a way to hide your insecurities) I would leave you walk away unharmed ;)

---------

I fall in love with the couple in this  book:

Forever My Girl (The Beaumont Series) by Heidi McLaughlin  

   

A rock star and his regrets.
He promised her all:

“You’re forever my girl.”   

“Hey, Jojo?” he yells.
“Yeah.” I yell back.
“I’m going to marry you someday.”

Then he run. And came back after ten years, creating havoc in her life o.O

It's an emotional second-chance love story, a boy who'd to find himself, a smart heroine, a strong group of supporting loving characters: a wonderful story, indeed.

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The third 5stars was the sequel of Forever my girl. And this time the 5stars are all for Harrison :) He has really the patience of a saint ;)

My Unexpected Forever (The Beaumont Series) 

   

I expected a life of music.
I expected to raise my son.
It took one look to make everything change.
I never expected happiness.

I never expected to find her.
I never expected to feel desire.
I never expected I’d be a family man.
I never expected to be loved.
I never expected to fall in love.

Stronger than you think

She's a lawyer, she's smart and well educated. She's strong. She's also a woman who'd said NO to a man. A man who cannot be called human being, a man who'd paid two guys to wait for her out of her door and ruin her face with acid.

She's the woman who said "I'll help other women, I'm not hiding".
Respect and admiration for Lucia.

«Ecco il mio viso sfregiato dall’acidobr /Aiuterò le donne vittime di violenza»

Jocks are overrated, let's fall in love with everyday heroes

I was slicing zucchini when I had an epiphany. Hey, don't read anything between the lines. I don't want to slice anybody's zucchini! It was a mindless action that left my brain free to wander. That's all ;P So, I was preparing dinner when I made a mental list of the last romances I read and loved and saw the fil rouge among the stories: little town and everyday heroes.

Yep! All my favorite writers stopped looking for handsome guys with killer bods in  fields and grounds and pointed at nice little towns.

Bye bye Rachel Gibson's Chinooks or Jill Shalvis's Pacific Heat players. Our beloved love geniuses had to follow the actual marketing rules and embrace their friends style, so their heroes have now current jobs.

I still love their stories, at the end is the romance that really counts. But I wonder if they had to fully adopt Robyn Carr or Kristan Higgins format in order to keep selling, because I loved also their jocks. And I miss them ;)

Luckily now exists a parallel universe populated by free writers (called Indie authors ;p) who write about whatever they love (Even sport!) and create stories as good as the aforementioned ones :)

Here some of my big names favorites