Carnival Season

“Alaaf and Helau”, it is Carnival.
In Germany, where I am living, we celebrate a great Carnival with a lot of noise and colourful and crazy costumes. I also love having Carnival parties with my friends, which means funny games and plenty of sweet food. Here are my ideas for your perfect party:

As a little Carnival snack, I can recommend our so called „Amerikaner“, also known as half-and-half cookies. They are easy to prepare and can be decorated beautifully.
Here is my receipt for you.

Ingredients:

100 g soft butter
100 g sugar
1 sachet vanilla sugar
Salt
2 eggs (Kl. M)
1 sachet custard powder vanilla
250 g flour
3 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk
1 bag chocolate icing
1 bag lemon glaze
Mini-Smarties

Let’s start with the dough.
Therefore you first have to mix butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and a bit of salt.
As soon as the dough is creamy, you add the first egg, stir for about one minute and then add the second egg and continue stirring.
Now you mix the custard powder with the flour and baking powder, add it to the creamy dough and keep on stirring.
Last but not least you add the milk and mix everything well.

Have a quick taste of the dough and go on.

For the right portion of the dough you can either use a piping bag or two tablespoons.
Put small circles of dough (about 4 cm) on a baking tray with baking paper. But be careful and keep enough distance between the individual dough circles as they will get bigger.

Bake the “Amerikaner” in the preheated oven at 190°C (fan oven 170°C) on the middle rack for about 15 minutes. Then let them cool down on a cake rack.

Finally, we can start decorating.
Melt one bag of chocolate icing and one bag of lemon icing according to the instructions on the package. Then paint one half of the backed dough with chocolate icing and the other half with lemon icing and decorate immediately with the Mini-Smarties.
Certainly you could also colour and decorate them with food colouring or other sweets, just as you like it.

“Mmhhh” Yummy!

Let’s come to the crazy part of the party. Music as well as balloons should not be missing at any party. You can also create simple games with them:

Find a partner so that you are a team of two.
Each team gets a balloon that should be pinched between you (e.g. between your foreheads, stomach, back, knee or bum).
As soon as the music starts, you move and to dance together while keeping the balloon between you – standing still is not allowed. Be careful, whoever loses the balloon, bows out. The winning team is the last one still moving with the balloon.

Or do you know the “stop-dance”?

When the music is on, you all start crazy dancing. Once the music stops, you also have to stop immediately, stand still and remain in the same position.

By the way, do you have any role model?
Mine are all the firefighters out there. They are always super-fast and rescue people – and of course animals- from burning houses. I wish I could be a firefighter too.
But, during Carnival, we can all dress up like our heroes and pretend to be a firefighter just for one day. But no matter if you like doctors, firefighters or police officers, everything is possible.

Especially with our costumes and the matching accessories like the stethoscope, fire extinguisher and handcuffs you are perfectly equipped for your mission.