I’m presenting you a perfect comfort food recipe for the colder seasons. My apple cider cheese soup with pretzel chips and finished Bad Ischler Salzzart Gourmet Salt flakes is an easy recipe and made under 30 minutes. The soup has a slight sweetness because of the hard apple cider which gets beautifully outbalanced by the 2 savory ripe cheeses. It’s a delicious fall recipe for sure.

Bad Ischler Salzzart – the gourmet salt from our home country Austria

This special salt is not for everyday cooking and seasoning. It’s the perfect touch to finishing any sweet or savory dish and we loved using it to create this fabulous soup. The locally produced gourmet salt has a melt-in your mouth texture and even has an extraordinary look, it’s pyramid-shaped!

Ever wondered how they produce pyramid-shaped salt flakes?

Bad Ischler combined thousand year old technique of salt boiling with todays knowledge and experience to harvest the finest Austrian gourmet salt directly in our Austrian alps. To produce it, only the purest natural brine, from the century old Dürrnberg salt mine in the Austrian alps, is getting heated to boiling temperature. This leads to the production of tiny salt crystals which join together to form pyramid-shaped flakes. Bad Ischler Salzzart gourmet salt is definitely one of a kind.

There are so may ways to use Bad Ischler Salzzart gourmet salt for example to add the finishing touch to a perfectly medium cooked steak or grilled vegetables. We love using it in the morning for avocado toast or chocolate cookies and for so much more!

What is important for that Autumnly Apple cider cheese soup?

Apple Cider

• If you don’t have hard Apple Cider (called Apfelmost in Austria) at hand mix together apple juice and wine – ratio 1:1

The choices of cheese

In Austria we have a large variety of different cheeses. The majority of these cheeses have a very strong flavor with a bite and of course they are smelly ?.

These strong flavored cheeses are the ones you need to get for that comforting soup recipe.

I used a younger cheese with a more smoother but still strong flavor with a softer consistency and an aged cheese with a very distinctive strong flavor and a harder consistency. For Austrian people it was an Erzherzog Johann and a Bergkäse.

For American folks: If you are not very versatile in the world of cheese I would go for a Muenster and a sharp cheddar. If you know your way around in the world of cheese then you already know what to use or what you prefer ?.

Pretzel Chips

I used as an add-in Pretzel slices which I baked in the oven until cross. I just love the slightly malted and sweet flavour. Of course you can use any bread you have at home. ?

It’s a fantastic comforting soup to surprise your family and friends with. Don’t forget to sprinkle the melt in your mouth Bad Ischler gourmet salt flakes over the pretzel chips as a finish. They perfectly enhance the taste of the dish.

Warm hugs Nina & Antonia

Did you make this recipe? Great tag us on Instagram @twosisterslivinglife or use our hashtag #twosisterslivinglife so we can see. Make sure to pin our recipe for later and follow us on Pinterest 

Are you craving more delicious comforting dishes? How about these:

• Vegetarian Cauliflower Bolognese
• Easy yellow thai curry with sweet potatoes, asparagus and shrimps
• Smoky Vegan Mac and Cheese with sun dried tomatoes and spinach

Savory Autumn Apple Cider and cheese soup served with bread chips seasoned with Bad Ischler Gourmet Salt

4 from 9 votes

Recipe by Nina Course: Appetizer, austrian recipe, lunch, SoupCuisine: austrian

Servings

8

Prep time

10

minutes

Cooking time

30

minutes

Calories

401

kcal

This is the perfect comforting soup for the cold weather season and to use up all that delicious fresh apple cider only available in autumn. The soup has a slightly sweet flavour from the apple cider which gets beautifully outbalanced by the savory ripe cheeses.

Cook Mode

Keep the screen of your device on

Ingredients

• Baked pretzel chips

• 200 g 200 pretzels fresh or stale bread will do the trick too

• 1 tbsp 1 butter melted or olive oil

• 1 tbsp 1 Bad Ischler Salzzart Gourmet salt or sea salt flakes

• 2 tbsp 2 parsley fried

• Apple cider and cheese soup

• 1 1 shallot finely minced

• 25 g 25 butter for the shallot

• 1/2 tbsp 1/2 salt

• 1/4 tbsp 1/4 garlic powder

• 50 g 50 butter

• 50 g 50 flour

• 200 ml 200 apple cider you can also use 100ml white wine and 100ml apple juice

• 1,2 l 1,2 chicken broth

• 230 g 230 grated cheese use 2 different aged and smelly cheeses with a sharper taste for this soup like sharp cheddar cheese and swiss cheese for example. The ratio is 150g aged cheese and 80g a more softer cheese. For Austrian People: Bergkäse, St. Johann or Weinkäse

• 150 ml 150 cream

• 1 pinch 1 Bad Ischler Salzzart Gourmet salt The Salt is the finishing touch when served along with some freschly grinted black pepper

Directions

• Baked Pretzel Chips
• Slice the Pretzel in thin Slices (1/2cm or 1/4 inch) and arange on a baking tray .
• Drizzle with the meldted butter amd sprinkle lightly with some salt flakes

  • 

• Bake at 180 degree Celsius fan for about 10min or until golden brown.
• Fry the Parsely leaves in hot oil until cross. This will take about 30 seconds. Put the leaves on a kitchen roll paper after the frying for cooling.
• Savory Apple Cider and cheese soup
• Start with melting the 25g of butter in a medium sized pot and add the minced shallot.

  • 

• Cook over medium heat the shallots without out browning until tender.
• Add the 50g butter.
• When melted add the flour and whisk until a roux is forming. Looks like a cake batter.

  • 

• Deglace with the apple cider and keep on whisking for about 5 minutes.

  • 

• Add the chicken Broth and keep whisking until a kind of soup/Cream is forming.
• Now while whisking add the cheeses and the cream. When everything is homogenous let everything bubble on low heat for about 10 minutes.

  • 

• Season with some with freshly ground black pepper and eventually some more salt.
• Serve the soup with the pretzel chips some fried parsely and a pinch of Bad Ischler Gourmet Salt as a finishing.

Nutrition Facts

• Calories: 401kcal
• Carbohydrates: 30g
• Protein: 12g
• Fat: 27g
• Saturated Fat: 16g
• Cholesterol: 80mg
• Sodium: 2446mg
• Potassium: 244mg
• Fiber: 1g
• Sugar: 4g
• Vitamin A: 927IU
• Vitamin C: 12mg
• Calcium: 238mg
• Iron: 2mg

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The post Autumnly Apple cider and cheese soup with pretzel chips and salt flakes appeared first on Two Sisters Living Life.

My parents have a really large wild grown garden and walking through it always feels like magic. And Nina and I we always find something new like these wild blackberries.

Doesn’t they look nice? But we needed to be extra careful, standing on a ladder because they had thorns. And I laughed my ass off while like a hundred thorns stuck in Ninas clothes because the Queen of Chaos is extremely clumsy too!;)

How to make Blackberry-Lavender Scones

First we prepare the vegan buttermilk: In a small bowl whisk together the nut milk and the vinegar and led it stand for a few minutes. Then add the vanilla extract.

In a large bowl whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cardamon, salt until combined. Add vegan butter cubes, then rub in with your fingers until the mix looks like fine crumbs. You can also use a pastry knife.

Add in the chopped lavender & blackberries with the wet ingredients and gently with a spatula fold into the dry ingredients until a ragged dough forms. Do not overmix! You should still se some streaks of flour throughout.

Scatter some flour onto the work surface and tip the dough out. Dredge the dough and your hands with a little more flour, then fold the dough over 2-3 times until it’s a little smoother. Divide the dough into 2 parts and shape each half into a disk about 1 1/2 inch thick. Cut each disk into 6 parts. You should end up with 12 scones.

Add scones onto a baking sheet, 6 each sheet, and brush with some nutmilk and sprinkle with brown sugar.

Bake on 180°C for 18-22 minutes until golden brown. Let cool. Once the scones have cooled for a few minutes, drizzle with the blackberry glaze (2-3 tbsp crushed blackberry juice, 1 1/2 cup icing sugar depends on consistency, whisk together until smooth).

Sadly I did not had enough light to shoot the scones the first evening and that’s why they look differently on the pictures. The first day you have a pinkish-violet-reddish colored glaze and the next day they look not as shocking and more natural;)

Enjoy these really delicious scones, they are moist and perfect and great for breakfast, snack or in the afternoon with some coffee.

Love, Antonia

Don’t forget to tag us on Instagram @twosisterslivinglife or hashtag #twosisterslivinglife. You can find us on Facebook too and Antonia and I would be more than happy if you followed us on our social media channels for more delicious food pictures and infos to what we are up to at the moment.

Vegan Blackberry-Lavender Scones

0 from 0 votes

Recipe by Antonia Course: Breakfast, Dessert, SnackCuisine: American, british

Servings

12

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

20

minutes

Calorieskcal

Scones are perfect, especially these! They are vegan, dairy-free and with the perfect early fall ingredients lavender and blackberries! Moist and perfect as a breakfast, snack or with some coffee in the afternoon!

Cook Mode

Keep the screen of your device on

Ingredients

• 1 cup 1 nut milk

• 2 tbsp 2 vinegar or lemon juice

• 1 tsp 1 vanilla extract

• 2 3/4 cup 2 3/4 whole grain flour

• 1/2 cup 1/2 brown sugar

• 1 tbsp 1 baking powder

• 1 tsp 1 baking soda

• 1/8 tsp 1/8 ground cardamon

• 2/3 cup 2/3 vegan butter

• 1 1/2 tsp 1 1/2 lavender

• 1 cup 1 blackberries

• 1 pinch 1 salt

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 180°C and line baking pans with parchment paper 
• In a small bowl whisk together the nutmilk and the vinegar and led it stand for a few minutes to make vegan buttermilk. Add vanilla extract.
• In a large bowl whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cardamon, salt until combined. Add vegan butter cubes, then rub in with your fingers until the mix looks like fine crumbs. You can also use a pastry knife.
• Add in the chopped lavender & blackberries and toss to evenly distribute.
• Add the wet ingredients and gently with a spatula fold into the dry ingredients until a ragged dough forms. Do not overmix! You should still se some streaks of flour throughout.
• Add the wet ingredients and gently with a spatula fold into the dry ingredients until a ragged dough forms. Scatter some flour onto the work surface and tip the dough out. Dredge the dough and your hands with a little more flour, then fold the dough over 2-3 times until it’s a little smoother. Divide the dough into 2 parts and shape each half into a disk about 1 1/2 inch thick. Cut each disk into 6 parts. You should end up with 12 scones.
• Add scones onto a baking sheet, 6 each sheet, and brush with some nutmilk and sprinkle with brown sugar.
• Bake for 18-22 minutes until golden brown. Let cool.
• Once the scones have cooled for a few minutes, drizzle with the blackberry glaze (2-3 tbsp crushed blackerry juice, 1 1/2 cup icing sugar depends on consistency, whisk together until smooth)

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If you liked this recipe I would recommend you look at these Granola Bars! They are vegan too! You can find the recipe here.

The post Vegan Blackberry Lavender Scones appeared first on Two Sisters Living Life.

This is a wonderful recipe for an autumnly plum sheet cake. It’s an easy recipe and the perfect cake for a crowd. It’s gluten free, made with basmati rice and ground almonds and sugar reduced. This cake is ideal for an afternoon snack cake or a Sunday dessert for you and your family.

Fall is almost at our door steps. The air already holds the promise of colder weather and the leaves start to change their colouring from hues of green to more vibrant colours. I truly love this season. Especially when I’m fed up with the hot temperatures and the sweaty and sticky nights because the house holds about 1000° degrees Celsius 😉 . My kids are cranky too when the nights are as hot as the days. Without air-condition its almost unbearable. That’s why we are all so happy and welcoming fall with everything we have . That leads us directly to this beautiful recipe for an Autumnly Plum Sheet Cake!

1000 and 1 autumnally plum sheet cakes!

I love developing new recipes and exploring new flavours. Most of the time it’s a very rewarding job but it also holds it’s challenges especially when you aren’t 100% satisfied with the outcome but your family begs you on their knees to just stop baking the same cake over and over again. I can’t help myself I have to redo it over and over again until I feel satisfied with what I baked or cooked up. I know sometimes I can be a real tyrant but believe me I just do it for the greater good of baking and enjoying food ;-).

Why do I use Basmati Rice for most of my gluten free baked goods.

I know many people of you have problems with their gut and are sensible to gluten or if nothing else just try to develop a healthier lifestyle for themselves and their families. It’s the same for me. I always had a sensitiv gut and can’t eat everything I like on a daily base. I started thinking about what alternatives there are for white flour. As you may noticed most of our recipes are without white bleached flour and are mostly naturally sweetened and or sugar reduced.

Healthier recipes!

We like to enjoy sweet things but at the same time we like to make our food healthier and more enjoyable for us. That’s why we most of the time use spelled flour, sweet potatoes or ground basmati rice instead of white flour. And it’s the same for this sheet cake with ripe plums .

Rice is a stable in every household.

Rice in general is a stable in almost every house and it’s the same for me that’s why I like to use it for baking. It’s one thing I will always have at home. The difference is that my choice of rice is always basmati. I love the taste and I always buy organic which is very important for my baked goods. Organic tells me that it’s hopefully free from pollution coming through air, pest control, water and other factors.

Basmati is a very slim corn and it’s easy to ground it at home in your blender to flour. It has almost the same behaviour when used for baking as normal flour. It’s just very important to ground it very very fine.

Let’s start baking and just stop talking about anything other than the plum sheet cake, will you please Nina?!?

The important things first!

• The basmati rice needs to be grounded in your blender as fine as possible. That’s important because if the ground rice is to course the batter needs more liquid and has to stay longer in the oven.
• All ingredients need to be at room temperature, if some of the ingredients are to cold you don’t get a homogenous batter and that is important for the success of every baking recipe. So please take all the chilled fresh ingredients out of the fridge 20 minutes before you start baking.
• Measure everything accurately .
• The butter and the sugar must be whisked until light pale and fluffy. That will be about 10 minutes.
• The egg whites need to be beaten until very stiff. Please fold them in gently into the dough.
• Don’t count on your oven to be exactly like mine. Please have an eye on your cake . That means always put a wooden skewer into the cake to make sure that it is done .

Autumnly plum sheet cake.

1. Start with preheating the oven. That’s always a good first step 😉
2. Prepare the baking sheet with baking paper.
3. In a medium bowl mix together all dry ingredients.
4. In another medium bowl mix together the milk, greek yoghurt (or as I prefer skyr yoghurt), vinegar and vanilla extract.
5. Separate the eggs and beat the egg whites until very stiff.
6. In a bowl of stand mixer start creaming the room soft butter cubes with the brown sugar until pale and fluffy. About 10 minutes.

Half of the work is already done.

1. Add the egg yolks one at the time to the butter mixture and mix until just incorporated.
2. Ad in 5 steps alternately the wet and the dry ingredients starting and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix until slightly incorporated.
3. Now gently fold in the stiff egg whites with a spatula. Don’t overdue it. We want all the air in the batter.
4. Pour the batter onto the prepared baking sheet and put the plum halves with the cut side up gently on top of the cake batter. Arrange the plums next to each other in neat rows.
5. Sprinkle the sugar-cinnamon mixture on top of the cake.
6. Put the cake into the oven and bake for about 35 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.
7. Let the cake cool down and cut it into 10x10cm squares.

Enjoy the cake as it is or with some powdered sugar or if your are extremely brave ;-), add some beaten and slightly sweetened cream on top.

f you tried my fall recipe for this flavourful sheet cake , make sure to leave some kind words and rate it please.

Don’t forget to tag us on Instagram @twososterslivinglife or hashtag #twosisterslivinglife. You can find us on Facebook too and Antonia and I would be more than happy if you followed us on our social media channels for more delicious food pictures and infos what we are up to at the moment.

Juicy and sticky plum flavoured hugs yours truly Nina

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Autumn Plum Sheet Cake

Here you'll find a moist and delicious plum sheet cake recipe which is perfect for Autumn and ideal to use up all those delicious plums which you now get at every farmers market. The cake is made up in 30 minutes, is sugar reduced and gluten free.

• 170 g butter (room temperatured and cut in small cubes)
• 170 g brown sugar
• 4 large eggs (at room temperature and separated)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 360 g Basmati (organic would be best, you can use normal parboiled rice too)
• 100 g ground almonds
• 15 g baking powder
• 150 ml milk (room temperature)
• 200 g greek yoghurt (or skyr yoghurt)
• 1 tbsp white vinegar (you can use apple vinegar too)
• 1 kg plums (pitted and cut in halves)

Sprinkling

• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180° degrees Celsius or 350° degrees Fahrenheit.

   Prepare a baking sheet with baking paper.

   It's important that all the ingredients are at room temperature so lets take out butter, milk, eggs and yoghurt 20 minutes before starting with the baking.

   First of all its important to ground the basmati rice in your blender until very fine, almost like flour. The finer the better.

   In a medium bowl mix together the ground rice, salt, baking powder and ground almonds.

   In another medium bowl pour together the milk, yoghurt , vanilla extract and vinegar and stir everything thoroughly with a spoon.

   Cut the room temperatured butter into small cubes and put it into the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attached.

   Add the brown sugar and whisk everything for about 10 minutes onto medium high. scrap the sides down with a spatula from time to time.

   The butter-sugar mixture is ready when it's a creamy , pale and fluffy batter.

   Seperate the eggs into egg yolks and egg whites.

   Add the egg yolks to the butter mixture one at a time with the speed on medium low. Just mix every egg yolk until incorporated.

   Now mix in the try ingredients and the liquid ingredients alternately in 2 steps and end with the try ingredients. Mix until almost incoperated. Dont overbeat the batter.

   Mix the egg whites in medium sized bowl until very stiff.

   Fold in the stiffened egg whites carefully .

   Pour the batter onto a baking sheet prepared with baking paper and arrange the plum halves carefully on top of the cake next to each other in need rows. Dont push the halves into the dough just put them carefully on the cake.

   Mix togehter the brown sugar and cinnamon and the it even over the cake.

   Put the sheet into the preheated oven and bake for 35 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

   Let the cake cool to room temperature and cut into squares.

   Enjoy the cake with some sprinkled powdered sugar or right out of the sheet pan 😉

   Sticky kisses and hugs

   Nina

You may also be interested into our deliciously good gluten free Banana Bread with Chocolate peanut butter Swirl

The post Autumnly Plum Sheet Cake appeared first on Two Sisters Living Life.