Game of thrones tag

I just wanted to take a quick break from studying for school, so I only have time for this short tag. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
And I'm kepping this tag spoiler-free, so even if you haven't read the A song of ice and fire series (yet) or watched HBO's Game of thrones you can still continue reading without any worries. Also, I'll answer the questions for the books, so I might mention characters or places we've never seen in the tv show.

1. How did you discover the books?

My brother started reading them (in German) about two years ago and absolutely loved them, but told me I should wait at least another year and a half before I read them (which was honestly such a great advice, because I probably wouldn't have liked them very much if I was any younger when I started reading them). When he got the books in English for his birthady in April this year, I finally started reading them and they're some of my most favorite books now.

2. Who is your favorite house apart from the Starks and Lannisters?

"Unbowed. Unbent. Unbroken." 

 Definitely the Martells! They're my by far most favorite house because of their attitude towards women and bastard children. And I absolutely adore every character from house Martell we've met so far: Oberyn is such an awesome and badass fighter, Doran is really smart and a great schemer and I enjoy Arianne's and Quentyn's POV chapters so much! Of course, the sand snakes are incredibly amazing as well (and I'm still sooo mad at the writers of Game of thrones for making the sand snakes so awful and crappy in the show!). And let's be honest, they have the by far most awesome and badass house words.

3. Who is your favorite character from the House of Stark?

This question is actually quite difficult. I totally love Arya, but I also have such a huge crush on Robb! So I guess I'll just go with both of them.

4. Who is your favorite character from the House of Lannister?

First of all, the Lannisters are one of my least favorite house, the only one I hate more is probably house Greyjoy, and except for Tyrion I dislike every Lannister in some way (of course, Tommen and Myrcella are pretty cute, but we haven't seen that much of both of them). Even though I learned to love hating Cersei and got some weird affection for her through that and probably enjoyed her chapters in A feast for crows, simply because they are satisfying af, so much more than Tyrion's in A dance with dragons, I'll still pick Tyrion as my anwser.

5. Who is your favorite character?

There are so many! But just some randomly chosen characters I absolutely adore are Missandei, Strong Belwas, Dacey Mormont, Shireen Baratheon, Tormund Giantsbane, Wylla Manderly, Alayne Stone, Willas, Garlan and Loras Tyrell, Renly Baratheon and a lot more.

6. Who is your least favorite character?

Ugh, I don't even know where to start! I could give you a list with more than 20 characters I absolutely hate, because there are so many horrible people in this story. Some I loathed from the very first time they appeared are Viserys Targaryen, Joffrey Baratheon, Ramsay Snow, Craster, Theon Greyjoy (basically all Greyjoys, maybe except from Asha) and Shae.

7. What are your thoughts about the show?

In my opinion, season one to three were absoultely amazing, I still liked season four, but season five was just horrible. Apparently the writers of the show tried to create their own story and changed so much from the books and just failed miserably. They changed storylines so nothing would make any sense and killed off random characters without any kind of purpose.

8. If you could be one of the characters who would you be and why?

I probably would have said Danaerys Targaryen because DRAGONS and she also has the coolest squad ever (well, except Jorah and Daario), but now that I think about it a bit longer, I guess I'd be Bran Stark. Of course, he's been through so much shit, but I think having the powers he has is so cool and I love the relationship between Bran and his wolf Summer, and having such a special connection to your pet (or animals in general) must be awesome, right?!

9. What is your favorite book?

I LOVE all of them so much, but right now I probably like A dance with dragons best, because it focuses a bit more on politics and scheming than the others do.

10. Who is your Game of thrones crush?

"Love's not always wise, I've learned. It can lead us to great folly, but we follow our hearts...wherever they take us."

Like I mentioned before, I have such a big crush on Robb Stark. He's compared to most of the other characters truly nice and honorable, but still (mostly) smart enough to know what to do in precarious situations. And his age is also really close to mine, which makes having a crush on him a bit less weird (at least I hope so...).
(The quote above is one of my favorites, said by Robb Stark in CATELYN II, ASOS)

11. What are you most looking forward to in the upcoming book?

Everything! But what I'm currently probably most excited about is the storyline in Oldtown and the opportunity to learn more about the maesters and the citadel in general. I'm also really interested to see what's going to happen with the current situation in Meereen. And of course, I'm dying to see what's gonna happen especially in Dorne and King's Landing, and I'll be seriously so happy if we get to see the Manderlys again!

I hope I did fangirl enough to keep my mouth shut about A song of ice and fire for the next few weeks here and obviously hope you enjoyed this little tag. Have a nice day,

Leah

Baking inspired by books - Lemon cakes

I just want to say at the beginning of this post, I'm nothing close to a professional baker, but I simply love baking, so I thought I'll share this really easy and quick recipe with you, that reminded me so much of one of my most favorite book series. I hope you'll enjoy reading this and maybe you'll even give it a try!

"There's going to be lemon cakes and tea," Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria. "Why would you ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat lemon cakes with the queen?" (AGOT, Sansa I)

Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa could not manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them. She was wondering wether she might attempt a third when the king began to shout.(AGOT, Sansa II)


As every reader of the A song of ice and fire series by George R.R. Martin knows, Sansa Stark absolutely LOVES lemon cakes. The last time I ate lemon cake before reading these fantastic books was probably over five years ago, so I wanted to eat some and when I made them, I realized they taste amazing. They're really lemony and pretty moist (God, I hate that word) and just delicious. One small warning: the "frosting" (or whatever you wanna call it) is really sweet (and quite unhealthy), but since Sansa has such a sweet tooth, I'm sure she'd love it. The lemon cakes are probably not fancy enough to be similiar to those she ate in King's Landing, but I can definitely see her snacking on them with Sweetrobin in the Vale!

Ingredients:

Batter:                                                                     Frosting:
-200g butter                                                            -30g butter
-200g sugar                                                             -30g sugar
-4 eggs                                                                      -1 egg yolk
-1/2 lemon (1 TS lemon juice, lemon peel of half a lemon)                      -30 ml lemon juice
-2/3 teaspoon vanilla sugar/extract
- 200g flour
-1 pinch of baking powder

Instructions:
1. Preheat your oven to 175°C (Use the hot air function)
2. Stir your butter, then mix in your sugar and vanilla sugar/extract first and add the eggs one by one and mix everything together.
3. Add in your flour, baking powder, lemon juice and peel and stir until you have a creamy batter.
4. Put the batter in any kind of baking pan or mold. (I used really cute looking flower shaped silicon molds.)
5. Bake them for about 15-25 minutes. Make sure to take them out of the oven BEFORE they turn golden-brown. Let them cool for 20-30 minutes before you add any kind of glaze or frosting.

6. For the glaze, melt your butter, then add in your sugar in small portions and stirr until it's completely dissolved. 
7. Add in your egg yolk and place the container with the mixture over a pot with boiling water and let it sit there for at least 10 minutes to kill off possible sallmonella in the raw egg yolk.
8. Mix the mixture once it's cooled down a bit with as much powdered sugar as you like to create a pretty thick glaze. Spread it onto your lemon cakes, let it harden and enjoy! (Use some lemon peel to decorate and make them look extra fancy.)

(Just mix 1 teaspoon lemon juice with about 30g powdered sugar to create an even simpler, yet still delicious glaze for the lemon cakes.)

So I really hope you enjoyed this slightly different post and you understood all the steps! I won't share recipes often, but whenever a book inspires me to bake something specific, I'll probably post it here. Happy baking!

Leah