Since moving to our new home (well an old home recently renovated in a big way), I have been enjoying the solitude and serenity of living on a rural road where the only cars that travel down it are those associated with our farm.

I love to look out the front windows and admire our surroundings while watching the seasonal transition – the grass is greening up, the crocus and daffodils are blooming, soon enough the peonies will be here, and plenty of woodland creatures scampering about. I will soon move my herb garden from our old house and add to that a sizeable vegetable garden. There are even two pairs of beautiful cardinals fluttering around.

While all of this I am sure sounds lovely, as of late, there is something that is regularly shattering my springtime mood. For about a month, every morning at sunrise, sometime between 6 and 6:30, two female cardinals take turns attacking our south and east facing bedroom windows. While I am typically an early riser, this nature inspired alarm clock is getting VERY old (especially since our otherwise sleep-through-the-night-baby has had a cold and been up every night further reducing my slumber).

My rational brain knows that those female cardinals are just “protecting” the nest they likely have stashed somewhere, but my patience is wearing thin. While surfing the net for a cure to this ongoing annoyance, I came across many anecdotes and a few old wives’ tales. Birds pecking on the windows are “visitors from heaven.” In the beginning, this was sort of a tender and sweet thought – perhaps I was waking up to my grandparents dropping by to check out how we have updated the home that they originally built, or maybe my cousin was dropping by to celebrate an early birthday, however, like family that has outstayed their welcome, I am done with this kind of sunrise visiting.

In another account, birds batting the windows should be interpreted as a sign of change, and while I welcome change with open arms, enough signaling already. Along with the Google search of this irritating noise of cardinals at dawn, I even came across two recipes that I couldn’t resist trying – a cocktail made with vodka from the St. Louis distillery, Cardinal Sin, and a feather light cake from Vienna called Kardinalschnitten. Maybe enjoying both of them in large doses will even help me sleep through the noise of all of those pecks.

Cheers ya’ll to springtime visitors and signs of change!

Kardinalschnitten (Cardinal Slices)

Ingredients

For the meringue:

• 7 egg whites
• 150 g granulated sugar

For the sponge biscuit:

• 5 egg yolks
• 2 eggs
• 70 g granulated sugar
• 1 vanilla pod (scrape the pulp out)
• 1/2 lemon (untreated, grated peel)
• 80 g flour
• icing sugar (for sprinkling)

For the creme:

• 500 g double cream
• 1 vanilla pod (scrape the pulp out)
• 1 pack of cream stiffener
• 50 g icing sugar
• red currant or cranberry jam

Directions

Whisk egg white with granulated sugar to form a stiff mixture. Line a baking tray with baking paper and pipe 4×3 stripes allowing enough space for a biscuit stripe in between (the recipe results to slices). If you do not have room for the fourth stripe, use another baking tray.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F/160 degrees C.

To make the biscuit sponge, beat the egg yolks, eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla pulp and grated lemon peel until frothy. Then gradually fold in the flour.

Spoon the mixture into a piping bag and then pipe a sponge stripe between each meringue stripe. Sprinkle a little icing sugar over this with a sieve and bake in a preheated oven for approximately 25 minutes.

To make the creme, beat double cream with vanilla pulp and cream stiffener and add the icing sugar.

Spread one meringue/biscuit stripe with red currant jam and then spread the cream mixture over this. Place the second stripe on top, placing carefully on the creme with the best side facing upward.

Repeat with both other stripes and then sprinkle the cardinal slice with sugar.