Christmas, snow and glögg

So I was supposed to make glögg again so that I had the correct quantity of spices but unfortunately mum and grandma drank what was left of the red wine.
Because of that you'll have to taste as you go but anyway here it is;

Swedish Glögg

4 servings
For about 2 dl red or white (the red is the most classic) wine you need

1 dl water
1 dl sugar
Peal from about half an orange
2 tsp ground clove or about 7 whole ones
2 small sticks of cinnamon broken into smaller pieces
1 tsp of vanilla (aroma or the real thing doesn't matter)
1 1/2 tsp of ground ginger
a little bit of mace

Put the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Ad the spices and boil until you have a relatively thick syrup.

Strain the syrup so that there isn't any bits of the spices left, pour it back into the saucepan and ad the wine, let everything come up to a boil.

Next part is optional but I think it gives the glögg an extra kick; take the glögg from the stove and ad 2 tbsp of gin (or vodka or any other strong booze you like), then you flambé it.

Serve hot with raisins and blanched almonds.

It taste best if you've been outside in the snow and are really cold, but the new trend here in Sweden is to drink it cold with an ice cube in it.

You can also replace the whine with apple juice to make an alcohol free version or just boil the wine until the alcohol has disappeared, but then you might want to make the syrup stronger or buy something called aromatic tincture (the pharmacists sell it).
The glögg can also be seasoned with saffron, lingonberries, chili, mandarin and more...

Tomorrow Herbert is coming home for the holiday and we're probably going to make some Christmas candy.
At the moment we're having trouble with the snow, we almost didn't make it outside today. There haven't been this much snow for a very long time and it's a bit daunting when the snow come halfway up the windows, I think that last night it came about 1 meter of snow.

We'll just have to wait to see what tomorrow brings...

yes i am procrastinating. it's my middle name.

ever had that "ohmygawd-i've-got-to-finish-this-rapport-i'm-suppodsed-to-hand-in-tomorrow-and-i've-been-procrastinating-for-a-month-i-need-some-serious-chocolatcake"-feeling? that's pretty much my day. so i thought i'd make some easypeasy chocolate spongecake with frosting. ha. i've got butter all over my kitchen floor, cause the pan leaked. when i took the cake out of the pan half of didn't come out, so the cake was crooked. the cream cheese fronsting tasted wierd, and daft as i am i added cocoa to it so it looked like... yeah. you know. adding sprinkles didn't help. dusted it with cocoa. didnt help. finally- choconut shavings gave the cake a sort of neat impression. but if you feel like making a chocolatcake i'd recomend using perhaps this: from annie or this from joy or if you can read swedish this one. am 100% sure they tase so much better than mine.

 

actually. it doesn't look to bad. the power of choconut. 

but it also makes me think of this site. unfortunalty it's in swedish, but oh so hilarious.

now, i'm going to continue writing and listening to this.

Teaser

Just to let you know I'm working on a new post, since it's winter and almost christmas I have developed a recipe for the swedish mulled wine called glögg that I'll post soon just a few more tweaks needed. And we're also getting a new guest-blogger, our mother, who will post a recipe on a chocolate mousse cake with pears.

And I do promise the post's will come soon.

winter winds

as lc said; sorry but i'm stuck in the woods. literally. no driverslicense and lousy bus-connections makes herbert all work and no play. too further spoil my return to civilization my hometown has been struck with a parasite in the drinking water so i'm not sure i want to risk giong home...

enough with the whining. it's a winter wonderland, on a clear day the temperature crawls down to below 20 celcius.

coconut-tops and even more biscotti- this time with chocolate

coconut-tops are a go-to cake in sweden, like spongecake or shortbread. i used this recipe.

oven 175 degrees celcius
50 g butter/margarine
2 eggs
1 dl granulated sugar
5,5 dl coconut shavings
1 tblsp white rum

 

chocolate 70%

melt the butter and stir in with the rest of the ingredients. let the batter rest for about 10 min. by using two teaspoons (or tablespoons) distribute the batter on a bakingparchment, making little top-shapes. bake for 15 minutes in the middle of the oven. let the cakes cool in the fridge. when they're cool melt some chocolate and dip the bottom (and perhaps on top?) in chocolate.

chocolate-biscotti

 oven 225 degrees

100g softened butter/margarine

1 dl granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 dl chopped almonds

0,5 dl cocoa powder

2 tblsp vanillasugar

3,5 dl flour

1 tsp bakingpowder

beat butter and sugar "fluffy" with a electrical blender (yeah, i know. wierd sentence but you know what i mean). mix in the rest of the ingredients and let rest in the fridge. divide the batter in three parts and make three rolls. place on bakingsheet with parchment and bake for about 10 min. while still warm, cut diagonal pieces about 1-2 wide. let dry in a 100 degree oven for aprox 1 hour. now i was to impatient and didn't let my biscotti dry enough so they where kind of chewy in the middle... so a word of wisdom- if the cakes are still soft, let them dry a bit longer. also, i think mixing in chocolat chips in the batter whould be kinda wonderful. just sayin'.

The Difference

So it's a week since I should have posted this, sorry but I'm a incorrigible time optimist.
If you're wondering whats been up I'll post some pictures at the end of this post, but now moving on to the more important things.





Here in Sweden we usually don't measure with cups when baking, as you might have noticed that in most of the recipes we've posted we use dl.
So why am I bringing this up, well when I first started baking with recipes written in English I didn't know how to translate the measurements but thankfully my mother had a formula on how to change cups into dl. Later on my lovely sister bought me a selection of cup measurements so now I can just use them.

So now I'm gonna share;
1 dl equals 100 ml
1 cup equals 250 ml which is equal to 2 1/2 dl
1/2 cup equals 125 ml which is 1 1/4 dl

And so on...

(hi, herbert here. i'm crashing lc's post. if you are lazy like me and can't be bothered with mental arithmetic (headcounting) or whatever here's a nifty link to a converter..)
Had to change Herberts spelling we do NOT count heads here in Sweden, anymore anyway.

Now on to the recipe I promised:

Chocolate cheesecake brownie

Brownie
150 g butter
1 dl cocoa
3 egg
3 dl caster sugar
2,5 dl flour
1 tsp baking powder
about 50 g dark chocolate
a handful of chopped almonds

Cheesecake
200 g cream cheese
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Makes about 20

Start with making the brownie;

1. Melt butter and stir in chocolate and cocoa, leave to cool
2. Meanwhile whisk eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Mix the baking powder with the flour and fold into the egg batter along with the chocolate butter and almonds. (if you want to you can ad a bit more chopped chocolate at this point)

Next, the cheesecake;
4. Stir cream cheese together with egg yolk, sugar and vanilla extract.
5. Line a baking tin with oven paper and pour in the brownie mixture.
6. Spread the cheesecake mixture on top of the brownie mixture and create patterns with the help of a knife or a fork.

7. Bake the cake in the lower part of the oven for about 30 minutes. (It should be sticky but not liquid)
8. Let the cake cool and then cut it into squares.

This is a picture of my second attempt of making macarons, I failed again so no recipe on those...


At November 23 this was not an unusual sight on the island and it got worse...



Last Wednesday the snowing started and it has yet to stop...





The new mittens I bought, they are really warm...


Me with Christmas lighting int the background...

Been sick

Hi everyone
Really sorry that I haven't posted anything in awhile, at the moment I'm getting vaccinated for my allergies and the injections are making me really sick but I'm working on a post with "translation" between cups and dl, it also contains a recipe on cheesecake-brownies and I'll try to get it out there at the latest on Sunday.
The reason for Herberts absence is mainly because she is stuck in the wild doing an internship, but she has promised to post something soon.

Hope you'll forgive us.

Red velvet cupcake with marshmallow frosting

So unfortunately we didn't go to the southern part of the island so there aren't any photos.
But I have something else for you...

Yesterday was Halloween (if my calender is right) however here in Sweden Halloween is a fairly new holiday, we have our own holiday (which is today 1st of November) where we celebrate or rather remember those who has died.
This day is (by my own translation) called all saints day or allsaints but all hallows eve is probably more correct grammatically but because there is a difference between the two days here I don't want to confuse or mix them up.

Since this day is quite a somber day, a day where you reflect on death and remember and miss those you have lost, there aren't any trick or treat, play or masquerades. You go to the graveyard and light a candle for someones soul.

I believe this is the reason for our "adoption" of Halloween, we have seen how much fun it looks like and want a part of it (it doesn't hurt that the commerce profits from it either).
That's why last year my door got egged because I had the wrong day and therefor no candy in the house...

Now don't go feel sorry for us, even though Halloween is new we get our turn to dress up and get candy at Easter. When I was little (which is not so long ago) we used to dress up as Easter witch, which is not a perfect translation but near enough, or in the boys case as an Easter man. (If you want to see how they look, Google påskkärring and påskgubbe for pictures.) This tradition has unfortunately dwindled in favor for Halloween.

Anywho, to get back from that sidetrack; I got very inspired by Annie's eats red velvet cupcakes and What the fruitcake?!s marshmallow frosting so I decided to make some cupcakes (I wanted to do something with Halloween theme, but couldn't be bothered in the end)

Red velvet cupcake with Marshmallow frosting

For the cupcakes you'll need

2 eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
150 g melted butter or margarine
1 tsp white vinegar
2 1/4 cups cake flour (if you don't have this just take normal flour and ad 2 1/2 tsp baking powder)
4 tbs cocoa powder
1 cup buttermilk (if you like I have problem finding buttermilk, do like this: pour 1 tbs lemon juice in a 1 cup measurement and top with milk to the 1 cup line and let rest for 2 minutes)
1 tsp vanilla
and red food coloring

Put the oven on 175° C.

Beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy ad the butter milk and then the dry ingredients (you should have sifted those).

Ad the mealted butter, vinegar and the food coloring mix until the batter is smoth.

Put out 22 cupcake mould's and fill them up to 2/3. (because I've changed the recipe some the batter probably won't make 22 but put them out just in case)

Bake in the middle of the oven for 10 - 15 minutes.

While the cupcakes cool, make the marshmallow frosting;
Caution, this recipe is quite large only half of it will be needed for the cupcakes so if you don't want to make meringue just half the recipe.

4 egg whites
2 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
Blue food coloring (how much depends on how blue you want your frosting)

Boil water, sugar and coloring until it forms a thick, colorless syrup, this takes about 5 minutes and the syrup should have the temperature 115° C, take it of the heat.
Beat the egg whites until soft peaks appear.
While still beating slowly pour the syrup in a thin jet into the eggs. Beat until thick and glossy.

Whit a piping bag, pip the frosting onto the cupcakes and ad sprinkles or other decorations if you wish.

help. i need somebody. help.

ok. so this is a specialpost. i need your advise. when i've been browsing my local charityshop i've found this skillet. now if it were a ordinary skillet there whouldn't be a ploblem. but this one has got me puzzled. i have no idea what it is and i'm curious. it looks like this:

but it has a lid that folds over the top. the pan in the picture i a doughnutpan (i got one so i am going to make danish aepleskiver sometimes soon) but the other one.. is that also a doughnut pan? or something else? got any ideas? (also- should i buy it?)

mid-week pile-ups

to make up for my lack of wid-week recipes here's a couple of ideas:

 

veggie sandwich

 with ovenroasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, beetroot, onion, garlic) that i reheated in a pan with a little oil. just befor serving add some frosen peas into the pan and toast two pieces of bread. mix feta-cheese whith sourcream to make a thick dressing, add a squirt of lemon juice. season whith blackpepper.

 

kindeybean-carrots

 boil wheatberry or bulgur/couscous according to the directions on the packet. peel a couple of carrots and slice into thin slices. slice a leek and a clove of galic. add oil into a pot, fry the leek and garlic til soft. add the carrot. if may feel wierd to fry carrot but this is similar to wook. stirr a few times then cover with a lid. still on a medium-high temperature. stirr now and then until the carrots have a good texture, add kidneybeans and heat them. serve with the wheat and perhaps some feta? or a drizzle of balsamicvinegar?

 

cauliflowersoup

peel four large potatoes and cut into cubes/slices. chop up some onion and a clove of garlic. fry the onions with some oil in a pot. when soft add the potatoes and aprox. 1-1,5 liter water. add 0.5 dl red lentils and one broth-cube. season with chilipowder or garam masala or currypowder. boil until the potatoes are almost done. add some frozen cauliflower and some kidneybeans. serve.

biscotti

it's cold, it's autumn, i drink ridicullus amounts of tea. (also- i'm hungover and bored and trying to avoid studying for my practical exam tomorrow) so i made biscotti. or rather italian almond biscotti with lavender. yum!

n.b: these biscuits comes with a warning- they are very hard. if you do not have dentures like jaws, dunk these babies in tea or hot chocolate (or coffee although tea is the perfekt match..)

lavender biscotti
oven 175 degrees celcius

200 grams coarsly chopped almonds
3 eggs
3 dl sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
1 pinch salt
the zest of one lemon
6,5-7 dl wheatflour
1 teasp. baking powder

Seperate the yolk from the eggwhites, beat the whites and the salt to a hard foam (think meringue). stirr the yolk, sugar and vanillasugar togeather. fold the two batters together, and add the zest and almonds. mix flour and bakingpowder and blend into the eggbatter. work together to make a dough. divide the dough into two, form a roll and place on a oiled bakingsheet. bake for 35 minutes. cut into 1 cm wide slices. bake an additional 15 minutes, 150 degrees.

 

if wanted dipp on end of the cookies in melted chocolate- although this makes the dipping-part of a liiittle complicated. chocolate-tea is... diffenent..

Another week gone by

So soon it's a new weekend, and maybe just maybe I'll have something new for you.
Tomorrow we'll go down to the southern part of the island (I think) and meet up with the family and I'm not sure but I might bake something to take whit us.
Anyhow I'll bring the camera and take some pictures to post, until then hang in there.








Just saw a funny thing apparently it's 8 am now when here in Sweden it's just gotten dark and is 17.45 hmm

Fruit, fruit, fruit

Herbert is right: I'm on the bender! No not really, but I have not had the energy to do anything, but I intend to rectify that.

Be prepared for a long post... But I also promise allot of pictures!

First out is a;

Fig, plum and apple pie

You'll need enough puff pastry to cover the dish your using (I don't see why it's necessary to make your it when the store bought is so good)
4 plums divided and tossed in flour (to help soak up the excess moisture)
4 figs cut in quarters
1 tart apple
A hand-full of almonds chopped
2 eggs
1 1/2 dl caster sugar
1 tbs flour



Now first thing to do, (after you put the oven on 175 °C) is to cover the dish with the pastry, then you toss in the fruit in any order you want (I put the figs on top).
When this is done you whisk the eggs and sugar until fluffy, stir in flour and almonds into the eggs. And then pour it onto the fruits, bake in the lower part of the oven for about 15 min check so that the filling is still. Serve with custard or vanilla ice cream.



I know that I've been bugging you about the fact that autumn has arrived in our cold country, but that's just because here on my little island the autumn colors and the cosy feeling doesn't last long (almost all of the wonderful leaves are gone and it rains almost every day).
The other week however I was out on a walk in the forest and took these pictures:







Getting on with the recipes;

Poached William pears

One of our grocary stores had a really great price on William pears so we bought 4 kg of them, 1 kg to eat straight as they were and the rest to poach because it's a great way to take care of fruit and here is how you do it;



3 kg William pears (you can use other pears as well but I prefer William because of the taste and texture)
2 l water
1 3/4 l caster sugar
5-6 pieces of fresh ginger (or as much as you like, I think I had a bit more ginger than that)
2-3 star anise
1 vanilla pod
and some lemon juice

Boil water, sugar, ginger, lemon and spices until the sugar is dissolved.
Peal the pears, half and pit them (you can either peal the pears before you start the syrup and out them in lemon juice so that they don't become brown or you can take the saucepan from the heat and put the pears in as they are ready).
Bring the syrup and pears up to a boil and let them simmer for about 15-25 minutes depending on the size, ripeness and kind of pear.

Let the pear cool of in the syrup over night or over the day depending on when you get started (it's good if you can leave them in for about 8 hours) then put the pears with some of the syrup in the freezer I portioned them to 4 pear halves per bag and enough syrup to keep them covered.



So what can you do with the poached pears?
Well anything you want, what do say about a Xantésoufflé with a pear compote?



Xantésoufflé with pear compote

55 g caster sugar and some extra for the soufflé form
3 large eggs divided into whites and yolks
1 large egg
1 large egg white
4 tbs flour
3 dl milk
1 tsp vanilla essences
2 1/2 tbs Xanté or any other pear liqueur
butter for the form

And about 10 poached pear halves

Put the oven to 180 °C.

Whisk together sugar, 1 whole egg, 1 egg yolk, flour, milk and vanilla in a saucepan and gently bring it to a boil (stir the whole time) stir until it makes a thick sauce.
Take the pan from the heat and one at a time stir in the rest of the egg yolks, let the mixture cool down some then add the liqueur.

Whisk the egg whites until it forms a stiff foam, when they are firm enough take some of the egg whites and ad to the liqueur batter then incorporate the rest of the egg whites to the batter gently (turn them in, do NOT whisk).

Butter a souffléform that will hold 1 3/4 l and powder it with sugar (this will help the soufflé to rise and not get caught in the form). Cut the pears into little bits and put them in the bottom of the form and pour some of the syrup on them.

When this is done you pour the soufflé batter over the pears and bake the soufflé for about 45 minutes or until it is raised and golden-brown.

An important thing to remember when you make a soufflé: DO NOT OPEN THE OVENHATCH! That will make the soufflé implode!



And another reason for not posting is that my cat has been sick, first he had stomach problems and now he has a wound on his paw so he must wear this:





and let me tell you he's not happy about it, at all!

Well that's it for this time promise I'll be better with the posts from now on.

chocolatecake with tequila-buttercream

i've been reading (it think) a lot about the combination chocolate and tequila on blog (altough a quick google-search made me think i've imagined it) but i'd thought i'v give it a try, plus i only had tequila and flavoured vodka at home so i went with the first. i tweaked the original recipe since i wanted the texture of a spongecake but with chocolat, so i replaced some of the flour with cocoapowder, but i must have under-baked it because the cake deflated. (could also be a result of accidentally slamming the ovendoor shut. oups)

it was about here i decided to use buttercream to cover up my sagging cake. so, buttercream with tequila it was (the recipe for that i just made up- if you have a buttercream you like, use that, otherwise this one was pretty foolprof)

chocolate-spongecake 

oven 175 degrees c.
50-75g margarine or butter
2 eggs

2 dl sugar
2,5 dl flour
0.5 dl cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tps vanilla sugar
1 dl cold water

butter and bread a baking pan, aprox. 1 1/2 l.

melt the butter and let it cool. beat the eggs and sugar together "until it's white"- light and fluffy-ish. mix the flour, cocoa, baking powder and vanilla sugar. stir the mixture into the eggbatter. add the butter and the fluid. stir until the batter is smooth and evenly mixed. pour into the pan.

bake for 40-50 minutes (or until it's done) in the lower part of the oven at 175 degrees celcius.*


this is how it looked when i took it out of the pan.not quite done in the middle.

buttercream
100g butter
1-1,5 dl confectioner's sugar
1eggyolk
2-3 tsp tequila

since i don't have an electical mixer i whisked the butter over a pan of simmering water, making it really easy to mix everything. so mix the butter with the sugar, yolk and tequila to taste. i used 3 tsp but 2 tsp whould also have sufficed. also 1,5 dl sugar makes the cream rather sweet so start with 1 and taste. in sweden we don't really have any problem with salmonella so for me using raw egg isn't a problem, but if you are there are probably recipes for buttercream out there without egg.

cut two slices of the cake, spread a layer of buttercream inbetween and on top and add some sprinkles if wanted.

found a version on the back of the packet of sugar for cupcakes; same batter (milk instead of water, heated with the butter) with higher temperature, 225 d., for 10 min, this makes 20 avrage sized cupcakes. also if you want to make a standard spongecake without the cocoa, try using cordial, elderberry is a classic in our home, instead of just water or add juce from half a lemon or orange.

been obsessing over these cupcakes from a café in town, when lc told me she'd seen them on bakerella and sure enough, the cupcakes my café called mums-mums cupcakes (mums-mums is a swedish kind of pastry/candy) are called hi-hat and are apparently all rage right now so i tracked down the recipe from martha stewart, eventhough that lady really scares me. so now i can make my own hi-hat. nah. can't be botherd.

images below from bakerella:

 

wow- this post is pretty long but on final thing: this pretty blog
just look at these pictures!

oh. now i'm hungry again.

i'm back!

ok, so apparently lc on the bender and i've been eaten by a runaway sourdough judging from the last weeks (?) lack of posts. nah, not really. what lc's been doing/eating i don't know, but the only explanation i can give for myself is very booring food and not bothering enough about anything to update anything (blog, facebook, emails), but im here now and boy do i have something yummy to share! it's BREAD! (sorry. i know you're probably fed up with our bread by now, but i like baking bread and the cake i made was a flunk. so bread it is)

sourdough:
day 1: mix 3/4 dl flour with 0,5 dl water, cover with cling/plastic wrap and keep in roomtemperature and draught free.
day 3: stirr in 2 dl flour and 1,5 dl water
day 5: remove dough so 1 dl remain (not to sure about this, 'caus i accidentaly whisked the dough before and it roughly made 1 dl so i didn't bother with this)
day 6: ready for use!

levain-bread

makes one loaf

5 dl cold water, but not ice cold.
10 dl wheatflour
1 dl rye flour
2dl sourdough
1 tblsp salt
*
mix everything but the salt together and knead for ten minutes (keep the workbench/table floured since the dough, though it's very easy to work, tends to stick), then add the salt and knead another minute.

oil a pan about twice the size of the dough, add the dough and let rise for one hour.

fold in the edges of the dough and gently flatten the top of the dough, to slightly flatten it. let it rise to aprox. dubble size, which can take from 45 minutes to 2 hours, depending on temperature and dough (also the weather can influence the rise of the dough)

carefully turn the dough unto a bakingsheet with parchment and sift flour over. bake for 30 minutes in the lower part of the oven. to make sure it's done, remove from the sheet, turn upside down and knock at the bottom of the loaf. if it sounds hollow, the bread is done!

*i made some alterations to the original recipe like removing 10 gram of yeast, since i felt it was redundant, also for variation, try increasing the amount of rye, deducting from the wheatflour or add spices such as carawayseed, aniseed and fennelseed- classic breadseasoning

a quicker sourdough

this is a bread i made from a recipe similar to the one lc published but not the same... 
makes two loaves.

sourdough
25 g yeast
1,5 dl water
1,5 dl sifted rye-flour

day 2
3,5 dl water
2 tblsp oil or melted butter
0,5 tblsp salt
aprox. 12 dl sifted rye-flour

use lc directions for the 2:nd variety, altough her bread were prettier than mine.. also a little tip:
if you're not able to bake both loaves at the same time, and can't fit the second loaf in the fridge (and thereby making it rise slower) DON'T make the loaves at the same time, simply make one and let the other rest in the bowl, and shape into a loaf when you're baking the first. otherwise the second will over-rise and become flat.