Liquorice ice cream

You should really consider to make your own liquorice ice cream, if you often are disappointed, when buying ice cream with liquorice ice, where the taste of liquorice many times to light. Making your liquorice ice cream means, that you can control the level of liquorice added into the ice cream.

With a total of 5 tablespoons of liquorice powder, this ice cream has plenty of liquorice taste, so if you worry about your blood pressure, you should reduce the amount of added liquorice powder. I have previously been sharing a recipe on home-made liquorice ice cream with you.

If you are not Danish or Scandinavian, DO NOT make this ice cream, as the taste will scare the hell out of you !!!

Hopefully I can get started again on my ambition regarding making ice cream on much more regular basic, perhaps monthly ice cream production is too ambitious, but making ice cream every second month would also be OK in my opinion.

If you have any idea, what type of ice cream I should create next time, please feel free to share your suggestion with me :-)

UPDATE:
January 27 2015, this recipe was used for the blog challenge "Cooking with herbs" having focus on store cupboards and essentials as theme for January 2015, as liquorice both as syrups (sweet & salty versions) and as powder is cupboard essentials in a Danish kitchen :-)


Liquorice ice cream:

• 630 g whole milk, 3-3.5% fat
• 39 g skimmed milk powder
• 96 g sugar
• 32 g glucose syrup as powder
• 6 g ice cream stabiliser
• 1 tablespoon raw liquorice powder
• 4 tablespoons liquorice powder

1. Dry-mix all the powder ingredients. Pout them into the milk, as the milk is whipped.
2. Pour the milk base into the a cooking pot.
3. Heat the ice cream mix over medium heat until hot, but not boiling.
4. Pour the ice cream mix into a plastic container with a lid on.
5. Cool down the ice cream mix in the refrigerator, let the mix stand for minimum 4 hours or night over.
6. Whip the ice cream mix prior to freezing it.
7. Pour the mix into the ice cream machine and freeze it into ice cream, which takes around 30-40 minutes.
8. Store the ice cream in the freezer.

Liquorice Fudge

After I have found out how to make great tasting caramels, I have wanted to expand my candy creation skills, so when I saw this recipe on hjemmelavet lakrids fudge a la "Maden i mit liv", I decided to have a go on this fudge.

For the whipping part after the cooking I decided to team up with my very good kitchen help. You could also use a basic electrical beater or whip the fudge by hand, if you need to exercise during this calorie rich season.

UPDATE:
January 27 2015, this recipe was used for the blog challenge "Cooking with herbs" having focus on store cupboards and essentials as theme for January 2015, as liquorice both as syrups (sweet & salty versions) and as powder is cupboard essentials in a Danish kitchen :-)


Liquorice fudge:

• 1 tin of 397 g sweetened condensed milk
• 450 g sugar
• 115 g butter
• 150 g milk
• 3 teaspoon liquorice powder
• 1 teaspoon raw liquorice powder

1. Mix the condensed milk, sugar, butter and milk together in a large saucepan. Boil up this mass, while you stir regular. Cook the mass up to 115'C. 
2. Pour the fudge mass in a whipping bowl and add in the liquorice powders. Whip the fudge mass on speed 2 for 10 minutes.
3. Cover a baking form with baking paper.
4. Fill the fudge mass into this form.
5. Let the mass cool down
6. When the fudge is firm enough, cut it into squares of 2 x 2 cm each
7. Store the fudge in an airtight container.

Fredsted lakrids te for my tea pot 30

I have got this liquorice tea from Fredsted by my cousin in connection with PINK afternoon tea 2014. Now there was room among the daily teas, so I have taken this tea into rotation. My cousin knows my attraction towards liquorice, so this liquorice tea from Fredsted is very fitting to me.

The Fredsted liquorice tea is made from black tea with addition of 1.5% liquorice flavour. The flavour profile is for sure liquorice, however, the liquorice taste is not over the top in any way. The taste is good, but I would buy another type of liquorice flavour tea myself, as I am expecting much more liquorice flavour from a liquorice tea. The size of the tea leafs is actually having a quiet big size.

Best Bread of the World - Verdens Bedste Brød

For the annual Christmas lunch for The Wonderful Women, where we enjoyed a cheese tapas I decided to bake the bread myself. As one of the bread I choose Best Bread of the World (Verdens bedste brød. This bread became very popular 2 years ago out here in blog land, but I first around baking it now. Good thing takes it´s time !

I also need to get hold of a cast iron cooking pot with a stain less steal knob to bake this bread in. If your present cast iron cooking pot has a phenolic knob, this knob can not withstand the very high temperature during baking. So now I have Le Creuset cast iron cooking (with phenolic knob) for plain cooking and a Pyrex cast iron cooking pot wih stain less knob for bread baking.

This bread both tastes and looks fantastic. And it looks like a bread brought at an Italian baker. So this bread is really a show-off, which is so very, very easy to bake. Actaully you are not even kneading the dough at all.

Best Bread of the World - Verdens Bedste brød: - 1 bread

• 600 g water
• 5 g fresh yeast
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoon honey
• 625 g wheat flour (550 g wheat flour and 75 g whole grain wheat flour)
• oatflakes

1. Stir yeast and water together in a big mixing bowl. Add salt, honey and flour and stir with a cooking spoon. 
2. Rise the dough to rise at room temperature overnight - minimum 12 hours.
3. Take the dough out off the mixing bowl, move 1/3 of the dough in over the rest of the dough, keep repeating this process untill you have a small size of the dough.
4. Clean the mixing bowl for any dough leftovers.
5. Place the dough again in a clean miing bowl, ket is rise again for 2 hours.
6. Heat up the cast iron cooking pot incl. lid on a rack in the lower part of the oven at 250°C (fan oven) for ½ hour.
7. Remove the hot cast iron cooking from the oven, remove the lid. Cover the bottom of the cooking pot with oat flakes, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to firm to the surface.
8. Place the dough in the hot cast iron cooking pot, put the lid back on. Place the cooking pot in the lower part of the oven, let it bake at 250°C for 30 minutes.
9. Remove the lid from the cast iron cooking pot, and let the bread bake at 250°C for another 15 minutes. 
10. Let the bread cold down on the cast iron cooking pot for 30 minutes. before it is taken out.

Pomegranate Aperitif

Lets get started on the New Year with a sparkling cocktail :-)

For the annual Christmas lunch for "The Wonderful Women"´we also need a sparkling cocktail to start of with. Either serving a glass of "plain" sparkling wine or a cocktail is for me an excellent way of saying welcome to my guests. So when I saw this recipe on Pomegranate Aperitif in the monthly magazine "Samvirke", issue December 2014, I knew at once, that this should be welcoming cocktail for my lovely girl friends due to the use of sparkling wine and pomegranate, which really is in season now. And on top the pomegranate juice is having such an excellent red colour, which was fitting perfect into the Christmas season !

You will need 1 big pomegranate in order to make 4 of these drinks, as it is a combination of both pomegranate juice and pomegranate kernels. I started off by taking 8 tablespoons pomegranate, which were needed for decoration, before I used my new best friend the juicer to make freshly pressed pomegranate juice. The pomegranate juice can be replaced by cranberry juice.

Pomegranate Aperitif: - 1 cocktail

• 2 cl pomegranate juice
• 2 cl gin
• 2 tablespoons pomegranate kernels
• sparkling wine

1. Pour pomegranate juice, gin and pomegranate kernel into a champagne glass.
2. Fill the remaining of the glass up with sparkling wine.
3. Cheers :-)

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year
Goodbye to 2014 & Welcome to 2015

to all of you from Hannibal the Cat and I. We hope you will get an exciting, promising and healthy New Year here in 2015 with plenty of sunshine, some white snow to bring some light into a dark Winter season and less wind during the rowing season !!!

The biggest thing for me and my little kitchen here in 2014 has for sure been the replacement of the old HTH kitchen with a brand new Svane kitchen incl. new tiles on the floor and new white goods.
From the end of October to mid November I had to live out any kitchen at all.
However, it has been one of my best decisions ever to invest money in a new kitchen as I spend so much of my free time here.
With the amount of light available make it an inviting place to be even during the dark evening of Winter time, as I can actually see, what I am doing.
The tiles for the wall still needs to be finished, so they can be put up. This will be done here in first part of 2015.

In July I participated in a jam competition, where my jam on apricot jam with lavender became one of the five best home-made Danish jams, so I have started to think of myself as a "jam createur" :-)



I have also got a new best kitchen friend the Juicer as company Christmas present, which I am really looking forward to make any excellent tasting juice from fruit and vegetable in the coming future. In order to get me started, I have signed up for JuiceSelvKasse as a frequent weekly box from Årstiderne.








Well my way of baking through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt" has been moving slower during 2014, where I managed to bake a total of 2 recipes. If I maintain this baking speed during 2015, I will be finished baking in around 20 years time, around the time, when I will be retiring from work !!!!  Could be that 2015 will bring more baking momentum.

Again 2014 was a year, where I used my baking capabilities for some fund raising activities involving both work colleagues and friends turning the month of October into PINK month (PINK afternoon tea 2014) collecting an amazing 797 DKK to support the fight against breast cancer. 2015 will be bringing similar activities in the Autumn month of October.




As usual I am still participating in the monthly virtual tea table called Tea Time Treats hosted by two food bloggers in the UK. It is great fun for me to work the various theme selected for these monthly tea tables. And I will continue to participate in these monthly virtual tea tables here in 2015, as it bringing me a lot of inspiration to both me and my little kitchen.


As usual the month of December has been a very, very busy month for me in my kitchen, as I am working on selecting interesting Christmas recipes as well as actually making the Christmas stuff, so I can share an daily blog post with a Christmas recipe with you in the count down for Christmas !!! For me this process is a little bit like mood therapy, a way of keeping up my mood during a long, dark, gray and rainy Winter season, as it keep me busy inside of hiding under my duvet like a little sleepy brown bear !!! So therefore I will already now promise, that you will get Christmas Calender again in 2014 :-) Traditionally I invited various friends living in the area of Vejle for a gløgg evening, so they can taste some of my Christmas creations.


As regular theme blog posts during every single month I have shared the following type of blog posts with you:

• blog introduction to each month with focus on a specific theme (starter in September 2013)
• recipe on cocktail and drinks (started in 2011) - been less regular in 2014 - so room for improvement here in 2015
• contribution to Tea Time Treat (started in December 2012)
• recipe on ice cream (started in October 2013) - quiet seldom in 2014 - so plenty of room for improvement in 2015

So how did I get get along with my TO-DO-LIST of 2014 ??? Well I managed to do 50% of my list, which means I will have some interesting thing to do here in 2015 :-)

      TO DO LIST 2014:

• making rye bread from a real sour dough - DONE
• collection of sloe during Autumn 2014, so I can make my own sloe gin
• collection of ramson during Spring 2014 - DONE
• collection of elderberry during Autumn 2014
• making macaroons
• making caramels, which is NOT floating together during storage - DONE
• making a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2014
• making my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2014
• making mince meat for Christmas 2014 - DONE
• baking mohn back (poppey seed) cake - DONE

Coming to the end of this very long blog text I would like to share a "TO DO" list with you of the things, which I would like work with in my kitchen during 2015:

     TO DO LIST 2015:

• collect sloe during Autumn 2015, so I can make my own sloe gin
• collect elderberry during Autumn 2015
• make macaroons
• make a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2015
• make my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2015
• work with more sugar candy type such as nougat and marshmallows
• make more ice cream
• enjoy more drinks and cocktail
• enjoy home-made juices from both juice and vegetable
• use the herbs from my kitchen garden more actively

So let´s how many of these "TO DO" points, which I managed to cross during the brand new year of 2015, at least I have 362 days in front of me to do something about it :-)

Kitchen status on 2014:

Review day: 1 January 2015
Recipes baked during 2014 from "Hjemmebagt": 2 (34 accomplished at 31 December 2014)
Amount of new cooking books in my kitchen: 19 new cooking book (77 books at end of 2014)
Page views in 2014: 121.179 (total page views of 187.074 at 31st December 2014)
Publish posts in 2014: 239 posts (total posts of 985 at 31st December 2014)

Top 10 of the most popular blog posts published during 2014:

1. Blood orange jam - published 6 March 2014
2. Hindbærsnitter "raspberry cutting" a la Mette Blomsterberg - published 23 March 2014
3. Knitted plaid - published 12 January 2014 
4. Knitted plaid after 4 weeks of knitting - published 8 February 2014
5. Tapas menu from Hotel Hedegaarden, Vejle - published 18 March 2014
6. Walnut cream cake a la Svinkløv Badehotel- published 8 June 2014
7. Cake lunch at conditoriet La Glace - published 14 July 2014
8. Stressful afternoon tea at Perch Aarhus - published 7 July 2014
9. Barbecue evening of 2014 - published 4 August 2014
10. Burger at Fur Strand Hotel - published 29 June 2014

The last meal !!! of 2014

Moving from 2014 into 2015 was done in the good company of my good friends living in Horsens, while we enjoyed a 4 course "take - away" New Year´s menu from Le Gateau.

The food was very, very easy to prepare, and were delivered with preparation instruction.

The first starter was named "Hummer & Herbs" and took the shape of light creamy lobster bisque with herb / black truffle pesto with freshly baked baguette. The lobster bisque was very creamy with a great taste. 

The second starter came along with the name of "Champagne & Halibut". The halibut filet had been steamed in champagne. The fish was when served a wonderful creamy champagne cream sauce,
watercress pesto and some crispy rye bread chips. The sauce was so excellent, so we used the baguette left-over to soak every single drop of this sauce.

The name for the main course was "Calf & Hazelnut" and consisted of tournedos cut from Danish veal tenderloin. The meat was served several items in form of baked tomatoes with pine needles (final use of the Christmas tree ?), red onion marmalade and beetroot / raspberry puree and finally 
toasted hazelnut / potato duchesse and strong red wine sauce. The combination of beetroot and raspberry worked perfect, as the fresh of the raspberry covered any earth taste, which many times is the case, when eating beetroot. 

As we did not  have any room left for ice cream, when we some of us meet up for traditional Christmas lunch, we decided to have two desserts as well during the last meal of 2014. The first dessert was therefore nougat ice cream, liquorice ice cream and freshly baked liquorice marzipan cake (kransekage).

The second dessert was called "Dessert Plate". And it was actually too much cake being a part of 4 course menu ! The first cake was forest fruit mousse with soft caramel core and a crispy base. The second cake was a chocolate praline cake with Grand Cru chocolate ganache and crunchy chocolate with dried forest berries. And the final little thing was home-made raspberry marshmallow, The two cakes were served upon forest fruit syrup.

For the two starters and main course the amount of food were perfect adjusted. However, the dessert plate was too big and over-whelming. Here just one cake would have been OK in food amount.

The final part of the New Year´s menu was a piece of marzipan cake, which we actually did not managed to eat, as we were all very full after this last meal. So I still have my piece of marzipan cake, which I will enjoy later today.

In total I ended to with paying approx 53 € for the entire great tasting menu incl the almond cake for the actual transition from 2013 to 2014 excl. wine. I will give this New Year menu 5 stars.