Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 7 - Christmas Yogurt

Taking taste inspiration from the very seasonal dessert ris a la mande I wanted to transfer the use of cherry sauce and blanched almonds into a breakfast treat serving with together with Greek yogurt.

Christmas Yogurt: - 1 serving

• 15 blanched almonds
• 4-5 big teaspoons cherry sauce - glass of M&S Morello Cherries in Kirsh from my last shopping expedition to England 
• 200 g Greek yogurt

1. Add the Greek yogurt into the serving dish
2. Fill the cherry sauce on top of the yogurt followed by chopped blanched almonds.
3. Grab a spoon and merry Christmas

Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 6 - Christma Tea Bread

Tea bread is another classic item on an afternoon tea table. This is the first time, where I have been baking a tea bread, and I will for sure repeat this experience.

I have found this recipe in the book called "Afternoon Tea - De bedste opskrifter fra Perch´s Tea Room" by Stine Hincheldey Alwén. I have did not make any modification to the original recipe.

It is not a cake, which you can make in a hurry, as the various dried fruits need to soak for minimum 3 hours in tea !!!

Christmas Tea Bread a la Afternoon Tea: - 1 bread/cake

• 125 g dried apricot - cut into smaller pieces
• 125 g raisins
• 75 g sucat
• 300 g strong black tea
• 275 g (cake) flour
• 2½ teaspoon baking powder
• 150 g sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 egg

1. Add all the various dried fruit in a small mixing bowl. Pour the hot strong tea over the fruit. Let the fruit soak in the tea for minimum 3 hours or night over.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar and cinnamon together. Add this dry mix into the soaked fruit, and stir everything well together.
3. Add in the egg, and stir everything into a homogeneous mass. If the cake dough seems to be too dry in it, add in some more black tea.
4. Cover a rye bread form with baking paper, before filling the cake dough into it.
5. Bake the cake at 160'C in the lower part of the oven for minimum 1 hour.
6. Check that the cake is baked with a pin, before removing it from the oven.
7. Let the cake cool down, before you start to cut into slices.

Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 5 - Christmas Scones

Quiet some time ago I baked these Spicy Scones with dried fruits. However, for this Christmas Calendar 2014 version I decided to twist this recipe and turn up for the Christmas flavour.

Instead of rolling out the scone dough, I decided to roll the dough into long roll, which I when cutted into slices of 3 cm. Doing it like this means, that you are working less with dough, which is a good thing, when baking scones.

Normally I have been baking the scone dough right after the mixing, but my good girl friend in Horsens normally let her scone dough rest for time, before baking the scones. So I tried this process out as well. The scones were increasing perfectly during the baking, so the resting time does not have a negative effect on the baking. I recall having read somewhere that, when using baking powder as raising agent, the baking need to take part as soon as possible for the muffin/cake to raise enough.

Christmas Scones: - 12 pieces

• 450 g cake flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• 50 g sugar
• 125 g cold butter
• 1 egg
• 2 dl milk
• 2 teaspoon Lebkuchen spiec - a German spiece mix
• 1 teaspoon Stollen spiec - a German spiece mix
• 75 g orange peel
• 70 g sucat

1. Heat the milk together with spices and dried fruit.
2. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
3. Cut the cold butter into small pieces.
4. Grind the butter pieces into the flour mix.
5. Add the milk and egg without kneading it a dough.
6. Place the dough on a pieces of baking paper.
7. Roll the dough into a longer roll.
8. Let the douge rest for 2-3 hours, before baking it.
9. Heat the oven (conventional) to 250'C.
10. Cut slices of the scone dough with a size of 3 cm. 
11. Bake the scone at 250'C for 10-15 minutes.

Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 4 - German version of "brunkager" (brown Christmas cookies)

When I am in Germany, I always going shopping for baking stuff in the German supermarkets. During one of my shopping explorations in Germany I found a little paper bag with Pefferkuchen Gewürz, which made it´s way into my heavy shopping basket.

Making this cookie dough for this German version of "brunkager" was almost killing off my Kitchen Aid, as the motor started to smoke and become very. very warm after 10 minutes kneading !!!! So be careful out where in your kitchen !!!!

German version of "brunkager" (brown Christmas cookies):

• 1 bag of Pefferkuchen Gewürz
• 1000 g (cake) wheat flour
• 500 g dark syrup
• 125 g sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100 g almonds - blended into flour
• 200 g butter
• ½ pod of vanilla - only the corns
• 15 g potash
• 5 carbamate
• 100 g rose syrup

1. Put sugar, syrup and butter into a smaller cooking pot. Heat it up, until the butter is melted.
2. Put flour, almond flour, vanilla corn and Pefferkuchen Gewürz into the mixing bowl of an electrical mixer.
3. Give the dry content a little stir, so the ingredients are mixed well together.
4. Add in the egg and sugar-butter liquid into the dry ingredients.
5. Dissolve the potash and carbamate into the rose syrup, before adding into the cookie dough.
6. Let the dough knead for 15 minutes. Here my Kitchen Aid had to give after 10 minutes !!!!
7. Divide the cookie dough into 3 portion of dough, which it formed in a roll covered in baking paper. Let the dough rest for one hour or place it in the freezer for later use.
8. Heat up the (fan) oven to 160'C.
9. Cut the cookie dough roll into slices of ½ cm.
10. Place the cookies on baking trays covered with baking paper.
11. Bake the cookies for approx 10 minutes at 160'C.
12. Cool down the cookies, before storing them in air-tight containers.

Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 3 - Christmas Cheese Cake

I am huge of cherries, and warm cherry sauce served together with Danish ris a la mande is one of my favourites. However, what to do with left-overs of this cherry sauce ? Well you could use this cherry sauce as topping on cream cheese cake !

Therefore I decided to twist this cheese cake with liquorice and lemon by removing the liquorice powder and add cherry sauce on top.

I was even considering to add some cinnamon into the biscuit layer, but I got away from that idea again. Let´s see, perhaps I will make a new Christmas version of a cheese cake in 2015 ?


Christmas Cheese Cake: - 6 BIG mini cheese cakes

Biscuit layer in the cake forms

• 150 g Digestive biscuits
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 60 g butter - melted
• 2 egg yolks (pasteurised = 1 cup egg yolk)
• 100 g sugar
• 200 g full-fat cream cheese
• ½ vanilla pod - the corns
• 200 g full-fat (10%) Greek yogurt
• 5 leaves of gelatine (Husblas in Danish)
• 3 egg whites (pasteurised = 2 cups of egg white)
• 250 g dairy whipping cream, 38% fat
• 1 lemon (organic) - the zest
• 12 tablespoon of cherry sauce
• 1 leave of gealtine 

1. Start by deciding, if you want to make one BIG cheese cake (spring form tin of 20 cm) or 6 smaller set moulds of 7 cm.
2. Also decide to use plastic pocket, which you have cut into a strap, as this will make it so much easier to get the cheese cake of the forms.
3. Crash the Digestive biscuits, first by hands and followed by using a blender, these biscuits should be turned into a fine powder.
4. Add the sugar and the melted butter into the biscuit flour, and stir well.
5. Place the set mould on a tray covered with baking paper.
6. Press the biscuit-butter mass into a firm bottom layer in the used form(s), I used a mortar stick for this part of the process. 
7. Place the forms with this bottom biscuit layer cold in the refrigerator.
8. Whip the egg yolks together with sugar, until the colour turns white.
9. Add the cream cheese and whip into a homogeneous mass. 
10. Add the vanilla corns, lemon zest and Greek yogurt.
11. Place the gelatine leaves in cold water for 5 minutes. 
12. Remove the gelatine leaves from the water, squeeze them slightly for water.
13. Melt the gelatine leave in a water bath over boiling water. 
14. Cool down the melted gelatine.
15. Start to whip cream cheese-yogurt mass, pouring in the gelatine liquid and whip very, very well, so you avoid the creation of gelatine strings in the final dessert. Do not be afraid of whipping to much, as the gelatine will gel the cheese cake mass.
16. Whip the egg white completely stiff - mix the whipped egg white gently into the cheese-yogurt mass.
17. Whip the dairy whipping cream and again mix the cream gently into the cheese-yogurt mass.
18. Pour the cheese-yogurt mass into the forms on top of the biscuit layer. 
19. Place some cling film on top of the cake mass to avoid formation of thick layer.
20. Place the forms again in the refrigerator for minimum 4 hours.
21. After 4 hours prepare the cherry sauce for topping of the cakes.
22. Place the gelatine leave in cold water for 5 minutes. Followed by melting the gelatine leave in a water bath over boiling water.
23. Heat up the cherry sauce to 40-50'C
24. Stir in the melted gelatine into the warm cherry sauce, mix very well.
25. Pour the cherry sauce on top of the cheese cake base. 
26. Place the cheese cake in the refrigerator for another 2 hours, so the cherry sauce will set.
27. Take the cheese cake out of the refrigerator, remove the cling film, get the cake out of the forms. 
28. Enjoy this luxury indulgent cheese cake with many, many calories !!!!

Christmas Calendar 2014 Day 2 - Brownie-muffin a la "A piece of cake"

I have found this recipe on Brownie-muffins in the very interesting cake book "a piece of cake" by Leila Lindholm.

I have basically made no changes to the recipe ! Well besides from using a mix of both light and dark syrup, as I did not have enough light syrup. The taste is excellent, as you are working both with cocoa powder and dark chocolate. Using that extra money on buying the dark chocolate is worth every single penny ! And the second change is, that I "only" used butter instead of the combination of butter and oil, as I could not find my oil after "moving back" into my new kitchen !!!

To boost the Christmas taste you could consider to add in 1/4-½ teaspoon cinnamon !

The only thing, which I struckled with, was the baking time of the muffins, as I have got a new oven. I had to increase the baking time from 12 minutes to 20-22 minutes to get a baked muffin still with a soft inner brownie core.

Brownie-muffin a la "a piece of cake): - 12 muffins

• 2 eggs
• 180 g sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 100 g butter - melted
• 80 g light syrup
• 80 g dark syrup
• 120 g (cake) wheat flour
• 40 g cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• 100 g dark chocolate - melted

1. Heat up the oven to 175'C (conventional heating).
2. Whip egg, sugar and vanilla sugar light and foam with an electrical mixer.
3. Add in the melted butter and syrups and whip again.
4. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa together. Break any lumps coming from the cocoa powder.
5. Gentle stir this powder mix into the liquid phase. Afterwards add in the melted chocolate.
6. Fill the dough into muffin form, no more than 2/3 of the form should be filled up.
7. Bake the brownie-muffin in the middle of the oven at 175'C for 20-22 minutes.
8. The brownie-muffin should collapse in the inner centre, when removed from the oven.
9. Cold down the brownie-muffins.

Welcome to December - Christmas is knocking on your door

Welcome to December & the Christmas Calendar 2014 by Kitchen of Kiki

This is my fourth season, where I am creating my own Christmas Calendar ! In theory my Christmas Calendar could be a guilt-free calendar for you on your side of the screen, as you do NOT have to eat all the many calories !!! You can look at the photos and read the various recipes without eating a single bite of anything. Hopefully I am able to bring a little inspiration from my kitchen to your kitchen :-)

I hope you will come by every day, where I will be sharing recipes on cakes, butter cookies, candy and alcohol with you.