Hostess gift 2 - home made oven gloves

At the Christmas lunch I received these lovely oven gloves with the motive of the Danish dairy cow named Karoline. I got them by one of my oldest girlfriends back from university. She had her mother sewing those for me and another friend as hostess gifts. I just love them :-))

The last Christmas lunch in 2010

Instead of the usual Danish Christmas lunch (aquavit, marinated herrings, fried fish, ham, red cabbage, Danish pate, cheese etc), my girlfriends and I decided this year to have Christmas tapas created by my local cheese "pusher".
However, the Christmas aquavit was still an important ingredient, even though the food was replaced with different slices of Parma ham and sausages, pate and some very good tasting cheeses.

I really enjoy this annual Christmas lunch with the girlfriends (after both a busy December month and some busy Christmas days), where I have the feeling of saying goodbye to Christmas with pleasure looking forward to an approaching new year in the company of some very good freinds, while eating,  drinking, talking and laughing.

The garden lion was as well very keen to participate doing his best to steal some sausages without luck. Even the black olives were in danger of being eaten by Hannibal the cat.
The history ended today, while I was at work, and the cat "killed"/smashed the butter bowl, while  eating butter. How the cat can both smell and locate butter in a closed butter bowl is beyond my imagination.

Kitchen equipment 1 - Christmas gift

I got these small cooking pots from Le Creuset as a Christmas gift from my parents. They can be used for baking or freezing or as serving pots. I used them at lunch time for baked potato mash with hazelnuts, uuuhmmm. And I just love the different colours.

Lønnestræde's Christmas Jam

No Christmas without cooking my very own Christmas Jam using Danish blackberries, vanilla and cognac. And I am ready now for Christmas to arrive with or without some more snow.

Ingredients:

• 1000 g (Danish) blackberries
• 500 g sugar
• 20 g gelling powder (citrus pectin, sugar and citric acid)
• ½ vanilla pod
• 3 cl cognac

• Put the blackberries into a cooking pot. Add the gelling powder and agitate.
• It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
• Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes

• Remove the vanilla corns from the vanilla pod. Save the vanilla pod for making home-made vanilla sugar.

• Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
• Bring the fruit and sugar to the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
• Add the cognac to the jam, after you have remove the cooking pan from the heat.

• Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. I do not use any preservatives in my home-made jam, so this is important to increase shelf-life of your jam.
• Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards.
• As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
• Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.

Now the Christmas Jam is made, and I am ready to either enjoy the jam myself or use it as hostess gifts.

Christmas aquavit is ready for Christmas

The Christmas aquavit is ready to welcoming my Christmas guests. I removed the orange peels today and pour the aquavit into glass bottles. The flavour notes are wonderful. I prefer to drink aquavit either cold or very cold, meaning taking the aquavit from the freezer just before drinking it.

Frederiksgård Frokostbrød - finally I got the bread out of the form in one piece

Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 1 accomplished = 72 recipes to bake

I decided to bake Frederiksgård Frokostbrød one more time, but this time using the advice of two rowing friends about using baking paper in the bread form before filling the dough in it.

And guess what ? This time I was able to get the bread out of the form in one whole piece !!!

Thank you rowing ladies :-)))

So now I can move to the next recipe in the baking book "Hjemmebagt", and I have started looking at different options of bread to try next.

Hostess gift 1

One of my girlfriends brought this lovely hostess gift for me in connection with my gløgg (mulled wine) evening Monday. I am always impressed, when people can make flower decorations like this. My talent for this is limited to placing some candles on a tray with some moss.

Thank you very much Belle, I will enjoy this Christmas decoration in the coming days :-))

Gløgg evening

Great fun and some very positive remarks on both the white wine gløgg as well as the almond orange cake this evening, while the local girlsfriends came for a gløgg evening.

We celebrated the coming Christmas, while we got another 5 cm of snow or perhaps even more.

Still have some almond orange cake left, so I think, I will bring the leftovers with me tomorrow for my colleagues to eat (so I avoid these calories).

Preparing for gløgg evening tomorrow

Tomorrow evening I will be hosting a gløgg evening for some good girl friends from my local town. So this afternoon I have been busy preparing the gløgg extract as well as some Christmas candy in form of soft nougat.

Instead of the usual gløgg based on red wine, I will serving a gløgg based on white wine, which I find to be more refreshing, even when is cool down.

I have been using a selection of spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cardamon etc. Put the spices into tea bags, which is added into the non-alcoholic part of the gløgg. The non-alcoholic part is one part of elderflower cordial and one part of apple juice. The spices should be in the liquid night over. I will post the exact recipe in the coming week.

Meanwhile I will share the recipe on soft nougat (Nougat konfekt):

Ingredients:

• 100 g soft nougat
• 50 g dark chocolate
• 50 g hazelnuts
• 40 g orange peel

Nougat and dark chocolate is melted in the microwave oven in a Tupperware Microplus pot. Apply 800 W - start with 40 seconds, take the pot out, stir the content together - give it another 20 seconds, stir the content together - give it more time in the microwave oven, until it is melt. Give it less and less in the microwave oven, as you do not want the chocolate to be burned.

Grind the orange peel and the hazelnuts together in a mini blender. The hazelnuts should be fine chopped.

Add the orange peel and hazelnuts together with the melted nougat. Mix it well together.





Afterwards pour this mass into a silicone form. Place the silicone form in the refrigerator and let is cool. When the nougat is firm again, the soft nougat can be removed from the form. Store the nougat candy cold, until you will eat it.

 

Almond orange cake

This afternoon and evening I have been working on creating, making and baking this almond orange, which recipe I have got from the magazine Alt for Damerne. The creator of this recipe is Mai Knauer - Sweet Nothing, and you have give it a try your self: Almond orange cake recipe by Mai Knauer

 

Meanwhile, you have look at these pictures from my baking process. Unfortunately I am not able to share the lovely smell of oranges and mint. The smell is just gorgeous.

I will be serving this cake for my guest coming Monday evening for gløgg.

During the cooking time of two hours for the two organic oranges, I noticed that the colour of the water changed from clear to light orange. And the smell of orange was surrounding me in the kitchen. From time to time I add extra water in the cooking pot, as the water was evaporating.

Almonds without skin- removal of skin is time consuming



Almonds ready for grinding in my Tupperware grinder/mill

  

Almond flour

 

Cutting the oranges is like cutting warm butter

Dried apricot, being organic also means no clear orange colour

Mint - I love the smell and taste of mint. It reminds me about summertime

Orange, apricot and mint in the blender - just before I turn it on

Blended orange mix with a lovely smell, uhm

Egg and sugar before some serious beating

After beating

Almond orange ready to be baked

Almond orange cake after baking



Christmas gifts for my kitchen

 

When I was out shopping this morning for the week-end as well as finding one of the last Christmas gifts for the family, I found four different Christmas gifts for my very own kitchen :-))

I found three Kusmi limited edition cans for 2010 with Russian dolls, and as we getting close moving from 2010 to 2011 I decided to buy all three cans in one go !!!! And when I was looking for fresh mint for almond-orange cake in a supermarket, I found a dessert cook book by Mette Blomsterberg, which when found it's way into the shopping basket. I really love to see the various programme called "Det søde liv" with Mette Bomsterberg on TV, so now I can sit a look into fantastic looking desserts, uuhmmm,

Progress of the Christmas Aquavit

My Christmas is getting more and more yellow in colour as it maturing for Christmas. It is now half through it's maturation time. Uuhmmmm, I am looking forward to smell and taste it by the various Christmas lunches with family and friends.

First portion of Christmas Candy done



 



After ½ days soaking of the walnuts & raisins in cognac and cranberries in Cointreau, I blended these fillings prior to mixing it with the marzipan. I was a bit surprised about the ration between filling and marzipan, 200 g walnuts & raisins to be mixed with 150 g marzipan. I normally use more marzipan and less filling, so it will interesting to taste. The marzipan mix was also much more moist than usual for my Christmas Candy.



Afterwards I rolled the mixed marzipan into smaller balls, which I when coated with 70% dark chocolate. I used the microwave for melting the chocolate in one of my many Tupperware plastic things.

It did actual take quiet some time for the chocolate to dry, close to 2 hours !!!! Perhaps due, that the marzipan was so moist.

Now I just have to be patient until Christmas before tasting these Valnødkugler & Tranebærkugler

Preparing for making Christmas Candy with marzipan tomorrow

I have found two Christmas Candy recipes with marzipan in a small recipe collection made by Mai Knauer. I will be making Valnøddekugler (Walnut Marzipan Candy) and Tranebærkugler (Cranberry Marzipan Candy) tomorrow. However, you have to start ½ day (night over) in advance, as walnuts and raisins need to soak in rum (I will use cognac), and the cranberries need to soak in Cointreau. I keep saving the small bottles of liqueur collected from my various flights around Europe for different kitchen activity like this.

Burnt almonds

If you are brave, I mean really brave with exposing your Tupperware Microplus cooker to danger of damage, I have this very easy recipe on burnt almonds from my cousin (former Tupperware consultant). You need to be brave AND any damage to your Tupperware plastic thing is NOT covered by the usual Tupperware guarantee !!!!

Intrigued ?????


Ingredients:

• 200 g almonds
• 6 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons water

Almond mix before cooking

1. All the ingredients are mixed together in the Tupperware Microplus cooker
2. Place the cooker in the microwave oven and cook at 750 watt for 2 minutes
3. Take the cooker out and stir around 
4. Cook a second round at 750 watt for 1 minute and 50 seconds
5. Pour the mass out on baking paper
6. Save your Tupperware Microplus cooker - place it in cold water AT ONCE in order to avoid damage to it from the boiling sugar
7. Mix around in the almond mass
8. Place the almonds in glass jars, when the sugar is firm
9. Wait, if you can, for 1-2 hours before eating the almonds.

 

Right after cooking

Sugar is crystallised