Follow up on Christmas Calendar 2011

I have been having a lot of fun making my very own Christmas Calendar in my little kitchen here in 2011, just like they do in TV ! Well not in my kitchen, but perhaps an idea for the upcoming 2012  for Brødrene Price ? I am sure Hannibal the Cat would become a fantastic fur star, and I am myself just like the brothers a dedicated fan of using butter, plenty of butter in my cooking and baking.

Reviewing your visits in my Christmas Calendar, I have made a TOP 5 over the most popular Christmas Calendar Doors according to you:

1. Baked marzipan confect - door 7
2. Daim confect - door 8
3. Cocoa marzipan confect with blackcurrant - door 11
4. Lebkuchen - door 12
5. Christmas Liqueur - door 2

So from this I will make the conclusion, that you are great fan of Christmas confect containing plenty of marzipan, German style Christmas cookies like Lebkuchen (not being perfect at all - here I am on the look out for much better recipe) and alcohol !!! I assume this profile is fitting 120% of most of us Danes.

I have a small survey (poll) running another 24 hours, so until the very end of 2011, if you were following this Christmas Calendar of mine and if you would like me to create a 2012 version of a similar Christmas Calender.

I will be making less confect in the 2012 version, as I completely filled up with all this Christmas confect !! I have been thinking about making family recipes from around the world and/or Denmark, which work colleagues as well as friends would like to share with you in my little kitchen.

So use your freedom to share your opinion on Christmas Calender 2012 either through the on-going poll and/or leave a comment here on this specific blog posting.

Marzipan cake (kransekage) suggestions for New Year 2011

 

If you are in a surplus situation of marzipan after Christmas I would suggest, that you try to make your own marzipan cake (kransekage) for the fast approaching New Year 2011. Home-made marzipan cake just taste so much better compared to the cakes, which you find in the supermarkets or at the baker´s shop.

Another benefit of making your own marzipan cake is, that you can control the sweetness in the final cake and hereby adjust it to your preferred sweetness level. I find the sweetness level to be too high in the marzipan cake, which you are buying in the shops.

And please remember to serve the marzipan cake with a sweet type of champagne or sparkling wine, as the combination of sweet marzipan cake and dry sparkling wine is a taste killer.

My first suggestion to you on the "classic" type of marzipan cake could be these zebra marzipan cake

made from either the plain marzipan or the cocoa marzipan.

Another good tasting marzipan cake could be these
marzipan orange cakes or with an extra little twist in of orange flower as here marzipan orange cakes with orange flower.

These baked marzipan confect is my final suggestion to you to try at New Year´s eve tomorrow.

DANISH marzipan cake

As it will be my last working tomorrow !!! well my last working day in 2011, I have decided, that I would bake marzipan cake as a New Year treat for my colleagues tomorrow.

My inspiration was to use the red coloured forest fruit marzipan and decorated with white icing sugar, so making marzipan cake in the Danish national colours !!!!

Well the red colour disappear from the  surface of the marzipan cake during the baking process. However, when you take a bite of the marzipan cake you are able to see the Danish national colours again in form of the red coloured forest fruit marzipan and rough white pieces of almonds. Therefore I decided to name this recipe DANISH marzipan cake.

DANISH marzipan cake:  - 20 pieces

• 400 g marzipan - forest fruit
• 100 g icing sugar
• 100 g almond flour
• 1 egg white

1. Heat the oven to 220'C (conventional oven).
2. Slip the almond. And grained them into flour using a mill.
3. Knead the marzipan, almond flour, icing sugar and egg white together.
4. Divide the marzipan cake mass into 20 pieces of equal size.
5. Form the marzipan cake mass into a longer sharp.
6. Bake the marzipan cake mass at 220'C for 7-8 minutes.
7. Cool down the marzipan cake.
8. Decorate the top of the marzipan cake with icing sugar.
9. Let the icing sugar dry.
10. Enjoy !!!!

Snow drops getting ready

While I was preparing the house and the dinning table for my guests coming for Christmas lunch Tuesday this week, the weather was just like a wonderful spring day full of sunshine.

And I noticed, that two out of three places, where I have planted various snow drops during the last couple of years, were showing "live" in form of snow drops getting ready popping their "heads" above the earth.

Christmas Cocktail

I have found this recipe on juleorangeade on the blog "Himmelske kager", and it look very interesting, so I decide to try it out in connection with the Christmas lunch yesterday.

This Christmas Cocktail does not have any spice flavour at all, but the taste is excellent being a mix of Christmas spices with the freshness of orange juice. And my girl friends found it to be quiet a good cocktail having a perfect Christmas profile without being dominated of the Christmas spices.

Christmas Cocktail: - 4 cocktails


Sugar liquid

• 1 dl water
• 1 dl sugar
• 1 orange - organic (as you use everything of the fruit)
• 4 cloves
• 2 star anise
• 2 cinnamon sticks

Christmas Cocktail:

• 5 dl orange juice
• 1 dl vodka
• ½ dl Cointreau
• Ice cubes

1. Slice the orange into thin slices.
2. Add water, sugar, orange slices and spices into a cooking pot.
3. Heat the sugar liquid to the boiling point. Let is softly boil for 3-4minutes.
4. Cool the down the sugar liquid in the refrigerator. In order to get the wonderful flavour of Christmas, I  let the sugar liquid infuse for 12-24 hours
5. Remove the spices from the sugar liquid.
6. Use the orange slices for decoration of the cocktail glasses.
7. Mix the sugar liquid, orange juice, vodka and Cointreau together.
8. Serves in cocktail glass with plenty of ice cubes and orange slices.
9. Cheers and merry Christmas :-)

Closing Christmas of 2011 with cheese tapas

As we found the cheese tapas from Osteriet Vejle to be a nice alternative to the traditional Danish Christmas lunch, my girl friends and I decided to repeat last year menu for annual Christmas lunch get together.

Perhaps the menu was not dominated by Christmas, but the "liquid food" had enough Christmas character to make it "real" Christmas lunch.

The "liquid" menu was:

• starter - Christmas Cocktail
• main course - Christmas Aquavit
• dessert - Christmas Liqueur

This Christmas lunch is for me is relaxing way of putting a closure to Christmas as well as looking forward to an approaching 2012 in the wonderful company of some very good girl friends, while talking, laughing, eating and drinking.

I received some lovely hostess gifts in form of home-made jam, a bowl full of hyacinths (I really like the wonderful of hyacinths) and a NEW cooking book (Spise med Price by the father to Adam and James Price)

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.

Glögg evening 2011

I have some great girl friends in the local area, which always comes around, when I need a "helping hand" or perhaps the correct wording is "helping mouth" removing calories from my kitchen !

So 4 days evening before Christmas Eve, 8 wonderful friends came banging on my front door with their hands full of some perfect hostess gifts like white wine, Christmas liqueur, some Christmas decorations and food care products.



Besides from the mulled white wine, tea and coffee my friends could taste the following "creations" from my kitchen:

• Kløben buns
• Christmas mince pies
• Lebkuchen
• Dates with marzipan
• Snow balls
• Forest fruit marzipan with blackberries
• Nougat confect
• Cocoa marzipan with blackcurrants
• Daim confect

Hannibal the Cat inspecting the hostess gifts

Christmas Calender Door 24 - Merry Christmas

Dear blog guest,

I wish you a merry Christmas during your visit in my little kitchen. I hope you will enjoy your stay here, being either a short browse or a long stay.

Thank your for dropping by and have wonderful Christmas :-)

Christmas Calendar Door 23 - Christmas Aquavit is ready

Today the Christmas aquavit is ready for Christmas, which is now is standing in front of all of us. So today I have 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.

CHEERS :-)

Christmas Calendar Door 22 - Kløben Buns

Since I was a little girl I have been loving to eat buns with a combinations of raisins, orange peel and sucat.

So when I found this recipe in a magazine, I teared it out of it and since when it have one of my favourite bun recipes.


Kløben Buns:

• 200 g milk
• 10 g (fresh) yeast
• 3 eggs
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 500 g wheat flour
• 50 g orange peel
• 50 g sucat
• 50 g raisins
• 75 g butter

1. Dissolve the yeast in the milk. Add egg, salt and sugar as well into the milk.
2. Add the flour.
3. Knead the dough together for 10 minutes.
4. Let the dough rest cold for 8-12 hours.
5. Cut the butter into small pieces.
6. Knead the butter, orange peel, sucat and raisins into the dough.
7. Divide the dough into 12 buns.
8. Let the bun raise for 30 minutes.
9. Heat the oven to 200'C (conventional oven)
10. Coat the buns with egg (1 egg whipped together)
11. Bake the buns at 200'C for 15 minutes.
12. Serve the buns together with some butter !!!

Christmas Calendar Door 21 - Mulled white wine

I am not a big fan of red white, so therefore I have preference for mulled wine based on white wine as well.

And for a gathering of friends I decided to try a combination of white wine and apple juice in a ratio of 1:1, so it is more "friendly" for the people needing to drive a car afterwards.

In order not to a too sweet mulled wine, I decided not to add extra sugar and I also decided to use a dry white wine.

My guests found this mulled white wine to be quiet refreshing. Last year I also made mulled white wine using a combination of both elder flower cordial and apple juice, which you can find here.

4 December 2013: This blog has been submitted for the Blogging Challenge "Cooking with Herbs & Christmas spieces" December 2013 

Mulled white wine: - 1 liter

• 50 cl dry white wine
• 50 cl apple juice
• 1 dried ginger
• 2 pieces of cinnamon
• 8 pieces of cloves
• ½ orange - sliced
• almonds and light raisin - optimal

1. Place the spices in larger tea bags, so you have them under control.
2. Heat up the apple juice together with spices to the boiling point. 
3. Place the apple juice cold for 12-24 hours.
4. Add the white wine and slices of oranges to the apple juice.
5. Heat up the mulled wine, do not let it boil.
6. Serves in glass or cup, where people individual can add almond splits and raisin according to their preference.

Christmas Calendar Door 20 - Chokokos (Chococonut)

I found the recipe on Chokokos in a Tupperware brochure. As it looked relative easy to make, I decided to make a go at it. As you using Mascarpone (Italian cream cheese) in this Christmas candy without any cooking involved, you need to store it in the refrigerator and I evaluated the shelf-life to be maximum 1 week. So it as close as possible to Christmas or the actual eating occasion.

The Chokokos has a pleasant taste of coconut, the sweetness is OK, but they could not be sweeter according to my taste bud. It is a difficult to taste the white chocolate. A twist to this Christmas candy could be remove the white chocolate from the recipe and instead of coat these coconut bites with either milk or dark chocolate like Bounty chocolate ?

Chokokos (Chococonut):

• 50 g white chocolate
• 125 g Mascarpone
• 50 g sugar
• 125 g desiccated coconut

1. Melt the white chocolate - I use the microwave oven for this purpose.
2. Add the Mascarpone cheese into a mixing bowl and whip it.
3. Add sugar and whit it into the Mascarpone cheese.
   
4. Add the melted white chocolate and whip it into the mix.
5. Add the desiccated coconut and stir it well into the mass.
6. Fill the mass into a silicone form.
7. Place the silicone form in the refrigerator for minimum 4 hours or the night over.
8. Remove the Chokokos from the silicone form.
9. Enjoy and Merry Christmas :-)

Christmas Calendar Door 19 - Christmas Mince Pies

This the very first time, where I have been making my own Christmas Mince Pies in my kitchen.
I recall them back from my time, when I was living in England. And I remember the first times, when I heard and saw the wording "Mince Pie", I thought it referred to pies with minced meat !!!!!, and I did not understand people obsession with these pies during Christmas. However, luckily enough I got the understanding of "Mince Pie".

I have found this recipe in a small folder from Dr. Oetker and you can also find it here: http://www.oetker.dk/oetker_dk/juletærter. I have made no changes at all to the recipe. And they taste GREAT :-)

During Christmas time I found, that you could participate in blog event called "Tea Time Treats", which is hosted by Kate from What Kate baked and Karen from Lavender and lovage. So I decided, I would participate with this recipe on Christmas Mince Pies.




Christmas Minced Pies:

• 125 g butter
• 275 g (cake) flour
• 65 g sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 apple
• 50 g small dark raisins
• ½ dl orange juice
• 25 g butter
• 100 g brown sugar
• 50 g almond splits
• 100 g sucat
• 100 g orange peel

1. Make the pie dough from the butter, flour, sugar, vanilla sugar and egg. Let it rest cold for 30 minutes.
2. Meanwhile make the filling.
3. Grate the apple roughly. 
4. Melt the butter in a cooking pot, add orange juice, raisins and brown sugar.
5. Let it cook for 5 minutes.
6. Afterwards add almond splits, sucat and orange peel. Remove the cooking pot from the heat
7. Heat the oven (conventional) to 185'C.
8. Roll the pie dough to approx 3 mm height, cut it into a circles of 7 cm.
9. Fill the dough into a large muffin form.
10. Place 1-2 teaspoon filling.
11. Bake in oven at 185'C for 20-25 minutes.

Christmas Calendar Door 18 - Oat flakes Pellets

Another very, very easy recipe on Christmas candy, which will take you approx. 20 minutes to make. The only thing is, that you will get some very greasy finger from kneading all the ingredients together as well as making the oat flakes pellets.

The fat content is very low in this recipe, as there is no chocolate in-side. And the fat content is 0.3% in the fromage frais.

Oat flakes Pellets:

• 250 g oat flakes
• 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 200 g sugar
• 6 tablespoons strong coffee
• 1 tablespoon rum flavouring
• 1 teaspoon vanilla flavouring
• 75 g fromage frais

1. Knead all the ingredients together.
2. Form them into pellets.
   
3. As they contain fromage frais, they should be stored in the refrigerator
4. Eat them within 1 week after "production"

Christmas Calendar Door 17 - Burnt Roasted Almonds

Another little twist to the burnt almonds. This time they have both been "burnt" in the micro-wave oven as
well as roasted in a conventional oven.

Please be aware of, that any damage to your Tupperware plastic thing is NOT covered by the usual Tupperware guarantee !!!!

Burnt Roasted Almonds:

• 200 g almonds
• 4 tablespoons home-made vanilla sugar 
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons water

1. Heat the oven to 200'C.
2. All the ingredients are mixed together in the Tupperware Microplus cooker
3. Place the cooker in the microwave oven and cook at 750 watt for 2 minutes
4. Take the cooker out and stir around 
5. Cook a second round at 750 watt for 1 minute and 50 seconds
6. Pour the mass out on baking paper
7. Save your Tupperware Microplus cooker -
   place it in cold water AT ONCE in order to  
8. avoid damage to it from the boiling sugar
9. Mix around in the almond mass
10. Place the almonds in the warn oven, and let them roast here for 5-10 minutes.
11. Place the almonds in glass jars, when the almonds are cold.



Christmas Calendar Door 16 - Dates with marzipan coated with dark chocolate

The final Christmas confect recipe, where I am using marzipan. I still two more Christmas confect recipes to share with you, but they are without marzipan !!!

This confect is also very. very sweet as I have added marzipan into the dates. In order to balance the sweetness I have coated the dates in dark chocolate. Another way of reducing the sweetness is to leave out the marzipan as filling in the dates.


Dates with marzipan coated with dark chocolate:

• 20 dates
  
• 100 g plain marzipan
• 150 g dark chocolate

1. Remove the stone from the date.
2. Fill the date with marzipan.
3. Melt the dark chocolate using the microwave oven.
4. Coat the dates with dark chocolate

Christmas Calendar Door 15 - Snow Balls

I am continuing with yet another Christmas confect recipe in order to my Estonia colleague request !!! This time it is "Snow Balls", which overall is a quiet sweet type of confect due to the combination of nougat, marzipan and white chocolate. If you would like less sweetness, I would suggest you to replace the coating with white chocolate with dark chocolate, however, when this confect does not look like a snow ball !!!

I used 50 g nougat, as I was able to "finish up" the last un-used nougat. the amount of nougat to marzipan should not be bigger, as it would quiet difficult to cover the nougat part entire with marzipan.

Snow Balls:

• 25-50 g nougat
• 200 g plain marzipan
• 150 g white chocolate 
• 50-100 g desiccated coconut

1. Cut the marzipan into 20 pieces of equal amount.
2. Cut the nougat into 20 pieces of equal amount.
3. Cover the nougat with marzipan.
4. Form the marzipan into balls.
   

   
5. Melt the white chocolate using the microwave oven.
6. Coat the marzipan balls in white chocolate.
7. Afterwards cover the marzipan ball in desiccated coconut, while the white chocolate still is wet. Below you can see a video of how you can roll the marzipan balls in the desiccated coconut.

Here you can see, how to give the final touche to "Snow Balls"