Cake vote for coming picnic row - your help is needed

Have a look at these lovely flower from my blooming Chinese thee peony, which I have received from an old garderner in my mother´s family, who personally has grown it from a seed.

The fifth of June is Constitution Day here in Denmark and we are having the day-off. I will be celebrating this national day of ours with a picnic row on my local fjord of Vejle. We will be starting the row early in the morning, at 6.00 o'clock, and hopefully we will be able row to the end point of the fjord, which is a rowing tour of 52 km in total.

My "responsibility" for this coming picnic row is to bring cake for the afternoon coffee/tea break. And here you help is needed (again) in form of a cake vote. So you will make decision by voting, I will bake the most popular cake and my fellow rowers will eat the cake.

You can vote between these three cake suggestions:

• Muffin with apple
• Carrot cake
• Rhubarb cake

Elder flower rhubarb muffin

The blog event called "Tea Time Treats", which is a monthly baking challenge event managed  Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Kate from What Kate Baked. It is Karen from Lavender and Lovage, which is the hostess for this wonderful spring month of May. The theme for this month is off cause FLOWER http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/2012/04/new-tea-time-treats-for-may-get-floral-in-the-kitchen-with-floral-flavours-flowers.  


I found this to be a perfect theme fitting well with my very own taste preference for flower flavours. However, being on my very first summer vacation lasting of this year, I have been a little time-pressed to make contribution to this monthly tea table. 


As I have a freezer full of elder flower cordial from last year production and fresh rhubarbs growing in my kitchen garden, I decided to make muffins with these two ingredients.

Elder flower rhubarb muffins: - 14 pieces

• 300 g cake flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 tablespoon home-made vanilla sugar
• 115 g sugar
• 1 dl elder flower cordial - concentrated
• 1,5 dl buttermilk 
• 1 egg
• ½ dl oil
• 200 g fresh rhubarb - cut into thin slices
• icing sugar and elder flower cordial - concentrated

1. Mix cake flour, baking powder, vanilla sugar together in a mixing bowl with a cooking spoon
2. Add buttermilk, elder-flower cordial, oil and egg into a shaker, and shake it together
3. Add the liquid to the mixing bowl, and mix everything together
4. Add rhubarb pieces into the dough
5. Fill into 14 muffin forms
6. Bake at 200' C (conventional oven) for 20-25 minutes
7. Cool down the muffins, decorate them with icing mixed together from icing sugar and elder flower cordial.,

Second status on bulbs planted in Autumn 2011

I would like to share a second status on how the different tulip bulbs, which I planted last autumn, are getting along in my "park" this spring.

As you can see, the 60 Double Tulips Angelique really are on their blooming peak now regarding having a first sow-off in the peony bed. The only draw-back is their "working time" seems to be quiet limits, something like 8-10 days.

On this spot, where I planted 25 Virirdiflora Tulips, they are also showing a blooming face to the rest of world. And I have noticed, that their blooming time is quiet long, they have been busy for the last 14 days.

First activity in the kitchen garden

Raspberry bush in full growth

The various plants in my kitchen garden are now showing the first activity. The raspberry bush is full of green leaves as well as showing plenty of places, where the raspberries will be growing later in this season.

All the potato pots are a show-off of potatoes with green leaves growing from day to day.

Potatoes 3 weeks after planting

Both my apples trees are so beautiful to look at right now with their beautiful apple blossom. Hopeful my little apple tree will provided me with more than just ONE apple this season compared to last summer. And if my family apple tree will give ONE apple this year, I will be more than happy, as it will be the first apple at all, since I planted this tree 2½ year ago.

The little apple tree in bloom

Wonderful apple blooms

Apple blooms getting ready on the family 

And as usual my rhubarbs are in full activity again, so I am planning to harvest some rhubarb tomorrow. I can always count on my rhubarb as "supplier" for my little kitchen.

Full activity among the rhubarbs

An almost green salad

Taking inspiration from an unfolding green and yet so more green spring time outside, I made an almost green salad for my evening meal served together with a glass of white wine.

The majority of this salad was made up of green things, as I used spring salad, baby spinach leaves, cucumber, asparagus and mustard & herb vinaigrette by Nicolas Vahé. The non-green parts of the salad were roasted pine kernels, walnuts, goat cheese and Danish strawberries.

It was a great and tasteful combination :-)

Lønnestræde´s hveder (wheat bun with cardamon)

Today Friday it is the Danish holiday called Store Bededag, translated literally as Great Prayer Day or more loosely as General Prayer Day, which is celebrated on the 4th Friday after Easter. One of the Danish Kings decided to collect a selection of small Christian holy days into one big day called Store Bededay, so the Danes would have more working days.

And with the on-going talk in Denmark about cancelling Store Bededag in order to get more working time, it could be last time, where Store Bededag will be celebrated on a Friday !!!! So I will really enjoy my home-made "varme hveder".

After my success last year with baking my own "hveder", I decided to do it again this year, however making my own "translation" of these wheat bun with cardamon.

This "creation" of mine turned out pretty good both un-roasted as well as roasted :-)

Lønnestræde´s hveder: - 12 buns

• 650 g wheat flour
• 40-50 g yeast
• 1 teaspoon grounded cardamon
• 1 tablespoon home-made vanilla sugar
• 30 g sugar
• 50 g butter
• 400 g milk
• 1 egg

1. Cut the butter into small pieces.
2. Weigh the flour, cardamon, salt, vanilla sugar, sugar into the mixing bowl. 
3. Add butter pieces, grated them into the flour mix.
4. Add the milk and egg into flour mix.
5. Knead the dough. Here I am also using my interpretation of the Richard Bertinet method. I knead on time - 10 minutes.
6. Raise the dough warm for 1½-2 hours.
7. De-gas the dough.
8. Rework the dough - scale each wheat bun to weigh around 80 g - so you get an even baking time for each bun.
9. Place each bun in a roasting pan covered with baking paper - let the buns raise for another ½-1 hour until they "grow" together.
10. Bake the wheat bun at 200'C for 20 minutes, please be aware of, the wheat bun in middle could use more baking time.
11. Cut the wheat bun into 2 pieces - lets those roast at 200'C for 6-8 minutes
12. Served hot or cold together with butter - plenty of butter, cheese and some fantastic home-made jam.

Tea Time Treat April 2012

For the monthly virtual blogging Tea Table hosted by Kate from What Kate Baked in April I tested these Easter butter cookies with saffron and marzipan as my contribution for the tea table. You can the entire tea table of April having focus on Easter here: April tea time treats round up.

For the coming virtual tea table hosted by Karen from Lavender and Lovage in May the focus on FLOWERS :-). You can more information about the event here: http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/2012/04/new-tea-time-treats-for-may-get-floral-in-the-kitchen

This theme really is fitting perfect into my kitchen, so my "only" task will be only to select one idea alone and not several tea time treats. So perhaps I should make a vote on my blog, and let my kitchen guests take the decision for me ?

Lønnestræde´s squash buns

I need some buns, which I could bring with me for eating away from home at various out-door activities such a walking and rowing. And at the same time I had some grated squash filling up in my freezer, so I decided to make some squash buns. As I also had some rye flour standing in my kitchen without being used, I decided to mix some rye flour into the spelt flour as well.

I used the recipe on Ringridderboller from the bread book "Hjemmebagt" as inspiration for my work with this recipe. The buns turned out to be quiet fine, I will not call them perfect.

Lønnestræde´s squash bun: - 14 buns

• 100 g rye flour
• 500 g spelt flour
• 150 g water - boiling
• 150 g milk
• 40-50 g yeast
• 20 g honey
• 10 g salt
• 1 egg
• 2½ dl squash - grated
• 50 sunflower seeds - optional

1. Add boiling water and rye flour into a mixing bowl.
2. Let this mix cool down for approx 45 minutes.
3. Add the spelt flour.
4. Mix the yeast into the spelt flour.
5. Add honey, salt, milk, egg and grated squash.
6. Knead the dough together, I usual knead for 10 minutes.
7. After the kneading process, knead in the sunflower seeds. I usually first add nuts and seeds at the every end of the kneading process, so these nuts/kernels/seeds do not fly around in the kitchen.
8. Let the dough raise warm for 1½ hour.
9. De-gas the dough and weigh the dough into 80 g pieces and form a bun from here.
10. Place the buns on a piece of baking paper.
11. Let the buns raise for 30-45 minutes
12. Heat the oven to 200'C (conventional oven).
13. Place the buns in the hot oven. Bake the buns for 15-20 minutes.