Mint chocolate marzipan cake

When the TV programme "Danish Idol" (X Factor) is being shown in Denmark, I together with a group of work colleagues, make a cake event of it ! We draw lots between the participants in Danish Idol. Every Friday a participant is votes off during prime time TV, and the lucky/unlucky work colleague will bring cake to the rest of the group the upcoming Monday.

Well - I am made all the way to final this year, which is something special, as my participant normally is voted off, as the first and second participant regardless of we are having a "Danish Idol" or "Strictly Ballroom" cake event. And I became second !!!! which means, that I have to bring marzipan cake for our final. The winner will bring sparkling wine to celebrate her/his victory.

Instead of baking a more traditional marzipan cake from marzipan, icing sugar and egg white, I decided to twist the flavour using a marzipan containing mint chocolate having the flavour of "After eighth" chocolate. Besides from these cakes I also made a orange coloured as well as orange flsavoured marzipan cake.

The only difficulty using this flavoured marzipan is, that the cake structure is different, these cakes can not hold their shape and they float more out. Otherwise the taste is great. So this specific marzipan is not perfect for baking marzipan cakes.

Mint chocolate marzipan cake:  - 10 pieces

• 150 g mint chocolate marzipan
• 60 g icing sugar
• 10 g egg white

1. Start by heating the (conventional) oven to 180'C.
2. Knead the marzipan, orange zest, orange blossom water, icing sugar and egg white together.
3. Roll the marzipan cake mass in one long roll, which is cut into piece of 5-8 mm.
4. Place the marzipan cake mass on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
5. Bake the marzipan cake in the oven at 180'C in the upper part of the oven for 8-10 minutes.
6. Cool down the marzipan cakes, before placing them in airtight container.

Gift bag from Odense Marcipan

Thursday evening I participated in a focus group event at Odense Marcipan, where various topics was discussed such as where we were finding inspiration for cakes/dessert, time used for planning of what to served for guests and shopping of cake articles on the net.

At the end of the evening each participant received a goodie bag full of marzipan, chocolate, chocolate coating, figure cutters and two amazing cooking books with focus on marzipan and chocolate. I already am the luckily owner of these cooking books, so I am planning to make some give aways on my blog, where you can win these cooking books.

For all the products I am planning to make various things in my kitchen for the upcoming Easter, which I will be posting during Easter.

Tove´s oat squares with speculoos

I have baked this cake for the traditional celebration of the start to the out-door rowing season, which is starting today in the rowing club of Vejle. We start by rowing a tour and when we celebrate with a speach by the chairman, before we end the day with drinking coffee/tea and eating cake.

So after a good rowing tour of 15 km, where has plenty of space in my stomach for cake, and I been enjoyed three different home-made cakes this afternoon.

A good colleague of mine has shared this cake recipe with me. I have made two changes to this recipe. The first minor change is, that I have added a pinch of salt into the cake and the second major change is, that I have replaced 100 g soft nougat with 100 g speculoos.

Tove´s oat squares with speculoos:

• 100 g butter
• 180 g oat flakes
• 1 tablespoon (cake) wheat flour
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 pinch of salt
• 100 g sugar
• 2 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 2 tablespoon light coloured syrup
• 100 g speculoos

1. Heat the (conventional) oven to 200'C
2. Melt the butter.
3. Mix oat flakes, wheat flour, baking powder, sugar, vanilla sugar and light syrup together in a mixing bowl.
4. Add in the melted butter and stir everything together.
5. Cover a baking tray of 20 x 30 cm with baking paper and spread the mass into the tray.
6. Bake the cake at 200'C for 10 minutes in the lower part of the oven.
7. Spread the speculoos paste on top of the warm cake, so it can be spread into a thin layer.
8. When the speculoos paste is firmer again, but the cake into smaller sqaures, approx 24.

Et rigtigt rugbrød - a real rye bread from "Hjemmebagt"

"Hjemmebagt" - 73 recipes - 33 accomplished = 40 recipes to bake

Finally I have started to tackle the dreaded task of baking with sour dough !!! as this is my very first attempt of baking a REAL rye bread from sour dough. And by doing this I actually also ticking off yet another line on my TO-DO-LIST 2014.

The very first part of baking this rye bread was actually to make the sour dough itself, and here the fantastic bread book "Hjemmebagt" was also containing two various recipes on how to start up a sour dough, one on rye flour and the second one on wheat flour for use in white sour breads. The wheat flour sour dough is pretty advance, so I decided to start of with the more "simple" sour dough made from water, thick milk and rye flour as the start time was minimum 24 hours for the sour dough starter.

Also the rest of the recipe on this real rye bread was relative simple without to many complicated steps. However, I soon realised, that baking your very own rye bread has a long time frame, it is not something you can decided to make two hours before the guests arrives for lunch.

First the sour dough starter needs to get started, which takes minimum 24 hours.
Secondly some rye grains needs to soak, which is another 8 hours, which in principal can be done, when the sour dough is being started up.
Third step is to make the rye bread dough, which when need to raise for minimum 12 hours, preferably for 24 hours.
Forth step is the actually baking process, which is 2½ hours in the oven.
As final fifth step, the rye bread needs to rest 24 hours, before cutting and eating it.

So three days, before you can want to eat rye bread made from sour dough, you need to start the very process of baking this rye bread. I think the correct word for this is planning very well in advance, just like I did, when I made this rye bread. I started it Tuesday evening for some lunch guests coming Saturday.

Next big question, is this rye bread worth the effort of creating it ?? Yes, the taste is good. And yes, I have got another good and living friend in my kitchen, or rather my new friend is living inside my refrigerator. And in case you have figured it out, I now house a rye bread sour dough in the refrigerator.

Bread with rosemary, squash and feta cheese

For some lunch guests coming around last week-end I wanted to bake as well a very easy to bake bread, something this did not required planning of several days in advance. Well, you are normally planning your guest good time in advance ! but you not always have the time to make actual food preparation several days in advance in a busy life. If this is the case, you could bake this bread, which will take you approx. 60 minutes from start to the bread is ready to eat.

I found the original recipe in a small bread booklet coming together with the weekly magazine called "Alt for damerne" - issue 7/2013.  And I have only made one change to the actually, as I decided to add rosemary into the bread recipe, as I am great fan of using rosemary in own kitchen and at the same time I could submit this blog post into the Blogging Challenge "Cooking with Herbs"  having focus on guess what ? - March 2014 rosemary

The taste of the bread is great, and I could easily have increased the amount of rosemary from 1/4 to 1 teaspoon. Another option to try out later on the feta cheese with chopped olives and rosemary.

Bread with rosemary, squash and feta cheese:

• 200 g wheat flour
• 200 g whole grain wheat flour
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly chopped rosemary
• ½ squash - grated
• 50 g feta cheese or white salad cheese - grated
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 375 g buttermilk

1. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
2. Add all the dry ingredients, squash, rosemary and cheese into a big bowl. Mix everything well using a cooking spoon.
3. Add into the olive oil and buttermilk.
4. Stir everything into a homogeneous mass, do not stir the dough to much, as this will give you a heavy and compact bread as result.
5. Cover a baking tray with baking paper.
6. Pour the dough into a file on the baking paper and shape into a bread shape. Use wet hands for the part of the process, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to your hands.
7. Cut a big cross in the dough using a knife.
8. Bake the bread in the lower part of the oven at 200'C for 40-50 minutes, until it is golden brown and sounds hollow, when knocking it in the bottom.
9. Lets the bread cool down, before cutting and eating it.

Hindbærsnitter "Raspberry Cutting" a la Mette Blomsterberg

The Tea Time Table is a monthly blogging event managed Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers. And for March Jane had selected decorative cakes as theme. What a challenge for me, who is true believer in the rustic appearance !!!!

After many thoughtsI decided to keep it simple, actually very, very simple !!! No need to overdue it, when your talent within cake decoration is mostly limited to icing with different colours.

So for the annual "Gold ore " lunch for my fellow rowers the cake called hindbærsnitter kept jumping into my mind. Hindbærsnitter alias "Raspberry Cutting" is more or less the only cake, you can buy at the bakers shop here in Denmark, which is NOT containing any lactose. And this is requirement, when we on rowing trips, as one of my fellow rowers is suffering from lactose intolerance. Meaning, that most of the commercial available hindbærsnitter is made on vegetable fat !!!! And vegetable fat as butter replacement has NO room in my kitchen !!!! Therefore I have been buying lactose-free butter, so I could made hindbærsnitter fitting into both my "plenty of butter" kitchen and the stomach of a lactose-intolerant rowing friend.

Previously I have been baking this hindbærsnitter a la Dr. Oetker, but it was time for me to try my hand on the recipe of Metter Blomsterberg. I started off with watching the TV programme, where Mette Blomsterberg is making hindbærsnitter, so I see all the small tricks incl the speed Mette Blomsterberg was using on the KitchenAid  !!! You can also find this recipe in her latest cake book "Blomsterbergs skønne klassikere".

The taste is just fantastic with it´s richness of butter (real butter) anf freshness coming from the raspberry jam. Uuuhmmm - I will be baking these hindbærsnitter again, perhaps adding into raspberry flavour into the glazing, as I will still have some of this flavour in one of my kitchen cupboard.

Hindbærsnitter a la Mette Blomsterberg:


Raspberry jam:

• 20 g water
• 225 g raspberries - freeze or fresh
• ½ teaspoon lemon juice
• 135 g sugar
• 1½ teasspoon pectin
• 1 tablespoon sugar - for dry-mixing together with pecti

Cake plates:

• ½ vanilla pod - only the corn
• 70 g icing sugar
• 150 g butter - at room temperature
• 200 g (cake) flour
• 25 g almond flour - finely grated almonds
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 50 g water

Glazing

• 200 g icing sugar
• water
• "nonpareille" sprinkle

Raspberry jam:

1. Add water, raspberries, lemon juice and sugar into a small cooking pot, and heat it up to the boiling point. Let is boil for 2-3 minutes.
2. Slowly add in the dry.mix of sugar and pectin, while you stir very weel to avoid lumps.
3. Let the jam cook for another 2-3 minites.
4. Pour the raspberry jam into a container for storage. You can easily make the jam a few days in advance. 

Cake plates:

1. Remove the vanilla corns from the vanilla pod. Seperate them by adding 1 tablespoon of icing sugar to the corns.
2. Add all the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl.
3. Mix the dry ingredients together with the butter on a mixer (I used a speed of 4 on my KitchenAid), when the dough looks likt coming together, add in the water. Mix everything very shortly together. 
4. Place the cake dough cold in the refrigerator for ½ hour.
5. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
6. Place the dough on a piece of baking paper covered with flour, before starting to roll out the cake plate dough. Move the dough around from time to time during the rolling process, so the dough will not stick to the surface. By rolling the cake dough on the piece of baking paper I find it much easier to move the dough from the table top to the baking tray. The dough should have a height of 3 mm and have the form of a equal square, so use a knife to trim the dough into a square.
7. Prick holes in the dough with a knife, something like 12- 14 holes.
8. Bake the dough at 200'C for 6 minutes in the upper part of the oven.
9. Take the cake doguh out of the oven, let the dough cool down fpr 2-3 minutes.
10. Measure the wide of the cake dough, divide this fugure by three, as there should be made 3 plates from the dough.  of the table top and thereby make it impossible to move the dough to the baking tray. Cut the dough into three plates of equal size. One of the three plates should be cut into two smaller plates. Move the plates away for each other.
11. Bake the dough plates again at 200'C for another 4 minutes. The plates must not be baked to much, as the plates will be divided again later on into single servings.
12. Cool down the plates.
13. Fill the raspberry jam into a piping bag (trick of Mette Blomsterberg). Cover 1½ plate of cake with raspberry jam squeezed into the middle of cake. Spread the jam into thin layer covering the plate.
14. Cover the raspberry plate with the rest of the plate.
15. Make a galzing of icing sugar and water. And spread the glazing on top of the plates.
16. Decorate the icing with  the other 1½ plate of cake.
17. Sprinkle the "nonpareille" sprinkle on top of the glazing.
18. Cut the plates into smaller pieces of cake.
19. The cake is now ready to the served together with a cup of tea or coffe.

"Gold ore" lunch for fellow rowers 2014

As a "thank you very much for your time" to my fellow rowers for rowing together with me during the season of 2013, so I once again managed to cross the magic figure of 1500 km required for a "Gold Ore" (actual I rowed 1501 km in 2013), I as usual decided to invite the rowers, who have spend the most time together with me in the rowing boat, for lunch today.

Actually if you estimate, that you row 6 km per hour - 1501 km equals 250 hours of rowing last season or 10 days and 10 hours spending in a rowing boat in rain or sunshine.

Bread selection for the "Gold ore" lunch

As tradition demands I as usual contacted my local "cheese pusher" (Osteriet) for make both a cheese as well as sausages selection, so I could spend yet some more "quality time" baking more of the recipes in the bread book "Hjemmebagt". I decided to bake my very first rye bread using a sour dough, a white bread called Hjertebrød and finally a non-yeasy raised bread called squash bread.

And for our "sweet tooth" I baked hindbærsnitter a la Mette Blomsterberg, which is another traditional cake among my fellow rowers.

I got some wonderful hostess gifts, which isbringing yet more Spring signs into my home. You can find some more Spring photo on Vejle by picture.

Now I am so ready for the a new rowing season, which starts next Saturday :-)

Relaxing or sleeping ?

Walking tour on Gendarmstien between Cathrinesminde Teglværk and Skelde Kobbelskov

Brick art

Here in March the walking tour along Gendarmstien (The Gendarme Path) started again after the Winter with the fourth distance. Gendarmstien is a walking path of 74 km between Padborg and Høruphav. Gendarmstien is located on the boarder between Denmark and Germany, and is where the boarder control force (Gendarmes) walk on foot between 1920 and 1958, after the relocation of the boarder between Denmark and Germany took place in 1920 based on the results of the boarder vote.

On the third part of the tour we walked between Gråsten Slot and Cathrinesminde Teglværk along the Northern side of the Fjord of Flensborg. The North side of the fjord is Danish, while the South part of the side is German.

So this time we started at Cathrinesminde Teglværk  ( the ending point of the third tour), where we got an an introduction to Catherinesminde Teglværk (brick yard). It was impressive to see the size of the old furnace for burning of the bricks. However, the most amazing thing was to see the three working homes for the brickyard workers anno 1870, 1930 and 1960, so see the progress in living conditions for the hard working people ending up with vacuum cleaner, TV and lawn in the garden, as the vegetable garden was not necessary any more.

Brickwork variation

The old ring furnace

Living room anno 1870 for brickyard workers

Kitchen anno 1870

Kitchen anno 1960 for brickyard workers

Living room anno 1960 

Beach with bricks leftovers around the area of Egernsund 

After the sight seeing we starter our 16 km long walk in drizzling and strong wind, which fortunately enough was coming from behind. We were actually filmed by a regional TV station (TV Syd) on our walking tour, so I could in the evening enjoy my very own 15 seconds of fame leading the walker´s pack !!!!

More normal coastline, but still brick leftovers can be found

It is also amazing to see, how all the leftovers of bricks coming from the many years of brick production and transportation on the fjord of Flensborg is dominating the coastline around the area of Egernsund. However, the brick leftovers can still be found as small souvenirs on the rest of the coastline of Flensborg Fjord.

Fairytale path

Some part of the walking tour was on a small foot path in a woodland area on hillside, where you are having the impression, that you are walking in fairytale land and then suddenly you can hear a strange noise coming out of nowhere. It turned out to the noise of busy windmill wings !!!








At the end of the tour we walking approx 2 kms on a very stony coastline. I really dislike walking on such a stony surface, as it is difficult to find a rhyme in your walking, as your foot suddenly is gliding on the stones. However, we ended the tour walking through Skelde Kobbelskov, a typical Danish beech forest with blankets of wood anemones covering the forest floor. And from Skelde Kobbelskov we had a wonderful view over the bay of Sønderborg to the very city of Sønderborg. It was also meant, that we finally had left Flensborg Fjord.

Coastline at Kobbelskov

Blooming wood anemones - so spring is here

The fifth tour will take part in April 2014, where we will start with a guided tour at Dybbøl Mølle - the most historical site of the Southern part of Jutland.

Tapas menu from Hotel Hedegaarden, Vejle

As a keen rower you are having "plenty of free time" during the Winter season, where we only are rowing twice per week in the indoor rowing machines. So some of this free time we spend on meeting up around a dining table for the annual fish dinner, which we this year decided to change into a tapas menu from hotel Hedegaarden to make some variation !!!

We started off with some starter tapas served as single serving in all types of small cups from something looking like a golf ball to a birch tree trunk.

In the black bowl is smoked salmon served with chervil creme, lump fish roe and dill.
In the white "golf ball" is marinated tiger prawns with herbs.
In the silver Christmas decoration ball is black foot ham with braised artichokes
In the turquoise bowl is sea food from the island of Læsø in aioli.
In the birch tree trunk is baked tomato pie with chorizo and red pepper fruit.
All in all five very tasteful starters.

After a small break we got a green curry soup with coconut. The soup was served in mugs and should be consumed as a beverage from this mug. Interesting way of serving soup. The soup was heated prior to serving, but an easy taste for the hostess of the evening. The soup was having a good balance between spice level and creaminess from the coconut.

The main course was heated as well as served in small black pots, so again a very easy preparation for the hostess.
In the black cooking pot braised breast of U.S. beef in Vejle beer and Lammefjords puree. And in the jam glass a salad of various vegetable thinly sliced and marinated with citrus.

As the final touch was a dessert tapas in form of a Danish cheese called høost (hay cheese) with chili jam in the white bowl. In the glass bowl was chocolate cake topped with nougat creme, mint leaves and freeze-dried raspberries. And in the little jam container was a refreshing panna cotta of black currant and some chocolate topping. A sweet ending to good tapas menu.

The daughter of the house knows, that we as many rower has a sweet tooth, so she had baked a dark rich chocolate cake :-)

The price for the tapas menu is approx 31 €/person, which is good value for money. The food is coming in individual servings pot. The things, which needed to be heated, is very easy to prepared. Everything taste great, and the amount of food is leaving you feeling full without being more than full and tried.  I will give this meal 5 stars due to taste, variation, quality and easy of preparation.

Another good thing about this tapas is, that minimum order size is for 4 persons instead of the usual 10-15 persons, which is minimum order size for take out food.

Dinner at ART @ Aros

Starter

Where am I ? - one of the amazing rooms of art @ Aros

In connection with evening event at work we went to Aros - the Art Museum in Aarhus, where we first had a guided tour around the museum, starting at the top in the rainbow in order to see the sunset followed by a walk down under to the bottom with various stops to see the highlight of the museum.

 At the very bottom we saw the dark rooms referred to as Dante´s Hell", before we went up to "heaven" at ART restaurant situated on floor level 8 with an amazing view over the city of Aarhus.

In advance we had informed the restaurant about, which dishes each participants would like to eat/enjoy. Some had selected starter & dessert, two main course or the more traditional choice of starter + main course or main course + dessert. This was handled very good by the restaurant, which adjusted the serving size like up-scaling the starter portion to a main course size or down-scaling the first main course size to starter size. I find this approach to be very service oriented !!!

My selection was the traditional choice of starter and main course.

As starter I got Norwegian lobster with smoked fresh cheese, some unknown green stuff and malt stick. The smoked fresh cheese has a great appearance like scallop, so imaging my confusion by putting a scallop into my mouth, which when taste like fresh goat cheese !!!!

Main course

As main course I was served Lamb from Thy with burnt hay in form of black powder, celery puree and thin slices of baking potatoes having a pickled acidic taste, dark pickled berries and on the top reindeer moss. It is the very time for me to eat reindeer moss, which had a good flavour and very crispy texture. The lamb had an excellent taste and juicy texture.

The price for two dishes was approx 35 € for the food alone. I will give this meal 6 stars due to the service level, attention to detail and great view over the city of Aarhus from the 8 floor (almost the top level in the museum).

So I will be back again another time enjoy some great food at a very good value for money.

Liquorice tea for my tea pot 21

Spending some sunny hours in my little park both yesterday and today spring cleaning my garden, cutting down old annuals, catching wild blowing beech leave from the neighbors' hedges, readjusting the trunk of my family apple tree to a more upright position, it was time to enjoy my first outdoor cup of tea this year.

I had brought two different liquorice tea for this week-end. One being Liquorice & Fennel from NUTE and the second being black liquorice tea from Fredsted. The liquorice tea from Fredsted is having tooo little liquorice in my opinion, where as the Liquorice & Fennel from NUTE is having the perfect sweet round liquorice taste with it´s combination of black tea with 30% liquorice root, 10% fennel, 10% anise with red fruit.

There is significant price difference between these two teas: the Fredsted tea costs 27 DKK for 50 g, whereas the NUTE version is costing 95 DKK for 100 g.

While I was busy the lion of the garden (Hannibal) spend some of his time rolling around among the crocus, licking his fur and enjoying some sunshine on his tummy. Tough life being a domestic garden lion !

PS: I have added two new pircture to the page called Vejle by picture.

Knitted plaid - halfway in progress after 8 weeks of knitting

One month ago I shared my latest progress after 4 weeks of knitting with you, so now it is time for a new update on how the plaid is coming along. So after 8 weeks knitting in the evening in front of TV watching the scary news from Ukraine, I am actually halfway through the entire plaid, as I have knitted nine rows of the 17 rows.

Looking out into my garden I can see, that Spring has kicked it´s way inside my little park with blooming crocus in the lawn, snows drops and aconite and Easter bells. Meanwhile various tulips and daffodils are preparing themselves to take over as blooming heralds of spring. So I will spend some time outside during this week-end starting on a spring cleaning of the garden cutting back the annual perennial and removing weeds from establishing them for real on my property.

Blood orange jam

Jam with the colour of a beautiful sunset

In the latest issue of "Mad & Bolig" februar 2014 there is a food theme on oranges with plenty of interesting recipes incl one recipe on orange jam.

The photo of the jam looks quiet gelled, however looking in details in the actual recipe, things are NOT adding up !!!! Following the recipe step by step would give you a more liquid jam type as there is not extra addition of pectin powder into the jam.

So as usual, when I find something is not adding up in, I call someone, who should be able to answer my many questions. And this time I called a world leading pectin experts, which I know at work to get her suggestions on making a gelled jam.

For you to actually extract the natural occurring pectin in citrus fruits for jam making in your kitchen you need to keep the white part of the peel, even though this will bring bitterness into the jam. Also the acidity of the mixture needs to be lowered, when working with oranges, so addition of lemon juice is needed.

The boiling time before addition of sugar should be increased to around 45 minutes and the cooking time after the sugar addition should be reduced significantly to 5 minutes to avoid pre-gelling of the jam !!! And finally you will need a higher amount of sugar to get the jam to gel. I needed up with a rather thick jam, which was not gellified, so I should either have added more sugar and/or used more lemon juice.
Well, details !!! The flavour is amazing and the colour is beautiful like a sunset :-) The addition of star anise and vanilla is not dominating in any way.

UPDATE & April 2014:
The Tea Time Table is a monthly blogging event managed Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers. The theme for April 2014 is has been selected by Karen to be jams, curds and preserves, so here this blood orange jam is fitting perfect.

Blood orange jam:

• 5 organic blood orange
• 1 lemon - juice
• water
• ½ star anise
• ½ vanilla pod - only the pod
• 1000 g sugar

1. Remove the peel in strings using a citrus peeler.
2. Cut the blood oranges into thinner slices, which is cut into smaller pieces.
3. Place the peel, blood orange pieces, blood orange juice in a mixing bowl, where the blood oranges are covered with water.
4. Store the blood orange cold in the refrigerator night over. 
5. Pour the blood orange mass in a bigger cooking with lemon juice, star anise and vanilla pod. Weight the mass, so the amount of sugar can be calculated. I used one part blood orange mass to one part of sugar.
6. Let the blood orange mass cook gentle for 45 minutes.
7. Remove the blood orange pieces from the cooking pot and blend then into a homogeneous mass.
8. Add the blood orange mass back into the cooking pot together with the sugar.
9. Bring the jam back to the boiling point. Let it boil for 5 minutes.
10. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water to increase the shelf-life of your jam. Another thing you can do to increase the shelf-life is to store the jam cold afterwards.
11. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.
12. You can put sunshine on your bread and buns :-)

Digital thermometer - kitchen equipment 24

Allow me to introduce you to my new best companion in my little kitchen !!!

A digital thermometer, which can measure temperatures between -50'C and up to +300'C !!!! with an accuracy of 0.1'C. It is one of my mothers Christmas presents to me, which I actually did the shopping of myself in order to ensure it was the right thing. I found it at Kunst og Køkkentøj located in Aarhus, where it costs 23.70 €.

So fare it have been working perfect allowing me to make caramels like Liquorice cream caramels and Valentine Day cream caramel without fluid structure.

I am also planning to use it for tempering of chocolate, hoping it will bring the same level of great success here with chocolate with a bite to it.

Fastelavnsboller a la "Maden i mit liv"

Today is Shrovetide Sunday, so if you come around singing in front  of my door:

Fastelavn er mit navn                                             Shrovetide is my name

Boller vil jeg have                                                    Buns I would like to have

Hvis jeg ingen boller får                                          If I get no buns

Så laver jeg ballade                                                When I will make trouble

I will be giving you NO money, but you can go away with this home-made fastelavnsboller a la "Maden i mit liv".

As usual I decided to reduced the yeast amount from the "classic" 50 g to 25 g, while I at the same time increased the raising time.

I must admit I also find this bun dough to quiet fatty in consistency, but better than this bun dough from Speculoos Shrovetide bun. I could actually see fatty spots from where the bun had been laying on the kitchen table. Not being entire happy leaves me plenty of opportunity to look around for the bun dough being perfect in my opinion :-)

To bring to some surprice into the Shrovetide buns, I choose to fill them with various fillings, so you will never know what you get :-)

Fastelavnsboller a la "Maden i mit liv": - 16 buns

• 200 g milk
• 25 g yeast - in small lumps
• 1 knife pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon cardamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 100 g dairy whipping cream - 35-40% fat
• 125 g butter - melted and cooled down
• 500 g wheat flour
• 1 egg for glazing
• filling suggestions:
• grated marzipan mixed with grate apple
• Speculoos paste
• blood orange curd
• home-made jam like blackberry jam with orange
• icing - optional

1. Heat up the milk in the microwave oven at 800 W for 20-30 seconds, until it is finger warm
2. Add the milk and yeast into the mixing bowl of my cherished kitchen helper, agitate slowly, while a dry-mix of sugar, salt, vanilla sugar and cardamon is added in as well for 1 minute on speed 1.
3. Mix melted butter and dairy cream together into the liquid phase.
4. Afterwards add in the wheat flour, knead for 5 minutes on speed 1 followed by 1 minute on speed 2.
5. Place the bun dough in air-tight container, while it raise in warm surroundings for ½-2 hours.
6. Weigh the bun dough in a size of 60-70 g, which is pressed flat.
7. On the flatten bun dough a spoon full of filling is placed.
8. Fold the dough together around the filling - fold it close together
9. Place the bun up-side-down on the baking plate
10. Raise the buns for another 30 minutes
11. Heat the (conventional) oven to 200'C
12. Glaze the buns with beaten egg
13. Bake at 200'C for 20 minutes in the upper part of the oven (conventional)
14. Cool down the buns before decoration with sugar icing.

Welcome to March - the first month of Spring

 Welcome to March - the first month of Spring

Official the Winter period is now over here in Denmark !!!! So let´s see, if the weather are able to control itself not sending ice, freezing temperature and any snow to us here in March ? Springtime is all around me in my little garden with blooming heralds of spring in form of snowdrops, aconite, Easter bells and crocus. Even the very first stems of rhubarb are putting their head above the soil surface.

Mid February I celebrated Valentine´s Day with very different recipes covering yogurt, cocktail, cream caramels, panna cotta and small marzipan cake with raspberry and lime being the most popular Valentine post 2014 among you readers.

As Easter first will happen in April, Shrove Sunday, which is the peak day of eating Shrovetide buns is also delayed this year, so it will first be tomorrow Sunday. Meanwhile I will share this most popular recipe ever on Shrovetide buns with you, so you can prepare yourself for tomorrow.

fastelavnsboller med kransekage

Right here and now I actually have no idea, what I will be focusing on during this first month of Spring, so look in from time to time and see what is going on in my kitchen. I knew for certain, that I will be having fellow rowers coming around late March for my traditional "gold ore lunch". And in this connection I could try to tackle the task on my to do list 2014 baking rye bread from real sour dough !!!! I dread this task !!!