APPLE ORANGE PEAR TWIST

Another way of clearing up in the weekly vegetable box is to make juice. This is basically a fruit juice without vegetable inside. The apples, oranges and pears are bringing all the sweetness into the juice, so I am using the peel of one orange together with lemon incl peel to adjust the taste in a fresh/acidic direction, which I think was managed quiet good in this juice.

This juice is fitting perfect into either breakfast or on a brunch table.

APPLE ORANGE PEAR TWIST: - 4 servings

• 1 lemon - with the peel
• 2 orange - one without the peel and one with the peel
• 7 apples - without the core and stem
• 7 pears - without the core and stem

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Juice the lemon in between the oranges.
4. Pour into a glass and enjoy :-)
   
   
   

Samvirke bread for butter

Apparently this bread should be good to served together with butter, plenty of butter ! I have found the recipe in Samvirke, issue December 2014. The use of brown sugar and sugar is giving the breads a warn, nice brown colour.

For this bread recipe fits perfect served together with pate, sausages and other type of cold meat in connection with lunch or tapas. The bread also works as a good alternative for rye bread. It is not the last time, I will be baking this type of bread.


Samvirke bread for butter: - 2 breads

• 25 g yeast
• 5 dl water - cold 
• 300 g rye flour
• 30 g butter
• 75 g brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 300 g purpose flour
• 180 g wheat flour
• 4 tablespoons milk for glazing

Day 1:

1. Add yeast and water into medium mixing bowl, and dissolve the yeast.
2. Add in the rye flour, and stir everything well together.
3. Cover the mixing bowl with a lid.
4. Store the rye flour mix cold either night over or up to 24 hours.

Day 2:

1. Smelt the butter in a small cooking pot.
2. Pour the melted butter in mixing bowl on stand alone mixer. Add the brown sugar, soy sauce and salt into the melted butter, and mix well.
3. Add  the rye flour mix, purpose flour and wheat flour. Knead the dough on speed 2 for 10 minutes.
4. Place the dough warm, let it raise for 45 minutes.
5. Divide the dough into 2 portions, which each in place in a bread form for further raising for another 45 minutes.
6. Heat up the oven to 190'C (conventional oven).
7. Bake the breads in the middle of the oven at 190'C for 55 minutes.
8. Take out the bread, and glaze the surface with milk.
9. Bake the bread for another 5 minutes at 190'C.
10. Cool down the bread on a rack.

APPLE APPEAL

My juicer and I become better and better acquainted with each as times goes by :-) And I am slowly trying to create my own juice combination. A colleague of mine mentioned he really like the combination of apple, kiwi and mint, so I decided to create my own version of these three ingredients.

At the same time I am participating in the monthly blog event Tea Time Treat packed lunch as the theme of January. Tea Time Treats is managed by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers.

APPLE APPEAL: - 2 portions

• 3 apples - core and stem removed
• 3 kiwis - ends removed
• 6 stems of mint - only use the leaves to avoid bitterness

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together. Use the mint leaves in between the apples or kiwis.
3. Pour into a glass or bottle to bring with you
4. Enjoy :-) 

New mile stone - 1000 blog posts

Another amazing mile stone is being passed with this very specific blog post, as this very blog post is post number 1.000 being published on this blog !!!!!!!

Did I imaging, that I would be writting 1.000 blog posts, when I started blogging ? NO
Did I imaging, what I would spend my time on in my kitchen, besides from cooking and baking ? NO
Did I imaging, I would had baked all the recipes in "Hjemmebagt" ? YES
Did I imaging having readers around the globe ? NO

But somehow I have been writting 1.000 blog posts !!!!

And somehow I have spend my time:

• baking cakes and cookies - today I was actually nominated for "Good to the core value" by work colleagues for my involvement in raising money towards figthing breast cancer by selling muffins. I am amazed over this nomination :-)
• becoming better at bake bread
• making my own ice cream
• drinking cocktails
• creating jams - this apricot jam with lavender was awarded as one of the five best home-made Danish jams of 2014 :-) I am quiet proved of this achievement
• enjoying my own home-made juices from both fruit and vegetables
• gathering friends and family for various afternoon tea session 

Somehow I had imaging, that after more than 4 years I should have been able to bake the entire 73 recipes in "Hjemmebagt". Assume at some stage I will have done it !

More and more of you readers are coming from out-side Denmark, perhaps this is is related to the popularity of Nordic kitchen ? I do not know, but I welcome all of you into my little kitchen :-)


The overall Top 10 for the 1.000 blog post look like this:

1. Plums in port a la Dansukker - 30 August 2012
2. TUC cake - 20 February 2011
3. Dinner at"Mad hos Mads, Horsens - 30 November 2012
4. Tea shopping at Kusmi in Paris - 30 September 2011
5. Wheat buns (varme hveder) for Great Prayer Day - 20 May 2011
6. Help in the kitchen - kitchen equipment 23 - 6 November 2013
7. Skovtursmuffin - picnic muffin - 7 April 2013
8. Baked Christmas confect - 7 December 2011
9. Meeting some Danish food bloggers in REAL life - 21 September 2012
10. Pomegranate marzipan cake - 7 January 2012

As usual I am ending the mile stone review with an update on my KPIs for the blog looks like this (in my professional life colleagues and managers are discussing Key Performance Indicators on a regular basis):

Review day: 25 January 2015
Start day - first posting: 13 November 2010
Development on "Hjemmebagt": 73 recipes - 34 accomplished = 39 recipes to bake
Amount of cooking books in my kitchen: 77 books
Page views: 191.863
Publish posts: 1.000 incl. this
Followers: 16
Blogs followed: 17

Page view per country:

• Canada: 1%
• Norway: 1%
• Ukraine: 1%
• Portugal: 1%
• Germany: 3%
• UK: 4%
• France: 4%
• Russia: 7%
• Other countries: 23%
• Denmark: 24%
• USA: 31%

Hope to see you soon :-)

Lasagne with plenty of vegetables

From time to time I need to do some clearing in my weekly vegetable box. And one way of "getting ride off" some vegetable, before the next weekly vegetable box arrives on my door step, is to use some of these left-over vegetables in a pasta sauce, freshly squeezed juice or in this case in a lasagne.

I used this recipe on lasagne from Karoline Køkken (book number 5) as starting point for my lasagne with plenty of vegetable.

Lasagne with plenty of vegetable:

• 3-4 tablespoons og olive oil
• 1 onion - roughly chopped
• 1 clove of garlic - finely chopped
• 400 g minced beef
• 3 carrots - roughly grated
• 1 can of canned tomato
• 1 can (70 g) of tomato concentrate
• 4 tomatoes - roughly chopped
• 4 stems of spring onions - roughly chopped
• 1 red pepperfruit - roughly chopped
• salt and pepper
• 15  lasagne plates
• ½ i Mornay sauce
• 50-75 g grated Cheddar cheese

1. Fry the onion, garlic and meat in hot oil in a cooking pot.
2. Wait until meat has changed colour, before addition of the vegetables.
3. Together with the addition of the vegetable add in the canned tomato and tomato concentrate. Season with pepper and salt.
4. Gently cook the meat sauce under lid for 15 minutes, when remove the lid and cook the sauce for another 10 minutes.
5. Start by pour some Mornay sauce into the bottom of ovenproof dish, followed by 5 lasagne plates. Next layer is the meat sauce, sprinkled with some grated Cheedar cheese and some Mornay sauce.
6. Next another 5 plates of lasagne plates topped with the last of the meat sauce sprinkled with grated Cheedar cheese.
7. Finally finish off with the last 5 lasagne plates, and the last of the Mornay sauce nd finally sprinkled with some Cheddar cheese.
8. Place the ovenproof dish in the middle of the oven.
9. Bake the lasagne at 200'C for 30 minutes in the fan oven.
10. Served the lasagne warm.

SPICY KALE

After my success using red cabbage in PURPLE POWER, I was really looking forward to test out some white cabbage in this juice calles SPICY KALE. I did drink the juice, but I am not fan of the bitterness coming from the white cabbage, and it was difficult for me to understand, why the word spicy was a part of this juice name ?? Well, not a success and neither a faileur, but not worth a repetition !

SPICY KALE - 1-2 servings

• 1/4 white cabbage
• 1 orange + the peel of ½ orange
• 2 apples
• 1 pear
• 2 cm ginger

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Pour into a glass and enjoy :-) as you think healthy thoughts !

Nute Christmas tea for my tea pot 32

I am within a tea drinking period, where I am drinking plenty of Christmas tea even though, the Christmas is almost gone from one month.

The Nute Chistmas tea is made from organic black Assam tea with organic spices (8% allspice, 5% cardamon seeds, 4% cloves buds, 1% nutmeg and finally flavoured by cherry and vanilla. I really like both the look and smell of this tea with all it´s spices. However, I was expecting more actually flavour in the brewed tea, neither can I detected any cherry flavour, which I am disappointed about.

PINK PASSION

Why not start of the Sunday with a glass of freshly made juice ? Well for the last month I have been starting most mornings with a glass of home-made juice instead of the orange or apple juice, which you can buy in the suoermarket. And I just love to drink my home-made juice in the morning :-)

It was very fascinating to make this juice called PINK PASSION, and see how 50 g of red beet (1 tiny little red beet) completely took over the entire colour of this juice !!! Another amazing thing about this juice is, that despite all it´s many vegetable the overall taste sensation is actually quiet sweet.

As I wanted to use up the broccoli, I decided to increase from 1/4 to ½ broccoli, when I made this use.

I normally make a bigger portion of the juice, and when I store the remaining juice cold in the refrigerator for 1-1½ days. All the many part of the juicer fills quiet a lot in the dish washer, so this is why I normally makes a bigger portion.

PINK PASSION: 2 servings

• 1½ apple - core and stem removed
• ½ cucumber
• ½ squash
• ½ lemon - with peel
• ½ pineapple
• 50 g red beet
• 2 cm ginger
• ½ broccoli incl stem
• 3 carrots

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Juice the lemon in between the apple.
4. Pour into a glass and enjoy :-)

FRESH´N BITTER

My juicer and I continues our journey together through the wonderful world of fruit and vegetable, even when the vegetable within the juice box is NOT one of my favourite vegetable such as fennel !!!! I did find some pleasure in "killing off" the fennel by putting it through the juice.

The taste of the juice is for sure living up to it´s name of FRESH´N BITTER, where the grapefruit is dominating with both fresh/acidic and bitter taste. The taste of fennel is also a part of the flavour profile without dominating it.

The big question is, would I make this juice again myself ??? No, as I find the taste to be too bitter.

I also find it very fascinating to see the type of mosaic, which the various fruit and vegetable creates, as their juice runs into the juice collector.

FRESH´N BITTER: - 2s ervings

• ½ lime - without the peel
• ½ squash
• 2 grapefruits - without the peel
• ½ fennel

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Juice the lime in between the grapefruits.
4. Pour into a glass and enjoy :-)

Kusmi Christmas Tea for Magasin for my tea pot 31

Christmas tea can be sommething of challenge to navigate within. Sometimes the flavour profile is perfect, and you can continue to drink this Christmas tea into January/February Other times your taste buds becomes overwhelmed by the flavour of the Christmas tea, so you either give the tea away or throw it out to get ride off it. And other times again you can find out, why the tea is a Christmas tea, as there is no Christmas profile about it.

For me a Christmas tea should have a spicy profile with various addition of other element than tea leafs. And I do not like it, when one flavour dominates the entire tea.

The Kusmi Christmas tea produced exclusive for Magasin du Nord is one of my favourite Christmas tea, as both look and taste appeals to me. The tea is made from black Chinese tea with flavour addition of orange, almonds, spices and rose petals.

PURPLE POWER

Good morning :-)

Let´s start of the day with a glass on freshly squeezed juice, using my new very best friend - the juicer. This time the colour supplying ingredient is red cabbage. I must admit, that I did not any high expectation about using red cabbage after my limited success using palm cabbage.

However, I must admit, that red cabbage was a positive surprice in this juice. The name of this juice is PURPLE POWER, which is a very fitting name.

PURPLE POWER: - 1-2 juice servings

• 1 appel - core removed
• 1/4 red cabbage
• 1/4 pine apple
• ½ lemon - incl peel

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Remove the stem and core from the apple.
3. Juice everything together.
4. Pour into a glass and enjoy :-)

Liquorice ice cream

You should really consider to make your own liquorice ice cream, if you often are disappointed, when buying ice cream with liquorice ice, where the taste of liquorice many times to light. Making your liquorice ice cream means, that you can control the level of liquorice added into the ice cream.

With a total of 5 tablespoons of liquorice powder, this ice cream has plenty of liquorice taste, so if you worry about your blood pressure, you should reduce the amount of added liquorice powder. I have previously been sharing a recipe on home-made liquorice ice cream with you.

If you are not Danish or Scandinavian, DO NOT make this ice cream, as the taste will scare the hell out of you !!!

Hopefully I can get started again on my ambition regarding making ice cream on much more regular basic, perhaps monthly ice cream production is too ambitious, but making ice cream every second month would also be OK in my opinion.

If you have any idea, what type of ice cream I should create next time, please feel free to share your suggestion with me :-)

UPDATE:
January 27 2015, this recipe was used for the blog challenge "Cooking with herbs" having focus on store cupboards and essentials as theme for January 2015, as liquorice both as syrups (sweet & salty versions) and as powder is cupboard essentials in a Danish kitchen :-)


Liquorice ice cream:

• 630 g whole milk, 3-3.5% fat
• 39 g skimmed milk powder
• 96 g sugar
• 32 g glucose syrup as powder
• 6 g ice cream stabiliser
• 1 tablespoon raw liquorice powder
• 4 tablespoons liquorice powder

1. Dry-mix all the powder ingredients. Pout them into the milk, as the milk is whipped.
2. Pour the milk base into the a cooking pot.
3. Heat the ice cream mix over medium heat until hot, but not boiling.
4. Pour the ice cream mix into a plastic container with a lid on.
5. Cool down the ice cream mix in the refrigerator, let the mix stand for minimum 4 hours or night over.
6. Whip the ice cream mix prior to freezing it.
7. Pour the mix into the ice cream machine and freeze it into ice cream, which takes around 30-40 minutes.
8. Store the ice cream in the freezer.

Liquorice Fudge

After I have found out how to make great tasting caramels, I have wanted to expand my candy creation skills, so when I saw this recipe on hjemmelavet lakrids fudge a la "Maden i mit liv", I decided to have a go on this fudge.

For the whipping part after the cooking I decided to team up with my very good kitchen help. You could also use a basic electrical beater or whip the fudge by hand, if you need to exercise during this calorie rich season.

UPDATE:
January 27 2015, this recipe was used for the blog challenge "Cooking with herbs" having focus on store cupboards and essentials as theme for January 2015, as liquorice both as syrups (sweet & salty versions) and as powder is cupboard essentials in a Danish kitchen :-)


Liquorice fudge:

• 1 tin of 397 g sweetened condensed milk
• 450 g sugar
• 115 g butter
• 150 g milk
• 3 teaspoon liquorice powder
• 1 teaspoon raw liquorice powder

1. Mix the condensed milk, sugar, butter and milk together in a large saucepan. Boil up this mass, while you stir regular. Cook the mass up to 115'C. 
2. Pour the fudge mass in a whipping bowl and add in the liquorice powders. Whip the fudge mass on speed 2 for 10 minutes.
3. Cover a baking form with baking paper.
4. Fill the fudge mass into this form.
5. Let the mass cool down
6. When the fudge is firm enough, cut it into squares of 2 x 2 cm each
7. Store the fudge in an airtight container.

Fredsted lakrids te for my tea pot 30

I have got this liquorice tea from Fredsted by my cousin in connection with PINK afternoon tea 2014. Now there was room among the daily teas, so I have taken this tea into rotation. My cousin knows my attraction towards liquorice, so this liquorice tea from Fredsted is very fitting to me.

The Fredsted liquorice tea is made from black tea with addition of 1.5% liquorice flavour. The flavour profile is for sure liquorice, however, the liquorice taste is not over the top in any way. The taste is good, but I would buy another type of liquorice flavour tea myself, as I am expecting much more liquorice flavour from a liquorice tea. The size of the tea leafs is actually having a quiet big size.

Best Bread of the World - Verdens Bedste Brød

For the annual Christmas lunch for The Wonderful Women, where we enjoyed a cheese tapas I decided to bake the bread myself. As one of the bread I choose Best Bread of the World (Verdens bedste brød. This bread became very popular 2 years ago out here in blog land, but I first around baking it now. Good thing takes it´s time !

I also need to get hold of a cast iron cooking pot with a stain less steal knob to bake this bread in. If your present cast iron cooking pot has a phenolic knob, this knob can not withstand the very high temperature during baking. So now I have Le Creuset cast iron cooking (with phenolic knob) for plain cooking and a Pyrex cast iron cooking pot wih stain less knob for bread baking.

This bread both tastes and looks fantastic. And it looks like a bread brought at an Italian baker. So this bread is really a show-off, which is so very, very easy to bake. Actaully you are not even kneading the dough at all.

Best Bread of the World - Verdens Bedste brød: - 1 bread

• 600 g water
• 5 g fresh yeast
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 tablespoon honey
• 625 g wheat flour (550 g wheat flour and 75 g whole grain wheat flour)
• oatflakes

1. Stir yeast and water together in a big mixing bowl. Add salt, honey and flour and stir with a cooking spoon. 
2. Rise the dough to rise at room temperature overnight - minimum 12 hours.
3. Take the dough out off the mixing bowl, move 1/3 of the dough in over the rest of the dough, keep repeating this process untill you have a small size of the dough.
4. Clean the mixing bowl for any dough leftovers.
5. Place the dough again in a clean miing bowl, ket is rise again for 2 hours.
6. Heat up the cast iron cooking pot incl. lid on a rack in the lower part of the oven at 250°C (fan oven) for ½ hour.
7. Remove the hot cast iron cooking from the oven, remove the lid. Cover the bottom of the cooking pot with oat flakes, as this will prevent the dough from sticking to firm to the surface.
8. Place the dough in the hot cast iron cooking pot, put the lid back on. Place the cooking pot in the lower part of the oven, let it bake at 250°C for 30 minutes.
9. Remove the lid from the cast iron cooking pot, and let the bread bake at 250°C for another 15 minutes. 
10. Let the bread cold down on the cast iron cooking pot for 30 minutes. before it is taken out.

Pomegranate Aperitif

Lets get started on the New Year with a sparkling cocktail :-)

For the annual Christmas lunch for "The Wonderful Women"´we also need a sparkling cocktail to start of with. Either serving a glass of "plain" sparkling wine or a cocktail is for me an excellent way of saying welcome to my guests. So when I saw this recipe on Pomegranate Aperitif in the monthly magazine "Samvirke", issue December 2014, I knew at once, that this should be welcoming cocktail for my lovely girl friends due to the use of sparkling wine and pomegranate, which really is in season now. And on top the pomegranate juice is having such an excellent red colour, which was fitting perfect into the Christmas season !

You will need 1 big pomegranate in order to make 4 of these drinks, as it is a combination of both pomegranate juice and pomegranate kernels. I started off by taking 8 tablespoons pomegranate, which were needed for decoration, before I used my new best friend the juicer to make freshly pressed pomegranate juice. The pomegranate juice can be replaced by cranberry juice.

Pomegranate Aperitif: - 1 cocktail

• 2 cl pomegranate juice
• 2 cl gin
• 2 tablespoons pomegranate kernels
• sparkling wine

1. Pour pomegranate juice, gin and pomegranate kernel into a champagne glass.
2. Fill the remaining of the glass up with sparkling wine.
3. Cheers :-)

Happy New Year 2015

Happy New Year
Goodbye to 2014 & Welcome to 2015

to all of you from Hannibal the Cat and I. We hope you will get an exciting, promising and healthy New Year here in 2015 with plenty of sunshine, some white snow to bring some light into a dark Winter season and less wind during the rowing season !!!

The biggest thing for me and my little kitchen here in 2014 has for sure been the replacement of the old HTH kitchen with a brand new Svane kitchen incl. new tiles on the floor and new white goods.
From the end of October to mid November I had to live out any kitchen at all.
However, it has been one of my best decisions ever to invest money in a new kitchen as I spend so much of my free time here.
With the amount of light available make it an inviting place to be even during the dark evening of Winter time, as I can actually see, what I am doing.
The tiles for the wall still needs to be finished, so they can be put up. This will be done here in first part of 2015.

In July I participated in a jam competition, where my jam on apricot jam with lavender became one of the five best home-made Danish jams, so I have started to think of myself as a "jam createur" :-)



I have also got a new best kitchen friend the Juicer as company Christmas present, which I am really looking forward to make any excellent tasting juice from fruit and vegetable in the coming future. In order to get me started, I have signed up for JuiceSelvKasse as a frequent weekly box from Årstiderne.








Well my way of baking through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt" has been moving slower during 2014, where I managed to bake a total of 2 recipes. If I maintain this baking speed during 2015, I will be finished baking in around 20 years time, around the time, when I will be retiring from work !!!!  Could be that 2015 will bring more baking momentum.

Again 2014 was a year, where I used my baking capabilities for some fund raising activities involving both work colleagues and friends turning the month of October into PINK month (PINK afternoon tea 2014) collecting an amazing 797 DKK to support the fight against breast cancer. 2015 will be bringing similar activities in the Autumn month of October.




As usual I am still participating in the monthly virtual tea table called Tea Time Treats hosted by two food bloggers in the UK. It is great fun for me to work the various theme selected for these monthly tea tables. And I will continue to participate in these monthly virtual tea tables here in 2015, as it bringing me a lot of inspiration to both me and my little kitchen.


As usual the month of December has been a very, very busy month for me in my kitchen, as I am working on selecting interesting Christmas recipes as well as actually making the Christmas stuff, so I can share an daily blog post with a Christmas recipe with you in the count down for Christmas !!! For me this process is a little bit like mood therapy, a way of keeping up my mood during a long, dark, gray and rainy Winter season, as it keep me busy inside of hiding under my duvet like a little sleepy brown bear !!! So therefore I will already now promise, that you will get Christmas Calender again in 2014 :-) Traditionally I invited various friends living in the area of Vejle for a gløgg evening, so they can taste some of my Christmas creations.


As regular theme blog posts during every single month I have shared the following type of blog posts with you:

• blog introduction to each month with focus on a specific theme (starter in September 2013)
• recipe on cocktail and drinks (started in 2011) - been less regular in 2014 - so room for improvement here in 2015
• contribution to Tea Time Treat (started in December 2012)
• recipe on ice cream (started in October 2013) - quiet seldom in 2014 - so plenty of room for improvement in 2015

So how did I get get along with my TO-DO-LIST of 2014 ??? Well I managed to do 50% of my list, which means I will have some interesting thing to do here in 2015 :-)

      TO DO LIST 2014:

• making rye bread from a real sour dough - DONE
• collection of sloe during Autumn 2014, so I can make my own sloe gin
• collection of ramson during Spring 2014 - DONE
• collection of elderberry during Autumn 2014
• making macaroons
• making caramels, which is NOT floating together during storage - DONE
• making a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2014
• making my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2014
• making mince meat for Christmas 2014 - DONE
• baking mohn back (poppey seed) cake - DONE

Coming to the end of this very long blog text I would like to share a "TO DO" list with you of the things, which I would like work with in my kitchen during 2015:

     TO DO LIST 2015:

• collect sloe during Autumn 2015, so I can make my own sloe gin
• collect elderberry during Autumn 2015
• make macaroons
• make a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2015
• make my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2015
• work with more sugar candy type such as nougat and marshmallows
• make more ice cream
• enjoy more drinks and cocktail
• enjoy home-made juices from both juice and vegetable
• use the herbs from my kitchen garden more actively

So let´s how many of these "TO DO" points, which I managed to cross during the brand new year of 2015, at least I have 362 days in front of me to do something about it :-)

Kitchen status on 2014:

Review day: 1 January 2015
Recipes baked during 2014 from "Hjemmebagt": 2 (34 accomplished at 31 December 2014)
Amount of new cooking books in my kitchen: 19 new cooking book (77 books at end of 2014)
Page views in 2014: 121.179 (total page views of 187.074 at 31st December 2014)
Publish posts in 2014: 239 posts (total posts of 985 at 31st December 2014)

Top 10 of the most popular blog posts published during 2014:

1. Blood orange jam - published 6 March 2014
2. Hindbærsnitter "raspberry cutting" a la Mette Blomsterberg - published 23 March 2014
3. Knitted plaid - published 12 January 2014 
4. Knitted plaid after 4 weeks of knitting - published 8 February 2014
5. Tapas menu from Hotel Hedegaarden, Vejle - published 18 March 2014
6. Walnut cream cake a la Svinkløv Badehotel- published 8 June 2014
7. Cake lunch at conditoriet La Glace - published 14 July 2014
8. Stressful afternoon tea at Perch Aarhus - published 7 July 2014
9. Barbecue evening of 2014 - published 4 August 2014
10. Burger at Fur Strand Hotel - published 29 June 2014

The last meal !!! of 2014

Moving from 2014 into 2015 was done in the good company of my good friends living in Horsens, while we enjoyed a 4 course "take - away" New Year´s menu from Le Gateau.

The food was very, very easy to prepare, and were delivered with preparation instruction.

The first starter was named "Hummer & Herbs" and took the shape of light creamy lobster bisque with herb / black truffle pesto with freshly baked baguette. The lobster bisque was very creamy with a great taste. 

The second starter came along with the name of "Champagne & Halibut". The halibut filet had been steamed in champagne. The fish was when served a wonderful creamy champagne cream sauce,
watercress pesto and some crispy rye bread chips. The sauce was so excellent, so we used the baguette left-over to soak every single drop of this sauce.

The name for the main course was "Calf & Hazelnut" and consisted of tournedos cut from Danish veal tenderloin. The meat was served several items in form of baked tomatoes with pine needles (final use of the Christmas tree ?), red onion marmalade and beetroot / raspberry puree and finally 
toasted hazelnut / potato duchesse and strong red wine sauce. The combination of beetroot and raspberry worked perfect, as the fresh of the raspberry covered any earth taste, which many times is the case, when eating beetroot. 

As we did not  have any room left for ice cream, when we some of us meet up for traditional Christmas lunch, we decided to have two desserts as well during the last meal of 2014. The first dessert was therefore nougat ice cream, liquorice ice cream and freshly baked liquorice marzipan cake (kransekage).

The second dessert was called "Dessert Plate". And it was actually too much cake being a part of 4 course menu ! The first cake was forest fruit mousse with soft caramel core and a crispy base. The second cake was a chocolate praline cake with Grand Cru chocolate ganache and crunchy chocolate with dried forest berries. And the final little thing was home-made raspberry marshmallow, The two cakes were served upon forest fruit syrup.

For the two starters and main course the amount of food were perfect adjusted. However, the dessert plate was too big and over-whelming. Here just one cake would have been OK in food amount.

The final part of the New Year´s menu was a piece of marzipan cake, which we actually did not managed to eat, as we were all very full after this last meal. So I still have my piece of marzipan cake, which I will enjoy later today.

In total I ended to with paying approx 53 € for the entire great tasting menu incl the almond cake for the actual transition from 2013 to 2014 excl. wine. I will give this New Year menu 5 stars.