Almond cake

The sweet finishing touch for my birthday Summer tapas was this almond cake served together with orange sauce. The original recipe can be found in the cooking book "Politikens bog om tapas" by Anne Hjernøe.

I made no changes to the original recipe. Another time I think I will be twist the taste by addition of some orange flower water.

Almond cake:

• 250 g butter - melted
• 150 g almond flour - blend almonds with their skin into flour in a blender
• 100 g (cake) flour
• 250 g icing sugar
• organic orange - only the zest
• 6 egg whites

1. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 210'C.
2. Whip almond flour, flour, icing sugar and orange zest together in the mixing bowl on the KitchenAid on speed 1.
3. Add the egg whites one by one, while whipping on speed 2-3.
4. Finally add in the melted butter, while whipping.
5. Fill the cake dough in a round silicone form (diameter 28 cm).
6. Bake the cake at 210'C in the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes.
7. Cool the cake, before serving it orange sauce or perhaps even vanilla ice cream.

PARSLEY & HORSERADISH

Another very green looking juice from Årstidernes JuiceSelvKasse. Luckily enough this juice was drinkable despite the very green colour.

It is the very first time, that I have been juicing with horseradish !! The horseradish gives a warm hot sensation, while you drink the juice.

PARSLEY & HORSERADISH: 3-4 servings

• 100 g parsley
• 4 apples
• 300 g spinach
• 4 cm horseradish - peeled

1. Clean all the ingredients
2. Juice all the ingredients on a juicer. Juice the parsley and spinach in between the apples.
3. Enjoy and store the remaining juice cold.

Summer yogurt

Now the raspberry bush is full of fresh ripened raspberries in my little garden, so it is with great joy, that I start out yet another busy day eating Summer yogurt.


Summer Yogurt: - 1 serving

• 200 g Greek yogurt
• 2-3 tablespoons honey roasted muesli
• 2 tablespoons orange sauce
• 6 fresh raspberries

1. Add the Greek yogurt into the serving dish
2. Afterwards add the muesli and orange sauce on top of the yogurt.
3. Finish off with some fresh raspberries
4. Grab a spoon and enjoy this start on a great Summer day :-)

Salted almonds

I have found this recipe on salted almonds on the blog "Maden i mit liv", and I have made no modifications to it.

My birthday guests did their best to eat all these almonds, however I had saved a portion for myself for later indulgence !! The comments to the almonds were, that they were very good and not too salty, which salted almonds sometimes can be.

I will for sure be making these almonds again, perhaps the taste with various herb addition.

Salted almonds:

• 200 g almonds
• 4 tablespoons of sea salt
• 400 g boiling water

1. Start by dissolving the sea salt in the boiling water in a bowl, before the almonds are into this salt solution.
2. Let the almonds soak for 20-25 minutes with a lid covering the bowl.
3. Remove the almonds from the salt solution.
4. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
5. Spread the almonds on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
6. Roast the almonds at 200'C for 8-10 minutes, mix around the almonds one or two times during the roasting process.
7. Cool down the almonds, before storing in an airtight container.

Tapas bread

My cousin once gave me two cooking books as birthday gift with focus on tapas. One of these cooking books were "Politikens bog om tapas" written by Anne Hjernøe. It is a great book full of wonderful food pictures, easy understandable recipes and many of the recipe contains additional comments as other ingredients to use instead of and how to twist the individual dish.

These books were of great assistance for me, when I made Summer tapas as birthday menu. This bread is a very white bread without any wholegrain flour instead. I decided to add in some sour dough together with the yeast, so I could lower the level of sour dough living in my refrigerator. However, if you have no sour dough, just use yeast as in the original recipe.


Tapas bread a la Anne Hjernøe: - 3 breads

• 15 g yeast
• 15 g sour dough - optional
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 500 g wheat flour
• 175 g durum flour
• olive oil for bread glazing

1. Stir the yeast, sour dough, salt and honey into the water part.
2. Add in all the flour.
3. Knead the dough for 10 minutes on speed two using stand-alone mixer.
4. Place the dough in bowl, which is sealed with cling film or lid.
5. Raise the bread in the refrigerator night over or minimum 8 hours.
6. Divide the dough into 3 pieces, which is form into flutes and placed a baking tray covered with baking paper. Cover the dough with a tea towel.
7. Raise the flutes at room temperature for 1 hour.
8. Heat up the oven (without fan) to 200'C.
9. Glaze the flutes with olive oil.
10. Bake the bread in the middle of the oven at 200'C for 20-25 minutes.
11. Cold down the flutes, before you slice them.

BODYBUILDER

 

Again I have been juicing, as I have received a new box of JuiceSelvKassen. This looks very, very green, and this juice has turned to be the most disliked juice I have every taste !!!! It taste was very bitter, and if I was drinking too large a portion of this juice I felt like throwing up, so I ended up with throwing out this juice instead of throwing it up !!!!

It was to be a very healthy juice, when it tastes as ugly as it does !!!! I will never ever make this juice again !!!!

BODYBUILDER: - 4 servings

• 2 cucumbers
• 1 spring cabbage
• 2 lemons - with peel
• ½ broccoli incl stem
• 300 g spinach

1. Clean all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Serve in a glass and store the remaining juice cold..

Classic blackcurrant jam with twist of balcamico

Again I have receive from mega blackberries from the kitchen garden of my very good friends in Horsens. This time I have been making a more classic jam with a small twist of balcamico.

Ingredients:

• 700 g (Danish) blackberries 
• 50 g water
• 350 g sugar - of which 50 g is used for dry-mixing with pectin and citric acid
• 10 g gelling powder (pectin)
• 2 g citric acid
• 1 teaspoon of balcamico
• preservative - optional

1. Heat up the blackcurrant in a cooking pot together with a small amount of water.
2. When the blackcurrant have reach a temperature of 80°C, add the gelling powder and agitate very well.
3. It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
4. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes
5. Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
6. Bring the fruit the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
7. Addition of balcamico, add it by ½ teaspoon by the time, so you can adjust the taste to your own preference.
8. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards to increase the shelf-life.
9. As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
10. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.

Summer tapas together with some wonderful women

Better late than never ! Yesterday evening it was time to celebrate my birthday together with some amazing and wonderful women. I decided, that tapas should be the theme for the served food and wine.

Tapas is actually an easy way of entertaining people, when you have to do the cooking yourself, as most of the food can be prepared in advance, followed by cooking up the food in the oven, just before serving it.

As starting point we enjoyed tapas bread served together with olive oil, cocktail tomatoes, salted almonds and green olives. You can turn a simple tomato into a taste feast by cutting it into two or four pieces, which when is sprinkled with ramson salt

Second (cold) dish was gazpacho, which is cold uncooked tomato soup, which is a wonderful dish for a hot Summer day, as it does not involve any cooking at all.

Third (either cold or warm) dish was fish cakes based on scrimps - great taste.

As the "only" really hot meal was served stuffed courgettes with a salad made from rocket, apricot, Serrano ham and goat cheese.

The sweet end to this tapas meal was almond cake served together with orange sauce.

Raspberry cream cake a la Mette Blomsterberg

For my birthday coffee guests  I created this great looking raspberry cream cake a la Mette Blomsterberg with a few adjustments, as I used more frozen raspberry without increasing the sugar amount. This gives you an excellent fresh fruit taste in combination with the marzipan without becoming over sweet in the taste.

I also decided not to use whie chocolate for the decoration of the cake, as I plenty of whipped dairy cream for the decoration part of the final cake.

It was the first time ever, that I tried to make a marzipan cover for the side, so here there is room for improvement on the look :-)

Raspberry cream cake a la Mette Blomsterberg: - 12-14 servings

Almond cake buns:

• 100 g pasteurised egg yolks
• 65 g sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 100 g (cake) wheat flour
• 50 g almonds - grated into fine powder
• 200 g pasteurised egg white

Raspberry mousse:

• 6 leaves of gelatine
• 300 g (frozen) raspberries - defrosted
• 50 g icing sugar
• ½ l dairy whipping cream
• ½ vanilla pod

Marzipan cover:

• 200 g marzipan
• 100 g icing sugar
• 25 g glucose syrup

For cake decoration:

• 4-5 dl dairy whipping cream
• min. 12-16 fresh raspberries

Almond cake buns:

1. Whip egg yolk and sugar with an electrical whipper into a thick foamy egg mass.
2. Mix wheat flour and baking powder together and pass it through a sieve.
3. Gently stir the sieved flour and finely grated almond into the foamy egg mass.
4. Whip the egg white stiff.
5. Add smaller portions of the egg white foam into the egg-flour mass, step by step. Stir gentle together.
6. Cut a piece of baking paper to it covers the bottom of springform with a diameter of approx 25 cm.
7. Cover the form bottom with this peice of baking paper, before filling up the springform with the bun dough.
8. Bake the cake bun at 190'C (conventional oven) for 20-30 minutes.
9. Cool down the cake bun, before removing it from the springform.
10. Clean the springform, as you will use it again for building the final cake
11. Afterwards add the egg-flour mass into the

Raspberry mousse:

1. Place the gelatine leaves in 1 liter of cold water for approx 30 minutes.
2. Remove the vanilla corns from the vanilla pod. Use some of the icing sugar in order to divide the vanilla corns from each other.
3. Heat up the raspberries, icing sugar and vanilla corn in a small cooking pot until it gentle boils.
4. Remove the cooking pot from the heat. 
5. Shake the gelatine leaves free from water, before they are added into the warm raspberry mass, stir well until the gelatine leaves are melted.
6. Whip the dairy whipping cream into a soft foam.
7. Add 1/3 of the whipped cream into the raspberry mass and whip it together.
8. Afterwards add this raspberry-cream mass into the remaining whipped cream, stir it gentle together.

Marzipan cover:

1. Knead all the ingredients to the marzipan cover together on a stand alone mixer (Kitchen Aid).
2. Store the marzipan cover in a plastic bag, which can be closed. The marzipan cover can be stored in the refrigerator for max 1 week.

Building up the cake:

1. Divide the almond cake into two pieces of equal height.
2. Place one of the cake up in the springform. 
3. 2/3 of the raspberry mousse should be spread on top of the cake bun.
4. Place the second cake bun on top of the raspberry mousse.
5. The rest of the raspberry mousse is spread on top of the second cake bun. Spread the mousse, so it gets a homogenous top layer.
6. Place the cake cold for minimum 3 hours in freezer or night over in the refrigerator.
7. Gentle remove the cake from the springform and place it on the serving cake plate.
8. Roll the marzipan cover out into a long band on top of extra icing sugar. Keep moving the marzipan around during this rolling process, so it does not stick to the table top.
9. Cut out a band, which is 1 cm higher than the actual cake.
10. Place the marzipan cover around the side of the cake.
11. Whip the dairy cream in whipped cream, which is used for decoration of the cake top.
12. Place fresh raspberries on top of the whipped cream.
13. Serve and enjoy all your "hard" work :-)

HEARTBEAT

Another great tasting juice from JuiceSelvKassen. In my opinion you could increase the level of ginger, so you will get more beat to your heart drinking this juice. I would increase the dosage from 4 cm to 6 cm next time, that I make this juice.


HEARTBEAT: - 4 servings

• 1 lemon with peel
• 300 g carrots
• 3 redbeets
• 4 apples
• 4 cm of ginger with peel
• 2 oranges without peel

1. Clean the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Serve in the glass and store the remaining juice cold in the refrigerator

Welcome to July - finally welcome to the Summer

Welcome to June - finally welcome to the Summer

Finally the Summer arrive together with the month of July !!!! It has really taken it´s time this year.

June was as May very cold and very windy !!! So with one month´s delay my peonies is blooming.

I think we should celebrate the arrival of the Summer drinking some cocktails. I hope you will join me sipping cocktails during some wunderful Summer evenings :-) CHEERS

GTIL - Gin Tonic Ice Lime



Cherry Cola Cocktail



Summer Strawberry



Hylde for de vilde