Christmas Fair at Trapholt 2015

The annual Christmas Fair at Trapholt has become a most-do-thing for me, as the level of the different art booths has a very high quality level. You can find "old" crafts people, which have been previous years as well as new crafts designers.

A good advise is to arrive from the very beginng, as this means you can get parking spots more or less next door to the museum. Besides from getting a good parking spot, you can also get a good look around the various arts and craft booths, before the fair area becomes over-crowed.

The entrance is free to both the fair as well as the museum, so you actually save 75 DKK, which is the normal entrance to the museum !!! The fair will also be open again today Sunday.
I will be back again next year :-)

So what could I "not live without" ?

Two urchins made Malene Lynggård, a new tea cup and little Christmas tree by Bruuns Keramik and a tea light candle holder by Lærke Langballe.

 

Creation of marzipan horn

During the Winter season Tuesday evening is normally my "evening off", as I am busy with in-door rowing and water ballet Monday - Thursday during a normal work week. However, Tuesday evening this week I had signed up for an "evening class" at Vanilla (patisserie in Vejle), where you could learn how to make a marzipan horn for New Years Eve.

We started off by getting a lump of marzipan mass of 485 g, which were divided into 11 portion of various sizes. Each portion should when by hand be rolled and shaped into different shapes, mostly cigar forms.

I was standing next to a man, who just was doing this very easy and neat. Somehow during the evening, he told that he had a back ground as baker. No wonder, why his marzipan horn was looking a million compared to mine !

During the baking the smaller marzipan parts should be placed on the inner part of the baking part, so they get less heat.

While the marzipan part were baking we had a go at making various chocolate part for the decoration of the marzipan horn. This is not one of my key competency areas. The chocolate was running over the top of the decoration "cornet", so I had chocolate on my hands and every where than on the decoration drawings.

After the baking process it was time for decoration the marzipan parts with the icing sugar. 

My capabilities of controlling the icing sugar pattern is another area of improvement. At least you can see, that I did the decoration myself without any assistance.

And when it is was time for putting all the different marzipan part together two and two using melted chocolate as glazing.

On my first attempt I managed to make a horn with hump !!!!

So I divided two part of the horn and turned them opposite, and finally I got the desired shape of a scorpion with a twist of the tale :-)

The marzipan horn is now stored in the freezer, so it will ready to welcome the arrival of the New Year.

Jerusalemen artichoke cream

A "fortune" in Jerusalem artichoke

I got a big portion of Jerusalem artichoke from the garden of my good friends in Horsens. Otherwise you can easily spend big amount of money buying these Jerusalem artichoke in the supermarket.

Having recently been dining out I discovered, that a more refined word for soup  is cream, so I decided to make my oven version of Jerusalem artichoke cream !!!

Jerusalem artichoke cream: 4-5 servings

• 700 g Jerusalem artichoke - peeled & chopped
• 1 onion - peeled & finely chopped
• 50 g butter
• 1 dl white wine
• 7,5 dl vegetable broth
• 2 dl dairy whipping cream, 38% fat
• 125 g mascarpone



Onion and Jerusalem artichoke enjoying themselves in butter

• salt & pepper

1. Peel the Jerusalem artichoke. Cut those into smaller pieces. Do similar with the onion.
2. Melt the butter in a cooking pot.
3. Add the chopped Jerusalem artichoke and onion, and it softly fry for 5 minutes without the vegetable turning brown in colour.
4. Add the white wine and let it evaporate from the cooking pot.
5. Add the vegetable broth and let the soup cook for 15 minutes, until the Jerusalem artichoke pieces are soft.
6. Add the dairy whipping cream. And blend the soup together.
7. Stir in the mascarpone
8. Season with salt & pepper. Cook up to the boil.
9. Serve together with bread.

Crazy about Kähler

I am crazy about the ceramics by Kähler (most of it), so when the art club at work made an arrangement at the shop Kähler and Friends, I was almost the first person to sign up !

The programme was a talk about the history of Kähler combined with enjoying tapas with some wine. After this we could go into the shops, where we would get 20% discount on our shopping !!!

You have to imaging how 30 persons (mostly females) were running over the street between the 2 Kähler shops, touching everything, checking their smart phones for various Christmas gift wishing lists, finally dragging their big shopping bags with them afterwards. And yes, I was one of the females in behaviour :-)

On my wish list (for myself) I had written down the new Urbania houses for tea light.

However, I also found a new green vase for green vase collection together with a tea light holder made in bone china (Stella).

Below you can find photos of the various displays in the shops together with a photo of my shopping basket.

Content of my shopping backet

DANISH DYNAMITE

I usually like the various juices with beetroot, which I get in JuiceSelvKassen from Årstiderne. It is amazing to see, the beetroot takes control over the entire colour of the juice as it is juiced into the liquid.

When the beetroot is to the smaller size, the taste of the beetroot will be sweet without the earth notes. Using beetroot having a big size, the juice will earth taste, which I do not like a lot.

DANISH DYNAMITE: - 4 servings

• 1 cucumber
• 500 g carrots
• 80 g mint - only the leaves without stems
• 300 g beetroot
• 4 apples
• 300 g spinach

1. Clean and rinse all ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Serve in a glass.
4. Store the remaining juice cold in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

Food shopping in Malmö

Recently I went to Malmö on a business trip. In order not to arrive to late at the customer meeting I scheduled into some extra time. The traffic was running smooth, so I had 1½ hour, which I could spend in a big supermarket more or less next to the customer location.

I went around in this supermarket for 1 hour trawling all the shelves being amazed about the selections, which is so much bigger than in a usual Danish supermarket. On top of this the prices were lower, as the Swedish kroners have 80% the value of Danish kroners !

So I could feel a shopping basket with breakfast cereals, olives, baking stuff, dried mulberries, mixture of raisins and mulberries, chai mix.

Much of the bake stuff will come in hand for the upcoming Christmas time :-)

Classic kougelhopf

For the recent November afternoon tea I tried for the first time to bake a classic kougelhopf cake using a flour mix from my Summer vacation to Alsace. As you can see from the photos this cake outgrow the available silicone form !!!! So next time I should only take half the volume mentioned in the recipe on the flour mix.

My good friends from Horsens and I discussed flavour combination for Christmas version of the kougelhopf, so look in again in December to see these suggestion and if I have been able to tame the dough !!!

This cake reminds me about the Italian pantone cake in both taste and texture. It really taste excellent, so I have to buy of this kougelhopf flour mix next time I am in Alsace or perhaps find an "original" recipe ?

Classic kougelhopf: - 1 extreme big cake

• 500 g kougelhopf flour mix
• 80 g raisins
• 22 g fresh yeast
• 240 g water
• almonds for top decoration

1. Dissolve the yeast in the water in the mixing bowl.
2. Add in the flour mix, knead the dough on stand alone mixer, first 3 minutes on speed 1 followed by 10 minutes on speed 4.
3. Add in the raisin and knead until they are distributed homogeneously in the dough.
4. Let the dough raise at 20'C for 1 hour.
5. Place almonds in the bottom of the kougelhopf form. Place the dough in the form on top of the almonds.
6. Let the dough raise in the form at 30'C for 1½ hour.
7. Heat up the oven (conventional) to 160'C.
8. Bake the kougelhopf in the lower of the oven at 160'C for 50-60 minutes.
9. Cool down the cake, before it is removed from the form.

Scones with marple syrup and walnuts

For any "serious" afternoon tea table scones of some sort plays an important role. This time it is scones with maple syrup and walnut without any modification at all. For a next batch I would like to increase the amount of maple syrup to have of this lovely flavour, and perhaps reduce the amount of vanilla sugar with 50%.

I found the height to be to the low side, so I would target a height of 3 cm next time.

Scones with maple syrup and walnuts: - 12 scones

• 450 g (cake) flour
• 50 g sugar
• ! tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 175 g cold butter - diced
• 175 g milk
• 60 g maple syrup
• 75 g walnuts - medium chopped
• optional milk for glazing

1. Heat up the oven to 190'C.
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and vanilla sugar together in a mixing bowl,
3. Grind the butter pieces into the flour mix.
4. Mix milk and maple syrup together
5. Add the liquid phase and walnuts without kneading the mass into a homogeneous dough
6. Place the dough on a piece of baking paper.
7. Flatten the dough by hand into a height of 2.5 cm.
8. Cut out 12 scones, I use a glass for this purpose.
9. Place the scones on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
10. Glaze the scones with milk using a brush.
11. Bake the scones at 190 (conventional) in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes, until they have a brownish colour
12. Cool down the scones before serving them with clotted cream & jam or lemon curd.

SOMETHING SPECIAL

Sometimes the name of these juice from JuiceSelvKassen is more fantastic than the actual taste of the juice !!! This juice has a fantastic, a beautiful colour, but the taste is not upsetting anyone. The taste is actually quiet bland and uninteresting.

I decided to peel the oranges, as I find that juicing citrus fruits with the peel on is giving too much bitterness to the taste. If you like bitterness, when included the orange peel in juicing process.

SOMETHING SPECIAL: - 4 servings

• 500 g carrots
• ½ pineapple - without skin
• 3-4 cm ginger
• 2 oranges - without peel
• 1 broccoli
• 1 fennel

1. Rinse all ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Serve in a glass.
4. Store the remaining juice cold in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

November afternoon tea

This afternoon was a lovely mixture of a walk in sunshine, funny visit to Økolariet and a filling afternoon tea.

The first thing to enjoy at this November afternoon tea was a glass of Cherry sparkling cocktail. Cherry sparkling cocktail instead of Kir Royal, so replacing the blackcurrant liqueur with cherry liqueur.

The second drinkable tea besides from tea was freshly pressed juice (SOMETHING SPECIAL). A juice with a bigger name than taste !

The eatable part of the afternoon tea was a classic kougelhopf, which had outgrown the cake form. For this kougelhopf I used a flour mix from my Summer vacation to Alsace.

Also these scones with marple syrup and walnuts was an energy-dense part of the eatable stuff.

As the sweet touch we enjoy both these pepper nut muffins as well as

these Liquourice truffles

Pickled cocktail tomatoes

When you grow your own tomatoes on your patio or in a greenhouse, you very often have a gigant  surplus of tomatoes, where you have no idea how to use those. One way of storing such a surplus of tomatoes is to turn them into pickled tomatoes. I have used this recipe Dansukker's syltede cocktailtomater without making any modification.

Pickled cocktail tomatoes: - 2-3 glasses

• 1000 g cocktail tomatoes
• 1 dl salt
• 3 fresh thyme stems
• 4 dl plain vinegar
• 3 dl sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1 cinnamon stem
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger - finely chopped
• 3 cloves

1. Wash the cocktail tomatoes and cut them into half.
2. Mix salt and tomatoes together in a mixing bowl, which is stored in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours.
3. Rinse the tomatoes for salt with water. Let the tomatoes drip of in strainer.
4. Place the tomatoes in clean storage glasses.
5. Place a stem of fresh thyme in each glass.
6. Cook up all the ingredients for the pickle liquid in a cooking pot.
7. Pour the hot pickle liquid in the storage glasses with tomatoes.
8. Close the glasses and store them cold.

Kitchen shopping in Alsace

Some part of my Summer vacation I spend in the lovely Alsace. We went by car, so it was very easy to fill up the car with kitchen stuff brought in one of the big French supermarkets. I can easily spend hours in such a big supermarket with both food and non-food departments, where you so many interesting things. After the first 30 minutes I "parked" my mother on a bench, as she got tried to looking into cheese, dairy, jam and bakery products.

So what kind of thins could I not live without ?

• French magazine called "Patisserie" full of cake recipes in French full of great looking photos. I assume Google translate can help baking some of these cakes ?
• buckwheat flour, as this is much cheaper to buy in France compared to Denmark
• flour mixture for Kougelkopf cake, a cake speciality from Alsace
• yellow plastic container for storage of lemon and lime
• purple plastic container for storage of onion

• silicone form of miniature kougelkopf cakes
• silicone form for eclairs
• jam glasses in two sizes
• various French jams

Pickled beetroot with blackcurrant cordial and vanilla pods

As mentioned previous beetroot is one of my favourite vegetable, so after I had received a big portion of beetroot from colleague, I decided to spend a rainy Autumn evening turning these earth fruits in purples goodies.

The boiling time for beetroot depends on the size of them, so everything between 20-50 minutes, so check after 20 minutes cooking with a kitchen knife, if the beetroot is firm or soft.

When the beetroot is boiled, place them in a big bowl or the kitchen sink, which is full of cold water. This will cracking the skin on the beetroot, so you push the skin off using your hands. Afterwards slice the beetroot into thinner slices. Now they are ready to be placed in the pickle liquid.

Beetroots will giving off plenty of colour, so consider to wear plastic gloves, when you remove the skin and slice the beetroot. Otherwise you hands can get a nice purple colour.

As I did not have enough apple vinegar or white wine vinegar for this specific pickle liquid I decided to make to mixture of all available vinegars and finally filling up with plain vinegar to get to a total of 450 g vinegar.

Pickled beetroot with blackcurrant cordial and vanilla pods: 2-3 glasses

• 600-750 g boiled and sliced beetroot
• 150 g apple vinegar
• 150 g white wine vinegar
• 150 g plain vinegar
• 50 g concentrated blackcurrant cordial
• 250 g sugar
• 2 empty vanilla pods - cut into smaller pieces

1. Add vinegar, blackcurrant cordial, vanilla pod pieces and sugar in a cooking pot.
2. Bring the pickle liquid to the boil.
3. Add beetroot slices into the storage glasses, which has been sterilised with boiling water.
4. Pour the hot pickle liquid into the glass, covering all the beetroot slices.
5. Store the pickled beetroot as ambient temperature, when not opened. 
6. After opening a glass of pickled beetroot store the rest in the refrigerator.

MUSCLE JUICE

Yet, another green juice. I am always becoming suspicious, when the colour of the juice coming out of the juice turns more and more green. Many time these green juices can have a bitter taste, which I do NOT like. This specific green juice has a taste, which is only a little bite bitter, so I can drink it without making too many ugly faces.


MUSCLE JUICE: - 3-4 servings

• 1 cucumber
• 300 g green cabbage
• 2 pears
• 1 green lemon with peel
• ½ pineapple - without peel
• 250 g broccoli

1. Clean all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together
3. Serve cold in a glass
4. Store the remaining juice cold in the refrigerator for 1-2 days