Eastern Afternoon Tea

Saturday my good friends from Horsens came around for Eastern afternoon tea, so they could help me to eat some of the many Eastern calories as well as enjoy the goodness of both butter and marzipan :-)

We started out with a welcome drink with white port wine and creme de bergamot, while the more chewable part of the menu were:

• Easter scones with marzipan and sucat
• Easter Lamb with marzipan and lemon
• Spiced Easter biscuits

My good friends did not come empty handed, as they brought a beautiful rose bouquet and some Italian nougat :-)

Drink with white port wine and creme de bergamot - Easter Calender 2017

Today is Easter Monday or second Easter day, which is the the final Easter vacation day here in Denmark. So tomorrow the normal working day starts again for many of us, so lets say cheers and happy Easter to each other with a drink.

Drink with white port wine and creme de bergamot: - 1 drink

• 1½ cl creme de bergamot
• 6 cl white port wine
• 1 slice of orange
• Sprite

1. Fill creme de bergamot and white port wine into a champagne glass.
2. Add in a slice of orange cut into two.
3. Fill the remaining of the glass with Sprite.
4. Cheers and happy Easter.

Easter scones with marzipan and sucat - Easter Calender 2017

Today it is Easter Sunday, which is the fourth day in the Danish Easter vacation. And today it is time for some Easter scones with addition of marzipan and sucat, some another way of getting ride of any Christmas leftovers of marzipan and sucat. Here in Denmark we have a saying, that Christmas lasts until Easter !

As I am am adding marzipan, I decided not to add any sugar at all into these scones.

Easter Scones with marzipan and sucat: - 12 pieces

• 450 g all pupose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1½ teaspoon baking power
• 125 g cold butter
• 1 egg
• 2 dl milk
• 100 g marzipan - roughly grates
• 75 g sucat - roughly chopped

1. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder together in a mixing bowl.
2. Cut the cold butter into small pieces.
3. Grind the butter pieces into the flour mix.
4. Add the milk and egg without kneading it into a dough.
5. Finally add in the marzipan and sucat without kneading it into dough consistency.
6. Place the dough on a pieces of baking paper.
7. Press the dough into a height of 4-5 cm using your hands.
8. Heat the oven (conventional) to 250'C.
9. Use a smaller glass to cut scones out of the dough. 
10. Bake the scone at 250'C for 10-15 minutes.

Easter Lamb with marzipan and lemon - Easter Calendar 2017

Today it is Easter Saturday, which is the third day in the Danish Easter vacation.

It is quiet some time since I last time baked an Easter Lamb using my Easter lamb form from Alsace. And this I got closer to find a good taste and texture inside this Easter Lamb using a combination of lemon zest and marzipan.

Easter lamb with marzipan and lemon:

• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoon boiling water
• 125 g (cake) flour
• 100 g icing sugar
• 75 g marzipan - roughly grated
• 1 organic lemon - only the zest
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 180'C.
2. Divide the egg into egg yolk and egg white. Beat the egg white into a stiff foam.
3. Whip the egg yolk, lemon zest, marzipan,  water and icing sugar together into a white and foamy mix.
4. Afterwards whip in the baking powder and flour.
5. Gentle stir in the egg white foam, little by little, as the cake mix is quiet firm.
6. Brush the Easter lamb form with melted butter or oil.
7. Fill up the Easter lamb, until it is 75% filled.
8. Bake the Easter lamb in the lower part of the oven at 180'C for 45 minutes.
9. Let the Easter lamb cool down, before you take it out for the form.

Spiced Easter biscuits - Easter Calendar 2017

Today it is Good Friday (Langfredag) being the second day of the Danish Easter vacation. And today I have been baking spiced Easter biscuits using a recipe from Country Living (issue April 2016) with a few modifications. As I did not had enough currants, I used a combinations of currant and dark raisins. And instead of mixed spiced I created my own mixed spice selection from cinnamon, mace, all spice and cloves.

Spiced Easter biscuits: - 40 biscuits

• 300 g (cake) wheat flour
• 150 g icing sugar
• 175 g cold butter - diced
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon mace
• 1/4 teaspoon all spice
• 1/4 teaspoon cloves
• 1 egg beaten together with 1 tablespoon water
• 125 g currants and dark raisins
• 1 egg white
• sugar for sprinkling

1. Add flour, icing sugar, butter and spices into a food process, where they are whizzed together.
2. Add in the egg and whizz untill the dough comes together.
3. Remove the dough from the food processer, and placed it on the kitchen table, where the currants and raisins are kneaded into the dough.
4. Flatten the dough into a disc shape and cover it with cling film.
5. Place the dough in the refrigerator for ½-1 hour.
6. Heat up the fan oven to 160'C.
7. Roll out the dough on baking paper, until a height of 4 mm. Stamp out cookies using a cookie cutter.
8. Place the cookies on baking tray covered with baking paper. 
9. Beat the egg white with a fork until foamy.
10. Glaze the surface of the biscuits with egg white and sprinkle the surface with sugar.
11. Bake the biscuits at 160'C (fan oven) for 12-15 minutes until lightly golden.
12. Cool down the biscuits on a wire rack.
13. Store in airtight container.

Lemon cake with chia seeds - Easter Calendar 2017

Today it is Maundy Thursday (Skærtorsdag), which is a public holiday here in Denmark and starting off the Danish Easter vacation with 5 days off from work. And at the same time it is the start for my little  Easter Calendar 2017, where I every Easter day will be sharing a new recipe having a relation to Easter of some kind.

It is interesting to see the use of various seeds into "more classic" cakes, recenty I baked another lemon cake with poppy seed, and this time I have locate a recipe on lemon cake this time with chia seeds in the monthly magazine Isabellas (issue 02/2017). I have made no changes to the recipe.

Lemon cake with chia seeds: - 1 cake

• 115 g soft butter
• 115 g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 180 g almond flour
• 30 g chia sseds
• 2 organic lemons - both juice and zest
• 125 g wheat (cake) flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• ½ lemon - only the juice
• 75-100 g icing sugar

1. Heat up the oven to 180-200'C.
2. Cover the bottom plate of a spring form with baking paper.
3. Whip the butter and sugar into a white and airy foam on a stand-alone mixer.
4. Add in the eggs, one egg by the time, whip in between.
5. Add in the almond flour, chia seeds, lemon zest and juice, and whip everything together.
6. Finally add in the wheat flour, baking power and vanilla sugar, whip everything into a homogeneous mass.
7. Pour the cake dough in the spring form, and bake the cake at 180-200'C in the middle of the oven for 40-50 minutes.
8. Check the cake is baked, before removal from the oven.
9. Cool down the cake in the springform.
10. Mix the lemon juice and icing sugar into the right consistency.Spread the icing on top of the cake.
11. Let the icing set, before the cake is cut into slices.

Palm Sunday - count-down for Easter Calender 2017

Today it is Palm Sunday, so we are one week away from Easter celebration. Many people in Denmark went on Easter vacation last Friday, as we here in Denmark are having public holiday Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Monday.

I typical start decoration for Easter both inside as well as outside approx 1 month in advance in order to celebrate the return for sun and long days full of sunlight. Inside I decorate with small wood Easter eggs, silver eggs, and one-two weeks Easter I take in branches from trees, which are decorate with wood Easter decoration.

Outside I decorate with Easter eggs on two climbing hydrangea in my front garden. This is something, which is done much more in Germany and very seldom in Denmark. However, I can see, that one of my neighboroughs has decorate a small pine tree in their front garden as well.

During the coming Easter days I will making a small Easter Calendar just my usual Christmas Calender, so look by starting from Thursday for some inspiration for your kitchen activities during the upcoming vacation time.

As teaser look below at some previous Easter creations.

Hot cross buns with tea and lemon

Easter tapas

Orange Easter egg

Swedish sausage dish

It is not the first time that I share a recipe on Swedish sausage dish with you, so here it another way of making Swedish sausage dish with inspiration from Valdemarsro.

Swedish sausage dish: - 4 servings

• 6-8 red sausages - in 1½-2 cm slices
• 700 g cold boiled potatoes - cut into squares
• 1tablespoon olive oil
• 2 onion - finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic - finely chopped
• 1½ teaspoon sweet paprika
• 2 dl full-fat milk
• 1 dl dairy whipping cream, 35-40% fat
• 70 g tomatoes concentrate
• 2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
• apple vinegar for seasoning
• salt & pepper for seasoning
• chives and parsley as green touch

1. Heat up the oil in large cooking pot, fry the chopped onion and garlic in the hot oil. The onion should not become brown in colour.
2. Add in the sausages slices and sweet paprika, fry for 2-3 minutes.
3. Add in the tomato concentrate & ketchup and stir well.
4. Add in the milk and potatoes squares, and stir well for 3-4 minutes.
5. Finally add in whipping cream, season with apple vinegar, salt and pepper. Stir together for 1 minute.
6. Serve on plate, sprinkle with chopped chives and parsley.
7. Enjoy.

Ciabatta buns

As I am going rowing again tomorrow evening directly from work, I have been baking buns again for tomorrow lunch pack. This time I have been trying my hands with ciabatta buns from "Det æltefri grydebrød", these buns are not baked in small cooking pots, but simply placed on the baking tray covered with baking paper.

These buns are easy to bake, and I am impressed by the crumb structure with has large unregular holes. I actually thought it would be tricky to bake ciabatta buns, so therefore I have hesitate to do it, but after my success I will fore sure bake some ciabatta buns in the future.

Ciabatta buns: - 8 buns

• 5 g yeast
• 25 g sour dough (optional)
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 300 g water
• 400 wheat flour

1. Add yeast, sour dough, salt, sugar and water into a large mixing bowl.
2. Add in the wheat flour and stir everything together using a cooking spoon.
3. Let the dough raise in the mixing bowl with the lid on for 12 hours at room temperature.
4. Heat up the fan oven to 250'C with the baking tray inside.
5. Divide the dough into 8 portions, which is placed apart from each other on baking paper.
6. Transfer the baking paper with bun dough on to the baking tray, sprinkle water on top of the bun dough.
7. Bake the ciabatta buns at 250'C for 5 minutes.
8. Lower the temperature in the fan oven to 225'C, and bake the buns for another 10 minutes, until the ciabatta buns have a golden surface.
9. Remove the ciabatta buns from the ove, and let the buns cool down.

Planting potatoes on the first day of April

On this first day of April I have been busy planting potatoes in my "huge" kitchen garden. This part of this sentence is not at all related to April Fool´s day, while the second part describing the size of my garden should be read having April Food´s day in mind !

My "kitchen garden " is made of a selection of various pots (ceramic pot with herbs and plastic pots with potatoes), a capillary box, two apple trees, one raspberry bush and 4 rhubarb plant in planted in small corner of the garden.

As usual I received a small collection of seed potatoes from a good working colleague, as I am planting potatoes in 6 plastic potatoes pots. If I had to buy my own seed potatoes, when I would not plant potatoes at all, as I only have a need for very little amount of seed potatoes.

This year I receive 2 Sava, 2 Artemis and 2 Ariella potatoes. According to my colleague I should now be able to harvest home-grown potatoes in beginning of June !

While planting the potatoes I also gave a spring clean to the herb pots (cutting dry herb parts and giving new earth to the pots). As over wintering herbs I have garden mint, mint, lemon balm, rosemary and thyme.





While I busy  watering the potatoes pots and herb pots Hannibal the Cat took refuge inside in the window looking out to all the many planting pots. Otherwise he had spend most of the time outside in the garden, while I was busy planting and pruning, but water is not a favorite thing for most cats !