Chai ice cream

As company for the saffron ice cream for the Christmas lunch I decided to make a second ice cream using chai powder (similar done in the chai scones). Using these pre-mix of chai powders is a very easy way for making various product with a chai spicy flavour.

At the same time is serving as a good start to my TO DO LIST 2016, where I already can tick of a point on the list :-)

UPDATE 13 January 2016:
This ice cream is being forward for the monthly blogging event Tea Time Treats having the theme of Anythings goes. Tea Time Treast is managed by Karen from Lavender and Lovage and Jane from The Hedge Combers.

Chai 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
• 7 tablespoons of David Rio maple moose chai 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.
9. Serve together with 1-2 pieces of chai fudge

Week-end stay at Broløkke

For my mother´s 80 year birthday I gave her a week-end stay at the manor house Broløkke as present. She like many other older people have plenty of thing and stuff for her home, so she is not lacking more things. Instead I find that a present in form of stay away from home is a much better gift. She gets something to look forward to as well as talking about with other people, followed by the actually stay getting away and finally she gets something to talk about afterwards.

In a stay at Broløkke is included both breakfast and 3 course evening menu. The evening starts with, that all the guests gathers in the red living room for a glass of sparkling wine and a talk about the menu of the evening.After the evening menu all the guests are again welcomed back to the red living room for evening coffee, and here the talks follow freely between all the guests. 

I am sharing a few of my photos taken from the manor house with you. 

January equals citrus fruits

January equals citrus fruits

After December, which for me always seams to be a short month of approx 3 weeks due to the many holidays, a longer, darker and perhaps colder month in form of January arrives after the joyful light Christmas month.

The good thing about January is, that the days becomes something like 1-5 minutes longer day by day. And snow covered landscape can also brings more light into a dark time.

Another brilliant thing about January is, that it is the peak season for citrus fruit such as mandarin, clementine, orange, blood orange (my favourite citrus fruit), grapefruit, lime and lemon, so providing you with very options of filling up on C-vitamin to fight of the season of colds.

So here in January I will have focus on using all the lovely citrus fruits in my kitchen for sure to make some jam, freshly squeezed juice and perhaps even some cake ?

blood orange jam

Juice of blood orange and pomegranate

almond orange cake

RED SUNSET

Wonderful coloured juice with a great taste, which I actually enjoyed drinking without making "ugly faces" ! It is the first time for me making juice with turmeric roots, which I were imaging would give much more colour than they needed up giving in the final juice.

The juice has flavour of red pepper fruits, which you however can not taste in the final juice. Here the ginger is the dominating flavour ingredients as usual.

RED SUNSET: - 4 servings

• 4 oranges without peel
• 600 g carrots
• 2 red pepper fruits - seeds and top removed
• ½ tuber of ginger
• 4-5 small turmeric roots

1. Clean and rinse all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Serve cold.
4. Store the remaining of the juice cold in the refrigerator cold for another 1-½ day. 

Bread book about cooking pot breads "Det æltefri grydebrød"

I have recently found a bread book with focus on making breads without kneading, which afterwards is baked in a cooking pot in a fan oven at 250'C with the lid on for some part of the baking time. It also referred to the Best Bread of the World !

Baking a cooking pot bread is very easy and it does not involve, that you have to touch the dough with your fingers, which can be disliked by some persons (not me in person). The bread dough is stirred together with a cooking spoon in a large mixing bowl prior to the resting time. After the resting/raising time the bread dough is poured in a very, very hot cooking pot and baked.

Before you start to bake your own cooking pot bread you should be aware of, that the bread process is a time consuming process, as the resting process takes a minimum of 14 hours prior to the actual baking of the bread. So making cooking pot bread is much more of a planning process than a kneading process.

This bread book is written in Danish. The title is "Det æltefri grydebrød" and is written by Kirsten Skaarup.

So you will in the future be able to read more, as I bake my way through this new bread book in my little kitchen.

Happy New Year 2016

Happy New Year
Goodbye to 2015 & Welcome to 2016

to all of you from Hannibal the Cat and I. We hope you will get an exciting, promising and healthy New Year here in 2016 with plenty of sunshine, some white snow to bring some light into a dark Winter season and less wind during the rowing season !!!

Here in 2015 my little kitchen got the final finishing touch in form of hand-made ceramic tiles in five different colour, which was placed according to my own mosaic design. All in all my kitchen project has turned out as I imaging it should be like.

After being busy in my kitchen, I decided to continue my "decoration work" converting the guest room into a library, where I off cause have a section with cooking books.

Right here and now I am in the line up to changing my entrance into a more light and less clothed room. However, this involves replacement of the floor tiles !!!! And the though of having brick workers inside my home again is a dreadful idea !

During Springtime 2016 all the windows of the house will also be replaced with new energy-efficient windows. Hopefully there will still be room for all my many small light houses in the windows ?




My new best kitchen friend the Juicer and I have formed a great friendship ! Together with the JuiceSelvKassen as a frequent weekly box from Årstiderne we have managed make 29 different juices with plenty of vegetable insides. Some of these juices have taste wonderful, while other have been having a more pretty colour than taste !







Well my way of baking through the entire bread book called "Hjemmebagt" has been moving so slow, so that I did no bake any of these recipes in this bread book. If I maintain this baking speed during 2016, 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.

Perhaps I have not been baking any of the bread from "Hjemmebagt", meanwhile I have been turning more and more to baking cooking pot bread (Grydebrød) such as Best bread of the World (Verdens bedste brød). Here "my" sour dough, which I managed to hold of at baking event (Rent mel i posen) has taken up residence in my refrigerator. Some friends and colleagues also have got a portion of this sour dough. This specific sour dough has a lovely apple vinegar flavour, which I am crazy about.

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 2015 :-) 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) - not done on a regular basic besides from Valentine theme in February, Easter in April and my classic Christmas Calendar in December. However, I thinking about how to twist this idea for reintroduction again here in 2016.
• recipe on cocktail and drinks (started in 2011) - even less regular in 2015 - so plenty of room for improvement in 2016
• as usual very regular contribution to Tea Time Treat (started in December 2012)
• recipe on ice cream (started in October 2013) - also quiet seldom in 2015 - so another area of improvement in 2016

So how did I get get along with my TO-DO-LIST of 2015 ??? Well I managed to less than 50% of my list, which means I will have some interesting thing to do here in 2016 :-) However, a very typical Danish saying is, what counts is to be part of the game and not necessary win the game !! Well in this Olympic year of 2016 it is the winning part, which is the most important part.

 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
• Liquorice fudge
• Chai fudge
• make more ice cream
• Liquorice ice cream
• Saffron ice cream
• enjoy more drinks and cocktail
• Pomegranate Aperitif
• Cherry sparkling cocktail
• Apple gløgg
• enjoy home-made juices from both juice and vegetable
• PURPLE POWER
• FRESH´N BITTER
• PINK PASSION
• SPICY KALE
• APPLE APPEAL
• APPLE ORANGE PEAR TWIST
• Sweetheart Juice
• LADY IN RED
• GÅ AGURK - GO CUCUMBER
• COOL SUMMER BREEZE
• BLADBEDEBOOST - SPINACH BEET BOOST
• SWEET CARROT
• CARROT LIFT WITH GREEN TWIST
• RED POWER
• ENERGIZER
• LEMON MINT
• FRUITY CAULIFLOWER
• ORANGE DREAM
• ROAD RUNNER
• GREEN CLEANER
• VILD MED INGEFÆR - CRAZY ABOUT GINGER
• BODYBUILDER
• PARSLEY HORSERADISH
• WORK OUT WONDER
• KÅL & KIWI - CABBAGE & KIWI
• GREEN GINGER
• MUSCLE JUICE
• SOMETHING SPECIAL
• DANISH DYNAMITE
• use the herbs from my kitchen/nature garden more actively
• Ramson salt
• Elder flower cordial a la Lønnestræde

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 2015:6

   

      TO DO LIST 2016:

• collect sloe during Autumn 2016, so I can make my own sloe gin
• collect elderberry during Autumn 2016
• make macaroons
• make a ginger bread decoration for Christmas 2016
• make my own marzipan from almonds for Christmas 2016
• work with more sugar candy type such as nougat and marshmallows
• make more ice cream
• enjoy more drinks and cocktail
• use the herbs and other stuff from my kitchen garden / nature more actively
• work more with cakes and desserts from the French kitchen
• make more soups
• try to sell some of all my home-made jams

So let´s see how many of these "TO DO" points, which I managed to cross during the brand new year of 2016, at least I have 363 days in front of me to do something about it :-)

Kitchen status on 2015:

Review day: 1 January 2016
Recipes baked during 2015 from "Hjemmebagt": 0 (2 accomplished at 31 December 2015)
Amount of new cooking books in my kitchen: 0 new cooking book (77 books at end of 2015)
Page views in 2015: 54.617 (total page views of 241.691 at 31st December 2015)
Publish posts in 2015: 182 posts (total posts of 1167 at 31st December 2015)

Top 10 of the most popular blog posts published during 2015:

1. Best bread of the World (Verdens bedste brød) - published 4 January 2015
2. Transformation fra grim ælling til flot svane - published 31 March 2015
3. Salted almonds - published 25 July 2015
4. Liquorice fudge- published 9 January 2015
5. Fredsted lakrids te - published 6 January 2015 & Mr & Mrs Croque - published 23 February 2015
6. Cookies with raspberry and white chocolate - published 14 March 2015
7. Svanen er landet - published 6 March 2015
8. The last meal !!! of 2014 - published 1 January 2015
9. Gazpacho - published 8 September
10. Brownie-style cake with yogurt - published 22 May 2015

The last meal of 2015 !!!

Jumping from 2015 into 2016 was done in the very good company of my good friends living in Horsens, while we enjoyed sushi from two different sushi places in Horsens combined with home-made ice creams and own creation of marzipan horn served together with champagne and mostly green and some black tea for me (the less advanced tea drinker !).

Eating sushi is very easy, as it only acquires, that you remove the sushi from the various take-away transport material, so no easy preparation in the kitchen !

As sushi is not to filling as a four course of menu of New Year 2014 we had on this lat evening of 2015 room for dessert in form of home made brownie and a selection of home-made ice creams (lavender ice cream, vanilla ice cream with figs, saffron ice cream and chai ice cream).

As we approached the transition from 2015 to 2016 we enjoyed some more champagne and my very own creation of a  marzipan horn.