Rhubarb jam with vanilla

I received a bunch of rhubarb in my weekly vegetable box from Årstiderne, which I decided to turn into rhubarb more or less the same day/evening.

Normally I work with ratio of 1 part sugar to 2 part of fruit, when I am making jam, but as rhubarb is quiet acidic, I decided to increase the ratio between sugar and fruit to 1 part of sugar to 1 part of rhubarb.

If you prefer a less sweet tasting rhubarb jam, you can always start with 1 part of sugar to 2 part of rhubarb, cook up the rhubarb, taste the hot jam and evaluate the entire sweetness of the jam, and when adjust the sweetness by adding in more sugar.

I always add the remain of the vanilla pod, when cooking various things using vanilla. And I never remove the vanilla pod from my jam, so if you are the "lucky" receiver of my jam, you should be prepare to remove the vanilla pod yourself.

Rhubarb jam with vanilla:

• 500 g rhubarb - stems cut into small pieces
• 500 g jam sugar
• 1 lemon - the juice
• 1 vanilla pod

1. Mix the rhubarb pieces with jam sugar, vanilla corns and pod with lemon juice in a cooking pot. I use a Gently heat up to the boiling point.
2. Let the rhubarb jam boil for 4-5 minutes.
3. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. 
4. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass. Store them cold.

Salt with elder flowers a la Camilla Plum

Two years ago I made my very first portion of this elder flower using a recipe by Camilla Plum for Politiken, and I have nothing left, so it is very right time to make a new portion of elder flower salt for later use in my little kitchen.

If you try to dry this herb salt in the oven on low heat like 50-70'C, the un-blended elder flower will turn black, so do not try to this, unless you would like have black spot in your salt. It took it almost 4 days to dry the salt.

Elder flower salt a la Camilla Plum:

• 200 g very rough salt
• 2 whole garlics
• 2-3 red chilies
• 20 stems of elder flower
• 2 organic lemons - only the zest

1. Start by removing the zest from the lemon.
2. Peel the garlic cloves and divide each clove into 8 pieces
3. Split the chilies and remove the seeds.
4. Cut of the flower heads from 10 stems of flower flower.
5. Fill all these ingredients into a food processor and blend everything into rough looking herb salt.
6. Fill the herb salt into tray/form and add in the rest of the elder flowers and let the salt dry. Cover the salt with a clean tea towel. The drying process can take it´s time, as the salt will drag the moist our of the other ingredients, before it finally dry. If possible you can dry the salt outside in the sunshine.
7. When the elder flower salt is dried, place it in air tight container.
8. You can either use the elder flower salt, when it is moist. Otherwise it will last in it´s dry form for years.

Elder flower tea - faileur

Last Christmas I made my very own Christmas Tea, so I decided it could be fun to make my very own summer tea taking inspiration from tea with fresh elder flowers, as such a summer tea would last longer than the season of fresh elder flowers.

10 July 2013:
2 weeks after I mixed this tea, I noticed, that the liquid from the elder flowers had turned the loose tea leafs into one big lump and at the same time I could see yeast growing in this tea !!!!! So please not make this tea yourselv !!!! I will be reworking this specific tea recipe to address this issue !!!! 

Christmas Tea: - 100 g tea

• 100 g Earl Grey tea
• 3 limes (organic) - only the peel
• 5 stems of elder flowers

1. Use a potato peeler in order to remove the peel in a thin layer of the limes
2. Dry the lime peel at 75'C for 1 hour
3. Cut the dried lime peel into small pieces. I used a scissor for this purpose.
4. Mix the tea with the small pieces of dry lime peel.
5. Use a scissor to cut off the small elder flowers from the stems,
6. Mix everything together in glass, which is air tight.
7. Let the tea stand for a few hours, before making the first cup/pot of tea.

Blooming elder flowers

Hannibal the Cat with the elderflower harvest of 2013

The elder tree are standing like Christmas tree full of bright lights in form of fragrant clusters of elder flowers along the roads, paths basically everything in the green surroundings here in Denmark.

So it is time for you to pick your own elder flowers for making the following fantastic flavour full elderflower things in your kitchen.

As usual Hannibal the Cat decided to join in on my hunt for elderflower in the surroundings, following me and my harvest basket like a little dog even though he is a cat !

Hannibal the Cat approving the harvest

And when the harvest of elder flower was done, Hannibal the Cat was busy putting his scent-marks on the basket with elderflower by rubbing his head everywhere. We just managed to get inside again in my little kitchen, before it started to pour down with rain.

You can easily infuse your tea with elder flower. First you make your usual cup of black tea. Afterwards you infuse this cup of tea with one-two elder flowers for 1-2 minutes. It gives you a refreshing flower flavour.

Another tea option is Elder flower First Flush

Not a year without making this wonderful elder flower cordial a la Palle, which you afterwards to use for the following drinks:

hylde for de vilde = elder for the wild ones, which easily could be you :-) or if you are "bobble-lady" like me should make Elder Flower Royal

or you could use the elder flower cordial for baking these muffins with another summer guest in form of rhubarb

For cooking purpose in the kitchen you could try to make raspberry vinegar with elder flower.

I will for sure make a portion of elderflower cordial a la Palle as usual, but I will also be making two other new recipe with elderflower as focus ingredients, so look into my virtual kitchen from time to time in the coming period, and I will share these new recipes with. However, I will already now share two clue with you: black tea and salt !!!! Do you have any idea, what I will be making ?

Bun with squash

Using this recipe on tea buns as basic I decided to twist the recipe in the direction of squash buns, so I could use the last remaining portion of grated squash in the freezer from last years harvest surplus. And at the same time I could get some buns, which I can use for eating, when I having an evening rowing on the fjord going directly from work to the rowing club without break for an evening meal.

As other suggestions on squash buns, I could also have baked buns using these recipes Lønnestræde´s squash buns or Lønnestræde´s bun wit squash and butter. Anyway it endup with, that I baked these buns.


Buns with squash: 20 buns

• 100 g butter
• 500 g milk
• 25 g yeast
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon Mélange Pain d'épices (mix of various spieces being cinnamon, anise, clove, ginger and cardamon)
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 950 g flour
• 5 dl grated squash - surplus liquid drained off
• 1 egg for glazing of the bun dough

1. Melt the butter.
2. Stir the yeast and cold milk together, add the melted butter into this liquid.
3. Add the egg, salt, specie mix and sugar into this liquid.
4. Add the wheat flour and the drained grated squash in. Knead the dough together, I usual knead for 10 minutes.
5. After the kneading process, let the dough raise warm for 1½-2 hour.
6. Divide the dough into equal size buns, I always a kitchen scale for this purpose in order to ensure equal baking of the buns, I target a dough amount of 80 g per bun.
7. Place the buns a baking tray covered with baking paper, and let the buns raise for another 30-45 minutes.
8. Heat up the (conventional) oven to 200'C.
9. Before baking the bun glaze them with an egg being together into a homogeneous mass.
10. Bake the buns at 200'C for 15-20' minutes in the upper part of then oven.

Lemon moon (citronmåne) a la Løgismose

Lemon moon (citronmåne) is a classic Danish cake known by all Danes, mostly in the form of the commercial produced cake, which can itself for quiet many months still keeping it´s appearance.

However, it is very easy to make your their own lemon cake, which will not last forever, as it is tasting too good. I have previously baked this version of a lemon moon cake using a recipe from "Te og kager året rundt".

Sometime time ago I found another recipe on a lemon moon cake in a small cooking book in the weekly magazine "Alt for Damerne" made by Løgismose. This version has an excellent taste of lemon, actually much more lemon taste than cake made from "Te of kager året rundt".

Lemon moon (citronmåne) a la Løgismose:

• 2 organic lemons - zest
• 130 g butter
• 100 g dairy whipping cream - 35-38% fat
• 3 eggs
• 190 g sugar
• 190 g (cake) wheat flour
• 60 g sugar
• ½ dl lemon juice

Glazing:

• 150 g icing sugar
• ½ lemon - juice
• yellow colour

1. Heat the (conventional) oven to 180'C.
2. Melt the butter in a small cooking pot, add the lemon zest into the melted butter.
3. Whip the dairy whipping cream into light foam.
4. Whip eggs and sugar together in a mixing bowl.
5. Stir the egg-sugar mass, melted butter, flour and whipped foam together.
6. Add the cake dough into a round form.
7. Bake the cake in the middle of the oven at 180 for 35-40 minutes.
8. Cook the lemon juice and sugar together to a syrup.
9. After baking pinch the warm cake with a fork, pour the lemon syrup over the cake.
10. Cool down the cake.
11. Make the glazing from icing sugar and lemon juice, adjust the colour by addition of yellow colour.

Paleo (stone age diet) chocolade cake

I got the recipe on paleo (stone age diet) chocolate cake from a rowing friend, which had baked it in connection with a picnic row. And this weekend I went away on another rowing trip, where one of the participants can not tolerate the use of milk products due to lactose intolerance, so I decided to bake this cake, so everyone in the boat could enjoy a piece of cake together.

Having my work in mind working with food, I can easily make the following relevant claims to accompany this cake:

• No Sugar Added (I do not mean sugar free)
• Lactose-free
• Gluten-free

If you do not tell people eating this cake about the unusual ingredients used in this cake, they will eat the cake and assume it it a normal rich chocolate cake with plenty of butter, sugar and flour, so give it a try and be surprised.

Paleo (stone age diet) chocolate cake:

• 4 eggs
• 160 g dark chocolate
• 250 g almond flour
• 160 g coconut milk/cream (I used cream with 18% fat inside)
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 15 dates -fresh with stone removed
• 1 vanilla pod - only the corns
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

1. Heat the (conventional) oven to 180'C.
2. Blend the almond flour and dates together.
3. Melt the chocolate and coconut milk/cream together in a small cooking pot on low heat. Mix it well together, so it looks like chocolate sauce.
4. Whip the eggs together.
5. Stir almond flour/date mix, chocolate/coconut milk and egg-mass together in a mixing bowl, until the cake dough is homogeneous.
6. Afterwards add it the cocoa powder, baking powder and vanilla corn into the cake dough.
7. Line a baking tray (20x26 cm) with a piece of baking paper (so it more easily to get the cake out of the form after baking).
8. Bake the cake in the middle of the oven at 180'C for 30-40 minutes.
9. Check with a baking pin, that the cake mass is not liquid/moist, before you stop baking the cake.
10. Cool down the cake before serving.