Another 80th birthday cake

Today would have been my Dad's 80th birthday, had he not passed away fairly suddenly some four years ago. I still miss him and I mark his birthday every year, though not always with a cake.

We visited Madeira at the start of June this year, it would have been a family trip back in 2020 with my Mum, Dad and Sister Bip, had we not been hit by covid and had to cancel it. In the supermarket in the centre of Funchal I spotted two cakes that looked very interesting and different from what I've seen before, so I quickly snapped a photo of each and decided to make the first one to mark my Dad's 80th. It is called Bolo de Bolacha and is a Portuguese version of a biscuit cake. I found an English language recipe here, but decided not to make the butter cream, that's way too much on one cake.

Instead I decided to make something lighter like a no-bake cheesecake filling, preferably with bilberries and I picked this one.

Ingredients

1 unwaxed lemon
300 g frozen bilberries
130 g granulated sugar
350 g cream cheese
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 dl double cream
42 Marie biscuits
3 dl blueberry soup or milk

Method

1. Wash the lemon, zest it and set aside, then cut the lemon in half.
2. Place the bilberries in a deep saucepan together with 50 g of the sugar and the juice from half of the lemon.
3. Bring the bilberries to a simmer on medium-low and stir occasionally. Simmer for about 10 minutes until it thickens and looks like jam.
4. Set aside to cool down - speed up by placing in cold water in the sink.
5. Transfer to a deep container and blend until smooth. Be very careful of splatter because it will be difficult to remove.
6. Place the cream cheese in a deep bowl, add the remaining sugar, the vanilla sugar and the juice from the second half of the lemon. Stir thoroughly to combine.
7. Add the smooth bilberries and stir through well.
8. Whip the double cream to stiff peaks – this doesn't take long and watch out so it doesn't turn to butter.
9. Fold in the whipped double cream into the cream cheese mixture.
10. Pour the blueberry soup or milk in a small bowl. Now dip each Marie bisquit into the liquid and place on a cake plate so that there is one in the middle and six around it.
11. Use a spatula or a knife to spread some of the cheesecake filling over the biscuits, taking care to not go outside the outer edge of the flower shape they form. I aimed for about 1 cm thickness.
12. Repeat the proces with the second layer of biscuits – dip in the liquid, then place on top of the cheesecake layer. Then follow with another layer of cheesecake mixture.
13. Do four more layers. Then carefully work around the outer edge and fill in the gaps and smooth out so that the biscuit layers are visible.
14. Place a little of the cheesecake filling in a piping bag with a star nozzle and pipe some rosettes on top. Decorate with fresh or frozen bilberries.
15. Chill in the fridge for a couple of hours, to allow the biscuits to soften a bit so that it's easier to cut the cake.

This turned out quite small because the Marie biscuits I bought were on the smaller side, so the cake would have been enough for 6 people. Lundulph thought that the lemon dominated the overall flavour. I agree, bilberries can easily get lost among other flavours, so I will need to experiment and reduce the lemon juice a bit. As there's a heat wave in the south of the UK at the moment, I had to chill the cheesecake filling for a bit before assimbling the cake, then I had to chill the assembled cake before finishing the edges, and chill a final time before piping decorations on top. But on a regular cooler day it should be possible to do everything in one go.

I had hoped that the cake would be the same lovely purple colour like in the recipe, but no, it went a lot darker. It could be a camera setting on the recipe photo or some sort of post-production treatment. But I wonder if it might be because I used bilberries – these are the European wild variety that my Mum picks every year. They seem to be purple all through, whereas the shop-bought blueberries only seem to have purple skins, so might not result in such a strong colour. I will need to experiment with these as well. It was very tasty – we had a slice on Sunday already when I made it and had the last piece today on my Dad's actual birthday.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Chickpea and cauliflower stew

Since we started using Ocado to deliver our weekly groceries, we've also been getting their magazine, which quite often has a few interesting recipes. Today I tried this one, which turned out to be quite tasty. However, I felt it needed a bit of sprucing up.

Ingredients

150 g sundried tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp vegetable oil
2 onions peeled and diced
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 tsp smoked paprika (1 mild and 1 spicy if you like)
1 cauliflower divided into bite-sized florets
250 g button mushrooms, sliced
400 ml hot vegetable stock
2 cans of chick peas, 400 g each, use the liquid from one of them
100 ml double cream
1 tbsp lemon juice
20 g basil leaves, sliced

Method

1. Heat the oil in a deep saucepan and fry the onion for 5 minutes until it goes soft and a bit transluscent.
2. Press in the garlic and add the paprika and stir vigorously for a few seconds.
3. Add the cauliflower, tomatoes, mushrooms, chickpeas with some of their liquid and the stock. Let simmer for 15–20 minutes until the cauliflower begins to soften.
4. Remove from the heat and stir in the double cream.
5. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice and stir in the basil.
6. Serve with a wholemeal flatbread.

The original recipe said serves 4, but I'd say this is more like serves 5, though it all depends on the size of the cauliflower of course. It was very tasty and worked very nicely as filling for a pita. Fairly easy to make too, so would work well as a working night dinner. I'm not sure how well it would freeze without the cauliflower going quite mushy, but I don't see a need for freezing with these amounts.

Lingonkola

One of the traditional Swedish Christmas sweets is kola (toffee) and there are loads of variations of it. I've been making it for a few years and always felt I've done something wrong. However, the stuff I've done over the past couple of years has been very tasty and I have decided that the discrepancy between what I imagine and what I end up with is due to the humid climate in the UK.

I've tried several different recipes, but a couple of years ago I made a lingon flavoured kola and it was really nice. So I was very surprised that I'd not recorded it in the blog. This is to correct this omission, because this year they turned out very nice too.

When I searched for the recipe, there were many results which showed beautifully rich pink sweets. I was hoping to get this colour too, unfortunately they went brown and look like generic toffees. Either the sugar caramelised or some of it burnt at the bottom of the saucepan, because it required some elbow grease to remove afterwards. Luckily the flavour was not affected.

The original recipe is in Swedish here.

Ingredients
makes around 70, depending on the size
250 g frozen lingonberries
260 g granulated sugar
100 g unsalted butter
3 dl whipping cream
1.5 dl light syrup
1 tbsp glucose syrup

Method

1. Stir together the frozen lingonberries and the sugar in a large saucepan with a thick bottom and bring to a boil.
2. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh or sieve. This should give around 340 g juice. Save the pulp and skins and use as jam on toast.
3. Melt the butter in the saucepan and add the whipping cream, lingon-sugar mixture, light syrup and glucose syrup and stir gently to mix.
4. Stop stirring once everything is combined and looks homogenous. Then let the mixture simmer gently until it reaches 125 °C.
5. While the toffee mixture is cooking, line a shallow baking tin (25 x 25 cm) with baking paper. 
6. When the mixture reaches the right temperature, pour into the baking tin and allow to cool down completely.
7. Cut up into bite sized pieces and wrap in baking paper, then store in an airtight container.

Needless to say, you need to have good teeth for these. Keep them in room temperature for a softer toffee or in the fridge for a harder, chewier texture.

A couple of years ago I invested in an adjustable "toffee mould" because the mixture does set fairly quickly once it's off the hob. However once it sets, I recommend refrigerating it before cutting because it will behave like a glacier - looks solid, but flows and once the adjustable mould is removed it will start deforming. I ended up cutting a strip, putting the mould sides back on and putting the thing in the fridge, then quickly cutting the strip into pieces, wrapping them in prepared pieces of baking paper, then also back in the fridge.

The lingonberries can probably be replaced with raspberries and I think adding some liquorice powder would be quite nice too. Next Christmas.

80th Birthday Cake

 This year has several round birthdays in our family, one of which was Lundulph's mum turning 80, so we threw a huge party and I had the pleasure of making a cake large enough for about 50 people. Lundulph suggested I make it in the shape of "80" and I wanted to make it a bit more festive when cutting it up, so I settled on the Funfetti cake from Preppy Kitchen.

 Having had a few mishaps when converting an American recipe to metric, I decided to do a trial run first with half of the recipe. As with others of Mr Kanell's recipes, this one worked very nicely too. Lundulph certainly didn't complain about the trial run, which gave 24 very tasty muffins.

Cake 

Ingredients

makes one round cake of 20 cm diameter

 

203 g plain flour

22 g glutinous rice flour

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 tbsp vanilla sugar 

114 g kefir (100 ml)

68 g semi-skimmed milk (60 ml) 

233 g granulated sugar

114 g unsalted butter at room temperature

38 g vegetable oil (40 ml)

140 g egg whites 

50 g colourful sprinkles

 

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 190 ℃, not fan. 
2. Sift together the flours, baking powder, salt and vanilla sugar and set aside.
3. Stir together the kefir and milk in a jug.
4. Beat together sugar, butter and vegetable oil until well combined and creamy.
5. Whisk in the egg whites in three parts, combining well between each addition.
6. Add one third of the flour mixture and keep whisking.
7. Add half the kefir-milk mixture and whisk in.
8. Add the second third of the flour mixture and incorporate.
9. Add the remaining kefir-milk.
10. Add the final third of the flour mixture.
11. Once all is well mixed, gently fold in the sprinkles just enough to get them distributed throughout the batter.
12. Pour the batter into a greased and floured cake tin and bake for 38 minutes.
13. Take out of the oven and let cool in the cake tin for 10 minutes, then remove the cake and put on a wire rack to cool down completely.
14. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before slicing layers. 
15. Freeze if not making the cake straight away. 

Because this cake uses only egg whites, the crumb is paler than if using whole eggs and I think it makes the sprinkles stand out a bit more. But it also results in a lot of yolks. I was lucky in that I had 8 leftover egg whites frozen from a previous bake, and I used them for two of the cakes. So I only needed 8 more eggs for the remaining two cakes. It still left 8 yolks to deal with and I used them for the vanilla cream (crème pâtissière) that I used as filling. I used the recipe that I should have used for the vanilla hearts all those years ago. This is a really nice one.

Filling

Ingredients

 

500 g semi-skimmed milk

1 tbsp vanilla sugar

120 g egg yolks

125 g granulated sugar

40 g corn starch

25 g unsalted butter

 

Method

1. Warm up the milk to room temperature in a large saucepan.
2. Whip up the vanilla sugar, yolks, sugar and corn starch in a bowl until pale and fluffy.
3. Add the milk and stir through to incorporate, then pour the mixture back into the saucepan and place on medium heat.
4. Bring to the boil while whisking constantly.
5. Add the butter and stir it in, then remove the saucepan from the stove.
6. Push through a sieve to remove any lumps and into a wide shallow dish.
7. Cover the surface with cling film to prevent a skin from forming, then place the dish in cold water to cool down the cream as quickly as possible and refrigerate.
8. Use within two days, otherwise freeze.
9. If using from frozen, thaw in the fridge, then bring to the boil in a microwave in short 20 s bursts with stirring through inbetween to bring it back together again. 

 This made enough vanilla cream to use as filling between the two layers of both cakes, as well as left a little bit over to use between the cutout pieces and help keep them together.

Once I'd settled on the recipe, the next thing to figure out was how to get the shapes of an "8" and a "0". The "8" was easy, two round cakes need to overlap a bit, so the overlap needs to be cut out from one of the cakes. I used the cake tin as a guide and cut carefully with a knife. Note that I swapped the overlaps between the two layers to make sure the cake wouldn't split during transport.

The "0" however was a bigger challenge. I originally planned to make a rectangular cake and cut out an oval, but this would have been wasteful in the extreme. I also couldn't find anything helpful when I searched on the internet, but it occurred to me that I could probably manage with two round cakes here as well. Just cut them out like the "8", then use all the cutoffs to fill in the "waist" and turn it into a "0". I'm very pleased that I managed to work this out and it saved me making a large rectangular sponge which would definitely have been different to the two round ones. There were still some leftovers afterwards, I've frozen them to use for cake pops.

 

An annoying thing was that although I used the same cake tin for all four sponges, there were some visible differences in size between them and I'm not entirely sure why this happened. I did my best to repeat everything exactly the same. But I made the sponges over a couple of days, so clearly something was different.

I should also mention that I had some frozen light syrup from canned peaches, about 2 dl, which I thawed and drizzled on the bottom layer of each cake as I was putting it together. I didn't have enough for the upper layer and since I covered the cakes with marzipan directly without a crumb layer, I thought the marzipan might soak up some of the syrup and go runny. In hindsight, I should have made a crumb layer to level out between the edges. This would need to be buttercream, again to protect the marzipan. 

Lundulph's mum had done some serious marzipan shopping by mistake, so I used most of it to cover the cake. I spent an evening after work colouring it green and discovered interesting differences between brands. The Dr. Oetker one was ground much more finely and was much easier to work with. Sainsbury's and Tesco's were fairly similar to each other, but a bit coarser. I should perhaps mention that I am not sponsored by any of these brands, this was just an unexpected opportunity to compare. I'm very pleased that I managed to get the same tone on all, because I did the colouring in batches. 

I then found this video on YouTube, which was very helpful in how to roll out the marzipan thinly and I blended and heated up some of my runny rhubarb jam to use as glue. I followed the steps in the video and managed to roll the marzipan to about 3 mm, maybe even a little thinner.

Earlier in the year, I'd spent a few evenings making the golden cake lace. This time I found ready mixed paste and the instructions helpfully said the lace could be set much faster in the oven, so I ended up doing about a metre and a half too much. It was fun and easy. Hopefully, I'll find use for that at some point. I used edible glue to fix it to the marzipan.

All in all, the cake was a success, but with all the other food, the guests didn't eat as much of it as anticipated, so we had a lot of cake on the following day.

Västerbottensostpaj

In August, as the end of the Swedish summer draws nearer, people have crayfish parties. I'm not a fan of most food stuffs that come from under water, so I have only taken part in the odd one. Very often there's very little else to eat, apart from the crayfish. But some people make a quiche made with a cheese from northern Sweden, a region called Västerbotten (Westrobothnia or West Bothnia). It's been ages since I've had this and since my sister always talks extatically about it, I finally decided to make one myself. It helps that Lundulph is at a stag weekend, so won't be pulling faces about the cheese. I decided to go for "the original" recipe (in Swedish) provided by the company that makes västerbottensost. As per usual with a slight improvement - garlic.

Ingredients
Dough

125 g unsalted butter
190 g plain flour (3 dl)
1 tbsp water

Filling

3 large eggs
2 dl whipping cream
black pepper
4 cloves garlic (optional)
300 g grated Västerbotten-cheese

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 ℃, no fan.
2. Slice the butter thinly and place in a bowl. Add the flour and pinch together to form fine crumbs.
3. Add the water and work together to a soft dough.
4. Use your fingers to spread the the dough in a pie dish (24 cm diameter). Push it gently to cover the bottom and sides as evenly as possible.
5. Prick with a fork and bake in the oven for 10 – 15 min.
6. While the crust is baking, stir together the eggs, cream and black pepper. Press in the garlic if using and finally stir in the cheese.
7. Remove the pie crust from the oven and pour in the filling, making sure to distribute the cheese across the whole pie.
8. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until the filling sets. Remove and let cool down before serving.

Yes, I decided to add garlic, though this is not in the original recipe. I just thought it would be a nice addition and also I'm looking to use up what's left from last year's crop. I owned up to my mum when I spoke with her last night, to which she commented without batting an eyelid, that she always does that.

I'm trying to figure out what other cheese could be used as a substitute, if you can't find västerbottensost. It is quite crumbly, salty and strong-flavoured, so maybe a mature cheddar would do the trick or something similar. I'm lucky that I can get hold of it in the UK, though it's expensive and disappears way too quickly.

Klappgröt

 Last year one of my colleagues told me about a funny book on the "brown food" people used to make in the 1970s and even sent me a link to it. The book is sadly no longer available, but the link allowed for looking at some of the pages and recipes. Severl of them were from a clear plastic box of recipe cards, which looked very familiar to me. Indeed my mum has one of these boxes, half-filled with recipe cards. I got it out and worked through all of them with the vague hope that I'd find one of the recipes from the book. I didn't, clearly there were different makes of these recipe card boxes available back in the early 80s when we first moved to Sweden.

However, of all the 100+ cards, there were two that really stood out for me and I decided to take them home and try them out. I can't remember my mum ever using these cards, so I'm quite pleased that she'd saved them.

The first card was from category #22 "delicious desserts" and is card #48. The dessert is called Klappgröt and it was the name that attracted me to it. "Gröt" means porrige and from what I've been able to find out, "klapp" is an older culinary term for beating or whipping. The second thing that attracted me was that it is made with lingonberries and semolina. Of all the different types of porrige, semolina porrige is the one I like best and thanks to my mum's foraging, I have a steady supply of premium quality lingonberries.

Ingredients

4 dl berries, e. g. lingonberries, cranberries, gooseberries or  red currants

1 litre water

85 – 125 g granulated sugar

75 g semolina

1 tbsp potato flour

4 tbsp water

Method

1. Clean and wash the berries. Place them in a large saucepan and mash with a fork.
2. Add the water and bring to the boil. Let simmer for a few minutes.
3. Strain the juice and put back into the saucepan.
4. Stir in the sugar, then the semolina and bring to the boil again.
5. Leave to simmer until the semolina is cooked, about 20 minutes.
6. In a small bowl, stir the potato flour together with the additional water, then add to the porrige and stir well to combine.
7. Allow to just come to the boil and then take off the heat and allow to cool down a little.
8. Transfer to a large bowl and whip the porrige with an electric whisk until it goes pale and very fluffy and has cooled down completely.
9. Pour into portions and either serve straight away or refrigerate and serve chilled.
   

 I used my trusty Assistent machine for the whipping, since it took at least 10 minutes (I forgot to time it). Some of the other recipes I found suggest using a hand-held electric whisk and placing the bowl into a water bath of cold water to speed up the cooling down. Either way, the magic will happen and the porrige will reach a mousse-like consistency which turned out to be very yummy both at room temperature and chilled. I think I liked the chilled version better.

Lingonberries, like cranberries are quite tart and the 125 g sugar just about reduced that tartness, but the dessert didn't feel very sweet at all.

I'm keen to try this with bilberries, that should work too and would also work in combination with the lingonberry to get a two-coloured klappgröt. I also think a sprinkling of chopped hazelnuts, desiccated coconut or biscuit crumbs and a little whipped cream would make it into quite a fancy dessert too.

The recipe says the above is 4 portions. I'd say it's more like 8 portions, unless you eat it as a main meal. Once it's whipped up it doubles in volume.

Finally the card also mentions as an extra tip that klappgröt can also be made with rhubarb. In which case 5 dl diced rhubarb is required, the method is the same, but there would be no need to strain. Having made rhubarb curd a few years ago, I would say that straining is required here too, at least for my rhubarb, as it goes a bit fibrous. But another flavour to try out once the rhubarb gets going in a few weeks.

I poured some of the porrige into a jelly mould to see if it would set enough to be demoulded like a jelly. As it turned out - no. Unfortunately I had a busy evening when I made this, so I didn't get a chance to take photos, but hopefully will do that next time.

Update on 2025-04-12: I had a litre of ready-made blåbärssoppa, that is Swedish bilberry soup, and decided to try using it for this fabulous dessert. Use one litre instead of the lingonberry juice, otherwise, the ingredients and the method are the same. Bilberries have a milder flavour to begin with and once whipped up, the flavour becomes milder still. I have also frozen some of it, with a prospect of making a vegan ice cream that is also easy to scoop. Once again, I was very busy, so didn't make any photos, but I promise, it is well worth making. Yum!

Stamped cookies revival

 

As I was rummaging around the cupboards I spotted my cookie press and realised it's been forever since I used it. And since Lundulph went to visit his parents for the day, I decide it would be a great time to make a batch, especially since I'd just watched this video, where the cookie dough appeared to have just the right consistency. 

Ingredients

makes about 130

 

480 g plain flour

60 g potato flour

¾ tsp salt

2 tbsp vanilla sugar

226 g unsalted butter at room temperature

200 g granulated sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 ℃, no fan.
   
2. Sift together the dry ingredients and stir to distribute evenly.
3. Whisk the butter in a food processor, then add the sugar and beat until it goes pale and fluffy.
4. Add one egg at a time while the mashine is still beating, allowing them to get fully incorporated.
5. Slowly add the flour and mix until it just combines to a dough. 
6. Load up a cookie press and stamp directly onto baking sheets.
7. Bake one sheet at a time for 10 - 11 minutes to keep them from colouring.
8. Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool, then store in an airtight jar.
   

 Looking quickly through my old stamped cookie recipes, the ingredients are mostly the same but in fairly different proportions. However, this dough turned out very well and worked splendidly with the cookie press. Some ended up a bit wonky, but that is entirely my fault. I wanted to stamp as many cookies as possible with one fill of the cookie press, so I filled it to the brim. This resulted in small air pockets which meant less dough came out from some of the cookie holes here and there. I ended up discarding a lot of cookies and ended up having to refill a more times than I was hoping to get away with. A better approach is to fill and leave about a centimetre or two of space left, then the pressing pad will pushes the dough down and even things out somewhat and result in nicer and more symmetrical cookies. 

Also very interesting was the potato flour. According to the video, it is the special ingredient that prevents the cookies from spreading in the oven and thus keeping their definition. I will need to double-check with Dr Cutie about that, but I do know that German sponge cake recipes tend to include some potato starch to make the crumb more delicate.

I tasted the cookies as soon as they'd cooled down enough to handle and thought they weren't nice at all, but tasted a bit of flour and not sweet at all. I thought I could ice them, but I got distracted by other things and by the time Lundulph came home late in the evening, they were still just like when I baked them. So we had a couple and it turned out the flavour had improved! I'm not sure what happened and eating them now a couple of days later, I think they are still very good. So clearly they do need to rest and not be gobbled up straight away. Or our tongues adjusted. Either way, I do like this recipe.