Pieday continued

As I mentioned, I had various pastries to use up in the fridge, one met its doom over my mince and mushroom pie.

What I also had was some sheets of filo pastry, left over from a spinach pie I made a while back. I'd sealed them nicely in two bags, so they were in pretty good shape.

Here too, I was inspired by the Hairy Bikers and their pie book - there is a whole chapter about suggestions on what to do with leftover pastry.

What they suggest doing with filo pastry is to cut into smallish rectangles, brush with melted butter, spoon a strip of chocolate/hazelnut spread and roll up and bake. And this is precisely what I did, except that I didn't have spread, but used Viennese nougat instead.

Ingredients
Filo pastry cut into rectangles, about 10 x 12 cm
Viennese nougat cut into thin strips (8 cm long, 0.5 x 0.5 cm wide)
25 g butter
icing sugar for dusting

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C (200 for fan-assisted oven).
2. Very gently melt the butter, so that it doesn't start bubbling. Remove from the heat
3. Cut up the strips of Viennese nougat. This is easier if the nougat is cold from the fridge.
   
4. Cut the filo pastry rectangles and stack together, to prevent them from drying out too quickly.
5. Brush a filo rectangle with a little butter, then place a strip of nougat along the 12 cm side, so that there are a couple of cm of filo on each side of the nougat.
6. Start rolling up the nougat, after a full turn, tuck in the sides, then continue to roll up the rest of the pastry. This prevents the filling from leaking out during baking.
   
7. Place the rolls on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and bake until golden brown.
   
8. Take out and let cool on a wire rack.

These were quite fiddly to make, but once I got into the rhythm, it worked OK. Sadly my oven is playing up a lot these days and I didn't pay attention enough, so I ended up burning them. I also erred on the baking temperature and baked at 200 degrees, which perhaps contributed to burning the filo rolls - filo pastry takes longer to bake than one might think and at the same time, Viennese nougat is quite sensitive to baking, so I think baking at 220 should do the trick, provided one keeps an eye on them. It hasn't stopped me from eating these, that's for sure.

Pieday

Having caught up on season 3 of The Great British Bake-off in the past week, I felt so inspired, that I had to bake yesterday.

The fact that it has been raining copious amounts of water in both liquid and solid form lately pointed me towards pies, so I brought out my pie book from the Hairy Bikers to find something interesting to do. And there is lots there! In fact I made the quick decision to try out a couple of other things while I was at it.

I had a packet of minced beef in the freezer and I'd bought a mixture of mushrooms, because I really fancied mushrooms.

Last week we opened a nice bottle of wine only to establish that it was corked. Of course I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, so I asked Lundulph to seal it and put in the fridge, so I could use it up in cooking.

Finally there were several types of pastry in the fridge that were screaming at me to be used. I'm pretty sure I'd missed the best before date on them, but they seemed OK for use.

The following recipe is not from the pie book, in fact it is nothing more than a glorified Bolognese sauce, but it turned out very nicely indeed.

Ingredients
650 g fresh mushrooms - a pack each of button, chestnut and shiitake
30 g butter
3 tbsp grapeseed oil
1 large onion ~220 g peeled
3 cloves of garlic ~1 tbsp when minced
500 g extra lean beef mince
1 carrot ~130 g peeled
2 tbsp plain flour
600 ml red wine
1 tbsp thyme
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp mint
3 tbsp tomato purée
salt and pepper
320 g ready rolled puff pastry
1 egg

Method

1. Brush and peel the mushrooms, then cut into chunks.
2. Peel and coarsely dice the onion. Peel the garlic.
3. Peel and dice the carrot.
4. Heat up 20 g of the butter and 2 tbsp of the oil in a large pan and sauté the mushrooms until all the liquid has evaporated. Season lightly while frying.
5. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and into the oven proof pie dish and set aside.
6. Add the remaining butter and oil to the pan and when hot, add the onion, carrot and press in the garlic and let fry until the onion goes translucent.
7. Add the minced beef and stir vigorously to avoid the meat frying into lumps.
8. Once the meat is browned, sprinkle the flour and stir in well.
9. When it starts thickening, add the wine, a little at a time so as not to reduce the temperature of the pan too much.
10. Add the thyme, oregano, mint, tomato purée, salt and pepper and stir in.
11. Let simmer until the liquid has evaporated, then stir in the mushrooms and transfer everything to the pie dish.
12. Allow the filling to cool, then chill in the fridge for at least an hour.
13. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C (or 200 if using fan-assisted oven).
14. Whisk up the egg with a pinch of salt, take out the pie dish and sparingly brush the edges with the egg wash.
15. Push in a pie funnel in the middle if you wish.
16. Cut out strips for the rim, a little wider and place them over the edges, so that there is a little overhang on the inside of the dish rim.
    
17. If there is a pie funnel, cut a cross in the middle of the main part of the puff pastry lid. Then brush the strips with more egg wash, then place the main part of the puff pastry over the pie, making sure it sticks to the strips. If not using a pie funnel, cut a few slots in the pie lid to allow steam to come out.
18. Trim any excess puff pastry and "knock up" the edges by using a small sharp knife by cutting into the edge of the pastry towards the filling, while pressing against with your hand, so the pastry lid doesn't slide off.
19. If there are any leftovers from the puff pastry, decorate the pie and brush with egg wash.
20. Bake for 30 - 40 minutes until the pie lid has puffed up and has a nice golden brown colour and the filling has heated through.

As usual, I made several mistakes here. For starters, I don't have a proper pie dish with a wide rim. Then I didn't allow the pie filling to chill, but flopped the puff pastry over directly, which resulted in the whole thing starting to melt almost immediately, so the knocking up of the edge was not possible. Once in the oven, the edges dripped down the sides of the dish. I really don't know what I was thinking, precisely this happened to one of the contestants of the Great British Bake-Off and it was clearly explained why...



I took it out after 30 minutes, at which point it had not risen at all.



Nevertheless, Lundulph and I put away half of it for dinner. The puff pastry was still fairly crispy, it just didn't puff up.



I had intended to serve with potatoes, but we were both fairly hungry, so just had the pie, which was wonderfully filling.

Results!

After a number of attempts at baking muffins in ice cream cones, I was finally successful.

I made the same nougat muffins I wanted to do for the village fete.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe:

Ingredients

100 g unsalted butter at room temperature
2.5 dl caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2.5 dl plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 dl crème fraîche
75 g Viennese nougat finely diced

I reduced the amount of butter. When I made these in paper cases, they would always come out very greasy and I suspect the reason is that the pieces of nougat were added to the recipe, but no adjustments were made for the fact that nougat has a lot of fat in it and so the excess would seep out. I reduced the butter with 50 grams from the original recipe.

I also baked at 140 degrees C,to be sure the muffins wouldn't erupt. This meant baking them for just over an hour. Lundulph got to try one and said it was OK and was well baked through.

I let them cool completely before mixing meringue. I wanted originally to make marshmallow fluff, but the recipe I wanted to use calls for golden syrup, which I didn't have, so I went for regular meringue instead:

3 medium egg whites
2 dl caster sugar

Whisked together over a bain marie. Took longer than I expected and I splattered up the cooker quite a bit.

Then I piped it over the muffins.

I need to practice piping as well, I didn't do it very well, but on the whole the result was pretty OK. I baked the meringue at 100 degrees for an hour and then left the cones in the oven and let it cool completely. The mixture was only enough for 15 of the cones, the last one just got a little dab.

So visually they turned out rather nice, but eating them was a bit tricky. Still, I'm very pleased that they finally turned out the way I wanted them to. I noticed that in the second baking, the sponge sank in a bit, I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure how long they will keep or if the meringue will suck out the moisture in the muffin sponge and go gooey.

Egg in the Basket

Work is getting a bit hectic again and I'm neglecting my cooking escapades. But during a casual and slightly distracted browsing session a few weeks back, my eye was caught by something called Egg in the Basket. What an intriguing twist on egg on toast, which I really like.

So when the whole clan packed themselves into two cars and went off to the English countryside for a long week-end of celebrating Lundulph's birthday, I decided to try this out and it was quite a success!

Unfortunately no fancy birthday cake this year for my darling Lundulph and the cupcakes I made together with Lou and Falbala didn't work out too well either, but at least everyone got a nice breakfast.

Traditionally when the whole family gathers, there is full English breakfast to be had and it is normally done by Lundulph's Mum. I just sneaked in with a hole cutter, and carefully cut out rounds from a few of the bread slices.



After wavering for a few seconds on whether I should butter the bread or not and realising that it would be trickier still, since I'd already cut the holes, I opted for not buttering.

Instead, I headed up a little oil on medium in a pan and placed the bread slices, two at a time and cracked an egg into each hole. I also put in the cut out circles to give them colour.



As you can see, the pan was a little too small, so the egg ran out under one of the bread slices.

Unfortunately, the circles were a little small and the egg would require longer to cook than the bread. I wanted to avoid burning it, so I had to flip each Egg in the Basket, which I feel ruined the visual appeal somewhat.



But with a slice of bacon and a big mushroom, it was lovely and the yolk was nicely gooey too.

Next time, I want to try and improve on the visual aspect of this dish and have the eggs with a "sunny side up". I'll fry the toast as before, but instead of flipping it , I'll put it under the grill. I'm hoping this will do the trick. Update to follow.

Update 2012-09-23: As a special Sunday breakfast and to try out the rye loaves I made yesterday, I tried out my plan and it worked! I got to use my fancy cast iron pan, which works both on a hob and in the oven. But alas, it has been ages since I used it and I had forgotten how thick bottomed pans work and over-cooked the eggs. But they were "sunny side up", yay!

Oat And Raisin Biscuits

One more recipe from my new book "277 types of biscuits/cakes" as it seems Lundulph has taken quite a fancy to having something sweet for afters these days.



But as always, he is very concerned about his diet and eating too much sugar. So I thought something with oat and raisins should at least give the feeling of healthiness.

This recipe makes 50 biscuits.

Ingredients

160 g unsalted butter at room temperature
150 g caster sugar
90 g porridge oats
100 g plain flour
100 g raisins
2 g bicarbonate of soda (about a quarter of a teaspoon)

Method

1. Mix all ingredients together into a dough, just using your fingers, so the butter doesn't melt.
   
   


2. Divide it up into 120 g pieces. It should be just right for this, no licking of fingers!
   
   


3. Place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.


4. Line three baking sheets with baking paper and pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C.


5. After the rest in the fridge, take out the dough pieces and roll each of them into a sausage.


6. Cut each sausage in 10 pieces, roll each into a ball and place on the baking sheets, with some space inbetween.
   
   


7. Press each piece down with the back of a fork, then bake in the middle of the oven until golden brown, about 15 - 30 minutes.
   
   


8. Remove and let cool on a rack, then store in an air-tight container.

It is also a good idea if the kitchen isn't too hot, or the dough will become sticky. If it does, just put it back in the fridge for a little longer.

The original recipe stated 12 minutes, but mine looked uncooked at that point in time, so I kept checking on them regularly after that and ended up baking the biscuits for 22 minutes.

I also recommend using a serrated knife when cutting the dough, it is easier to get through the raisins.

These cookies came out very nice indeed, they were crunchy with a little chewiness in the middle. They were also incredibly brittle, I had to take a lot of precautions in transporting them. They arrived relatively safe and sound.

Memo To Self On Poppy and Sesame Seed Bread

Today is a baking day, for the simple reason that Lundulph had the last three slices of bread for breakfast this morning.

Combine this with finding a jar of poppy seeds in the bottom drawer of the spice cupboard, I decided to make poppy and sesame seed bread this time.

As basis I decided to go for Richard Bertinet's recipe for olive dough, which I also used last night for a large pizza. As usual I make a double batch, which results in two large loaves. Sliced and frozen, they lasts us for a couple of weeks. We don't eat much bread, Lundulph and I.

Ingredients

1 kg super strong white flour
40 g semolina
22 g dried yeast (3 sachets)
100 g olive oil
340 g water
2 tbsp (black) poppy seeds
4 tbsp sesame seeds
20 g salt

Method

1. Put flour, semolina and dried yeast into the bowl of a bread mixer and run it "on dry" to blend the dry ingredients.


2. Add the olive oil and water and run the machine to mix into a dough.


3. After a few minutes add the salt slowly and continue to run until the dough doesn't stick and gluten has developed.


4. Take out of the machine and onto a floured worksurface. Fold up into a ball, dust the bottom of the bowl with flour and place the dough back in the bowl. Cover and let rise until double in size.


5. Prepare the loaf tins by brushing them with olive oil, bottom and sides. Pre-heat the oven to 240 degrees C.


6. Dust the worksurface with flour and take out the risen dough onto it. Weigh and divide in two equal parts. Mine usually are around 945 g each, but it depends on the loaf tins used of course.


7. Shape each part into a loaf and place in the tin. Cover and let proof for 30 - 45 minutes.


8. Slash and place in the oven to bake, 30 minutes at 240 degrees C, then turn down to 200 degrees C and bake for a further 30 minutes.


9. Keep an eye on the breads, if they start going dark too early, place a sheet of baking paper over them.


10. When done, turn out onto a cooling rack and let cool completely before slicing.

There, I have written it down, so that I know what amounts of seeds I have used - they seemed the right amount. Usually I don't write down my changes, especially if it is something I do regularly like bread and then next time I want to repeat it, if it was a successful change, I can never remember the amounts. Thus a memo to self.

Variations On A Theme - Salmon Pie Version 4

Looking through my list of recipes, I see that there are already three salmon pies on it, not to mention the salmon and spinach pie. But here I go again - there was salmon in the fridge, Lundulph and I are massively hungry and I'd bought a packet of ready made puff pastry, I really can't remember the reason why.

I had planned the pie for Thursday night, that's why both salmon and puff pastry were thawed and ready to go. But work was extremely busy and I didn't finish until well in the evening, so we had salad instead.

But yesterday Lundulph had a day off from work and I finished up a little earlier.

Other left-over ingredients in the fridge were also happily used up - the whipping cream I had planned to use with my sticky muffins and never used and the remaining créme fraîche from the nougat muffins.

I also realise that this pie is very similar to my last one, it seems my mind is fixed and I keep thinking along the same lines.

Ingredients

600 g ready rolled puff pastry - two sheets
600 g fillets of hot smoked salmon
1 tsp hot chilli flakes
3 eggs + 1 egg white
3 dl whipping cream
2 dl créme fraîche
black pepper
1 dl finely cut chives
1 tbsp dried mint
1 tbsp dried dill
1 tbsp dried thyme
3 tbsp fresh finely chopped parsley
1 egg yolk for decoration
Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees C.


2. Line a deep (5 - 7 cm) pie dish with one of the puff pastry sheets, making sure it goes right up to the edge of the dish and even a little above.


3. Remove the skin from the salmon steaks, then shred it and put in the pie dish.
   
   


4. Sprinkle in the hot chilli flakes and stir in a little.


5. In a bowl, stir together the eggs, whipping cream, créme fraîche, black pepper, chives, mint, dill, thyme and parsley, then pour carefully over the salmon.
   
   


6. Cover the pie with the second sheet of puff pastry, pinch in along the edges, so that it doesn't run out, make some holes to allow steam out and brush with the egg yolk.
   
   


7. Bake until golden brown, 1h to 1h 30 min. Let cool a little before serving.
   
   

I made a couple of mistakes (as usual) - I added salt to the liquid mixture, not thinking about that hot smoked salmon tends to be quite salty, so the whole pie was a bit on the salty side.



I also should have blind-baked the bottom pastry layer, knowing that my oven doesn't bake at all underneath. Probably this wouldn't be necessary in an electric oven with heating elements at both bottom and top.

I think this pie would have been rather nice with my standard white sauce that normally do for barbecues.

It could also have taken on more chilli flakes.

Vaniljhjärtan

During my last trip to Sweden, I was not able to resist going into the kitchen shop where I found metal heart shapes, which I just had to buy.

After all, I'd promised Lundulph some time ago to make him vanilla hearts and with a recipe for these classic Swedish pastries from my new patisserie book I got to work. With the usual swap of vanilla sugar for icing sugar and vanilla extract. It also calls for fleur de sel, which I didn't have, so I used regular cooking salt instead, however, I will get some for my next batch. The recipe was for 30 hearts, which I felt was a bit too much to make, so I halved the recipe. Besides I only have 12 of the little heart tins, which incidentally measure 7.5 cm along the line of symmetry and they have a small lip around the edge.

Ingredients

240 g plain flour
200 g unsalted butter from the fridge
55 g icing sugar
1 g fleur de sel (or salt)
5 g vanilla extract
20 g egg yolk (from 1 large egg)
3 dl vanilla custard
icing sugar for decoration

Method

1. Place the flour on a work surface and form a well.
   
   
2. Cut the butter in a few pieces and place in the middle of the well along with the icing sugar and the salt.
3. Pinch together into a crumbly dough, but careful not to over-work.
4. Add the vanilla and the yolk and mix in.
5. When well incorporated, wrap in cling film and place in the fridge to rest for at least 1 h.
6. Line up the heart tins together as closely as possible. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees C.
7. Take out half of the dough from the fridge and roll out to 3 mm thickness on a lightly dusted work surface, making sure it doesn't stick.
8. Carefully roll up the dough onto the rolling pin and roll out over the heart tins.
9. Using a small piece of dough, gently push the rolled out dough into each heart tin.
10. Carefully roll the rolling pin over the hearts, then cut around the edge to free them and remove excess dough.
11. Spoon or pipe in the custard, filling each heart to about three-quarters.
12. Take out the remainder of the dough and roll out to 3 mm in the same way.
13. Roll up on the rolling pin, then roll out over the heart tins, then roll the rolling pin over the tins to seal in the filling.
14. Prick the tops of the hearts before baking them for 25 minutes until golden brown.
15. Prepare a piece of baking paper large enough to fit all the hearts. Turn out the hearts immediately after taking them out of the oven, then carefully prise off the little tins and allow the hearts to cool.
16. Dust with icing sugar before serving. The hearts keep for one day if kept in room temperature and a couple of days if kept in the fridge.

I made several mistakes in baking these. First I over-worked the dough.

So that when I added my egg yolk and a bit and the vanilla extract, I ended up with sticky goo.

Using a dough scraper made it a bit easier. I wrapped the thing in cling film and left it in the fridge overnight.

To avoid it going sticky again, I tried to work as fast as I could and ended up adding a lot of extra flour to the dough.

Unfortunately I also misunderstood the instructions on how to get the dough into the heart tins, so ended up doing each individually and had to wait inbetween turns as the dough kept warming up and going gooey.

I think this below is what filling up to three-quarters meant...

I also didn't succeed with covering the filling according to instructions and rolling the rolling pin over each individually was a precarious work, but I got there in the end. Here they are, ready for baking:

And straight out of the oven:

Unfortunately upon turning the hearts out, I once again had a confirmation that I need a new oven. I had to bake the hearts for 40 minutes and still they were barely cooked underneath. Luckily, the dusting of icing sugar covered it mostly.

After day 2 in the fridge (only Lundulph and me to eat the little beauties), I started warming the hearts up in the microwave a little. This resulted in the crust becoming very soft and impossible to touch, so they required a spoon for eating. Also the custard inside changed and became more solid. I think I'll make real crème pâtissière next time.
On the whole the hearts were good, but I would have preferred them a little sweeter on the inside. Lundulph said they were really good, which is nice.

Vanilla Dreams

A few weeks before I moved back to the UK, I finally managed to buy a new baking book. One that I'd had my eye on since it came out the year before.

It's by Jan Hedh (in Swedish), one of the leading pastry chefs in Sweden, and is called "277 sorters kakor". This translates to "277 types of biscuits/cakes" and is a play on the Swedish concept of "kafferep" and "sju sorters kakor". That is "coffee rope" and "seven types of biscuits" and refers to a very old Swedish tradition where women would gather and drink coffee and eat biscuits. According to Swedish wikipedia, this was usually done for a wedding or a funeral, but I'm not sure those were the only reasons for such a gathering. For starters, ladies could get a few hours' break from husband and children. These events are expected to last for a whole afternoon I would think.

The seven types of biscuits is what kafferep-etiquette required as a minimum! This doesn't count bread rolls, buns and other such items. Another must was of course the Princess cake.

So, for Lundulph's last Swedish lesson for the term, he asked me to bake something Swedish for him to take along and I picked one very Swedish biscuit - vaniljdrömmar or vanilla dreams. And the recipe is from my new book. The only change I made was with respect to vanilla sugar - this is found in most Swedish recipes calling for vanilla, but I haven't had any in years since I discovered the wonderful bottles of vanilla extract. The original stated 25 g vanilla sugar, which I have replaced with 20 g of caster sugar + 1 tbsp vanilla extract.

Ingredients
Makes 70
300 g plain flour
4 g ammonium carbonate (baker's ammonia or salt of hartshorn)
225 g unsalted butter at room temperature
220 g caster sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150 degrees C. Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper and cut out a couple of additional pieces of baking paper as well.
2. Sift together the flour and ammonium carbonate, making sure they are well blended.
3. In a separate bowl, stir together with a spoon the butter, sugar and vanilla extract until the mixture is smooth.
4. Add all the flour mixture and mix to a soft dough, using only your fingers, so the butter doesn't start melting. Don't over-work it, but just enough so that it comes together and is homogeneous.
   
   
5. Divide up into 5 - 6 pieces and roll each one into a longish sausage, about 2 cm thick.
6. Cut up each sausage into chunks of 11 g.
7. Roll each chunk briefly into a ball and place on the baking paper, starting with the two sheets. Don't be tempted to place them too closely together, but leave some 6 - 7 cm inbetween.
   
   
8. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20- 25 minutes. They should preferably remain pale. If the oven is too hot, they will run out more and become too thin.
   
   
9. Remove and let cool, while the next batch is baking. Then just before that is ready, carefully slide the dreams off the baking sheet along with the paper, then slide the next batch onto the baking sheet.
10. Remove very carefully and store in an air-tight box, but line the box with some kitchen tissue beforehand, as these biscuits are very delicate and break extremely easily.

And they are ready to enjoy. But don't even think of dunking them, they will disintegrate!

There are several interesting aspects to these I think. The main point is the use of ammonium carbonate. This is a predecessor to today's bicarbonate of soda and baking powder and this is the only recipe where I have encountered this before. In Sweden, every supermarket sells packets of salt of hartshorn probably for precisely this recipe. I'm not sure how easy it is to find in the UK or elsewhere. My packet was purchased several years ago and has been kept dry and relatively cool in the larder. It does behave differently to the modern chemical leavening agents and so can't easily be substituted for them.

Another very good aspect is that it was very much easier to make than I expected. I can't remember if I've made these biscuits before, but blending things together, then dividing up into the 11 g portion (and yes, I did weigh each one!) felt a lot easier and quicker than I thought, when I read the recipe originally.

The oven temperature for my bake was 145 degrees actually and comparing to the picture in the book, my dreams ran out perhaps a bit more. Also after 25 minutes of baking, they still retained a slight chewiness in the centre. This is not traditional, but both Lundulph and I found it very appealing.

Mr Hedh also adds the following variations:
Kokosdrömmar - Coconut dreams - add 80 g desiccated coconut to the above recipe. Nötdrömmar - Nutty dreams - add 70 g finely ground roasted hazelnuts. Chokladdrömmar- Chocolate dreams - replace 30 g of flour with cocoa powder.

And he finishes that for Christmas, he adds a little ground saffron to the basic recipe and make saffron dreams. Saffron is very much associated with St Lucia and Christmas in Sweden.

Lundulph commented that the biscuits were very well met in his Swedish class.

Update in January 2019:
These biscuits are turning into quite a staple for me and during the month of January, I've been trying out the different varieties, as a small compensation for not baking and treating my lovely colleagues for ages - work has been extremely busy in the past few months and I've not felt like doing anything. Many of my colleagues had started complaining. Plus, since I purchased a small scoop for these to use as a quick measure, I can easily make a batch in a work-day evening, with over 100 of the little lovelies.

I first made the chocolate version and because I reduced the flour and replaced with cocoa powder, these turned out even more delicate and brittle than the vanilla version. I just about managed to get them to work without disintegrating them. They were all well-met.

Next I tried the coconut version, thanks to finding a somewhat finer desiccated coconut than what I normally use, which saved me some additional processing to make finer. Now there were no adjustments to the other ingredients, so these turned out a bit more sturdy and crunchier. A bit too much for my liking, but if anything they turned out to be even more popular than the chocolate ones, with several people asking for seconds and one of my managers coming back several times. He probably had about 10 of them. And a box of these survived the Royal Mail, since I have colleagues working in other parts of the country and don't get to see them more than every other year or so.

Next on the list is the nutty and saffron variants and also to try out a suggestion from a colleague - orange flavour. I'll need to think about how to achieve that.

Update in March 2023:
I have recently started listening to the food podcast from the Swedish Radio and in an episode, they mentioned that these biscuits can be made with oat flour. This sounded very ingriguing and I snuck into my local health food shop and grabbed a bag. It worked a treat, a lot more flavour than the regular recipe and slightly sturdier, which means Lundulph is just about able to dunk them in his tea. So this is the new way forward.

For Mother's Day, however, I had half a kilo of unsalted butter and decided to make a taste test. I halved the above recipe and I made a batch each of plain wheat flour, oat flour, ground almonds, and ground dessicated coconut mixed with tapioca flour. All four were very nice and I nearly had to wrestle with my brother-in-law Roger to stop him from devouring all of them.

The oat version is still definitely the winner for me, followed closely by the ground almond variety and the plain wheat one. The coconut/tapioca combo was OK, but were also the ones that spread out most, almost like brandy snaps. Both almond and coconut/tapioca were very, very brittle and required very careful handling and quite literally disintegrated in the mouth. The almond dreams did spread out quite a bit more than the oat and wheat ones, but kept their shape reasonably well. So some good results and one to be developed further. There are a few more odd flour types in the larder that need to be tested as well.

Sega Chokladmuffins

While searching for a suitable recipe for my bake-off cup cakes, I also came across another recipe, which combines the concept of a muffin with that of so called chocolate mud cake, or Kladdkaka in Swedish. Which I thought was a fabulous idea. The Swedish name means literally "gooey cake".



I haven't made this since university for the simple reason that last time I made it, it was so sticky we ended up throwing away the tray we baked it in, after carving out as much as we could of course.

The name of the recipe I did on Thursday is Sega Chokladmuffins, which roughly translates to "chewy chocolate muffins". The original recipe in Swedish is here and what caught my attention was the photo - they looked very beautiful.

Makes 8 - 14, depending on size

Ingredients

2 medium eggs
2.5 dl caster sugar
100 g unsalted melted butter
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1 ml salt
4 tbsp cocoa powder
2 dl plain flour
1 tsp baking powder

Method

1. Line a muffin tin with paper cases, or place double paper cases on a flat baking sheet and pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C.


2. Whisk together the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy.


3. Slowly add the melted butter, while still beating the mixture. Make sure the butter is about finger warmth.


4. Follow up with the vanilla extract, still whisking.


5. In a separate bowl, sift together salt, cocoa powder, flour and baking powder and make sure they are well blended.


6. Whisk in the dry mixture until well incorporated.


7. Fill the paper cases to about two-thirds and bake for 12 - 20 minutes, but not until fully baked!


8. Take out of the oven and let cool completely. The muffins will sink back as they cool, possibly also their surface will crack up, that's as it should be.

These can be eaten as is or with a dollop of whipped cream (without sugar!). They can also be rather nice if warmed up a little and with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.



I didn't bake mine for long enough. The recipe was very strict on the duration - 12 minutes precisely, but I left them in for 18 minutes and they could have baked a few more minutes, they were a bit too gooey for me. Lundulph of course had nothing bad to say about them.

They also weren't as sweet as I expected them to be. Don't get me wrong, they were very sweet, but I expected more. I might dig out that old recipe and try it in cup cake form, that was definitely sweet to the point where the tongue would stick to the roof of the mouth. That's why it's so important not to add any sugar to the whipped cream, if serving with it.

Bake-off at the Village Fete

I always look forward to the Village Fete where I live. Over the years, what started as a trendy food market, has grown to a quite big event. And a wonderful opportunity for me to stock up on some exotics that otherwise would require a special day trip to London.



New for this year was a bake-off, following in the steps of The Great British Bake-Off show from TV. Of course I signed up, well knowing that I would be in Brussels the day before and would have a tough week work-wise in general. There were four categories - tray bake, cake, cup cakes and cookies/biscuits. I opted for cup cakes, having acquired that bug last year.

I had several ideas for a design and shared with Lundulph, who said no to most of them as being "not technically cup cakes". Bah! OK, so one of the ideas was to use ice cream cones instead of the traditional paper cups. But I was toying with the idea to use meringe as topping or maybe marshmallow fluff. I even bought red cocktail cherries so as to complete the illusion of a real ice cream cone.

My plan was also to use some of the Viennese nougat I brought back from my last trip to Sweden. Viennese nougat is also known as German nougat or gianduja and is a solid form from which Nutella evolved. So I googled around for recipes and found one that seemed good.

Nougat Muffins
12 - 18, depending on size

Ingredients

150 g unsalted butter at room temperature
2.5 dl caster sugar
2 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp cocoa powder
2.5 dl plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 dl créme fraîche
75 g Viennese nougat finely diced
200 g Viennese nougat for decoration
sprinkles of choice

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Line a muffin tray with paper cases, alternatively place double paper cases on a flat baking sheet.


2. Whip together the soft butter with the caster sugar until fluffy in a large bowl.


3. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla extract and incorporate well in between.


4. In a separate bowl, sift together cocoa powder, flour and baking powder and mix well. Then sift into the cake mixture, a little at a time and whisk to incorporate.
Finally whisk in the créme fraîche and the diced nougat.

5. Pour into the cups, filling to about two-thirds, then bake until ready. This can be between 15 - 30 minutes, depending on the oven, test with a toothpick. Muffins are ready when the toothpick comes out clean.


6. Take out of the oven and let cool, they will sink back a bit as they do so.


7. For decoration, melt the 200 g nougat over a bain marie and spread over the cooled down muffins, then add sprinkles.

I prepared and filled 12 muffin cases and still had quite a lot of the mixture left, so I thought I'd try to make some ice cream cones as well, as a proof of concept. I did this on the Wednesday and was planning to decorate them this morning and take to the Village Fete.



Sadly this was not to be - the air traffic control systems in Munich decided to pack it in yesterday afternoon, resulting in a number of delays and cancellations across Europe and so I spent most of the late afternoon and evening at Brussels Airport. Hot tip - if you don't have a connecting flight, you can get checked in to the following flight at the regular check-in desk, rather than stand in line for 2 h at the customer service desk, which is what I ended up doing and in high heel shoes too.
The last flight was delayed by over an hour too and I didn't get home until 23:55, having gotten up at 4:00 in the morning. Thus I was not in any condition to do fancy decorations of muffins this morning. Besides, I wanted to do a meringue topping, but today it seems the skies had opened up and it looked like the whole house was going through a car wash, looking out of the window. This means massively high levels of humidity, no way meringues would be possible.

Fine, then marshmallow fluff. But oh, no! My whisk is in the dishwasher which is midway through a cycle. This wouldn't finish on time and there is no way I would whisk manually. Thus I decided to skip the bake-off. But I did decorate with melted nougat and used daim sprinkles on top. Lundulph approved.



The ice cream cones on the other hand were just that - a proof of concept. I didn't bake them enough and they remained raw inside and collapsed badly back to the innards of the cones when they cooled down. Also unbaked - the mixture didn't taste at all nice. But my concerns about the cones soaking up moisture from the cake mixture were unfounded, I even let them stand for about 20 minutes before baking, no problems at all. But I'll need to experiment to get the right duration of the baking.



I'll take a proper day off today and get my strength back. Luckily I won't be going to Brussels again until October and I have more baking to do next week for Lundulph's last Swedish lesson - he's supposed to bring some typical Swedish sweet treat into class.

As for using meringue and marshmallow fluff as topping, I'll have to try it out another time.

Another Birthday Cake

We went to Sweden for my birthday and I thought I'd try my hand at my newly acquired chocolate tempering skills.



My Sister Bip is obsessed with New York at the moment, so I thought I'd make the New York Cheese Cake, I had such great success with a couple of weeks back. Though she declared that cheese cakes are not for her, I decided to go ahead anyway and not tell her, because I suspected that she had the same opinion as me - I also don't like "regular" cheese cakes, that aren't cooked, but the New York ones are something completely different.

My Mum remembering well that Lundulph disapproves of cheese in general, had stocked up with mascarpone, so I used this instead of Philadelphia.

The Swedish digestive biscuits were also a bit different - they were smaller and had a different colour.

I was careful not to over-do the butter like last time and I used walnuts instead of hazel nuts.

Of course the oven was different. I definitely left it in the oven to cool for way too long.

I don't know, but it didn't turn out as good as the first time. As I made the cream mixture, it was way too runny. After baking, the texture was completely different, drier and grainier. And the biscuit base went soggy very quickly.

But at least very little of the butter oozed out. Also, walnuts were OK in the biscuit mixture, but toasted hazel nuts are much better.

The topping was different though, instead of lemon, I added mango purée. And not just any, but the stuff made for babies (link in Swedish). I added the whole jar, 125 g and it tasted nice and showed colour. This was a suggestion from Mum and a very good one, so definitely a keeper for alternative topping. The main cheese cake was lemon flavoured though. I suspect peach or passion fruit would work as well.

Also, Mum only had white chocolate. I should have taken the trouble to get milk chocolate, which was what we used in the course and what is supposedly the easiest thing to do. So I struggled with the white chocolate, to say the least.

I think it did temper a little, I'm not sure, it behaved differently and after some web research, it seems that white chocolate is the trickiest to do. I should have thought of it - after all, white chocolate is mostly cocoa fat, sugar and milk solids. Still, I managed to make a rosette and I also had a play with some new sprinkles my Mum had handy.



On the whole it was OK. But I definitely need to spend some time practicing tempering chocolate...

Frittata

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a dead end, cooking-wise. No inspiration, no ideas, nothing.

So I dug out my old "things to cook in 20xx" lists and looked through them, to see if there was anything there that might loosen the blockage.

Of course I could have opted for the Ye Olde Recipe Collection, but that would have meant having to go out and buy ingredients and I have become a bit house bound of late as well. The rain has of course contributed to this.

So, frittata was on the cards. Sadly, I had only listed it, without any accompanying research and appropriate recipe links. So I googled the term and looked up the 3 - 4 links that came up on top. Pretty pictures, I must say, very mouth-watering. But once I started reading, I began to realise that it is not as simple as I had thought.

I opted to pick out bits and bobs from different recipes and of course this massively affected the end result. Besides, I wanted to use some of that smoked paprika I bought some time ago.

I already had some boiled potatoes, so I just sliced them. Probably about 300 g.
I then fished out the last onion that was hiding at the back of the veg drawer in the fridge (what was it doing there?!?) and sliced it in what I thought would look pretty.

I then heated up a little oil and put the onion in to soften a bit.

In the mean time, I whisked together 5 eggs + a left-over egg white with a little salt, pepper, smoked paprika and chopped parsley.

I then tried to stir in the potato slices without breaking them up too much and when the onions were ready, I did the same with them without much success.

So I put the pan back on the hob and poured out the whole lot. As expected the potatoes and onions were too big and sort of stuck up from the pan, while the egg kept to the very bottom of it.

I tried to fold up the edges over the middle to give it a nicer shape, but that didn't work either, instead the omelette just broke up, so I gave up and stirred around to make sure everything raw got cooked and everything cold got warmed through.



Not appetising one bit. So to be on the safe side, I fried up some good old Swedish meatballs and sliced some roast pepper for garnish.



This would have worked a treat, if I hadn't been overly careful with the seasoning of my "frittata".

I don't know what's gotten into me, but I seem less able than normal to add a sufficient amount of salt in my food lately. I've always been careful with that, but what I'm doing now is ridiculous.

I'm not sure I will want to try this out again, at least not any time soon, even if I like frittata.