Lots and lots of recipes!

I've been sitting at the library the last couple of days reading about exercise, which lead me to read about healthy eating which in turn of course led me to just "regular" eating. And it gave me an idea for this blog.

Once I (hopefully) get the house I can have themed weeks, food-wise. I can have an Indian week, Italian week, vegan week, soup week, the list goes on... During the themed week I will try to post at least one recipe every day to do with that weeks theme.

Hopefully this will make me try foods I may not have thought about trying earlier, and also eat proper meals instead of just doing something quick like fried eggs or something.

It will have to wait a few weeks though as I would like to have a proper kitchen to cook in and a fridge to store the food in.

I already have a long list of themes for my cooking, but if you have any ideas feel free to let me know!

Shrovetide "Boller"

I know in the UK you have Pancake Tuesday, also known as Shrove Tuesday, here in Norway we have Shrove Sunday, which is today. We make the above "bolle", or sweet bun if you will, filled with cream and jam. I can't even remember the last time I ate those, so of course I had to make some! I was worried that it wouldn't be enough when I used the following recipe, but just one of those babies is enough food for a whole day!

I got the recipe from this website: Tine

Ingredients:

50 grams yeast (or 1 small packet of dry yeast)
3,5 decilitres of full fat milk
100 grams butter
100 grams sugar
500 grams sifted flour (approx, I had to use about 550/600grams)
0,5 teaspoon cardamom
0,5 teaspoon salt
0,5 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg whisked

3 decilitres whipping cream/double cream
2 teaspoons vanilla sugar

Method:

Start by melting the butter in a small casserole, careful so it doesn't burn. Once the butter is melted add the milk and heat it to 37C (for Fahrenheit... just like babies milk; check it on the inside of your wrist). Put the yeast in a bowl, if you're using fresh yeast crumble it. Add the liquid and stir it so the yeast disintegrates

Add the sugar, salt, cardamom, baking powder and flour and knead to a smooth dough. Don't put all the flour in at once in case you don't need it. Cover the dough with some cling film and leave it in a nice and warm place to rise to twice it's size, approx 30 minutes.

When I made it I got 10 "boller" of the dough, although I could have probably gotten 12 if I had made them smaller. Divide the dough into parts (just under the size of a handful), and shape them into balls. Put them on a tray with baking paper, cover the tray with plastic and let it rest in a warm place for another 30 minutes. Sometime within these 30 minutes turn your oven on 250C.

Glaze with the whisked egg and put them in the oven for 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Whip the cream and vanilla sugar to a fluffy cream, spread the "boller" with jam ( I prefer rasberry) and cream, sprinkle some icing sugar on top, which I forgot, and enjoy!

Chocolate balls

Last year I used to arrange a little competition at work, where the department that managed to empty the most pallets during the week got brownies on Friday. While I was on holiday the other girl in my group made chocolate balls instead. Luckily she made them again after I got back so that I got to try them as well, and they were delicious!!

This weekend I just had to try to make them myself. The recipe is from this Swedish webpage, look below for the recipe in English. Be careful, they're very addictive!

This recipe is for about 20 balls, depending on size. I suggest you double the recipe and just keep them in the freezer.

100 grams margarine or butter, room temperature
2 decilitres sugar
3 decilitres rolled oats
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla powder (in the UK they don't have vanilla powder so I used 1 teaspoon of icing sugar with a little vanilla essence instead)
3 tablespoons coffee (cold)
shredded coconut

1. Mix together the margarine and sugar to a fluffy consistency
2. Add all other ingredients except the coconut and mix to a kind of dough
3. Put some shredded coconut on a plate
4. Shape the dough into balls and roll them in the coconut
5. Put the balls in the fridge to cool.

The ones I tasted at work also had a teaspoon of cinnamon in them as it was close to Christmas, that was really tasty as well!

I would also suggest putting them in the freezer, it actually makes them taste even better! Just remember to take them out a few hours before you're planning on eating them.

Try them and let me know what you think!

Individual Puff Pastry Apple Pies

My mum made puff pastry salmon for her and her partner for dinner today and forgot to put the rest of the puff pastry back in the freezer, so I decided to use it to make a dessert.

I found the recipe HERE, but I have written it again with metric measurement for those that prefer that, like myself.

Ingredients:
481 grams puff pastry
340 grams apples (two medium sized ones)
43 grams brown sugar
2 tsp flour
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 egg (beaten)


Thaw puff pastry according to instructions on package.
Peel, core and chop apples up coarsely.
Combine apples with sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon and nutmeg. I just juiced half a lemon and used all the juice from it, which was a lot more than the recipe states, but it made them very nice and fresh, and not too sweet.

Heat oven to 175 C
Flour surface lightly and cut pastry sheets into nine 8x8cm squares. I had 3 puff pastry sheets and managed to cut them into 12 squares, roughly the same size.
Place approximately 4 tbs apple mixture on each of half of the squares and brush edge with beaten egg. I didn't measure, just distributed it on 6 fairly evenly.

Place second pastry square on the top of the already filled pastry to form a pocket.
Press down border with fingers to seal and then press with fork to decorate the edges. It's the first time I've made anything with puff pastry, so I managed to tear them a little bit, but I think they turned out quite nice for the first time.
Make a 3cm L shape incision into each pie and fold back the pastry flap.

Place on un-greased cookie sheet and give each one an egg wash.
Bake for approximately 20 minutes or until golden.

They might not look very pretty, but they tasted lovely. 

A coconutty day!

I made Courgettes Pacifico for for the host family yesterday. The Mother liked it, but The Girl wasn't too keen.

Anyway, I accidentally opened a can of coconut cream instead of coconut milk at first, and when I opened the coconut milk the can was so big that there was quite a bit left. So I decided to make something with them today just to make sure they wouldn't just sit in the fridge until they went off.

I used most of the coconut cream for the dinner. I didn't actually use a recipe, just threw something together. I fried some vegetables, then added the coconut milk mixed with some sweet soy sauce, salt and pepper, and served it with rice. It was quite nice and surprisingly filling!

With the remaining coconut milk I made THESE muffins.

They were quite nice, but I thought they looked a bit boring, so I made the icing from THIS page to go with them. I didn't have any almond extract, and I used coconut cream instead of milk, the icing was okay but a bit too sweet. I sprinkled some shredded coconut and chopped almonds over the icing and we ate them with some fresh raspberry sauce. The icing really was WAY too sweet, but the raspberry sauce helped a lot to kind of tone the sweetness down. I think if I make these again I'll make a different icing.

Quick-mix Chocolate Cake

I've been really good lately. I've not had much chocolate, cakes, lollies in quite a while and I've been out running almost every night. But today the sugar craving was just too much. It started out as just the munchies, I wanted something to eat, but no matter how much fruit I ate I still wanted something else. Either salty or sweet. Then I suddenly thought of cakes. I don't know if I was watching tv and there was a cake on or something, but I NEEDED cake!!!

I found a recipe online, I thought I might as well try a new recipe out if I'm going to be bad. Not so sure about the Quick part of the name though, as if you follow the recipe it takes nearly 3 hours before you can actually eat it! And it didn't really whip together all that quick either (but that might just be because I have no patience).

If you want the recipe it's here. It turned out pretty tasty. Now the only problem is it has to be eaten, so I haven't just been bad today, but I'm going to be for a few more days as well..... Oh well. A treat now and then won't kill anyone!

Icing!

And even if it does, it was totally worth it for this yummy cake!

Just a tip if you make it, it doesn't look like enough icing if you make the one in the recipe, but it is. There was actually some left over... Well there always is when I bake because I like to eat the icing! Favourite part of the cake! Oh! And the cake also rises to twice it's size, just something to keep in mind for the cake pan.

Finished result!

2-4-6-8-Cake!

Made another cake yesterday. We didn't have many ingredients in so I had to find a simple recipe, and I found one here. I made the chocolate one, it was a bit tasteless, so I thought I should probably make an icing with loads of flavor.

I then remembered my favourite icing, which has got coffee and chocolate in it, and luckily I managed to find it online, here. It's in Norwegian, so I'll translate it for you in case you want to try it.

Icing with cocoa, icing sugar, coffee and butter:
115g butter
1tbs hot espresso coffee (or 1/2 ts instant coffee mixed with 1tbs hot water)
225g icing sugar
1 1/4tbs cocoa
1 1/2ts vanilla essence

Melt butter in a small pan on the hob
Add the the coffee, icing sugar, cocoa and vanilla essence (with the pan still on the hob)
Mix thoroughly until smooth.

I don't know if I did something wrong or not with the icing as I got some liquid on top of the icing, but I just poured that off before I put the icing on the cake. The icing was almost better than I remember it! The Girl didn't like it, which might be just as well since it has coffee in it, but that just means more for me! Just be aware if your make this that it's very sweet, because of all the icing sugar.

Peanut butter chocolate brownies

I tried a recipe Samaiyyah Abidah told me about today: Peanut butter chocolate brownies. You can find the recipe here (Stonesoup).

I used regular wheat flour when I made them as I didn't want to go out and buy special flour just for this recipe. Again I forgot to take pictures as I was mixing all the ingredients, I remembered just as I put it in the tin.

I wrote the recipe down so I wouldn't need to bring the laptop in the kitchen...

Licking the bowl is my favourite thing to do when I'm cooking!

The mixture was really thick and I had some trouble spreading it out in the tin. I though it would "melt" and get more runny when it went in the oven but it didn't (luckily I did spread it out a bit).

Just spread out...

I left it in for a bit longer than the recipe said, at first because it wasn't done, and then I forgot about it (Ooops...) but luckily it didn't burn, just was a bit hard wen we were going to eat it later this evening.

Just out of the oven!

The end result was very nice if I may say so myself, but it was also really rich, I think instead of only dividing the whole thing between 5 people, I could have saved some for later!

As always: If you've got any ideas for things I can cook, just leave a suggestion in the comments below!

Apple cake.

The oldest of the kids I'm looking after,A, and I made an apple cake this afternoon, from a recipe I found online here. It's in Norwegian but you can find my translation further down.

It turned our pretty good, although I managed to burn it a little because I forgot to check on it in the last 5 minutes of the cooking time, but it was edible so it was all okay. Mistakes just make you learn. I also forgot to take pictures as we were making it, but I took one as it came out of the oven.

I have also learn today that even though Australians are on the metric system, they don't know what a deciliter (dl) is. Deciliter is one 10th of a liter, so 1dl is the same as 100ml. 1 cl (centiliter) is 10ml although even I don't really use that very often.

I wrote the recipe down so that I wouldn't have to bring my laptop into the kitchen, and since A was helping me I translated the recipe for her so that she could have a look at it and see what we needed and all that.

Here is the recipe in case anyone is interested i trying to cook it!

200 g butter
3 dl sugar
3 eggs
3 3/4 dl plain flour (weird measurement I know)
1/2 ts baking powder
3-4 apples (I only used 1 and a half, cut into really thing wedges, they could have probably been a bit thicker)
Cinnamon
Sugar

Mix sugar and butter white.
Add the eggs and sift in the flour mixed with baking powder.
Put the mixture in a baking tin (24cm) lined with paper.
Peel the apples and cut them into wedges. Put them on top of the mixture, close together.
Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.
Cook at 200 degrees Celsius, for about 45 mins (remember to pay attention those last few minutes!)

If you have any ideas for stuff I can cook for my host family, please leave a suggestion in the comment section below. I would love to try it out!

Pudding/Dinner ideas.

The family I live with has pudding/dessert just about every day, and I think it would be nice to make it for them occasionally. I'm usually at home with the youngest kid anyway and I can bake and cook when he's sleeping (he's a bit too young to help yet) or when the oldest is back from school. I would also like to cook dinner sometimes. 

So I am asking you, my blogosphere friends, and anyone just popping by, to please give me ideas to what I can cook/bake. I will try and remember to take pictures of what I make and put it on here, and I will of course credit you if I use your idea. Just leave me a link to a recipe, either on your own blog, someone else's blog or one you've just found on the internet, or you can write your recipe in the comments. 

If possible I will make something at least once a week, so there will be a regular cooking post. 

Just some information for any recipes you would like to give me:

• We all LOOOOOVE chocolate!
• I'm allergic to shellfish
• We don't eat a lot of fish, the mum and the oldest kid likes it, but not the rest of us
• We eat a lot of meat, but I think it would be nice with some more meals with just veg.

I hope you will all give me some fun tings to make, I love trying new things. I will try to make some Norwegian meals of course, but it's nice to try other things as well.

#15 - Chocolate (plus recipe)

I made cupcakes with chocolate icing today!

30 Days Photographic Challenge

So I figured I should use my new cupcake cups today. I found the recipe for cupcakes here, it's in Norwegian so I've translated it and you can find it further down this post.

One batch makes 12 (small) cupcakes. I made two batches, one plain one, and one with chocolate. I only needed to make one batch of icing/frosting (what's the difference? American vs. English?) though, and there was even some left. But that might be because I didn't put a very thick layer on...

Cupcakes:
100g butter
100g sugar
3 eggs
150g flour
1ts baking soda
0.5dl milk or orange juice ( I used milk)

Cream butter and sugar. Add the eggs one by one. Mix flour and baking soda. Add the dry and the milk alternately while stirring.
If you want Chocolate cupcakes, substitute 4tbs of the flour with cocoa powder.
Bake in the middle of the oven at 175 degrees (Celsius) for about 20 minutes (depending on how strong your oven is, I had to cook mine 5 minutes longer)

Icing (buttercream):
250g room temperature butter or margarine
250g icing sugar
3-4tbs cocoa powder (if you want a chocolate one)
1 egg

Cream butter and sugar. Add the cocoa powder. Add the egg and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Plain Batter

Before going in the oven...

Nice and golden after

Chocolate batter

I wouldn't mind just eating them like this...

Making the chocolate icing

Something's still missing...

Cupcakes!

Brownies

Loads of sugar!

A friend at work made some brownies and brought them with her to work the other day. They were so nice I just had to get the recipe.

6 eggs
9 dl sugar
450 g butter/margarine
9 tbs cocoa powder
2 ts vanilla powder

1. Turn the oven on 175 degrees (Celsius)
2. Mix together the eggs and sugar. Stop before you get eggnog.
3. Melt the butter and put in the mixture.
4. Add all the dry ingredients and mix together with a rubber/silicone spatula.
5. Put the thick mixture in a large baking tray coated with baking paper.
6. Cook for 20-30 minutes (the cooking time varies, so keep an eye on it)

If you haven't got a big baking tray (picture at the bottom) you should probably half the recipe.

You could also add 1/2 dl walnuts if you want.

The batter gets really thick!

Yummy!

They turned out really nice! I'll definitely be making these again.

BIG baking tray

American Muffins

INGREDIENT:

Dry Ingredients:
4,8 dl all-purpose flour
1,5 dl sugar (preferrably brown, amount according to taste)
3 large tsp. baking powder
1 pinch of salt

Wet Ingredients:
1 egg
0,75 dl cup cooking oil
2,5 dl milk

DIRECTION:

This is "the real thing", not eggnog based muffins (cup cakes as Americans would say).  The ingredients should only be stirred together by hand, and one only needs two bowls and a large ballon whisper or ladle in addition to the muffin pans. The mixture makes up 6-12 muffins, depending on the size of the muffin pan.

You can decide the taste variations. I made this with banana and chopped almonds. Other alternatives are raisins, chopped chocolate, walnuts, cinnamon, blueberry etc. If you exchange 1/3 of the flour for cornmeal, you get so-called corn-muffins.

METHOD:

Set the oven on 200-225 Celsius. Stir dry and wet ingredients together, blend just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Spoon batter into muffin pans - so full as you dare. It is an advantage to use muffin pans with paper forms in the bottom. Bake the muffins on the lowest rack for 15-20 minutes.

I found this recipe online, and I thought it seemed quite good as you can just use the same recipe to make loads of different flavours.