Småleivar

Småleivar

This is a typical Norwegian cake that my mother always made for Christmas. It can be eaten like a sandwich with butter and cheese. When making these growing up we made them a bit bigger since my mother had this special Lefse Grill. Now in this recipe I have made them smaller like small biscuits when I cut them out and I fried them in a frying pan.

Ingredients:

250 gr lard

250 gr butter

200 gr sugar

2, 25 dl water

1 teaspoon salt

60 gr semolina

550 gr flour

0, 25 tsp Ammonium Carbonate or Barker´s Ammonia (Hjorthornssalt in Swedish/Hjortesalt in Norwegian).

Directions:

Stir lard, butter and sugar porous. Add the other ingredients. Mix well until a smooth dough. Refrigerate for a while. Roll out thinly and cut buscuits into squares of 20 cm or use a glass to cut out round biscuits. Bake on medium warm frying pan or this special Lefse Grill called “Takke” which is used in Norway for Lefse. Fry until they are light golden with a little dark spots on both sides.

I am used to eating these served with butter and Norwegian goat cheese or butter and sirap. But try anything you like really!

Mandelmusslor (Almond ”clams”)

Mandelmusslor (Almond ”clams”)

Mandelmusslor are traditional in Sweden and it is almondcakes baked in a special mold.

Ingredients:

100 gr almonds, blanched and grinded

5 dl flour

210 gr butter, room temperature

1,5 dl sugar

Butter for the cake molds

Directions:

Boil the almonds and take off the skin. Let them dry and when dried grind in an almond grinder. It also works to use almond flour that you can buy in the store.

Place the flour on the baking table. Put the butter, grinded almonds and sugar in the middle. Work it all together with your fingertips until it is smooth dough.

Let the dough rest in a cold place about 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 200 Celsius Degrees.

Grease the cake molds brushing them inside with melted butter.

Roll out the dough and divide to about 40 pieces and press them out in the molds.

Bake in the oven for about 8-10 minutes.

Take the cakes carefully out while still warm. They can be a bit difficult to get out of the molds.

Serve with whipped cream and jam or fresh berries on the top.

If you serve them without anything, place them upside down on the tray, since they look nicer that way.

Jødekake

Jødekake

  

This is like a sandwich cookie

This is a cake that gives me really nostalgic feelings. I used to make this with my grandmother, my dad´s mother, when growing up. We lived in the same house and I also used to sneak off between meals to eat these cakes in her kitchen. I ate them with butter and Norwegian goat cheese (brown cheese) together with a glass of sour milk that my grandma made and always had in a big bucket in her cupboard.

Nowadays we call it Kefir in Norway and you buy it in the grocery store. It works perfect to eat with milk, tea or coffee as well.

When I was thinking about putting this recipe on my blog I was worried about the name of the cookie, whether it would be a problem to use the name I know this cake by. I actually googled to see if I could find if there had been anything written about it. And I found this cake is very common in Denmark as well and there had been some controversy about the name but that it is still used. I also found that it had never been a problem in Norway. So I hope it is not. To me it is just the name of a cookie I loved growing up and that brings all these cozy and nice memories of my grandmother and her kitchen.

Ingredients:

2 cups sour milk (Kefir in Norwegian/Filmjölk in Swedish)

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter

6 tsp Ammonium Carbonate or Baker’s Ammonia (Hjorthornssalt in Swedish/Hjortesalt in Norwegian)

Flour enough to make a nice dough for rolling and cutting cookies. Just add a little at a time until you have the dough you like. You don´t want it to stick to the table when rolling and you don´t want it to be too hard either.

Roll the dough with a roller until it is about 3-4 mm thick. Cut cakes with a glass or a cake cutter.

Bake in the oven at 200 Celsius Degrees for about 10 minutes or until light golden.

The time depends a bit on the oven. They are not supposed to get dark. So watch carefully. How big cake cutter you use is up to you. It depends how big cakes you want basically. I use a coffee cup or a milk glass as a cutter.

Serve with butter and cheese.

Kransekakebitar

Kransekakebitar

These cookies could also be called Almond cookies. They are made from the same recipe as the traditional Norwegian festive Kransekake. The taste of the cake is wonderful and it is also glutenfree. However to make the Kransekake tower and decorate it with flowers and all I usually only do for the most festive occations. So for christmas I use to make the cookies into small lengths and dip them in chocolate instead. Here is the recipt and the instructions.

Ingredients:

·         5 cups water

·         500 grams raw whole almonds

·         500 grams confectioner's sugar

·         ca 3-4 egg whites

·         2 tsp. almond extract

·         2 Tbsp. potato starch flour

You also need an almond grinder

Directions:

Pour the water in a pan and blanche 1/2 half of the raw almonds in boiling water until the nuts float to the top of the pot, about 5 minutes.

Rinse the newly blanched almonds in a colander under cool water. Remove and discard skins. 

Your unblanched almonds need to be completely dry before grinding. Place on a baking sheet and allow to air dry. 

Grind the unblanched almonds in a almond grinder or a coffee / spice grinder (don't use a food processor for this, for it will overprocess the almond flour). Repeat the process with the blanched and dried almonds. Mix together the unblanched and blanched almond flours and the confectioner's sugar. Then, run this mixture through your grinder a second time. 

Combine the ground almond-sugar mixture with 3-4 egg whites and 2 tsp. almond extract.  Knead the almond paste mixture over low heat until the sides of the paste pull away from the pot, about 5 minutes. The paste will have the consistency of homemade play dough. Wrap the paste in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. 

Preheat your oven to 200 C º. Flour a pastry board or clean counter with potato starch flour. Roll the almond paste into 1,3 cm"-wide "snakes" and cut cakes about 5 cm long. 

Place on baking trays with baking sheets and bake in the center of oven about 10 minutes, until the cakes turn a light gold. Watch carefully, as they will burn quickly if unattended. Remove cakes from oven and allow to cool in the pan. 

When cooled melt chocolate and dip the ends in chocolate. Cool and store the cakes in a tight cake box or in the freezer. Frozen and taken out to eat at any time they will taste as good as new, maybe even better! If you want to make the Kransekake tower follow this link to the recipe and the directions. 



















NORWEGIAN KRANSEKAKE

http://ohemmabjorg.blogspot.se/2013/09/norwegian-kransekake.html

Skåne Gingerbread

Skåne Gingerbread

   

about 24 pieces

Ingredients

2 dl light baking syrup

½ dl brown sugar

1 dl granulated sugar

75 g butter

2-3 tsp ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ tsp ground ginger

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 dl cream

1 teaspoon baking soda

1½ tsp baking powder

10 dl flour

Directions

Boil the syrup, brown sugar and granulated sugar in a saucepan, add the butter and let it melt. Add the spices in the hot butter mixture. Cool the mixture.

Whisk together the eggs, yolk and cream and pour it into the mixture. Let it stand until it is cooled down and at some point during that time mix half of the flour with the baking soda and baking powder and stir into the bowl. Work in the rest of the flour, either with the dough hook of a mixer or you do it by hand.

 

Cover the mixing bowl and let stand in the refrigerator overnight and rest.

Divide the dough into smaller pieces as you roll into balls and flatten out, they should be about 6-7 cm in diameter and about 1 cm thick. The easiest way is to flatten them directly on the sheet that you covered with baking paper, put them thinly because they rise up and out when they are baked in the oven.

To get all the cookies the same size you can also use a roller to roll the dough until 1 cm thick and then use a round cookie cutter, a glass or something to stick out the cookies. This is the way I made them.

Bake the cookies in the oven at 200 celsius degrees about 10 minutes. Let gingerbread cool and freeze or keep in a plastic bag or plastic container so they keep smooth.

The best way to enjoy them is with butter and delicious cheese with a glass of ice cold milk!

Coffee from fresh coffee beans!

Did you know that fresh coffee is green? I love coffee, I have to admit. Still I never knew that coffee is green? Did you know? Fresh coffee is green! I have never seen fresh coffee before. When I was little I grinded coffee and made it the old fashioned way in a kettle. My mother and grandmother taught me. It was long before I drunk myself. But I liked the big coffee grinder my grandmother had in her kitchen, Still the coffee beans we grinded were black! 

Now I have seen the fresh green coffee beans and didn´t know what I was looking at, even though I have been drinking coffee for more than 25 years. I have now tasted coffee from fresh coffee beans that I have roasted myself, grinded and made coffee from! It is such a difference in the taste, it is amazing!

I bought the coffee beans in a Eritrean shop in Stockholm. I even got a small pan to roast the beans and the Jebena to make the coffee in after it is grinded. In Eritrea drinking coffee is a whole ceremony. It is drunk with popcorn. So I made myself a coffee ceremony the Eritrean way. Well I drunk alone, and it is always a social event in Eritrea.

It is a long story to describe a real coffee ceremony, You can read more on these links.
www.ineedcoffee.com/coffee-cultures-eritrea-and-ethiopia/
www.ucl.ac.uk/atlas/tigrinya/coffee_ceremony.html

For me I roasted the coffee beans in the pan called a “menkeskesha”. I let them cool on a small woven mat and then grinded the beans in a small coffee grinder I have bought. It works to use a mixer as well. After grinding the coffee I filled water and coffee in my Jebena. This is a coffeepot made of clay. I put it on my electric stove. It works even if it is not the "right way". After the coffee has boiled I placed it on a special woven stand to let the coffee sink before I poured it. The coffee is poured into small cups with sugar. How much sugar depends on your taste. For me I normally drink coffee without sugar. And with the coffee the tradition is to eat popcorn.