Cinnamon bun crisps

Just as pancakes has its own day here in Ireland, the cinnamon bus has its own day in Sweden. This day is the 4th of October and I sure did my duty as a Swede abroad and baked some buns. When buns are fresh they are such a delight to bite into, but after a day or two they loose their freshness and a lot of leftover buns end up in the bin. Then I read about what delicious things they can be turned into; bread and butter pudding, french toast, grilled into a sweet bruschetta topped with apples and mascarpone...the list is long but one idea really caught my interest.
The bun is sliced thinly and put on a baking tray or wire rack, toasted in the oven and then dried out on a low heat to create crisp, biscotti-like biscuits to serve on the side of tea or coffee. I tried and it worked a treat. The bun is so rich itself that even though it's dried out it tastes sweet and buttery.
So just get some old buns, slice them up and toast on 175C for 5min, turn down the heat to 120 and continue to cook until the buns are dry and crisp.

Lemon custard hearts

In the kitchen there is a box full of the things I use when I bake, there is muffin cups, icing, cookie cutters, different tools and ingredients and then there is a load of little metal tins in different shapes, sizes and varieties that are very valuable to me. I got them from my mum, and she got them from her mum and I just love using them because of the history to them. When making these shortbread biscuits filled with custard, a very typical Swedish treat usually made in heart shaped tins, I felt quite lucky to come from a family with people who shared and shares my interest in cooking and baking. My grandmother was a very good home-cook and baker, she made the most amazing chocolate fudge and baked the yummiest buns with almond paste...
When I decided to use the heart shaped tins and make these pastries I made a small change to the recipe, not so surprising at this stage...do I ever follow a recipe completely I wonder? It was only a tiny change though; the vanilla flavoured custard, as the recipe called for, was swapped for a lemon flavoured custard because I like tangy things and I had no good vanilla at home. Simple like that!

Dough
120 grams plain flour
100 grams butter
30 grams cornflour
25 grams caster sugar

Beat butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add both types of flour gradually while stirring into a smooth dough. Let the dough chill in the fridge while making the custard.

Custard
1 egg yolk
100ml milk
1/2tbsp cornflour
1tsp caster sugar
zest of one lemon+2tbsp juice

Mix egg yolk and cornflour. Heat milk, sugar and lemon zest until it nearly starts to boil. Pour the liquid over the egg yolk while whisking. Put the mix back into the pot and on a medium heat bring the mix to 85C, or until it starts to thicken, while stirring constantly. When thick (but not scrambled!!) take off the heat and add the lemon juice. Let cool down before straining the lemon zest away.

Roll out half of the pastry and line 8 small pie tins or what ever moulds you are using. Fill with the custard and roll out the rest of the pastry to cover the top. Bake for 10-15min on 200C until golden.

Almond and cardamom biscotti

As a chef it is important to find basic recipes that always works. Once you have one you can play around a little and create all sorts of taste sensations. Remember not to move too far from the original recipe though when it comes to baking, there is a lot of chemistry involved in getting the right amounts of flour, sugar, eggs and butter to come together and turn out to be the perfect pastry, cake or biscuit.
This biscotti recipe is more or less foolproof, I have never failed when making them and I still return to the recipe on a regular basis. The only thing that changes is the flavour. One day I use hazelnuts and chocolate, like here. Another day I might not use nuts at all but throw in some dried fruit and spices. Another day I just keep it simple and use almonds like the original recipe calls for and then just spice it up a little with some freshly ground cardamom. Like here:

220 grams plain flour

220 grams sugar

110 grams almonds

2tsp baking powder

3 eggs
1tsp ground cardamom

Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the eggs and quickly bring together to a loose dough. Divide into 3 pieces and roll out to the length of the baking tray you are using. You need a good bit of flour on the surface you are working on to prevent the dough from sticking. Bake for 12-15min on 220C. Cut into biscuits about 2cm thick. Put back into the oven and turn the heat down to 50C and let dry out(takes roughly an hour). Keep the biscotti in an air tight jar. Serve with tea or coffee, great for dunking.

Brown butter pecan shortbread

Back home there is a very old fashioned grinder we used when grinding nuts for certain pastries. It is attached to a table top and lets you by hand grind nuts or coffee in to fine powder. Nuts and coffee can of course be bought ground already but there is something special about making things on your own. At a recent trip to Stockholm I came across one on these grinders in a little old style hard ware shop. I bought it and brought it back to Ireland and was very eager to try it out. Having a bag of pecan nuts in my cup board i decided to grind them into fine powder, toast it and use in a brown butter short bread biscuit. The result; lovely crumbly biscuits with a rich flavour of nutty butter and sweet toasted pecans. Go on and try it.

100 grams butter
50 grams brown sugar
150 grams plain flour
50 grams pecans
1 large egg yolk

Melt butter in a pot, let it start to foam and smell nutty. When the colour in brown take of the heat and let cool down.
Grind pecan nuts and toast in a dry hot pan until golden in colour. Let cool down.
Beat sugar and butter until fluffy and pale, add egg yolk, pecans and flour. Knead quickly into a dough. Roll out to a square about 1cm thick. Prick with a fork and score little rectangular biscuits in the dough with a sharp knife. Bake for 30-35min on 160C. Sprinkle with caster sugar just after it comes out of the oven. Let cool down before cutting in to biscuits.

Toffee biscuits

Sometimes I lack in inspiration and motivation to bake or cook, still I can simply not sit still and do nothing. These are the days when I go back to old, well tried and tested recipes that when I use I don't need to pay to much attention to what I do. These are recipes known by heart and always turns out the same, yummy in this case.
These toffee biscuits are so simple to make, my mum used to bake them a lot when I was younger and I still remember how they came out of the oven as big rectangular flats of dough, cut in to pieces while still hot and then cooled down before kept in a cookie jar in the kitchen. The end pieces were always left out for sampling when still hot.
Yesterday we were invited for a dinner party and I brought a batch of freshly baked toffee biscuits as a gift, it was highly appreciated.

100 grams butter, soft
60 grams caster sugar
155 grams plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1tbsp golden syrup
1/2tsp vanilla extract

Beat sugar and butter until smooth and creamy. Add syrup and vanilla extract. Last stir in flour and baking powder, work until the dough comes together. Divide into 2 pieces and roll out to the length of your baking tray. Place on the tray lined with baking parchment. Press the dough gently to flatten a little. Bake for 18-20min on 175C. Take out and let settle for a couple of minutes before cutting into 2cm wide biscuits.

Digestive biscuits

Did you know you can make your own digestive biscuits? I did not until I the other day got the idea into my head and started having a look around on other food blogs and recipe pages. It obviously has been done before and there is a good few recipes out there. This recipe is one that came up on a few different pages and seemed easy enough. With a few different types of flour, butter and of course my lovely cookie stamp they turned out to be lovely. The taste is just like the biscuits you buy in a packet, maybe a little less sweet though. I like to dunk mine in a cup of tea but of course they go very well with a glass of cold milk.

12 biscuits

25 grams plain flour
35 grams whole wheat flour
40 grams oat flakes
40 grams butter
1tbsp milk
1/4tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
1tsp sugar

Blend oat flakes and whole wheat flour into a fine powder with a hand held mixer or in a kithcen assistant. Add plain flour, baking soda, salt and sugar. Rub butter into the dry mix and last milk to bind it together to a dough. Roll the dough out on a floured surface and take out cookies with a glass or cookie cutter, prick with a fork. Bake on 175C for 15min.

Melt in your mouth chocolate biscuits

I got a lovely christmas gift 2010 containing a cookie stamp saying "Home made", so while baking these cookies I had the perfect opportunity to try the stamp out. The fancy cup and saucer is a christmas gift too and it really feels like a treat drinking tea out of a cup so fragile I should not be aloud to hold it.
I dont think I need to explain the biscuits, the name kind of says it all. They are very tasty and it is the potato starch that makes them melt in your mouth. In Sweden potato starch or potato flour can be found in nearly every super market, but in Dublin I had to go to the Asian market to get it.


10 biscuits

100 grams butter, room temperature
30 grams icing sugar
80 grams potato starch/potato flour
80 grams plain flour
1tbsp cocoa powder

Mix all dry ingredients. Beat icing sugar and butter white and fluffy with a hand held electric whisk. Gradually start to add cocoa powder, plain flour and potato flour while still beating. Continue until all flour is added and the mix is very smooth and easy to work with.
With Cookie stamp: Divide into 10 pieces about he size of a golf ball. Place on a baking paper on a baking tray, press the stamp on top of each cookie.
If you don't have a cookie stamp simply roll out small marble sized balls or you can press the mix through a nostril for a piping bag and will then get little "frilly finger-shaped" cookies.
Bake on 175C for 10min.

Spiced biscotti with muscovado sugar

I have made these biscotti before with almond and cardamom, but since christmas is near and all I can think about is mulled whine I thought I'd give them a kick; dark muscovado sugar and ginger bread spices. Perfect with a cup of mulled wine or even an irish coffee.

50 grams butter

35 grams ground almonds

105 grams sugar

1 egg

160 grams flour
1/2tsp baking powder
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground cloves

Blend almonds and butter until well mixed. Mix flour, baking powder and spices. Beat sugar and egg until white and fluffy. Combine all ingredients until it forms a quite loose dough. Shape 2 rolls the lenght of the baking tray you are using, transfer the dough to the tray with baking paper. Lightly press the dough out a little so you have the rolls about 2cm high and 3-4cm wide. Bake on 200C for 15 min. Take out and cut into little biscuits, put back on the tray and let dry on very low heat, say 50C for 2h or until dry.

Blackberries; jam and biscuits.

A couple of weeks ago Martin and myself went for a walk in the evening around the area we live in. Not too far from our house there is a little stream that has blackberry bushes growing all around it and I have been there several times this summer to see how long it will be before the berries are ripe enough to pick. Little did I know that this very evening, walking down along the stream, the berries were just sitting there ripe and ready, waiting to be picked. Since we were without baskets or buckets I took my scarf off and used as an improvised bag to carry the berries in and within 20min we had picked around a litre.
I decided to make a jam out of the berries just the way i did the Raspberry jam earlier this year, and after a couple of weeks in the fridge the jam was turned in to shortbread biscuits with lemon icing. Lovely with a cup of tea.

Dough
130 grams butter, room temperature
60 grams caster sugar
200 grams plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1 egg

Icing+filling
5tbsp icing sugar
jucie and zest of a lemon
50ml blackberry jam

Beat sugar and butter until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and continue beating until smooth. Add flour and baking powder and quickly work into a dough. Divide in to 6 pieces, shape rolls the length of the baking tray and gently push down a little. With your finger make a well in the middle of the roll and fill with the jam.
Bake on 180C 12-15min, or until golden in colour.
Mix icing sugar with a little lemon juice to create a smooth icing. Drizzle icing over the jam/pastry lengths and cut in to 2 cm wide biscuits and sprinkle some lemon zest on top.

Creamy lime and coconut biscuits

Sick and tired of dry and crumbly biscuits? I have a solution; fancy biscuits. These ones are crispy, thin, brandy-snap like little biscuits filled with a lime butter cream...oh did I forget to say that they are perfect to keep in the freezer and eat just a tiny bit defrosted?! Basically they are just delicious.
I have made them since I was a kid, and when looking around for something to snack on it felt like gold wort finding these biscuits in the freezer.

Biscuits
35 grams butter
50 grams sugar
50 grams dessicated coconut
1tbsp flour
1/2tbsp milk

Melt butter and sugar in a pot on low heat. Add coconut, flour and milk and let simmer for 2 min while stirring. Put teaspoons of the mix on to a baking tray. This has to be done in batches because the mix will melt and float out a lot. Bake on 180C for 6-8min, or until golden. Let cool down before filling.

Butter cream
45 grams icing sugar
50 grams butter, room temperature
1 egg yolk
1 lime

Beat butter and sugar until thick and pale. Add the egg yolk and continue beating the mix until smooth. Add the zest of the lime and juice to taste. Spread the butter cream between two bicuits and keep in fridge or freezer.

A swedish take on biscotti

In Sweden it is just as common with biscotti as in Italy, the recipes may vary but the concept still is the same; a small, kind of hard biscuit, usually flavoured with spices or nuts. This is one of those recipes that you can play around with depending on what you like. I think cardamom and almonds is a perfect combination but I can imagine these biscottis also would be very tasty with hazelnuts and orange zest, or maybe ginger bread spices and dark muscovado sugar, or maybe even lavender sugar if that tickles your fancy...ok you get the picture now I think.

50 grams butter

35 grams ground almonds

105 grams sugar

1 egg

160 grams flour

1/2tsp baking powder

1tsp ground cardamom

Beat butter and almonds together. Mix flour, baking powder and cardamom. Whisk sugar and egg until white and fluffy. Combine all ingredients until it forms a quite loose dough. Shape 2 rolls the lenght of the baking tray you are using, transfer the dough to the tray with baking paper. Lightly press the dough out a little so you have the rolls about 2cm high and 3-4cm wide. Bake on 200C gor 15 min. Take out and cut into little biscuits, put back on the tray and let dry on very low heat, say 50C for 2h or until dry.

Blueberry jam cakes

If there is one thing you will see a lot of on my blog it is blueberries. It is one of my favourite berries and they are not just very tasty; they are good for you too. They are full of antioxidants and are classed as one of the new "super foods".

In Sweden we pick buckets full of blueberries in the forrest just around the corner from our country house. Usually we freeze some and the rest we make jam of, and if you have a jar of homemade blueberry jam you have to make these little jam cakes. It is so easy and just the perfect thing to have with a cup of tea or coffee.

200 grams butter, roomtemperature

85 grams sugar

1tsp bakingpowder

300 grams plain flour

4-5tbsp blueberry jam

2tbsp icing sugar+water

Beat sugar and butter until pale and fluffy. Mix bakingpowder and flour, add to the sugar/butter-mix. Mix just enough until it forms a dough. Divide into 20 pieces. Roll little balls and put in small muffincups. Make a little well in the middle of the dough with your finger and fill with 1/2tsp of blueberry jam.

Bake on 175C for 18-20min. Let cool down. Mix icing sugar with just enough water to create a thick icing. Drizzle on top of the cakes.

Serve with a cup of tea or coffee!

Seven types of cakes

Seven types of cakes is a Swedish tradition going back to the end of the 1800's. Seven was the number of how many different types of cakes/biscuits/buns you were meant to serve when having your friends over for a "coffee party". Yes you read right, we drank more coffee than tea in Sweden so the tradition was to have coffee and cakes. The ladies would have their good friends over and it would almost be a competition in who would serve the most varieties of baked goods.

Nowadays we are not as strict, maybe we just serve one type of cake and maybe we drink tea, but I would love to bring the old traditions back and have a proper "coffee party" where I will serve the whole seven types of cakes on a pretty cake stand (I have my eyes on one in STOCK).

The other day I made some biscuits that probably were served on one of those parties. If I translate straight from Swedish the English name would be "Farmers biscuits". It is a little like shortbread but crunchier and with a nice taste of almonds.

The trick is to let the dough rest in the fridge, it says 2 hours but I let it rest for the whole night. Also, they are very tasty so you might just as well do the big batch.

Dough

330grams plain flour

170grams sugar

1tbsp golden syrup

1tsp bread soda/bicarbonate

50grams almonds, finely chopped

200grams butter, room temperature

Mix all ingredients til it forms a dough. Shape in to a roll and cover with clingfilm. Let it rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours. With a sharp knife cut in to 1/2cm thick slices. Bake on a tray with baking paper in 200C for 6-7min til golden.