Morehampton chocolate cake

When making these chocolate cup cakes a few months ago I explained the history of the cake called Morehampton; a Swedish sticky chocolate cake that turned into a hazelnut fudge cake when I lived on Morehampton Road. Last week I baked one of those and brought to a BBQ, it was very appreciated and nobody could belive this was put together in 35min, including the time in the oven. I used dark muscovado sugar instead of caster sugar, and put little chunks of dark chocolate on top of the cake before it went in to the oven, it made the cake even tastier.

150 grams butter
2 eggs
200 grams dark muscovado sugar
80 grams plain white flour
40 grams cocoa powder
90 grams hazelnuts
pinch of salt
50 grams dark chocolate

Chop the hazelnuts finely and toast in a hot frying pan until golden brown. Melt butter and let cool down. Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl, add melted butter and the egg, stir until well mixed. Pour in to a cake tin and sprinkle chopped dark chocolate on top. Bake for 25min on 175C.

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.

Swedish shrove tuesday pastries

The 8th of March this year was the date of Shrove tuesday. More known as pancake tuesday this is the day people indulge in pancakes. For me it was once again a day of making pancakes all day long in work since people, religious or not, really do want their pancakes on this very day. So working in a restaurant or cafe this day can be pretty busy.
In Sweden however this day is called "fat tuesday", but we dont eat pancakes. We eat a pastry called "Semla" or "Fastlagsbulle" (lent/fast-bun). A cardamom flavoured bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, dusted with icing sugar. It is a real treat and should traditionally only be sold and eaten on this very day, nowadays most cafes and bakeries sell the pastries for weeks before the actual day to eat them though.

Buns

50 grams fresh yeast/ 14 grams dried yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground
1 egg+egg yolk for brushing the buns

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add egg, sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Divide into 20 pieces and shape little round balls. Let prove under a cloth on a baking tray lined with baking paper for 30-40min. Brush with a lighlt beaten egg yolk and bake for 8-10min on 220C. Let cool down.

Almond paste

100 grams ground almonds
100 grams caster sugar
water

Combine almond and sugar and and add just enough water to bind it togehter to a firm paste.

Cut the top of the buns and put a small bit of almond paste on each bun. Whisk 300ml of cream, not too firm but firm enough to pipe on top of the almond paste. Place the lid of the buns on top of the cream. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

If you have some unfilled buns left you can cut them into quarters and dry out on a low heat in to oven for a couple of hours and you have lovely, crisp cardamom biscotti.

Blueberry buns

Here is another recipe for those who are not tired of them yet. I am definitely not tired of buns and would gladly have one a day if my tummy did not tell me not too. So maybe it is not the healthiest treat but what can one say when a tray of freshly baked buns comes out of the oven and smell delicious? This time I filled them with blueberry jam instead of a butter filling and it was so nice. It is more Finnish than Swedish to bake blueberry buns but that does not bother me at and in fact I think that anyone, just like me, loves blueberries should bake these. The recipe is the same as the cardamon or cinnamon buns that I have blogged about before so i will send to to that page if you click here. The only thing you have to change is to skip the filling in the recipe and use jam instead.

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.

Crisp bread, cracker bread, crackers...

In Sweden we eat a lot of bread; sour dough, rye, plain white ... but there is one particular type that im going to write about now. It is hard for me to say what it is called in english because as the name of this post says there seems to be a few names to choose from. I will simply call it cracker bread.
Cracker bread is originally from Sweden and back in the days it was mainly bakes on rye flour or other whole grain flours. The dough is very heavy due to a low content of water and is rolled out very thin, baked quickly on a high heat and then dried out. It keeps very well, weighs very little and is therefore a great addition to lucnhes serevd in schools, prisons and in the army. You can take my word for that (not because I have been in prison or the army) because the lunch served in our canteen in school was not very tasty at all so I lived on cracker bread.
In Ireland it is not so common to eat cracker bread, and beacuse of that there is not the same variety here and in the shopes at home. Recently I found a recipe that I had to try and with a few minor adjustments I now have a very nice cracker bread recipe.

150ml water, luke warm
5 grams dried yeast
12 grams butter
1tsp salt
115 grams plain flour
100 grams whole wheat flour, stone ground
60 grams mixed seeds (I used sesame, lins seeds and sunflower seeds)

Dissolve yeast in the water. Stir in butter, salt and seeds and last whole wheat flour. Add plain flour and work the dough by hand for a bout 5min on a floured surface. Let prove for 1h.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll out to very, very thin sheets on a floured surface, about 2mm. Prick with a fork before baking on 250C for 5-8 min. Let dry on an oven rack before storing in an air tight container.

Rye loaf

Rye bread is originally from Germany but is now a big part of Scandinavias and Eastern European countries food culture. It is heavy, compact and dark, rich in fibre and iron. Growing up in sweden I am very used to this type of bread and still remember one particular typ of Finnish rye bread that was very dark and sour. Delicious I say but for someone who is not so used to eating rye bread I here give you a recipe that has a lovely mild taste of rye.
The recipe comes from my mum and even though my memory is letting me down in this case she claims she used to bake it a lot when I was younger, I have to take her word for that!
Baking with rye flour can be a little tricky since it binds water different than plain wheat flour so a great way of creating a moist bread that wont get crumbly is to "soak" the flour in boiling water the night before baking the bread. So be prepared to set a side time for baking this bread, it is worth it.

1 litre water
550 grams rye flour
14 grams dried yeast
1 tbsp salt
100ml butter milk/sour cream
3tbsp treacle
900 grams wheat flour

Day 1
Bring the water to boil and pour over the flour, mix until it looks like porridge. Cover with cling film and leave in room temperature over night.

Day 2
Dissolve yeast in a couple of tablespoons of warm water and blend with the rye flour/water-mix. Add butter milk, salt, treacle and 800 grams of the wheat flour (leave the rest of the flour for kneading the dough and shaping the loaves). Knead the dough on a floured surface until it is elastic and easy to work with. Let prove for 1 hour. Divide the dough into 2 pieces and shape 2 loaves. Let prove again until doubled in size on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Bake for 1 hour on 200C in the lower part of the oven. Brush the loaves with water when taking it out of the oven and let cool down wrapped in tea towels.

Remember December

It is january 2011 and nearly half way in to this absolutely grey and dull month I am going to treat you all to a little peak of what was going on in my house in december 2010. A lot of sweet treats were made since Christmas seems to be the time of the year that everybody (including me) indulges in chocolates, cakes and biscuits, all washed down with mulled wine.

Chocolate toffes made with my dads mums recipe...

Mint kisses; a typical Swedish treat usually made around christmas.

Wild strawberry and milk chocolate truffles.

My own Baci; italian milk chocolate and hazelnut truffles

Cinnamon buns

The 4th of october is the cinnamon buns day in Sweden but they are baked and eaten all year around. I made some last week to put in the freezer. It is so handy to defrost a few buns if someone pops over for tea or if I decide to go for a picnic. Baked goods are always tastier when fresh but if you freeze the buns as soon as they have cooled down they will taste perfectly fine when defrosted.

Dough
50 grams fresh yeast/ 14 grams dried yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground

Filling
100grams butter, room temperature
80grams caster sugar
2tbsp cinnamon, ground

1 egg
pearl sugar or flaked almonds

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Gently knead the dough on a floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Roll out to big squares about 2cm thick. Spread the butter evenly over the dough, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. You can either roll together like a swiss roll and cut into little swirls, or fold once and cut into strips that you twist around little swirly braids. Let rise for about 30min on a baking tray on baking paper or in muffins paper cups.

Brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with pearl sugar or flaked almonds and bake for 8-10min on 220C.

Mocha cup cakes

This recipe is something myself and my Swedish friends all remember from our childhood. It was something our mums would bake a large tray of and cut into squares, decorate with either coconut or colourful sprinkles. They freeze very well so sometimes we kept them in the freezer but the best is of course to enjoy them fresh. I made cup cakes out of the recipe and gave away some to my Swedish friend Stina, she knows how to appreciate a mocha cup cake. A little taste of Sweden in Ireland.

Muffins
1 egg
75 grams butter
130 grams caster sugar
130 grams plain flour
1.5tsp baking powder
75ml milk
1 1/2tsp cocoa powder

Melt butter and put aside to cool down. Combine flour, cocoa powder and baking powder. Whisk egg and sugar until very fluffy and pale, add butter and stir until smooth. Add the dry ingredients through a sieve and fold in, last add milk and stir until all is well blended. Fill muffin cups to 2/3 and bake on 175C for 20min or until a skewer comes out dry. Let cool down.

Frosting
50 grams butter, soft
1tbsp cocoa powder
3tbsp coffee
180 grams icing sugar

3tbsp dessicated coconut

Beat butter, sugar and cocoa powder until smooth, slowly add coffee while still beating, continue beating the frosting until fluffy.

Spread the frosting on the cold muffins, sprinkle with dessicated coconut.

Chocolate dreams

I could write pages full of praise for these melt-in-your-mouth biscuits. In fact I belive that if you bake these once you will never look at a shortbread recipe again. It is a sweet, crumbly and buttery pleasure to bite in to a Chocolate Dream.

The raising agent in this recipe is called powdered ammonium carbonate, I found it in the Asian Market in Dublin, but I get it sent over from Sweden as well since it is more widely used there. It is neccessary to use this particular ingredient for these biscuits, it is what makes them so fragile and crumbly.

75 grams butter, rommtemperature
160 grams caster sugar
120 grams plain flour
15 grams cocoa powder
1tbsp vanilla sugar
1/2tsp ammonium carbonate
75ml vegetable oil

Beat sugar, vanilla sugar and butter until pale and fluffy, slowly add oil while still beating. Combine flour, cocoa powder and ammonium carbonate and add to the butter/oil/sugar-mix.
Mix with your hands just until the crumbs forms a dough. Divide the doug in to equal size pieces and roll small balls. The size can be varied, I like them quite small so I'd say this recipe would give around 15-20 biscuits. Put the dough-balls on a tray lined with baking paper. Bake on 150C for 20 min.

Buns

If you go to Sweden you will soon realise that we have a great variety of baked goods, and that there is a bakery in almost every corner. A lot of our traditional pastries and cakes are very similar to French, Italian, German and English pastries, but there is a few things that we Swedes proudly brag about being so very Swedish and original, and buns are certainly one of them. What might surprise many people is the generous amount of spices used to flavour these pastries. The use of spices such as cardamom and cinnamon goes back to the 1600's when the export of spices increased and therefor made it possible for the less fortunate people get their hands on them. It used to be only the royalty who could afford such treats as spices of this kind.

The bun itself has been made since around 1950, when ingredients like butter, white flour and sugar became cheaper and the Swedish people became richer. The traditional bun is a sort of brioche-like dough flavoured with cinnamon, butter and sugar, rolled out to the classical swirl shape. The bun is for us Swedes what a croissant is for the French; an essential part of our food culture. There is even a day for the cinnamon bun, the 4th of October, and that very day will be honoured with bun baking here in my cottage in Dublin.

Today there is endless variations and one of my personal favourites is the cardamom bun, mainly because I love cardamom but also because instead of the pearl sugar, usually used for decoration, this kind of bun is brushed with melted butter after baked and then dipped in caster sugar.

Dough

50 grams fresh yeast
500ml milk
150grams butter
85 grams caster sugar
1tsp salt
900 grams plain flour
1tsp cardamom, ground

Filling

100grams butter, room temperature
80grams caster sugar
2tbsp cardamom, ground

Decoration

1 egg
25 grams butter
caster sugar

Melt butter in a pan and add milk, let it be luke warm. Add the butter and milk to the yeast in a large bowl and mix until the yeast has dissolved. Add sugar, salt and cardamom. Add 2/3 of the flour, mix into a paste. Gradually add more flour while working the paste into a dough, you might not need all flour, the dough is good when it is elastic and easy to work. Let prove under a cloth until it has doubled in size.

Gently knead the dough on a floured surface. Divide into 2 pieces. Roll out to big squares about 2cm thick. Spread the butter evenly over the dough, sprinkle with sugar and cardamom. You can either roll together like a swiss roll and cut into little swirls, or fold once and cut into strips that you twist around little swirly braids. Let rise for about 30min on a baking tray on baking paper or in muffins paper cups.

Brush with beaten egg and bake for 8-10min on 220C.

When cooled down brush with melted butter and dip in caster sugar.

Soft rye cakes

The name of this bread makes it sound like something sweet, but it is actually bread. In sweden we eat a lot of rye bread and, for someone who is not so used to that flavour this recipe is a great way of learning to like it. It is very soft and has got a mild, kind of sweet rye-flavour because of the mix of wheat flour and rye flour. I have had my mum make this since I was a kid, and the best part was that the little piece you cut out in the middle went in to the oven and came out as a perfect little piece to nibble on, hot with butter of course! These days I obviously bake my own bread, and because I like to experiment with old recipes I have added a bit of linsseeds and sunflower seeds to this bread. It gives it a bit more bite and of course more goodness, but you can just leave it plain.

400 grams plain flour

260 grams ryeflour

50 grams fresh yeast or 12-14 grams dry yeast

2tsp salt

2tbsp golden syrup or honey

500ml milk

50 grams butter

1tbsp anisseeds or fennelseeds,

Melt butter and add milk, dissolve the yeast in the milk/butter mix. Add salt, syrup and spices. Work in the flour until it forms a dough. Work this dough for about 5-7min by hand. Let prove until doubled in size. Divide in to 4 pieces, roll each one in to a ball. With a rolling pin shape the balls in to flat cakes, about 2cm high. With a glass or cake cutter cut out a whole in the middle. Prick with a fork and let prove again on a baking tray for about 30min. Bake on 225C for 12min in the middle of the oven.

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.