Prinsesstårta

About a month ago I had this great idea to just make my very own Swedish princess cake. So I ordered marzipan online and did just that. I ended up following Mary's recipe, because it seemed the same as many swedish recipes, while eliminating the chance that I would go wrong because of a translating error. Plus I like measuring ingredients by weight instead of volume.

I did not dye my marzipan green. Sometimes extra work for pure aesthetics​ is worth it, but not this time. I also did not make a rose for the top of the cake.

I did use blueberry jam (that I bought and did not make). I seem to remember that the cakes in Sweden with white marzipan were blueberry flavored. So I can almost justify my lack of green, but then can I call it a princesstårta? Probably not.

Anyhow. This cake turned out to be so delicious! While very time consuming, I am so glad I made it.   Plus, making the custard required six egg yolks, leaving me with six egg whites. How convenient :)

The phases of the pumpkin

7QT - food, ballet, and needing new pants

1. Earlier this week I reached the epitome of Uppsala residency - I was about to put on a pair of pants when I realized the butt was nearly worn through from riding my bicycle. I'm a little sad that I can't wear the pants anymore because I really liked them, but I feel proud of myself too, like I earned a badge.

Then I spent some time reading about commuter pants, which are specially designed to look like normal pants you can wear at work, but are built with reinforced fabric in the bike-seat-regions. (The really cool ones also have some reflective material that is on the inside of the legs, so that it shows when you cuff your pants!) Unfortunately, most of the available commuter pants are made for men only. I don't know what is up with that. I'd like some commuter pants please. Although I'd probably have better luck getting the men's pants to fit than any option they could come up with for women…

2. I've gotten so much better about not letting myself get needlessly stressed out about work since my days as a PhD student. This week I had some things that absolutely had to get done by the end of the week, and I was not entirely convinced they would get done. Luckily they are done, and now that I am past this I realise that I was more than a little stressed about them.

Now I'm just basking in the post-task completion (and trying not to think too much about how this all sort of has to be repeated once I get more data). My current activities include things like cleaning my computer screen and installing updates on my computer, both of which I had been putting off for far too long. Having a fresh computer makes me feel so fresh by proxy(:

3. Even if I already said this, it is worth saying again. For Easter I made homemade Reese's eggs following this recipe from Natalie. The recipe was such a completely perfect match. Just so much deliciousness. I can't even make sentences about them. I also sprinkled a tiny bit of sea salt on the top, so I have to say, these were even More amazing than the original.

4. On my last day of my third decade I get to go to the ballet! Ballet fascinates and amazes me, and I'm really excited to see something other than The Nutcracker (which I love, don't get my wrong, especially the Swedish interpretation).

5. This reminds me that there is a new ballet documentary that is out or soon to be out called Ballet 422. I really really need to not forget to see this when I figure out if/when it is released.

6. All week I've been really lazy about cooking (a result of #2, being stressed about not having enough time to finish work tasks). Last night I decided I better eat something more healthy than frozen pizza. I had some salad greens already, so I decided I'd make some hummus to put on top, plus add some chopped carrots and tomatoes, and call it a meal.

However, when I got home I started to dread the amount of time it would take to actually make the hummus properly with the immersion blender. This is when I realized that I could just dump the chickpeas on my salad, and make a dressing from tahini + olive oil + lemon juice. Same ingredients as hummus, just a different presentation. It wasn't as tasty as hummus, but it was a passable substitute. Most importantly, I didn't feel like I was wasting any time with food prep. Some days are just not for prepping food.

7. This final take is made possible because I just started cooking dinner and decided to go ahead and let my onions and garlic rest after chopping and before cooking. I read about this on Kate's blog, and normally I'd enjoy doing more reading on the topic instead of blindly trusting, buuuutttt…. what have I got to lose? So my onions are resting!

__________________________

The End & The Link-Up!

Pumpkin bread!

Last week we found a cooking pumpkin in the grocery store! Greg is a major pumpkin pie lover, so I had to let him down gently when I told him I wanted to make pumpkin bread. I think we need to go buy more pumpkins so that pies can happen. I also remembered that I once made a pumpkin lasagne which I loved so much! (recipe here, if you are interested)

The store had a few pumpkins, with short descriptions in Swedish. I don't remember the name of our pumpkin, and I can't be sure of all its qualities, but I do know that it had an orange flesh and was good for soups. And it turned out to be good for pumpkin bread.

I don't have any photo documentation of this, but here is what I did. I chopped the pumpkin in half, and also chopped off the stem. Then I removed the goop and seeds (the seeds were HUGE, and Greg baked them the next day). Then I put the two pumpkin halves in a baking dish with the cut side up, and put a little water into each pumpkin half. I don't know. One time my friend who is a nutritionist introduced me to the concept of spaghetti squash and she put the water in the squash halves, so I now do that with pumpkin halves. Also, the pumpkin descriptions at the store listed a spaghetti squash, but there were sadly none in the bin, but either way that is the closest I've gotten to getting a spaghetti squash in this country. So I baked the pumpkins at a temperature that was probably too high, maybe like 190C? They were done in only a half hour, which is a shame, because the heat hadn't been turned on yet and our apartment was getting cold, and I was banking on an hour of oven-use.

After the pumpkins were cooled I scooped out the flesh. Then a couple days later when it was time to bake the pumpkin bread, Greg used the immersion blender on it, so that it was a nice pumpkin puree. I used this recipe, which calls for one 16 ounce can.

So here is a really important thing, which the internet world doesn't always understand. The ounces in '16 ounce' are a measure of weight. Since I don't have a kitchen scale, I needed to figure out what volume (aka how many cups) of pumpkin I needed. I did some searching, which informed me that a 16 ounce can of pumpkin contained either 2 or 4 cups of pumpkin. That is a pretty big discrepancy, but there is no way that you can fit 4 cups into one of those cans. Plus since I had just shy of 2 cups, I just used all the pumpkin I had.

Now that I look at the pumpkin lasagne recipe, I see that a 28 ounce can of pumpkin is equivalent to 3 cups of pumpkin. So that means I should have used 1.7 cups of pumpkin in the recipe that called for 16 ounces of pumpkin.

This is my attempt to get some blog hits via google searches for 'how many cups of pumpkin are in a 16 ounce can?' and also my attempt to never again have to do that very same google search because the results are painful.

Pumpkin Conversion

16 ounce can = 1.7 cups

28 ounce can = 3 cups

So anyhow, the pumpkin bread was really delicious, and I've been taking it for a snack every day this week. Since I like to keep the quality of the photos here high, behold.

7QT - food things

- 1 -

Apparently grape seed oil is a new popular thing? I've read about it in at least two places in just the past week, after never hearing about it before. That is, after never hearing about it in English before. You see, here in Sweden, when I wanted to buy something like vegetable oil or canola oil, I ended up with rapseed oil. I didn't even know what it was when I was buying it, but this was when I used the method of buying the item that was available in the largest quantity, because that meant it was reasonable to think many people used said item. This technique worked particularly well when I wanted to buy flour, just plain regular white flour, and I encountered at least a dozen different options.

- 2 -

Come to think of it, I find that things in Sweden work like that most of the time. There is very little variety of items due to personal preference it seems. Usually there is just one of a thing available. I think that says something about Swedes being practical maybe? So like, here is a baking soda, it is the best one, everyone knows that, everyone buys the same one, so places only sell the one option. Also, for example, the same candle holder lantern thingy that is a decoration in my apartment was also a decoration at the little snack shop in the airport. True story.

- 3 -

And you can easily figure out where Swedes have strong and differing opinions based on what items come with a lot of variety. Knäckebröd (a sort of cracker thing) and cheese in tubes fall into this category.

- 4 -

Two weeks ago was Culture Night in Uppsala. Culture Night is a full day of activities showcasing culture all throughout the town. Tons of people roam the streets and there is street food. Greg and I saw an a capella group consisting of four young men who sang a medley of Backstreet Boys songs. It was spectacular.

- 5 -

A little while ago Greg made a comment about earl grey tea smelling like fruit loops. I thought it was madness, but well, it really sort of does. Now when I have a cup of the earl, my entire tea-drinking experience is something different and a bit strange.

- 6 -

We tried our beer and it is yummy! It is still a bit 'green' as in, not quite at its prime, flavor-wise. The banana flavor is mellowing out, which I appreciate. I think I wrote before that when we bottled it, we tasted it and the overwhelming flavor was banana.

We were going to start our next batch tomorrow, but we didn't order ingredients/supplies in time, so it will have to wait a week. It is time to brew a Christmas beer! I found this recipe for an award-winner called Bad Santa that is made with cherries and vanilla and cinnamon!

- 7 -

And since I wouldn't want any 'quick take' to exclude the topic of food, we found a cooking pumpkin! In a grocery store near our apartment! Last year we had a really hard time finding pumpkin, which is a big deal since you can't buy canned pumpkin. Or at least, it was a big deal last year when we thought we could not buy canned pumpkin. But we found this cafe that is run by an American and he sells poptarts and canned pumpkin.

- The End and The Linkup -

7QT - less solitude, more påskmust

- 1 -

I think I had a race up the stairs with a stranger. I think I've always thought it would be so hilarious if a stranger ran up the stairs past me with the look of victory upon reaching the top first. The thing is, I didn't know it was happening at the time. I thought I was being mistaken for another person this man knew, and by the time I realized we might have just had a race up the stairs, it was too late for me to even laugh about it.

- 2 -

There is this thing called the Rule of Friendship, which a friend of mine invented. In Hanover, it means that if you are walking through town, you must walk on Main St. and not the back roads, even if those back roads might be more direct or faster. If a friend is also walking in Hanover and abiding by the Rule of Friendship, then you will cross paths and it will be so friendly!

On Monday, I applied the Rule of Friendship to Uppsala. The concept is still the same, although deciding which road is the equivalent of Hanover's Main St. is not always so obvious. There is a pedestrian road in town, where all the shops are, so I'm going to go ahead and say this is the number one road for the Rule of Friendship. Next would probably be to walk along the river, but that is beside the point.

Lately I've started to feel friendly again. For awhile, I was feeling not-so-friendly, and if I needed to go into town for something, I was sure to take the most direct route possible and walk really fast and avoid eye contact with everyone.

- 3 -

There was a little stand set up on the pedestrian road. As I walked by I saw this t-shirt being sold:

DOUBLE TACOS

WHAT DOES IT MEAN

Strange for sure, but also intriguing. Where does this t-shirt come from?

- 4 -

Last week I braved Ikea, and my reward was two of the cheapest bread pans ever. I think they were even cheaper than a thrift store would have marked them. Maybe. The thrift store was on summer holiday all of last month, so I can't be sure. So before Greg arrived I made zucchini bread, because I thought it would be a good treat for him. I followed the Smitten Kitchen recipe, because it is the best ever (no chocolate chips for me, thank you). I even managed to eat one full loaf before Greg even had any. Oops.

(smitten kitchen image)

- 5 -

Wednesday was the last summer evening folk dance. I really wanted to go and take Greg so that he could experience the joy that is the summer evening folk dance. And the waffles. The weather forecast was not on our side for the entire day, but in the evening it wasn't raining, so we decided to just ride our bikes out there and see if it was happening. And it was! We danced a little. Ate waffles. Then it started to rain so we took cover in a barn. Then it stopped raining, so we danced a little more. And then we headed home.

- 6 -

Now that I am no longer living the bachelor life and am sharing the apartment with my husband (novel concept), I find that I am talking about 100 times more than I had been talking for the past six months. I always manage to have an awful lot to say when there is just always another person there, eager to listen!

- 7 -

I was asking Greg if there was anything he wanted me to pick up from the grocery store before he arrived. His response was that he wished he could have Julmust, but he knew he'd have to wait until Christmas for it. Julmust is a sort of spiced cola type beverage that is consumed in large quantities around Christmas time. Well, since Greg had left at the end of December, he didn't even know that there is also a special spiced cola type beverage for Easter called Påskmust. So I bought a bottle and kept it a secret for MONTHS, which is a huge accomplishment for me.

P.S. Yes that image is a baby riding a rooster pulling some more babies riding an egg with wheels.

- The End and The Link-up -

Cake!

Here is a thing that frequently happens in my home. I'm in the mood for baking a tasty treat, but I am not in the mood to run to the store to buy any ingredients. I'd rather spend thirty minutes scouring the internet looking for a recipe for which I have all of the ingredients.

On the day that I am writing about, I happened to be interested in making a lemon pound cake. I had two lemons, and also lemon juice in a bottle, so I was perfectly set on that front. What I did not have was very much butter or milk, and no yogurt or half and half or anything like that. Then I remembered that you can make a cake with olive oil. The best recipe I could find was this vegan cake recipe. I didn't have maple syrup but I had honey, which I thought could be a reasonable substitute.

Plus, here's a thing, I like the idea of eating a variety of foods. I'm not a vegan, but sometimes I like to eat foods that happen to be vegan. Vegan dessert. That means it is automatically healthy, right?

Anyhow. Getting distracted. I was glad that this recipe worked for the foods that I had in my house.

I tasted the batter and it was strongly olive oil flavored and not delicious. But once it was baked!

This cake was SO good! I ate the entire thing in less than an hour. In my defense I only made half a recipe (which is why it is so thin).

Allowing myself to get distracted again. Looking at this photo makes me realize that this cake was basically as thin as a pancake, which makes me wonder if you can make a cake in a pan on the stove? Like a real cake, in a pan, not a pancake.

And I've had this post written and waiting for that photo to be uploaded for-basically-ever. And today happens to be Mystery Ingredient Monday - Lemons. And I don't blog unless I can link-up. Apparently(:

Baking a cake!

I guess I have this cake thing going on now? I don't actually do a lot of cake-baking (yet), but I just feel really into cakes these days. After Greg's defense, I decided I needed to bake him a cake, even though he isn't really a huge cake fan. But he is a huge coffee fan, so I decided to make a coffee cake. And by that I mean a real cake, with a coffee flavor, not like the kind of cake that is intended to be eaten for breakfast with coffee.

I ended up going with this Smitten Kitchen recipe, because that is one of my favorite recipe sources. What really sold me was at the end where she suggests a cappuccino chiffon cake variation. No fudge frosting for us! We want whipped cream! It is how the Swedes would do it!

This was one of the more complicated things I've made, but the effort was totally worth it. It was incredibly delicious, and very strongly coffee flavored. I highly recommend this cake!

Petite apple pastries

It happened that on Sunday I was thinking of going to a cafe after church to get a cappuccino and an apple pastry. Partly because those things are delicious, partly because it was my anniversary and I'm sure my husband would have wanted me to do that, because that is our idea of a celebration.

But I didn't go to the cafe, and I remembered that it is possible to buy pastry dough pre-made here. Pre-made foods are a bit of a rarity in this country, so I thought it probably wouldn't exist at my small close store. But it did! And I bought it! And I baked these lovelies!

For the pastry 'style' I followed this how-to written by my friend Brian. I am in full agreement on intricate-looking pastries (although I can't say I've done much (any?) pastry baking before, soooo...)

I was slightly worried that these wouldn't work out, since I wasn't baking the shell and the filling separately. Luckily the dough baked up around the apples quite nicely, and also the apples were not still raw when it was done baking. A delicious success!

PS I brought these to the office and was once again thanked for the 'cake.'

Happy Easter!

This is a post mainly about food. I hadn't done much cooking or baking lately, so I figured Easter was a good time for that. This is how Swedes decorate for Easter:

Colored feathers everywhere.

Last night for dinner I roasted a chicken and also roasted an assortment of root vegetables. It was incredibly delicious. I also made some paneer in preparation for tonight's dinner of saag paneer. I have to say, nothing says 'easter' like saag paneer. I plan to follow a different recipe than last time, so hopefully it turns out. But that is for later.

Here is a photo of my breakfast.

Yes, I ate all of those sausages; don't judge me. One of the items that was on my list of foods-to-eat-while-in-the-US was maple breakfast sausage. Unfortunately, that never happened. Even though they have a lot of sausage here, it just isn't like those maple breakfast sausages.

Fun fact: On the day after our wedding I cooked maybe a billion sausages for our 'wedding brunch.'

I even found proof on facebook. Here I am with Greg and his sister, as well as our classy brown'n'serve sausages. Also, I am always trying to convince Greg that I am actually taller than him, but the real reason this photo makes me look distinctly taller is the extreme lopsided flooring in the barn.

So anyhow. My breakfast (today) was super delicious. I tried to make an omelet like this one. It was pretty good, but I'm pretty sure it was not the best omelet I've ever had. Now I feel like I never have to wonder if those recipes actually are the 'best ever' so I'm glad I at least tried. I also bought some manchego, which I was going to open and have with my dinner last night, but I forgot about it. Breakfast cheese it is! I used my super fancy cheese cutter which is a favorite kitchen tool of Swedes and now I know why.

OH. I almost forgot about my dessert last night. I bought a finostkaka. Ta daa:

I always see people buying these and just recently I finally found where they were located in the store (near the deli meats?). They also have ones called 'ostkaka' which literally translates to cheese cake. I did some reading online and a page somewhere said that ostkaka was not the same as cheesecake, that the ostkaka had no layering. I don't have any idea what that meant, but I was prepared for this to not be like the cheesecake I know and love. Especially since there seemed to be the ostkaka, and then the dessert ostkaka: finostkaka. This is getting long, so to get to the point, it is Not the same as cheesecake but still quite tasty, and it sort of reminded me of the non-crust part of quiche only sweeter?

Back to breakfast. I also meant to make scones, but haven't done that yet. Those will be for lunch I think. I'm making the same ones I've made before. They are seriously delicious. I just realized that thanks to daylight savings finally coming to Sweden, it is well past noon. Scones for afternoon tea then.

Crackers

I made these crackers the other evening. They were quite simple to make and quite nice to eat. I even managed to buy flaky sea salt to sprinkle on the top. There are a Lot of different options when buying salt, so I wasn't holding out much hope that I'd get the right one. But I did! Small victories!

I ventured into the world in an attempt to not be so purposely friendless, and I brought my crackers as a peace offering. They were well-received. And then I was told a story by a Swede who did an exchange program in the US and gained 30 pounds in the first three months he was there.

Four ingredient cookies

Somehow last week, I found myself presented with these two, very similar recipes. You better believe I made myself some of these. My four ingredients were peanut butter, powdered sugar, one egg, and chopped chocolate. And I baked them for 8 minutes. And I used natural peanut butter, even though that second recipe advises against it. I don't know about you, but I feel like, there just comes a time in your life when you join the adult table and start eating real maple syrup and real peanut butter. Although I concede that creamy peanut butter would have been better for this recipe than the crunchy that I had.

Also, I remember when it was decided that there would only be one space after a period, instead of two. I remember thinking it would take me forever to get used to doing that, if I ever did at all. And I just realized that it seems perfectly natural, so I guess that transition worked.

So the cookies ended up looking exactly the same after baking as they looked before baking. I actually think the insides just got warmed and nothing more.

These cookies are like the quick and easy version of these peanut butter balls that I adore. Actually, that makes me realize that these cookies would benefit from a pinch of salt. I guess a lot of peanut butters will have a little salt, but my recipe is totally lacking that 'flavor carrier' which is a bit of a shame. Although adding salt would probably make me want to eat these all in one day (instead of a more respectable two day).

And that is all I have to say about that.

Scones!

Sometimes I see recipes posted online that are modified versions of another recipe.

Separately (but which will be related in a moment) my favorite sources for recipes come from Smitten Kitchen*, The Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks, and America's Test Kitchen cookbook(s?).

Neglecting the fact that I've been making mac & cheese from a Test Kitchen recipe without actually following the recipe (only due to laziness, not due to any crazy ideas about being able to improve the recipe), I have a really hard time understanding why you would modify a recipe from any of these three sources. I just feel like... I don't think I'd be able to make a recipe that did that.

Except when a Smitten Kitchen recipe is a modified Test Kitchen recipe. Then I get confused and end up with a lot of really delicious scones in my house. Also, the reason I was looking for scone recipes in the first place was because I found lemon curd at the grocery store and needed a reason to buy it. Now if only I could find clotted cream. Then my tea time dreams would be complete.





*I just went to the page to include the link here. Looks like I'll be making Chocolate Sables in the near future.

Keeping Busy

For the past two days I have been partly moping around, but partly keeping busy so that I don't start to feel too sorry for myself and so that no one else starts to feel sorry for me. Greg has had to go back to the states. I am not really looking forward to this Skype-phase of our marriage. I want to be cautious about wishing time away, but I am pretty much wishing this time will go quickly.

The night before Greg left he decided we should make some pepparkakor. This is the standard Swedish Christmas cookie, basically a ginger snap. Normally I have a decent instinct with baking. For example, if I am looking at a recipe that requires 6 cups of flour, I know that the yield is probably a bit high for a household of two, soon to be one. But when a recipe requires 15 dl of flour, then it is just like, 'Okay where is the measuring cup?'. So after we had about half of the cookies made (using our new cookie cutters shaped like a polar bear, giraffe, lion, alligator, and camel), Greg saw that the yield for the recipe was 300. Luckily I don't roll dough very thin, so we only made about 150?



And I cleaned the windows. Riveting! Just look at how filthy they were.



And of course the first day Greg was gone I finished the rest of the Reese's trees that my mother had lovingly sent to me when I panicked about not being able to buy any here. So today I made the peanut butter balls that we had planned to make before Christmas. I guess when you buy a most-delicious cake, any pre-Christmas baking plans get delayed.



Unfortunately (fortunately), though the peanut butter balls look so spectacular in that photo (it is salt sprinkled on top! so amazing!), the removal of peanut butter balls from plate was not a smooth operation. The chocolate majorly stuck to the plate. Unless I let them warm up a bit, in which it stuck all over my fingers. Needless to say, these are not presentable and will not be shared with anyone else. Sad day for me? I put half of them in the freezer so that I wouldn't eat them all in two days. Although a frozen peanut butter ball is probably delicious...

In other news I just like reading blogs and I am now obsessed with Ana's blog. I feel so lucky to have learned about 'super bust-out mode'. Basically, set a timer, pick a task, and get as much done with it as you can in the allotted time. Aim for quantity over quality. I just busted-out on the kitchen and basically got everything done in under the 30 minutes I gave myself. But before, I was looking at all of the mess and thinking about how it would take hours to clean, a task which was too daunting to even start.

I think it helps that I've created a super bust-out mode playlist on spotify. (Spell checker wants that to say spottily.) So far it has two songs, Party Rock Anthem and Kerncraft 400. It took a little searching for that second one, because I only know it as the Hockey Goal Song.

Weekend cooking #4: granola bars

Most of the grocery stores do not have granola bars, which is something that I normally like to have around. It is good to be able to have some quick food that is healthy and delicious. So I decided it was time to make my own granola bars. I essentially followed this recipe. I didn't use any corn syrup. For the mix-ins I used dried cranberries, dried blueberries, pumpkin seeds, chopped walnuts, and something which I think is flaxseeds.

I am guessing these will come in really handy this week, since we will be quite busy. On Monday I have dance class, and on Tuesday Greg and I start our Swedish course. This is part of the reason I've been cooking and baking, so that we will have a good amount of leftovers for lunches and dinners for a few days before there is time for cooking again.

Weekend cooking #3: bread

This was the kind of bread I had been thinking about making for a week or longer now. I wanted to use a simple recipe that was just flour, water, salt, and yeast. This one does have an egg white brushed on the top, so it is a touch above your most basic bread recipe.

I also thought it was interesting that this recipe required a starter to be made the night before. I always think of sourdough as the only type of bread that needs a starter. I tried reading about it on the interwebs, and the only thing to come of that is that now I want to make some sourdough.