Norway's National Day

The 17th May is Norway's constitution day, in the past we have celebrated it in Oslo in full national dress stuffing our faces with waffles and ice cream, at Thorpe Park throwing ourselves down roller coasters and log flumes but in the last couple of years we've celebrated at home with huge Norwegian feasts. 

 Out comes the dress, a blue sailory Hell Bunny one. I should make one with a flag on it shouldn't I? This year I'm wearing a white Lindy Bop underskirt with it for some extra oomph. I went all out with the rockabilly hair and victory rolls, they came out pretty good!

And by celebrating we of course mean - making lots of food! We're also not very good at scaling down so there's always loads. 

So on the menu we had:

Open faced sandwiches

Whole baked salmon

Potato salad (with homemade mayonnaise)

Krumkaker (vanilla cripsy cones)

Norwegian flag cake

Open faced sandwiches are their own food group in Norway, on ours we decided to have sliced boiled egg and prawn, Jarlsberg cheese, roast beef and ham. I also thought it would be a great idea to make the mayonnaise for the potato salad, all of the recipes said to do it by hand...so I did. It took FOREVER! But it tasted soooooo good and my bingo wings got a good working out. 

We loves us some salmon us Norgies, especially a whole baked one. Whenever we buy on we always call him Herbert, and then shove him in the oven. But the good news is, that he tasted delicious! So he did not die in vain, we ate every last bit. 

For dessert I made a batch of Krumkaker, very crumbly light vanilla cone biscuits. I used my nan's iron, she bought me my own but on special occasions I like to use her cast iron one from the 60s, isn't it amazing? I love the floral pattern. 

Magazines in Norway coming up to the big day always show huge cakes decorated with fruit to look like the Norwegian flag so I wanted to recreate it. I also wanted it to show a flag when you cut it..which it NEARLY did! But I messed up and forgot the top blue bit so there is no picture evidence...it's better this way.

I love the 17th May, I love the food, the family and the fuss and I hope there's never a year that passes that we don't celebrate it.

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Baking Buys

Another Baking Buys post, I can't seem to stop shopping at the moment, not healthy for the bank balance...I just can't help myself. Some of these were bought a little while ago and kept for this post that you will have seen me use in past posts.

On one of my last trips I managed to pick up some red,white and blue sprinkles, red writing jelly (these use this a lot on their iced cakes), cake flags and also some tutti fruitti flavouring, it's a tiny bottle but it's super concentrated so a little goes a long way :) You'll see these feature in my next post so keep a look out.

The first of which are my Norway purchases, these were actually bought a while ago but I've only used them recently which reminded me that I actually had them! Today is actually Norway's independence day, I really wish I could have been there but instead I had the day off. Normally we do something fun like going to a theme park but there's been so much going on it didn't feel right this year so we had a nice day at home with a bit of shopping, eating and baking. Which is why I bought some of the following bits you'll see in a moment. Norway love their baking - LOVE IT! I love trawling their baking aisles in the shops as they stock so many great products we just don't get that would be so useful.



Last Week I had ANOTHER shopping trip, I couldn't resist popping into TK MAXX where I picked up this cupcake cutter, I've been wanting one for ages and this one was perfect. I also picked up a plain icing rolling pin which I forgot to take a picture of before I covered it in icing sugar, it's great for fondant and gumpaste work. Which bring me to my trip to HobbyCraft, there I bought two boxes of gum paste mix, I never bought ready rolled until my mum pointed out the price difference, £5.99 for the mix, £12.99 for the ready to roll stuff. As I was buying it for my brother's wedding cake, not knowing how much the mix made I bought two, but after mixing it (in fear) I discovered one mix made up 500g of gum paste - exactly the same as the ready made but less than half price! Love it.

 My next hit was Tesco and the garden center. I love the new products the garden center is stocking, I couldn't resist the patterned rolling pin, set of girly cookie cutters, apple blossom plungers and the cute polkadot petit fours cases. The range is so reasonable the rolling pin was only £6.99 - bargain!

 My next hit was Tesco, it's not that exciting for most but I found the blue table cover in the picture above, actually I got the cupcake one there too! I also found the Jubilee golden syrup tin, I think this would love lovely in my baking room when it's empty to hold some of my various tools, and a nice keepsake :)

Finally I hit my town to pick up something to help me make my cake pops more rounded, I found this Joseph Joseph measuring spoon, I have tried it out and while it doesn't make them perfect it definitely helps. In another little shop I found these star cookies cutters for making a star tree, I know it's stupidy early.... but I thought these would come in handy for Christmas, or do you think I could use them at other times?

 

Now I did do a big order from Sew White, a lovely website my work friend told me about, but I've already tried some of the products out so I think they need a post all to themselves :)

Nom!

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Scandinavian Waffles - Norwegian Bake Of The Month

I'm trying to make a post I do every month, it did start at Old School Bake Of The Month...but it didn't really feel right so I stopped, but I have noticed there are a lot of my grandmother's recipes I want to share, I also have piles of recipes I gather every time I visit, which has been a lot recently...so I've collected a few! I think I might actually do two this month as Norway's national day is on the 17th of May and they love to eat cake then so I can't really ignore it :D

This recipe is a favourite in our house, it is my grandmother's own recipe as is the only one we use in our house, anything else would be sacrilegious...she would know! A lot of people think of waffles as big fluffy creation topped with piles of ice cream...wrong! Those are Belgian, and completely different. Scandinavian waffles are denser, gorgeous and commonly topped with jam, brown goats cheese (not my favourite might I add) and my favourite - butter. You can also add normal waffle toppings like maple syrup and ice cream though so don't worry if that is what you like.

 

Waffle makers are quite easy to find in the UK, my mum has had hers for a long time and my grandmother bought me one a few Christmases ago as a thank you for traveling with her to ours for the festive season, she remember me saying how much I really wanted one and sent it back with my mum when she traveled back with her. My mum hadn't used hers in a while though so we decided it was her turn to bake.

My sister-in-law had never had these before, which is shocking as she's been in our family for 11 years! We always seem to make them on random evening when the urge takes us, you just can't beat them. And it's worth noting, that many people don't know our secret ingredient is ground cardamom, it's hard to find here in England though, you might have luck in Asian food shops as they use it a lot but we have yet to find it...let me know if you do! It really make a difference to the recipe, well to us anyway as we can always tell if we forgot to put it in! Please forgive some of the measurements, Norwegians often measure ingredients in units of deciliters (dl), which is 100ml - rather than just grams, I always say I'll convert it but as it's my grandmother's recipe I won't touch it!

Ingredients:
Makes 8 - 10

100g butter, melted and extra for greasing
4 eggs
4-5 tbsp caster sugar
5 dl plain flour, sifted
5dl whole milk
1/2 tsp ground cardamom


Method:


1. Pour the butter in a large mixing bowl and combine all of the other ingredients in the bowl at the same time. I always think this is a mad method but with some good whisking (electric) it does all mix it. Don't worry if there are any lumps though as when it goes in the iron it really isn't noticeable. 
2. Leave the batter to stand for about 30 minutes to allow it to swell and thicken.
3. Turn on the waffle iron and when it's hot spread on some butter, if you don't the batter will stick...and it makes the waffle even more buttery when it comes out, nom.
4. You'll see the iron lid rise up as the waffle cooks, basically it's trial and error to see if it's beautiful and golden, if not, place the lid back down and give it some more time. Some irons have a light that changes when it's cooked but even they're not always spot on so just keep checking - it won't affect the cooking.
5. Eat! Best eaten when warm in my opinion, choose your topping and enjoy. Nom!

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The Lemon Drizzle Smuggle

I'm going back to Norway for the weekend tomorrow night to see my nan. I've heard it's about -12!! So not sure how I'll cope with that, being half Norwegian doesn't mean I have proper fish blood, I need heat!

I haven't seen my nan since Christmas so it'll be great to see her, and all she has asked me to bring in a lemon drizzle cake. She loves cakes and demands it in her home everyday, which I absolutely love - cake is clearly in the genes.

I have posted this recipe before but who cares, it's gorgeous! And it helps remind me that spring is indeed on its way and will be here soon...I hope.....please? I also got an iPad this week, yay! Which I've also found is very useful to use as a cookbook (mainly because I couldn't find the book I got this recipe from to just brought up my blog!)

It's also means I got to use my mixer my nan got me again, I'm afraid there will be lots of 'mixer shots' in my future posts, unfortunately it was really dark last night so the pictures aren't too bright and sunny which they should be when you think of lemon drizzle.

I have heard you're not allowed to take food in hand luggage....which is all I'm taking. I did take a cake in August and that went fine so I hope it doesn't actually turn into a smuggling job! Could you image being caught in customs with cake...I'd look like a maniac...and you know they'd only eat it later! (p.s if you're reading this lovely airport people... please don't take my cake!)

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 240g caster sugar
• pinch of salt
• 180g plain flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 70g butter, salted
• 100ml double cream
• grated zest of two lemons - please, never use artificial flavourings, use real lemons people!

Drizzle

• 100ml water
• 80g caster sugar
• juice of one lemon

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Grab a mixing bowl and slowly whisk your eggs, now slowly add the sugar, flour, salt and baking powder. Grate the zest and add to mixture,  melt the butter and add that too along with the cream and whisk. Grease and line a loaf tin, pour in mixture and bake for about an hour...sometimes you may need more.

About 12 minutes before it's done make the drizzle. Boil the sugar and water together at 140 degrees (measure with a sugar thermometer), add the lemon juice and let boil for 10 minutes. When you take the cake out of the oven immediately lacquer on the drizzle, use all of it too, it will sink in.

Once it's cool -if you can wait....eat! Nom! Or do what I do and sneak it in your hand luggage to Norway. Pin It Now!

Norwegian National Costume Confirmation Cake!

That title was a bit of a mouthful, and so is this cake! We attended a Confirmation in Norway, I think I've only been to one before when I was young in Norway so I don't really remember too much about it so it great to experience one. It was very different to what we have here and very popular over there where you really celebrate it with speeches (which we sing), lots of food and and family parties!

And me being me of course I had to make a cake! Most people there when confirmed are given a national costume (Bunad), theyr'e really big on it over there and really expensive so they are often special gifts for occasions like these. I do have one myself, each county has their own design, I didn't have enough money for a real proper one so me and my mum designed one just how I wanted it which was brilliant and made it for a fraction of the price but it looks brilliant. However seeing so many at the weekend it really made me want a fully embroidered one! ANYWAY! This is where I took my inspiration for the cake, I thought I would make one in the style of the Bunad (from Lundeby) she was receiving. This was no easy task, it is beautiful embroidered with floral patterns, but I knew it would be brilliant so I simply had to give it a go.

Armed with my mum's Bunad book with all of the designs I figured out in my mind how I wanted it to look, so flying over to Norway my hand luggage was full of decorationg equipment and the giant cupcake (of course) it self in two pieces. I was a little worried I wouldn't be allowed it through security and maybe that I was smuggling with it (which of course I wasn't!) but luckily it all went through! I dreaded the thought of chunks being taken out for testing!! In the normal luggage I also had a bout a kilo of icing in various colours which I did think could also look a bit dodgy on the scanner but two hours later we all arrived fine with no chunks missing or cases being ripped open by sniffer dogs - success.

The floral pattern was quite complicated so I found a couple of the main pattern sections to copy around the base of the cake. The Bunad comes in blue or black and I knew she was getting a blue one, I luckily got the colour spot on which is great as it actually looked a lot darker in photos but I wanted it to look edible so I made it lighter which turned out to be the actual colour so that was lucky.
For the base I used a lot of Baby Blue Sugarflair paste (which left a lot of people blue-mouthed!) and for the flowers, two different shades of Claret, I decided it would be easier to pipe the stems and buds on with writing icing I got in the shop from Dr.Oetker. I made the petals from using a leaf cutter I had and cut out the petals individually, I then used the darker pink and cut out smaller leaves to get different shading, I actually think this was a great technique as the flower shapes weren't the standard ones and if I were going to cut them out by hand I'd be there until the next day!

For the top I did my normal rose piping in vanilla buttercream, I wanted it to look a little like a dress with the base with the skirt and the top being the shirt. On the shirt also they were gorgeous Bunad jewelery which is again quite expensive but great quality and really sets the dress off and there are so many different kinds and sizes everyone has at least one piece. I thought I would try to make some of the jewelery out of fondant to put on the front, I went for the classic style jewelery which you can get in silver/gold. I've recently bought some Dr.Oetker gold and silver colour spray so this was a great time to try it out. It's hard to explain how it looks so I will include pictures of the dress etc so you can see what I mean. These had to travel wrapped in bubble wrap in a plastic box as they were so delicate and had to be assembled the night before.

It took me about 3/4 hours to decorate the night before. But I don't mind at all as she was so happy when she saw it as it was a surprise. In Norway, we like to eat cake, and it was so nice to see a table just full of them!  The one on the bottom right picture is called Kranse Kake, a cake made up of almond rings decorated with runny icing and flags. Traditionally they are stacked like you can see here but do come in other forms, you will find this cake at most Norwegian parties. You may think I'm crazy to arrive somewhere and decorate a cake that night for the next day, but it's what I do for family, everyone gets a cake at some point!

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Old School Post Of The Month - Norwegian Krumkaker

OK so I have included these in a post before, talking about the seven kinds of christmas biscuits they make in Norway, but I thought now they deserved a post all to themselves. My grandmother always had these in her house, and I never realised she made them herself until I asked how they made them and she produced an amazing cast iron krumkake iron with a great floral pattern - I was in love.

So she got me my very own iron...weighing about a tenth of hers and no where near as gorgeous, but I did have to take it on the plane...and had to explain what is was at security, but I loved it all the same. So she taught me how to make them and shared her recipe with me (next pic on the right). I love it when we can do these things together, being in different countries I try to soak up as many baking tips I can when I see her, and raid her recipe file.  I do realise many of you don't have these irons...so I guess this may be more aimed at my Europeans readers! I have found one you can buy in the UK but it's a little pricey, here.

The recipe is very similar to a pancake recipe, with a secret ingredient, ground cardamom - which isn't that secret if you're from Norway but we went all over the country looking for the stuff and couldn't find it so had to grind it from the pods, that is how important the flavour is....grinding enough is brutal so I bought about 4 packs when I visited last. It always feels like I'm back in Norway when the house smells of baking and cardamom.

So here is the best recipe in the world.
Ingredients

3 eggs
150g caster sugar
150 melted and chilled butter
150 plain flour (sifted)
1/2 tsp vanilla sugar/essence
1/2 ground cardamom
2-4 tbsp water

Mix eggs and sugar until big and fluffy like eggnog.  Then add the butter, flour, vanilla and cardamom. Leave batter to swell for 30 minutes (optional). I needed to add a few tablespoons of water, you don't want to batter to thick or they stay soft even when set. It usually takes about 5 tries to get the right consistency...you'll just know. Turn on iron when ready to bake and butter plates for the first cone. Add a tablespoon of batter in the middle and press the lid of the iron down. Cook until golden brown, remove and wrap around the cone roller (krumkaker pinne), or around a self made one. Set for 20 seconds and leave to cool. I then had some chocolate left over so I melted it and drizzled it over the krumkaker to give them an extra bit of sweetness, and mixes up the traditional bake a bit. Store them in an airtight tin and they keep for a good while. They are often served with freshly whipped cream too and with some coffee. Eat! Nom! Pin It Now!