Christmas is around the corner!

It's about this time of year when I start getting Christmas on the brain. Yes, I'm definitely one of those people who watch Christmas movies unacceptably early and start listening to Amy Grant come October (ok ok, I've already listened to her Christmas album once...). I just love Christmas time.

Since we had Astrid, it's been really fun talking about what kinds of traditions we want to have as our own family of 3. We always are traveling to our respective families homes for the actual day, but for the past few years we celebrate just us on New Years Day. I love waking up at home and drinking coffee by our tree. It's the BEST! And now it's even more exciting that Astrid is in the mix. I think she will be really into everything Christmas this year, including the cookies!

In the spirit of Christmas soon approaching, I decided to do some prelimary "research" on what cookies to make this year. So I bookmarked some new Swedish cookies I haven't made before and decided to bake and eat my way through them to see which ones would make the cut for this year's Christmas. It's tough work, but someone has to do it. 

First, I baked these Almond Spice cookies from the famous Swedish cookbook Swedish Cakes and Cookies (or Sju Sjorter kakor in Swedish). I love a good spice cookie in wintertime and these didn't disappoint. Be warned though, they are subtly spicy, not like gingerbread or pepperkakor. They only contain cinnamon and cardamom for the spices - one of my favorite spice combos!

Ready for fika!

I really enjoyed the texture of both the ground almonds in the cookies, and the pearl sugar on top. And don't worry, I didn't eat the entire place of cookies.

Verdict: I liked them! Especially warm from the oven. After I bake through more recipes, I'll do a final verdict of what makes the Christmas Cookie list for 2016 - these are definitely a contender!

Swedish Almond Spice Cookies

3/4 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

2/3 cup ground almonds (I used blanched, slivered almonds and gave them a quick grind in my food processor)

Garnish with pearl sugar 

Preheat oven to 400. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add egg. Combine remaining ingredients and add, kneading lightly. Form into small balls and roll in pearl sugar and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Notes: I found 10 minutes was perfect - the bottom of these cookies seemed to brown quickly. I would check them early. They didn't stick to the pearl sugar easily when I rolled the balls in; I had to gently push the sugar into the dough. If you don't have pearl sugar, I'm sure regular sugar would suffice  but you'd miss out on the crunchy texture that it offers. If you have a local IKEA you can check their pantry section - they used to carry it in the past at ours, but I haven't seen in there in about a year now.

Happy Fika-ing! :)

*This post may contain affiliate links, but all opinions remain my own

Time For Cake!

I have been really into trying new cake recipes these days. You may remember me saying in the past that I'm not much of a cake person, well, my friends, that has changed. 

Lately, I've been baking tons of the cakes from the Fika cookbook. [sidenote: this is one of my most favorite Swedish cookbooks ever - so many make-again recipes] Most recently, this scrumptious fyriskaka, or apple cake. It has everything you'd want for a Swedish fall cake - apples, cardamom, cinnamon and it pairs wonderfully with a strong cup of coffee. 


First, you will need to gather your apples. It helps if you have a really cute assistant. 

Fyriskaka:

9 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 heaping teaspoon freshly ground cardamom

3-4 medium apples

3-4 tablespoons brown sugar

1.5 teaspoons cinnamon

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter and add the cardamom, set aside. Peel and slice the apples thinly and toss in 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar and the cinnamon. 

Combine the cooled butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder. Spread batter into the pan and place the apple slices in the batter in a circular formation. Top with remaining brown sugar and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes up clean.

I highly recommend making this vanilla sauce to pour over top, or serve with vanilla ice cream. 

Before baking:

 

Fresh from the oven:

Happy baking!

*this post may contain affiliate links but all opinions remain my own

Cardamom Cake

I posted about this scrumptious cake just a few weeks ago and have had a few people request the recipe - so here it is in all its glory!

What I love about this cake is that it's a heartier, not overly sweet cake. I highly recommend tracking down some pearl sugar for the topping (IKEA carries it, as do specialty food stores). I'm sure normal sugar would work in a pinch, but then you miss out on the amazing texture and crunchiness the pearl sugar offers.

Swedish Cardamom Cake
1 cup butter or margarine
2 eggs
1 +1/4 cups sugar
3 + 1/3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 + 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 + 1/4 cups milk
Garnish: Pearl Sugar or coarsely chopped almonds (I prefer pearl sugar)

Grease a 10" round cake pan and preheat the oven to 350. Melt the butter and let it cool. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light yellow and very thick. Add all additional ingredients until combined. Pour into prepared pan and sprinkle with pearl sugar and/or almonds. Bake for approximately 1 hour - test to make sure it's fully baked. Let cool completely before serving.

Be sure to use freshly ground cardamom if you can - it really makes a difference!

I like to enjoy a slice of this cake with a nice cup of coffee and a friend or two.

Enjoy!

*Update: My sisters made this for my baby shower in a bundt pan and it worked out wonderfully! Just omit the pearl sugar on top, as it will stick to the pan and not release without leaving chunks of the cake behind (learned the hard way...). This way, you can also refer to it as more of a bread instead of cake and eat it for breakfast. :)

Scandinavian Christmas: Day 11

Welcome to Day 12! I can't believe the series is already wrapping up! It's been so much fun to hear from everyone - a huge thank you to all who participated either in preparing a guest post or came to read! 

Today we will be hearing from my Dad! He will be sharing his delicious Swedish Rye Bread recipe! I love this stuff. I can eat an entire loaf by myself - and I'm not even exaggerating. I have such great memories of eating this bread at Christmas, and loving it when we had leftovers (this rarely happens now that there are so many of us!) and could use it to make sandwiches for our school lunches with it the next week. So good! 

Hi I'm Kathryn's dad, Mark. I will be demonstrating a recipe for Swedish Rye bread that was passed down from my Grandmother to my Mother and now from myself to Kathryn and her sisters.  This will be my third contribution to Kathryn's Scandinavian Christmas. This bread was a favorite of Kathryn and her sisters when they were little.  They would always want to help with kneading the dough.  The recipe is as follows:

   Swedish Rye Bread

            

1 quart of milk                                             1/4 cup warm water

1 cup shortening (butter)                           grate the skin of 3 oranges

1/4 cup of molasses                                   1 Tbsp anise seed

1/2 cup of dark Karo syrup                        2 cups of medium rye flour

1 Tbsp salt                                                    about 12 cups of white flour

3 cakes of yeast

1 cup of brown sugar

Scald the milk, butter, molasses, brown sugar, Karo syrup and salt.  Let this cool to room temperature so that the yeast is not inactivated when added.

Activate the yeast in a 1/4 cup of luke warm water with a pinch of sugar on top to get it started.  Add the yeast, grated orange peels, anise seed and rye flour to the milk mixture and let that rise for 1/2 hour.  

Then add enough white flour and knead to make a stiff dough, about 12 cups. 

Take this ball of dough and set aside in a large bowl and let rise until doubled, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. 

Take this dough and roll out and divide into 5 loaves and place in bread pans and set aside to rise again. 

  Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 45 minutes.  Thump with finger and if it sounds hollow, its done. 

Remove from pans and place on rack to cool and immediately take a stick of butter and rub all over the crust, (top, bottom and sides) to keep the crust nicely soft.  

I hope all of you will enjoy trying this for your holiday season and thank you Kathryn for another opportunity to participate in your Scandinavian Christmas.  It is so much fun to see your passion for all things Swedish.  

Thanks again to everyone who participated! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

Scandinavian Christmas: Day 10

Welcome back to Day 10, everyone! I can't believe the series is almost over!! Today my cousin's wife, Lisa  will be sharing with us! Lisa blogs over at Married To Medicine,  and has some great recipes and hot clothing tips for shopping sites like Zulily! Today she's going to share the ever-delicious cardamom coffee bread recipe!

Thank you to Kathryn for inviting me to do a guest blog on her "Scandinavian Christmas" series - you can find and follow the series on her blog "The Pickled Herring."  She is my husband's cousin on his Swedish side... and if you've ever wondered what Scandinavian cooking, crafting, and fika-ing is all about, look no further than her blog!

I've actually written before about how I'm a Scandinavian poser.  I love the food and I look the part but I'm actually just a Euro-mix and there's nothing Scandinavian in there.  Hasn't stopped me though.    I went to a Norweigan-affiliated college and married myself right into a culturally Swedish-American family.  My husband's family lives near the Swedish area of Chicago.  They are ECC Christians and most attend college at North Park University (both Swedish-affiliated).  They have a massive "smorgasbord" on Christmas Eve, and some of the nuttier ones actually wake up at dawn on Christmas morning for a Julotta service.  (Never.  Again.).

Me, I'm just in it for the food.  (And the excuse for extra cute Christmas decor in our apartment).  And one of my absolute favorites is a simple, moist, sweet, little-something-extra bread.  I have no idea how my MIL keeps it stocked at the epic Murakami Christmases, where seriously like 30 people (more one year!) stay in the same house and never stop eating this bread.  She must make like 20 loaves of it and freeze them all or something.  But it is THE staple of Christmases I've come to know and love over the past 15 years and it's just perfect - you'll never tire of it.  So if you're all snowed in or you have a day you can spend relaxing at home, I highly recommend Swedish Cardamom Coffee Bread.  The recipe makes four loaves - perfect for sharing or freezing!  My husband's family members are most likely to be found eating a slice toasted with butter, cinnamon, and sugar or plain with a slice of jarlsburg cheese.  I like it just straight up - so moist.

Swedish Cardamom Coffee Bread

1 slightly rounded Tbsp. dry yeast

1/4 cup lukewarm water

1 tsp. sugar

2 cups warm milk

1/2 cup butter

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar

2 tsp salt

2 eggs plus 3 egg yolks, well beaten

7-9 cups flour (all-purpose)

2 Tbsp ground cardamom

Pastry brush or other tool to smooth on egg glaze

Cinnamon and sugar mixture (to taste - about 1-1.5 cups)

Stir the first three ingredients in a bowl to prepare the yeast. 

In a mixer, mix the butter, sugar, and salt.  Add the warm milk - to melt the butter.  Cool to lukewarm (so that you don't cook the eggs when you add them).  Add the cardamom.  Add the beaten eggs and egg yolks.  Add the yeast.  Mix.  Mix in 6 cups of flour and beat until smooth.  Turn out batter onto a floured (1 cup) board.  Gently kneed in the balance of the flour with greased hands for 5-10 minutes.  Place in a greased bowl.  Cover with wet towel.  Let rise until doubled in a barely-warm oven with a pan of water - should take 1.5-2 hours. 

Having a blast with the lady herself - people who see pics ask  me if she's "the Asian one" - no, she's Swedish.

Turn the risen dough out on a lightly floured board.  Kneed for about half a minute.  Divide into 4 equal parts; these will be your loaves.  Working with one part at a time, divide that part in 4 again and roll out into 4 ropes.

And now I'm a real poser - this was 2009 so I was 29 here.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Gather 4 ropes at one end and press them together.  Braid by starting with the rope on the right and weaving it over to the left, under-over-under.  Repeat with the rope that is now on the right, always weaving right to left.  Pinch the ends together.  It doesn't have to be perfect - mine never are.

Place the braids on greased cookie sheets (2 braids per sheet) and cover with another wet towel.  Let rise until double (45 minutes - 1 hour).  Take one egg, add a tsp of water, beat, and smooth it over the top of the loaves.  Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the top of each loaf, just cram it on 

Mine.

Mark's mom's.  Hers look way better but you can mess it up like I do and it still tastes great!

Bake 1 pan with 2 loaves at a time for 20 minutes.  Check and add 1-2 minutes as needed.  Check the bottom along the edge to avoid blackening.  The top and bottom should be browned.  Cool on racks if possible.

Pretend you're 29 again as soon as these come out of the oven.   That way you can eat twice as much!

Scandinavian Christmas: Day 6

Welcome to Day 6! Today I'm so excited to have my niece, Anna, and one of my sisters, Krista, share this delicious Spritz Cookie recipe - a family favorite! I get to see this two in just a couple days and couldn't be more excited!

Spritz Cookies
By Anna and Krista Palmquist

Spritz cookies are a type of Christmas Swedish cookie that is a part of Swedish tradition. Me and my mom made them because they are yummy and they save well (unless my dad eats them first!). The process we went through to make these cookies is really quite simple. Here are the steps:

1. One cup butter ( no margarine ) 

2. Half cup white sugar

3. Half tsp. almond extract

4. 1 egg yolk 

5. 2 cups flour. (**scant) 

6. A fourth tsp. salt 

Cream the butter , add the sugar and cream thoroughly.

 Add extract and egg (yolk) and then flour . Force dough through cookie press onto ungreased 

baking sheet.

  We make them into little wreaths and use candied red and green cherries to decorate.

  Bake 7-10 minutes in 400 degree oven ( I sometimes use 375 oven ) . Watch them so theydon’t burn --the edges should only be a little bit brown.

**Note : We test try the first ones to see if there is enough flour . We also take a table knife and put it into the dough . If the dough does not stick to the knife you have enough flour. If not , add the rest of the 2 cups of flour.

We hope you enjoy these delicious treats! 

Krista and Anna Palmquist

Fresh Apple Cake

It's the weekend! And a grand weekend at that. Our good friends are getting married today (yay!), it finally has cooled down here in LA, and I had time to bake!

Ryan and I went apple picking last weekend with some friends in Oak Glen. Ever since, the apples have been staring me down all week in the fridge. I couldn't decide what to make with them until I came across this apple bundt coffee cake recipe. I love coffee cakes. They are the perfect midday fika and you can also eat them for breakfast because it has the word coffee in it [sound logic, don't you think?].

I apparently couldn't wait to try the cake before taking a photo. Oops. 

This cake is quite scrumptious. I used this recipe here on the Food Network site, and subbed out the 1 1/4 cups oil for 3/4 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup oil instead. I also did a cinnamon glaze instead of the honey glaze it called for. I think it would be even more delicious with some Swedish vanilla sauce! Yum!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Pickled Sriracha Chard Stems

If you know my husband Ryan at all, you know that he's pretty obsessed with spicy foods. And I'm not talking just a hint-of-spice kind of obsessed, but rather the let-me-douse-my-entire-meal-with-crushed-red-peppers-until-my-nose-runs kind of obsessed. Needless to say, when the great Sriracha panic happened back in May, we stocked up on the hot sauce...just in case. Thankfully, the Sriracha panic subsided and the local factory never shut down production [phew!]. All that to say, if you like spicy foods and Sriracha, you will love these pickled chard stems!

We got 2 insanely huge bunches of red chard in our CSA* this month - the leaves were bigger than my head! After using a few leaves in our breakfast smoothies, then in some lentil soup, I started researching other recipes for chard. When I came across a recipe for Sriracha fridge pickles using chard stems, I knew I had stumbled upon gold.

They were super easy to whip up, too. I made them before heading to work in the morning they were that easy and quick. And that's saying something coming from a non-morning person.

If you feel like whipping some up yourself, all you have to do is cut up the card stems in 3-4 inch lengths and put them in a jar. Then...

...start mixing up your pickling liquid.

I cut the recipe in half and skipped the onion (only because I was trying to save time).

They were so fast to make. I even made it to work early!

And check out that gorgeous color!

I'm excited to use these in tacos and salads. I might even venture to use them with eggs and toast, or perhaps even just eat them straight from the jar.

Sriracha Pickled Chard Stems

slightly adapated from Bon Apetit

Chard stems from 2 bunches of red chard

1/2 cup vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

1 cup sugar

1/4 tsp celery seed

1.5-2 Tbl Sriracha hot sauce

Cut up your chard stems in 3-4 inch hunks and put into a mason jar. Heat your vinegar and sugar mixture slightly until sugar is dissolved. Add celery seed and Sriracha and mix. Pour over chard stems and put the lid on. Refrigerate for 2 days before eating. 

Enjoy!

* Use my code to get $10 off your first CSA box if you want to sign up for your own! KATH5242

DIY Cinnamon Sweetener / Simple Syrup

Lately, I've been all about cold beverages. It's probably because of the LA heat, but besides my morning cup of hot joe, I can't bring myself to drink hot coffee in the afternoon anymore. What's happening to me?! Fear not. I found a way to work in my daily coffee intake by whipping up some fun iced coffee beverages. Infused simple syrups! This cinnamon one has been my recent fave (I'll have to share the cardamom one later!), and it's positively delightful in a cup of cold brew iced coffee with milk.

Here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
1.5 cups water
1.5 cups sugar
5 cinnamon sticks
You can increase amounts to make more, just use equal parts sugar and water and up the spice.

Bring the water to a boil in a small saucepan. Once it reaches a boil, add the cinnamon sticks and let steep for about 5 or 10 minutes.

The water should look a bit brown like the cinnamon has infused.

Remove the cinnamon sticks from the water and add the sugar. Stir until all the sugar is dissolved.

Bottle it up!

Enjoy in iced coffees, hot coffees, hot chocolate, or even a fancy schmancy cocktail! It will keep well in the refrigerator for at least 2 weeks.

I have been loving this stuff with cold brew coffee...so good! It's delicious all year round - but espeically during the holidays when things start cooling down (my favorite time of year!). This will warm up any drink! One day, I may even create a Shutterfly recipe book to keep track of all the creations I've tried.

Stay tuned! I'll be sharing a fun cold brew coffee tutorial next week, which includes 2 awesome giveaways! 

Don't miss out - August 11!