Ingredient: sugar

Maybe French Apple Cake

(stealing is that thing geniuses do right?)

This really isn’t my recipe. It just might be my favorite cake though. Our mum passed a couple of years back and she really loved to make it, so maybe there’s a bit of nostalgia mixed in there, but… anyway. Me and my brother Olov especially love this cake. And you know, he had a food blog called “Falsk Mat” (it’s in Swedish, I’ve linked to it before). And he also wanted to tell the world (more precisely Sweden) about this cake. But it’s not his cake either. He named it: “Mammas franska äppelkaka” (“Mum’s French Apple Cake“). Suck up much Olov? I kid. I really shouldn’t use such an arrogant tone as this is unquestionably yet another chapter in “posting recipes that Olov has already posted”.

So it’s our mum’s cake? Well, she did have a real good run when she made it on an at least semi-regular basis. But it’s not quite her cake either, though she did tweak it to become much better (suck up much… myself?).

It’s from the Swedish cook book “Vår kokbok” (“Our Cook Book”) or possibly “Annas mat” (“Anna’s Food”) where the cake is called “Hanna’s franska äppelkaka” (“Hanna’s French Apple Cake”). So it’s a French apple cake out of a Swedish cook book from a time in which I really don’t think Sweden had other food cultures quite nailed down. I’m not sure if it’s really that French is what I’m trying to say.

To us though, it really is our mum’s cake. At first, I wasn’t completely sure if I remembered what she changed, but I had a feeling she primarily upped the batter to apples ratio. I spoke to Olov about it and said that I kind of remember something about mum liking the batter a lot and that she might have increased it in the recipe. He said…

“oh yes, she really loved the batter. I remember her saying, about the amounts in the recipe from the cook book ‘It has to be a mistake…‘”

….which I had completely forgotten but jolted me back to hearing her say it, which was really lovely.

Then I spoke with my dad, who sent me the recipe from the cook book in which mum had made notes about increasing the batter (+50%). Well… she adjusted it further upwards since, to almost +200%! Aaaaand I’ll be honest… when I did it from a recipe that mum jotted down for Olov, I actually thought “It has to be a mistake…” because there was sooo much batter. I guess we’ve come full circle 🙂 So, you know, dial it back by a third if you like, but be sure to try mum’s maxed out version first!

I’m counting on that this mind blowing exposition has led you straight to the heart of the issue? We’ve ended up with a heck of a cake here. Combined with home made vanilla ice cream it’s downright dangerous.

Do it right away and never look back. And hey, if it goes well: why not dedicate it to a parent?

Special Equipment

  • Ice cream maker
  • Immersion blender
  • Thermometer
Created with Sketch. 60 minutes + oven time Created with Sketch. 10 (cake), 5 (ice cream)

Ingredients

  • For the cake
  • 5 large apples (adjust if you use smaller apples)
  • 200 galmond
  • 300 gbutter
  • 320 gsugar (ca 4 dl)
  • 6 eggs
  • 3 lemons
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 4 egg yolks (ca 80 g, take 5 yolks if the eggs are smaller)
  • 2.5 dlcream
  • 2.5 dlmilk
  • 1 vanilla rod (or 2 if you're feeling wealthy)
  • 70 gsugar (just short of a dl)

Directions

  1. Start with the ice cream. This is basically this recipe but with vanilla instead of popcorn, so I’m gonna go through it pretty quickly. Slice the vanilla rod and scrape out the seeds. Heat up the milk and cream with the vanilla rod. When it comes to a boil, take it off the heat.

  2. Whisk the yolks (4) and the sugar (70 g) together. Pour the hot milk/cream- mix over the whisked sugar and yolks while whisking.
  3. Put the resulting mix back on the stove on medium to low heat. While stirring with a flat bottomed wooden spoon or spatula, let the mixture reach 82-84 C and then take it off the heat, and let it cool down in the fridge (let the vanilla rod stay in the batter). After an hour and onwards, it’s ready for the ice cream maker.
  4. Now for the cake: peel the apples and cut them into big pieces (roughly 1/4). Put them in a pan, cover them with water and add 1 dl of sugar. Bring this to a boil and let it simmer for about 3-5 minutes.
  5. Mix the butter (300 g) and sugar (240 g) together.
  6. Crack the eggs (6) and divvy upp the white and the yolks in different bowls.
  7. Add the juice from the lemons (3) and the peel from one lemon to the yolks. Then add the almonds (200 g) and mix with an immersion blender until the almonds are really smashed into pieces (the consistency should be like a loose-ish porridge). Stir this in with the sugar/butter- mix.

  8. Put the oven to 200 C.
  9. Whisk the egg whites into a thick foam.
  10. Put the boiled apples into an oven shape, turn the egg white foam into the almond/yolk/sugar/butter/lemon- mix, and pour everything over the apples.

  11. Bake in the oven on 200 C for about 30 minutes.

Let it cool down for at least 20-30 minutes before serving. If it’s at all hot when serving it’s gonna look more like this…

…than this…

…in which the cake has had time to set (in the fridge no less). Just fyi.

I’m not recommending you to it it cold mind you. I’m just preparing you for the reality with regard to the esthetics. When I sent the first picture (in which it’s more of a “pile” than a “piece” of cake) to Danilo for illustration he just replied: “I can’t illustrate that, it’s just a blob”. So, you know… it’s not a beautiful cake is all I’m saying.

Oh, and by the way, this is my mothers original recipe flaunting her rather insane hand writing.

Miss you mum.

Banoffee Pie

(banana and toffee, bananatoffee, banoffee, get it?)

This is a ridiculous dessert. I guess it is very English (I think it’s English… look, I’m not gonna google it)? At least it feels very English, in that it’s just… too much… of… stuff? Digestive biscuits mixed with substantial amounts of additional butter? Condensed, super sweet milk? Banana? Whipped cream? Let’s get it all in there.

I’ve added a bit of acidity as the quadruple threat of “sweet and fat with no acidity”, i.e. digestive biscuits x condensed milk x banana x cream just feels a bit much for me. But the thing is, the sum of the parts really has got something. It’s rather glorious actually, in all its too-muched-ness. I find myself really crave it from time to time and it’s real easy to make, so I thought you might like it.

Created with Sketch. 4 hours (but three of them is waiting for the condensed milk to gel) Created with Sketch. 6-8

Ingredients

  • 200 gDigestive biscuits
  • 100 gbutter
  • 2 bananas
  • 200 g(2 dl) of cream (40-ish % fat)
  • 400 gcondensed milk
  • 1 lemon
  • Some sugar
  • Some cocoa powder
  • A bit of dark chocolate

Directions

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and put the can of condensed milk in the boiling water. Turn the heat down so the water is just simmering. Leave for three (3) hours. It’s important that the can is covered by water the entire time so you might have to add a bit of water after a while.
  2. Slice the two (2) bananas into one centimeter-ish thick pieces and put them in a bowl or a shallow container of some sort. Squeeze the lemon and pour the lemon juice over the banana slices.
  3. Melt the butter (100 g) and smash up the Digestive biscuits (200 g). Pour the melted butter over the crushed biscuits and mix with an immersion blender.
  4. Put the biscuit-butter-mash-up in a pie tin and spread it evenly across the bottom. Use something flat to really…. um, flatten it… Let it rest in the fridge for at least one hour.
  5. Thing is, now you’re basically done! When the condensed milk has simmered for three hours, take it out of the water, open the can and spread it on top of the biscuit bottom of the pie tin.
  6. Add the banana slices (don’t use the lemon juice at the bottom of the tray) on top and finish it off with some lightly sugared whip cream (200 g / 2 dl, couple of pinches of sugar), cocoa powder and grated dark chocolate. If you leave in the fridge for a while it gets a bit more set and the jellyfied condensed milk has time to cool down, but that’s basically up to you. I’d say that it’s good to go from the start but gets a bit better from some 30 minutes or so in the fridge.

This is… well, I’ve already said it several times but it bears repeating: too much. It’s really great though.

Kids really fucking love it as well, so that’s good. It’s soooo hard getting kids to finish their desserts, am I right?

Tarte Tatin

(accidents happen)

Tarte Tatin is a puff pastry apple… tart (well yes I guess, but is “tarte” the same thing as “tart”, no right?)? Pie? Cake? Something. It was invented by accident at Hotel Tatin in France, and thank the lord for accidents.

I’m not really sure exactly what it is about it that I like so much. I am a bit of a sucker for apples in desserts (I’ll be back with an even better but also a bit more complicated cake in a while) and there’s just something with the apple & caramelized sugar combo that’s… lovely.

It’s sweet. Maybe too sweet for some. Hanna (my girlfriend) thinks so, but she’s very sugar conservative. I might be a liiiittle bit wained off sugar but I thinks it’s right on the border, despite my recipe having quite a lot less sugar than other ones I’ve come upon. It depends a lot on the apples as well for sure. I recommend you to use quite sweet as well as not too sour apples, which might sound a bit counter productive when reading the above, but I think it fits best for this dish.

So how do you make this bad boy? Easy. You just pan-fry the apples in butter, sugar and lemon until the sugar starts to caramelize. Then you cover the the contents of the pan with puff pastry and bake it in the oven. When it has cooled down outside the oven you flip the pan upside down over a plate and out comes this lovely thing. I tend to think that it’s ok to buy the puff pastry. The store bought one is mostly pretty good and it’s a bit of a chore to do it.

Best eaten with vanilla ice cream so I’ll include a simple recipe for that as well. Mmmmm.

Special Equipment

  • Frying pan that you can put in the oven (most modern ones qualify)
Created with Sketch. 40 min Created with Sketch. 6-ish

Ingredients

  • For the Tarte Tatin
  • 4 quite bigapples (maybe five)
  • 1 lemon
  • 75 gbutter
  • 75 gsugar (ca 0.9 dl)
  • 300 gpuff pastry
  • For the vanilla ice cream
  • 250 gcream (2.5 dl)
  • 250 gmilk (2.5 dl)
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 70 gsugar
  • 1 vanillabean

Directions

Making the ice cream:

  1. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and put the together with the emptied bean in a pan.
  2. Add the milk (250g, 2.5 dl) and the cream (250g, 2.5 dl)
  3. When the milk-cream mixture reaches a light simmer, take it off the heat and let it rest while continuing to step four.
  4. Gently whisk the sugar (70 g, ca 0.8 dl) with five egg yolks.
  5. Pour the vanilla cream-milk-mixture into the sugar-egg-yolks while whisking.
  6. Add the mix back into the pan and heat it slowly up to 84 C, while stirring constantly (a flat wooden spoon scraping the bottom of the pan is ideal). When it reaches 84 C, take it off the heat (important to not exceed 84 C, but if you want to stop at 82/83 C, that’s completely fine). Pour the batter into a bowl and put it into the fridge.
  7. Now the ice cream is ready to go into the ice cream maker. If you have a fancy ice cream machine (active cooling), you can put the warm ice cream batter straight into the machine.If you have a less fancy ice cream maker (freeze block cooling), you’ll have to wait for the batter to get cold before putting into the ice cream maker, otherwise the warm batter will heat the freeze block too much, and the ice cream might not get the proper consistency.

Making the Tarte Tatin:

  1. Put the oven on 200 C.
  2. Peel the apples and cut them in four or six (or something) pieces.
  3. Heat a pan to medium, add the butter (75 g). When the butter stops sizzling, add the apples.
  4. Squeeze the lemon into the pan and add the sugar (75 g, ca 0.9 dl).
  5. After a couple of minutes, lower the heat to low/medium and let the apples fry until the butter caramelizes (gently turning them ones in a while).
  6. Let the apples cool off the stove for five minutes (but still in the pan), then cover the apples with puff pastry.
  7. Put into the oven for about 15-20 minutes. When done, flip the pan over a plate. Beware of hot caramelized sugar dripping on to your wrist when turning the pan. Let it rest for a while and serve luke warm.


Making Tarte Tatin is really very easy. You might have different preferences regarding how caramelized the sugar should be, how much lemon to use and so forth, but I think you’ll be happy from the first go. If you want to get adventurous later on, try mixing the apples with pears or even parsnip(!).

Making the ice cream might seem a bit involved at first but after a while it becomes second nature. It’s really worth getting comfortable with this. Whipping up some home made ice cream is a real home run and this basic recipe is the starting point for all cream-based ice creams.

Lemon & Meringue Tart

(when life gives you lemons, great!)

In Shanghai, me and Hanna lived close to one of the real hot spots for expats: Yongkang Lu. People mostly went there for the numerous bars. To eat, barhop and have a good time. This however didn’t sit well with the locals (living on the second floors along the street) who regularly started throwing things from their homes down to the street when the clock past 10PM – the official curfew.

Things deteriorated further I guess, as Chinese authorities closed the street shortly after we moved back to Sweden. Anyway, we didn’t go there much for the drinking but we did frequent a café called Pain Chaud. A surprisingly wonderful French café, though everyone weren’t aware of that. One of the first time we went there the Chinese waitress serving us asked what “Pain Chaud” meant and which language it was 🙂 A french café yes, yet unabashedly Chinese.

Most importantly, they made great cakes and best of the bunch was this lemon/ meringue tart. I’ve tried to recreate it and I think I’ve done a decent job. I’ve pieced it together from a version of the filling in Greg’s tangy lemon tart, a less sweet variant of this simple pie dough, and this Leif Mannerström Italian meringue recipe. The result is different from the thing we had, but very good.

Special Equipment

  • Bunsen burner
  • Electric mixer
  • Thermometer
Created with Sketch. 2 hours Created with Sketch. 15 pieces

Ingredients

  • For the dough
  • 150 gbutter
  • 180 gflour (3 dl)
  • 60 gsugar (≈ 0.6 dl)
  • 5 gbaking powder (1 tsp)
  • For the filling
  • 3 lemons
  • 120 gsugar (ca 1.25 dl)
  • 5 eggs
  • 150 gdouble cream, i.e cream with ca 40% fat (1.5 dl)
  • For the meringue
  • 120 gsugar (ca 1.25 dl)
  • 37 gwater
  • 60 gegg white (ca 2 egg whites)
  • 5 glemon juice (1 tsp)

Directions

Start with the dough.

  1. Put the oven on 180 C.
  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the dry ingredients.
  3. Spread the dough evenly in a pie tin. Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork.
  4. Coat the dough with aluminium foil, then fill it with (in order of preference) coins, rice, or beans. The purpose of this is to keep the dough from collapsing and generally keep its shape.
  5. Bake the dough for ca 15 minutes then take it out of the oven, remove the coins/rice/beans and the aluminium foil. Continue baking in the oven until golden, then let it rest.

  6. While the pie crust is baking, prepare the filling. Grate two of the three lemons (should result in ca 30-40 ml peel).
  7. Squeeze out the juice from all three lemons (should be 100-150 g/ 1-1.5 dl).
  8. Crack the eggs and mix them with the sugar. Whisk until reasonably smooth.
  9. Add the cream, the lemon juice and the grated lemon peel.
  10. Pour the filling into the (baked) pie crust. Bake in the oven on 130 C. It should be finished in about 30 minutes but depending on the shape of the pie tin (and the oven) the time can vary quite a lot. The lemon filling should be just set. If overcooked it becomes a bit to eggy.
  11. Let it cool for a bit outside the oven.
  12. And now for the Italian meringue. Mix 110 grams of the sugar with the water in a pot and bring it to 125 C. Let it cool to ca 115 degrees.
  13. Add the egg white, the lemon juice and the last 10 grams of sugar to the sugar solution whilst mixing with the electric mixer on the highest (most intense) setting for about three minutes. It’s very important that you’re mixing while you’re adding the egg white, otherwise you’ll get a very sweet omelette instead.Continue mixing on a slightly less intense setting until the meringue is fluffy and firm (ca 5 minutes).
  14. Spread the meringue across the surface of the pie.
  15. Give the top of the meringue a nice burnt tint with the Bunsen burner. You can do this with the grill setting on the oven (on warmest setting) but it doesn’t become as pretty 🙂

 

I just love love love this pie but it does require a bit of practice. I’ve made several ones that I haven’t been quite pleased with. The lemon filling is really so much better if the time in the oven is timed perfectly and the meringue can be a little bit tricky. Easily worth it to put in the time though.

Enjoy!

Pickled Red Onion

(1-2-3 go!)

Let’s say that you’ve never pickled before. Or maybe you have? Either way, you’ve probably had pickled red onion. On some burger or taco or whatever. And maybe you thought (if so, very reasonable): “man… this red onion thing… why is it so FRICKIN’ good?!”.

Let me tell it to you straight. It’s sugar. It’s insane amounts of sugar.

There are different ways of pickling though and not all of them are distilled vinegar/sugar based, but this particular pickling is done by letting something rest in a solution of distilled vinegar (also called spirit vinegar or white vinegar), sugar and water, to which you add flavoring agents, for example bay leaves, pepper corns or chili. The distilled vinegar comes in different concentrations. Make sure you get the 12% one (alternatively dilute a stronger one with water).

The most commonly used mixture for pickling in Sweden is called “1-2-3-solution” which is a handy name, as it’s both… a name, AND a description. 1-2-3  denotes the proportions of distilled vinegar, sugar and water (in deciliters). Thus, if you want to make say about four deciliters of 1-2-3-solution, you’ll need one deciliter of distilled vinegar (100 grams), two… yes TWO deciliters, which is around 160 grams, of sugar. And three deciliters (300 grams) of water. Every time I make this I think: “wait what? Two deciliters of sugar, I must have the one and two confused…. two?!”. So there you have it. It was sugar all along. Which makes sense, because sugar is great! I mean… not always and it’s for sure not good to eat too much of it. But these people who’re like “sugar doesn’t belong in food, it’s got no nutrients! Blah, blah…” and whatever? Loosen up. Sometimes, sugar is just what your dish needs. It’s a spice and in my humble opinion it doesn’t have to contribute anything but enjoyment.

You CAN use less sugar of course. Then it’s… less sweet. And more vinegary.

Pickled red onions. Real easy to make. Keeps for weeks (it doesn’t really go bad, but it’s best the first couple of days). And it’s so pretty!

Do it.

Created with Sketch. 20-30 minutes to make, 2+ hours to let the pickling process have its way with the onion Created with Sketch. 6

Ingredients

  • 2 red onions
  • 100 grdistilled vinegar (12%)
  • 160 grsugar
  • 300 grwater
  • 3 bay leaves

Directions

  1. Put the distilled vinegar, the sugar and 1/3 of the water in a pot and heat it on the stove. When the sugar is completely dissolved, take it off the stove and leave it to cool down in the fridge.
  2. Slice the red onion. If you’re short on time and want the pickling to go quicker, make the slices thin.
  3. Put the sliced onions and the bay leaves in a jar.
  4. Mix the remaining 2/3 of the water into the vinegar/sugar/water- solution. When the resulting mix is room temperature or cooler – pour it into the jar until the liquid covers the onion.
  5. Leave the jar in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Preferably over night. When the onion is a popping pink, it’s done.
  6. Enjoy!

This recipe is one of the building blocks of an upcoming one: bean tacos, which is frankly just the best. In the meantime, put it on your tacos why don’t you? Or burgers! Or serve it to mashed potatoes and meatballs. You get the idea, put it to good use.

Godspeed.

Popcorn Ice Cream

(how everything started)

So this must be the appropriate place to start, right? My brother first made this a long(ish) time ago. I don’t know, let’s say five years ago (you can find his recipe, in Swedish, here). I think he read about it on a Swedish blog but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it kinda became a thing in our circle. I then decided to do it one of the first times we had Danilo and Maria over for dinner, serving it with something that my father introduced me to: salt and olive oil on ice cream (which he in turn got from some place, probably Mathias Dahlgren actually Jamie Oliver). And it continued to be kind of a thing. It became something fun to serve new people and then annoyingly ask: ”…what do you think it is..? Guess!” (it really is pretty rare that it’s fun when someone asks you to guess, but… I’m naively open to the possibility that it might not always have been annoying).

So why the fuss, you might rightly ask. This just sounds like a hipstery over worked, over hyped, over well… this just sounds like the sorta thing that’s gonna be over pretty quickly, right? Not a thing that becomes something more than a fun (pretentious) little (annoying) thing? Buuuuut, listen, I know popcorn ice cream sounds weird, but the weird part is actually that it’s not weird at all. It’s just a really, really good flavouring for ice cream!

Quite frankly, it’s my favourite ice cream. And despite attempts to find a conceptually appropriate pairing, e.g. coca-cola sauce, I think salt flakes and olive really hold its ground against the alternatives. And you know what? I know it sounds weird, but the weird part is that it’s actually… yeah, you know where I’m going with this. It’s just great.

And so what if all the above makes me look like a bit of a quirky foodie type guy, can’t that just be ok?

Time-wise: if you have a fancy ice cream maker: ca 2 hours. 1.5 hours of prep, ca 30 (eh, maybe 40) min in the machine. Explain fancy! Fancy means active cooling. Cheaper ice cream makers have cooling blocks that have to be frozen in preparation to making the ice cream. In addition, with these machines you normally have to cool the batter before putting it in the machine. With an active cooling aggregate you can put warm batter in the machine (at least the one I have). I do think however, that results improve if the batter is pre-cooled, also in the case of active cooling. So:

If you have an freezing block style ice cream maker: Ca 4 hours. 1.5 hours of prep, 2 hours to let the batter cool down, 30 min (ish, very dependent on the actual machine) in the machine.

Ideally, regardless of machine, it’s preferable to make the batter the day before and stuff it in the fridge overnight.

Let’s get down to it shall we?

Special Equipment

  • You kinda have to have an ice cream maker to make ice cream. You can make it without but even a rudimentary (cheap) one makes a big big difference
  • A cooking thermometer
Created with Sketch. 2 or 4 hours depending on equipment Created with Sketch. 4 Servings

Ingredients

  • 300 gmilk
  • 300 grdouble cream
  • 60 gsugar
  • 80 gegg yolk (4-6 yolks, depending on size)
  • 50 gun-popped popcorn

Directions

  1. Pop the popcorn in a pot. Actually, add just a little bit of salt to the popcorn.
  2. Heat the milk and cream together in a pot.
  3. When the milk-cream mixture reaches a light simmer, take it off the heat and add the popped popcorn. Put this to rest for about 45 min under a lid.
  4. Mix the egg yolks with the sugar. Some light whipping will do.
  5. Sift away the popcorn from the milk-cream mixture. You should be left with ca 5 dl of popcorn-tasting cream-milk. Throw away the mushy popcorn and whisk the popcorn-milk-cream in with the egg yolk and sugar.
  6. Put the mixture in a pot and gently warm it to about 84 degrees Celsius. Stir the bottom of the pot continuously with a whisker or a wooden spoon. The important thing here is to not let anything stick to the bottom of the pot.

    The exact temperature is hotly debated (not really that hotly though…)! Some recipes say 82, others say just below 85. I say 84. The important part is to not let the yolk get to hot. If this happens, the batter gets grainy and taste a lot more like eggs. But don’t worry, there’s a fix! Repeat step 1-5. Easy, no? But seriously, it’s not that hard, just be careful. Start out on a fairly high (stove) temperature but reduce it quickly when the thermometer starts ticking faster. Reduce the heat as the temperature rises so that the temperature of the mixture (ideally) comes to a halt at 84 degrees. Remember to stir. Keep the temperature at 84 degrees for a little while, say 20-30 seconds, before removing the pot from the stove. And if you’re the nervous type, just stop a little bit short of 84.
  7. Let the batter cool down until it’s about fridge temperature. Best practise? Leave it in the fridge over night. This improves both taste and texture of the final product.
  8. Put into the freezer whatever you’re serving the ice cream in. Home made ice cream tends to melt pretty quickly. Serving it in chilled bowls really helps to counter this.
  9. Put the batter in the ice cream maker.

    My ice cream maker stops stirring automatically when the batter is wonderfully creamy*. This usually happens after about 20 minutes, if the batter starts out cool, and the machine then proceeds to freeze the ice cream. At -22 degrees C this can quickly make the ice cream too firm. Leave it in the machine (or put it in the freezer) for just 10 minutes before serving. It should then be firm, but still silky smooth.

 

*My former (cooling block) one, just stopped when it couldn’t manage to stir anymore because of the thickness of the ice cream, which is usually at about the same texture.

Serve in chilled bowls with a sprinkle of salt flakes and some olive oil. It is to be eaten post haste!

And hey, don’t forget to annoyingly ask your guests what they think the flavor is. They’ll love it probably.