Maple and Oak Designs

Hello all,
Once again I disappeared. I'm having a very hard time fitting my blogging into my life somehow. Whether for lack of time, inspiration or content. However today I'm back with a post (as you very clearly can see), and it's half-outfit post, half-introduction (to a company).

Without further ado, I want to introduce you to Maple and Oak Designs.
Leonie, the creator, owner and designer of Maple and Oak, and I have been Instagram friends for some time, and I have secretly admired her company of fun and unique accessories. So when Leonie contacted me about a collaboration I was very happy indeed.

Leonie kindly sent me one of her rockabilly headbands from her shop, and I love everything about it. First off, red is probably my favourite colour to wear. And secondly, and more importantly, polka dots! Polka dots people! I do love me some polka dots.

This headband instantly lifts any outfit with it's vintage inspired design. It's so cute, and effortlessly so. Gosh it's adorable!

Maple and Oak's accessories are hand made from vintage, reclaimed and retro fabrics, to reduce the strain on the planet, and it came from all the way over in Canada.

In August Maple and Oak will relaunch their website and shop. You can check it all out here.

Also, check out their Facebook page (here) and Instagram (@mapleandoak). I will let you in on a little secret too. If you follow Maple and Oak, there might *wink* be a coupon code coming in time with the relaunch of the website.

They ship internationally (yay) and have a whole myriad of wonderfully funky, quirky accessories. I've personally got my eyes on the hood scarves and felted ponchos (as well as the rest of their rockabilly headbands).

Headband: Maple and Oak Designs (here)

Blouse: Miss Patina (old)

Dress: Closet via ModCloth (old)

Shoes: ModCloth (here)

I love when you can feel the heart that goes into a creation, and with Leonie's Maple and Oak the love, hard work and fun is tangible.

Hope you're all doing great.
Much love,

Creamy-cheesey-chocolatey

Hello all,
Hope you're doing great.

It is time for a new recipe! Yay!
This is my go-to cheesecake. I baked it for my boyfriends family when they were over to my place for the first time, and it was a success. I've made it many times before, so I knew that it would be good.

This cheesecake is creamy, chocolatey and delicious. One of the things I love about it is that you can decorate it however you want. You can add berries or fruits during the summer season, or sprinkles when berries are scarce.

I added berries, some whipped cream and biscuit crumbs for decoration, and I think it looks rather nice.

 

Chocolate Cheesecake

INGREDIENTS

• Digestives, crushed - 200 grams
• Cocoa powder - 2 tablespoons
• Butter, melted - 100 grams
• Cream cheese - 900 grams
• Sugar - 150 grams
• Eggs - 4
• Dark chocolate, melted - 200 grams
• Vanilla powder - 1-2 teaspoons

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 150°C.

For the base: Crush the digestives into fine crumbs (I use a food processor) and mix with the cocoa powder. Pour the melted butter over the crumbs and mix until all crumbs are moist. Prepare a 24 cm springform cake tin by greasing the sides and lining the base with parchment paper. Press the moist crumbs into the base of the cake tin, flatten with hand or spoon, and then put into fridge.

For the cheesecake filling: Melt the chocolate (I use a double boiler), and allow to cool a little. Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with a handmixer until smooth and thick. Add one egg at a time and mix in. Do not over mix! Now spoon a little of the cream cheese mixture into the melted chocolate. This will even out the temperatures. Continue in this way until half of the cream cheese mixture is mixed with the chocolate. Then mix it all in.

Pour the filling onto the base. Place the cake tin in a larger baking tin and fill the outer tin with water. Bake in this waterbath for about 50 minutes. The times varies, and depends on your oven. The cake should be wobbly in the middle. Once you've removed the cake from the oven allow it to cool before placing it in the fridge, preferably overnight.

Dress: Joanie Clothing (here)

Hope you all liked this recipe, it really is worth making as it is so delicious. I'm sitting here drooling a bit just as I'm writing everything down.

Have a fantastic day.

Much love,

Galos de Joanie

Hi there you,

Long time no see. I'm back for a blog post, you guys.

I want to start by asking you how you are all doing.

What's going on in your life and how's the weather where you are?

Here it's just about getting a bit warmer. Last week it snowed basically every day, but finally the sun is out and you only need a regular spring jacket.

I wanted to write this post and let you all know about a brand that I only recently discovered (not sponsored though). I might have been late to the party (it's amazing that I even arrived at the party at all), as it seems to be a pretty popular brand on instagram.

The brand is called Joanie Clothing and wow!

I want everything they make. They have vintage and retro inspired clothes that have a south European feel to it, with French-inspired tops and this lovely dress that I'm wearing with a Portuguese Galo de Barcelos print. About this dress, I adore the warm summery colour and the detailed print. The little bow is like icing on a cake. It has become my favourite dress and I got plenty of compliments when wearing it this weekend.

Had you heard of Joanie?

Dress: Joanie Clothing (here)
Lipstick: Besame Cosmetics (here)
Necklace: Edblad

I wish you all a happy rest of the week. Take care.

Much love,

Mona

I did another cover

Hello all,

I hope you have had a most awesome Easter holiday.

I just wanted to share that I have done another cover that is now live on
my youtube channel. It's from the musical Amélie, based on my favourite
movie of all time.

I just cut my fringe into the Amélie-fringe and thought what better time to do a mini-cover from the musical that I wish I will one day be able to see.
Hope you enjoy it!

Much love,

Easter and Happiness

Hello all,
and Happy Easter!

It's been almost two months since my last post, and while I feel a bit bad for not having posted anything in this time I've honestly never felt better... Those of you who follow me on Instagram will know that I feel great health-wise. As I said in a post on IG, usually me not being active on here would mean that I'm not doing too good. Previously it has been during my rough times with bouts of strong depression or anxiety where I've not been around here. But I am very happy to say that my health hasn't been this good for years. I can barely remember the last time I was doing so well mentally, and I am also really happy to boot. I am however quite busy, with work and other things... Good things.

Again, if you've seen my IG lately you will know that I now have a boyfriend, and he is making me so happy it's ridiculous. I've never been the type of person to leave my happiness to someone else. I believe that you need to make yourself happy, and to be honest, I never understood what the big deal about a romantic relationship was. I still hold on to the fact that your happiness lies within you, but I'm definitely understanding the big whoop about a partner. It's like icing on a cake, it heightens my happiness, makes everything that much sweeter.

Anyway, so that's what's been going on in my life, work and boyfriend are keeping me busy, and blogging has taken a backseat. For Easter I had to bake though, so without further ado, here is my Easter bake.

As by tradition, I made cupcakes for Easter, with chocolate eggs from Lindt and they were delicious. Also, my sprinkles are from Sweetapolita.

I hope you all have a fantastic Easter with a bit of spring (in my city it's snowing...).
Much love,

Lemon Birthday

Hello all you lovely people,
I hope you are doing well. Today is my birthday, I turn 26, and I am weirdly okay with it.

I had an excellent birthday together with my lovely family. I received great gifts (among them Harry Potter related ones), and we saw Moana (which was so beautiful, and I wish Lin-Manuel Miranda will get the Oscar so badly)!

If you follow me on instagram you will have seen the amazing cake that my family got for me. It was fancy, and gorgeous. It was inspired by the Swedish Princesstårta in flavours, but made to look a bit more haute. It had an almond base and was filled with raspberries and topped off with a vanilla bavarois.

You would think that that cake would be enough, but no. Being who I am, I also needed to bake a birthday cake of my own, and while mine was much simpler, it was still delicious.

I made a lemon and vanilla layered cake with whipped cream frosting and a filling of lemon curd. It was one of the easier cakes I've ever done, so I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

Lemon and Vanilla Birthday Cake

INGREDIENTS

• 345 grams flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 225 grams butter, at room temperature
• 300 grams sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
• 250 ml milk
• 300 ml whipping cream
• 300 ml lemon curd
• Yellow food colouring (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Prepare two 20 cm round pans with parchment paper at the bottom.
In one bowl, sift the flour and baking powder together. In another bowl beat the butter until a bit fluffier. Then add the sugar and beat for several minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and add the vanilla. Add a third of the sifted flour and baking powder to the egg mixture, then add half of the milk. Continue to add the second third of the flour and finish off by adding the last half of the milk, followed by the last third of the flour.

Spread the batter into the two prepared pans, I like to weigh them so that they become equal in size. And then bake for about 30-35 minutes depending on your oven. A toothpick inserted in the centre should come out clean.
Let the cakes cool completely before you proceed.

Place one of the cakes upside down on your serving plate. Spread 250 ml of lemon curd on the cake. Then place the other cake (also upside down) on top of the spread lemon curd.

Whip the rest of the lemon curd together with the whipping cream until stiff peaks, adding a few drops of food colouring if wanted. Proceed to spread the lemon whipping cream frosting around and on top of the layered cake. Save a bit of the frosting to pipe a border around the cake and add sprinkles if wanted. My sprinkles are from Sweetapolita.

There you have it! Simple as that.
It became a very moist and fresh tasting cake. I liked it, especially considering it was done in a flash.

Have a fantastic week!
Much love,

Vday cleaning

Hello all you lovely people,
Happy Valentine's Day!!

I hope you all have a fantastic day, filled with love and chocolate (which is basically love, so love and love).

I have personally spent Vday loving myself - which is also important, and should not be forgotten. And then of course loving my family and friends. I also wanted to extend that love to you, by sharing a recipe with you!

These little pink rolls are called Dammsugare in Sweden, which means Vacuum cleaner. Why? I don't know. I've always thought it's because they're shaped like the vacuumy part of a vacuum cleaner. But for now it will remain a mystery.

Anyway, you take crumbs from biscuits or cakes and mix it together with a few other ingredients to get a sort of dough, then you roll out the dough to thin logs which you then wrap into marzipan (usually green, but I made a Valentine's-y pink instead).

The most important ingredient is arrack or punsch, these little things are also called Arrack-rolls or Punsch-rolls. I personally don't use alcohol when baking so instead I used arrack aroma. It does have a distinct taste/scent, but I like it very much. However, fair warning, not everybody likes it.

 
Without further ado, the recipe...

Vacuum cleaners

INGREDIENTS

• Crumbs from cake or biscuits, I used 8 digestives
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 30 grams almond paste
• 1 decilitre oatmeal 
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 85 grams butter, room temperature
• 0,5tsk Arrack aroma or actual arrack or punsch
• 400 grams marizpan
• Food colouring (optional)
• 150 grams dark chocolate

DIRECTIONS

Crush the digestives into crumbs, mix together with the cocoa powder, vanilla sugar, almond paste, oatmeal and brown sugar. Then add the butter (at room temperature) and make into a dough. Lastly add the arrack aroma. Form dough into thin logs, about 1.5 fingers thick. And place in fridge.

If colouring marzipan do so now, and then roll out the marzipan to a rectangle. Take the dough logs out of the fridge and place onto the marzipan. Wrap the marzipan around the logs and cut away the excess. Cut the logs into smaller pieces. Melt the chocolate and dip both ends of a roll into the chocolate.

Enjoy!

Much love,

The Nutella Semla

Hello all you lovely people,

Last year on a day just like this, I claimed that it was no ordinary day. And I'm here to say that is the case this year as well!

It's World Nutella Day!!

*confetti and balloons*

I've also mentioned before how February is a yummy month, because it's got the Nutella day, Valentine's Day (obviously you eat something sweet on Vday) and Fat Tuesday where we eat Semla in Sweden.

This year I decided to combine two yummies in one!
I present to you -- the Nutella Semla!

It is basically a Semla-bun filled with Nutella instead of almond paste and dusted with cocoa powder instead of powdered sugar.

For the Semla-bun check out my recipe from last year here from the post Fat Tuesday.

The Nutella Semla

INGREDIENTS

• Everything needed for the Semla-buns minus the almondpaste and powdered sugar
• 1 jar of Nutella
• Cocoa powder

DIRECTIONS

We'll start from where the buns are out of the oven and cooled.

Cut off the top of each bun. I use scissors and cut out a triangular shape. Leave the lid for later use. Empty the middle of the buns, creating little wells. Spoon in as much Nutella as you can fit inside of the wells.

Whip the whipping cream with vanilla sugar until soft peaks and pipe it onto the filled buns using a star tip (I use Wilton 1M). Add the lid on top of the piped cream, very gently pushing down a little. Dust the lids with cocoa powder.

I hope you all have a fantastic Nutella day!
Please let me know if you make these yummy little pastries!

Much love,

Crystal clear

Hello you,
Hope you are all doing great and that you're keeping warm or cool depending on where you live.
Where I live in northern Sweden it is cold (not very, but enough to not be able to photograph outdoors), and I'm keeping warm with blankets and hot cups of tea.

When I was a kid I loved rocks, stones and crystals of all kinds. I used to collect some and at times I would get them all out and arrange them in order of colour, just look at them and be joyful. The little things really make me happy, and I was like that as a child too. The littlest thing could amuse and preoccupy me.

Top: Book of Deer (here)

Jeans: Forever 21 (old)

Lipstick: Bésame Cosmetics (here)

This lovely top from Book of Deer with a crystal print reminded me of my box of rocks, and I went searching for them in my old stuff, and to my surprise, my box was still there, with crystals and stones of different shapes, sizes and colours - all living in harmony. It made me happy.

This unique and dreamy top also makes me think of the 70's, and I imagined that it would be what I would wear on the cover of my soul-rock record. Arms outstretched above me, my curly mane billowing behind me, a cross between Freddie Mercury and Erykah Badu. Well, I sure wish anyway...

I think I'm going to go arrange my rocks now.
I hope you all have a fantastic week, take care of yourselves.

Much love,