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,