3.14 Day

Hello everyone and Happy Pi Day!
I come to you on this special day with another recipe, this time (of course) for pie!

This apple pie is adapted from a recipe by the Hummingbird bakery. I personally love my apples to be a bit on the sour side, so I chose Granny Smith apples, but you could use any juicy apples.

The wonderful apron and dress that I am wearing are both from Olga Valeska's Etsy shop. And my ring is from Femme De Bloom.

Without further ado...

Apple Pie

INGREDIENTS

• 520 g flour
• 220 g butter
• 4-5 tablespoons cold water

• 150 g butter
• 5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 kg apples
• 100 g sugar
• 1 egg + a tablespoon milk

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 175°C.
Whisk the 220g butter with the flour, until you get a grainy consistency. Add cold water, tablespoon by tablespoon until the dough comes together. Leave to rest in clingfilm for an hour.

Divide the dough into two equal parts (one part for base, and one for the pie lid). Roll out one part of the dough until half a centimeter thick and line the pie tin with it.

Peel and slice the apples in fairly thick slices.
Put the 150g butter and cinnamon in a saucepan and melt the butter, then add the sugar followed by the apples slices. Make sure all the apple slices are covered with the butter-cinnamon-sugar mixture and let cook for a couple of minutes until the apple slices soften a bit, but are not completely cooked. Spread the apple slices on a plate and leave to cool.

Fill the dough covered pie tin with the cool apple slices. Roll out the other part of the dough, and place it on top of the apple slices like a lid. Cut a couple of slits in the pie lid (so that the steam can leave) and add any decorations.

Beat the egg and add a tablespoon of milk to it, then brush this mixture over the pie lid. Sprinkle on some sugar and bake for 30-40 minutes.

So there you have it, my apple pie. I hope you like the recipe and I hope you spend this Pi Day eating lots and lots of pie. I like to eat my pie with ice cream or custard, but I prefer Pie à la mode. How do you like to eat your pie? Please tell me in the comments.

Much love,
Mona

Blueberry bundt cake with lemon icing

Hello all,
Today I have a recipe of a delicious, citrusy blueberry cake for you! But before that I need to tell you about my inspiration behind this bake.

Two weeks ago was my birthday. I turned 28 years old, which I'm very happy about, because finally I left 27 behind me. The number 27 is really difficult to pronounce in Swedish - tjugosju. I'm so relieved I don't have to say I'm tjugosju years old anymore!

For my birthday, my dear friend Christiane (IG: @aliceinthewoodssomewhere) sent me a package filled with wonderful things, among them a beautiful Ravenclaw-styled apron that she had made herself!! I fell in love with everything in my birthday package, but I'm a real sucker for handmade things. I imagine that I can feel the love it was made with. This apron, in true Ravenclaw colours brightened my life with it's bold blue colour. And with that I figured I need to bake something with blueberry in it. So after a little bit of experimenting, I present to you a blueberry bundt cake.

Blueberry bundt cake with lemon icing

INGREDIENTS

• 200 g butter, room temperature
• 2 dl sugar
• 4 eggs
• 4 dl flour
• 2 tablespoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons lemon zest (I used all the zest I got from 1 lemon)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 dl milk, room temperature
• 250 g blueberries

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 dl powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS
Preheat your oven to 175°C. Prepare the bundt tin by buttering it, and then add flour to it so that the cake won't stick to the tin.

Beat the butter and sugar until slightly fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time.
Mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, lemon zest) together in a separate bowl.
Mix the milk and lemon juice in another bowl.
Alternate between adding the dry ingredients, then the wet, to the butter-and-sugar-mix. Start and end with the dry ingredients. Mix in the blueberries lastly. If you use frozen blueberries, like I did, they might become a bit wet, and might sink to the bottom of the batter (this happened to me). To avoid that, roll the blueberries in a bit of flour, and then add them to the batter.
Bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out dry.

For the icing, mix the lemon juice with the powdered sugar until it becomes thick, but pipeable. Drizzle or pipe the icing onto the cake after it's cooled.

I hope you enjoy this recipe. It was a lot of fun to make it and then bake it, and finally eat it!

Much love,
Mona