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,

Match made in heaven

Hello all,
Hope you're doing great!

I want to share with you a baking "experiment" if you will. It's not really novel in any way, but for me it was quite exciting because it was the first time I made this dough.

I baked éclairs!

Éclairs are these delicious little pastry made with choux dough, or pâte à choux, which is a dough that you cook. Yeah, you heard me. You cook the dough, and instead of a raising agent, the steam incorporated into the dough helps it poof up!

I've only ever tried éclairs once when I was in London, and bought a chocolate éclair from Ladurée. It was delicious, but I don't feel like it prepared me for the adventure of baking my own.

I decided to take the vanilla route myself, but then added chocolate ganache on top as a glaze. Yummy and a match made in heaven in my opinion - but apparently not something you'd do classically as a pâtissière, I was informed by a French friend. I have started rebelling lately after my quiet and calm adolescent years, so I'll put it down to that.

I've split up the recipe into two parts. One for the actual pastry dough, and one for the vanilla pastry cream that goes into it. For the chocolate ganache that goes on top click here.

Chocolate and Vanilla Éclairs

Recipe adapted from Joy of Baking.

Choux Pastry

INGREDIENTS

• 65 grams flour
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated white sugar
• 55 grams butter, cut into pieces
• 120 ml water
• 2 eggs

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 200°C.

Whisk the flour and sugar together. Bring the water and butter to a boil in a saucepan. Remove from heat and the add in the flour+sugar mix. Return to heat and keep mixing until the dough comes away from the sides of the saucepan and forms a ball. Pour the dough into a mixing bowl and beat for about one minutes to let some of the steam rise away. Once the dough has cooled a little (it's still warm to the touch) add the eggs. Beat until the dough becomes a smooth, thick paste. Pour the dough into a piping bag and pipe oblongs, about 2 cm wide, and however long you want them to be. I made small ones of about 8 cm. Bake for 15 minutes, and then reduce the heat to 180°C and bake for another 25 minutes.

Pastry Cream

INGREDIENTS

• 300 ml milk
• One vanilla pod
• 3 egg yolks
• 50 grams granulated white sugar
• 20 grams flour
• 15 grams cornstarch

DIRECTIONS

Scrape out the seeds in the vanilla pod and add that as well as the actual pod to a saucepan containing the milk. Bring the milk just to a boil.

Mix the sugar and egg yolks together. Mix the flour and cornstarch together and then add the egg mixture to it.

Remove the milk from heat (remove the vanilla pod) and add to the egg mixture whisking constantly. Then pour everything back into a saucepan and cook until boiling, whisking all the while. As it comes to a boil, let it continue for about a minute as the cream thickens up. Pour the cream in a clean bowl and cover the surface with plastic film. Let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate.

Assembly

Before filling the oblongs with pastry cream, dip the prettier side of the oblong in chocolate ganache. Let it dry for a couple of minutes and then you can either cut each oblong into two halves and add pastry cream in the middle. I used a piping bag and filled it with the pastry cream and then stuck the tip into the uncut oblong and pressed the pastry cream into it. It's a bit trickier, but it looks neater. I also added some 23 karat edible gold leaves as decoration to make it even fancier. I got my gold from the Etsy shop Layer Cake Shop (here).

Hope you all have a lovely day!

Much love,

I Donut Want To Be Without You

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I hope you are all having the best day filled with love and happiness, sharing your time with people who matter to you.

You all matter to me, so on Vday I just want to say thank you for reading this blog. You guys make this a lot more fun! Lots of love to all of you <3

For Valentine's Day I decided to make doughnuts this year. Last year I made cupcakes, but this year I felt like it was time for some doughnuts. I sprinkled my doughnuts with hearts, pearls and red glitter sprinkles - all of it feeling very appropriate for Vday.

And today is all about love, so let me just say this - I LOVE doughnuts!!! And I LOVE sprinkles!!!
I aptly wore my pink doughnut dress, and had the person I love the most (my wee big sister) snap some photos of me while I ate the delicious pink things.

I've shared the recipe I use for these cake doughnuts on the blog before. In fact it was last time I wore this amazing dress for the blog. I just love this dress. Find the recipe here.

Much love on this day and all others,

Fat Tuesday

Hello all you lovely people.
Tuesday the 9th of February, is Shrove Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday also known as Mardi Gras. In Swedish we call it Fettisdag (= Fat Tuesday). Historically it's a day where you gorge before the beginning of fasting. But in Sweden it is nowadays mostly celebrated by eating the pastry known as Semla.

A semla is a delicious thing. The flavours are so balanced and go so well together. It really is a masterpiece in my opinion, and I wouldn't change anything about it.

Let me tell you what a semla actually is. It is a yeast-proven dough with cardamom made into buns. Once cooled, the buns are cut at the top, to form something like a lid. The insides of the bun is emptied (not completely, the actual bun is very tasty too, so you ought to leave quite a bit of it). The empty "well" that is created is filled with almond paste. Whipped cream is piped on top of the bun, and then the lid is placed back before dusting it with powdered sugar.

And let me tell you this, a semla really is a sweet piece of heaven.

Semla

INGREDIENTS

• 50 g butter
• 1,5 dl milk
• 25 g yeast
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 1 small egg + extra for egg wash
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 2 ml ammonium bicarbonate (can be omitted)
• 5 dl flour

• 200 g almond paste
• 5 dl whipping cream
• 3 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• powdered sugar

DIRECTIONS

Melt the butter and pour in the milk. Add yeast and whisk until dissolved.
Add the sugar and then the egg, whisking while adding them.

Pour in the dry ingredients (cardamom, ammonium bicarbonate and flour). Cover and let prove for 30 minutes.

Roll the dough into round buns (I make this amount of dough into 9 equal sized buns). Cover and let prove again for 1 hour. Turn on your oven to 200°C. Egg wash the buns.
Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Let the buns cool to room temperature. In the meantime mix the almond paste with un-whipped whipping cream until you have a soft, pipeable consistency. Whip the rest of the whipping cream together with the vanilla sugar until soft peaks.

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. Pipe or pour the soft almond paste into the wells of each bun. Pipe the whipped cream onto the filled buns using a star tip or closed star tip (I use Wilton 2d). Add the lid on top of the piped cream, very gently pushing down a little. Dust the lids with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

Much love,