Coconut, Coffee & Chocolate Balls

I'm still trying to find my way around blogging and this site, and I'm still trying to write a 3000 word essay on death on three texts (bluh!), so please bear with me if I'm posting these recipes a little slowly. I'll get there, promise. In the meantime, I made these for you.

If you could smell pictures, then oh boy! Picture courtesy of ma mamma.

These little treats are just a whole new kind of delicious, and there isn't an oven in sight. They're another Swedish treat that combines coffee, chocolate, vanilla and coconut. Thank you Sweden! They are so easy it's unreal, so, have a go, go ooooon. I may have gone for a swim earlier and eaten A LOT of these afterwards, or not.

Delicious goo.

They're not pretty yet, but just wait!

Just too pretty, another one courtesy of me mam! Here's to pretending it's summer!

This recipe reminds me of summer, my brother and I eat a ton of these every time we visit our grandparents in Sweden. My brother in particular can work his way through several packets in a couple of days! I've used guess work to try and replicate the recipe a couple of times, they're not quite the same, but still pretty good I'd like to think!

If you want to try the real thing, then the ones from Ikea are pretty good!

Also, if you're wanting to make cake pops, whack a lolly stick in each one before you dip it in the chocolate, but that's where it starts getting too complicated for me!

Here comes the recipe....

Coconut, Chocolate & Coffee Balls

Ingredients

Makes about 27 balls.

2 3/4 cups oats (2 cups will need to be blitzed in the food processor and the 3/4 held back)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/4 cups butter
1/4 cup chocolate powder

2 tsp coffee granules, diluted with 3 tsp hot water
tsp vanilla extract, or half pod vanilla pod, seeds scraped out
2 cups desicated coconut
250g chocolate

1. Blitz 2 cups of the oats in a food processor, till there are no more whole oats, though you don't want it like flour either!

2. Melt the butter and add to the oats.
3. Add the sugar, coffee, chocolate powder and vanilla and the 3/4 cups oats and mix until combined and looks like the picture above. If it is too wet, add more oats, too dry, more butter.
4. Roll into walnut sized balls and put on a sheet of greaseproof paper and leave in the fridge to set for 1 hour.
5. Melt the chocolate and allow to cool slightly, pour the coconut onto a chopping board, then, using barbeque tongs dip each ball into the chocolate until it is completely covered and roll in the coconut.
6. Return to the greaseproof paper and leave until the chocolate has set, enjoy with a strong coffee!

If you have any problems or queries about my recipes then feel free to get in touch!

Spiced peppercorn (I know- but trust!) loaf cake

A cake, a bread, an enigma.

  How in the world do you make peppercorns look beautiful. Tiny, wrinkly and just damn ugly. But this is the thing. It has its own kind of beautiful, like the flower embroided jeans of your early teenage years. This is why you just got to put it in everything, so don't skimp out when it comes to cake-nuh uh. Pepper used to be more valuable than gold, and to be honest, I still see it that way, because, let's be frank here, how tasty is ground gold in your scrambled eggs... not so tasty.

Cake is a valuable thing. It can be a celebration, a tiny tasty emblem of your love, or a sorry. Like, sorry I'm 2 hours late for *insert situation*, have some cake... you'll see all is soon forgiven, even if you're late because you were making the cake. The taste justifies the means! 

This recipe is a mix of just about everything I value in a good cake- a loafy shape, a moist crumb and a mixture of sweet and fragrant spices. It is inspired by a cake my mum used to make, which though still unrivalled, comes pretty close. The flavour used to come from a packet of Swedish spice mix, so this is an attempt at replicating those flavours.  

It's dead simple, have a pop at it, procrastinate once more. 

 HERE COMES THE RECIPE.....

 Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup butter-room temperature, if removed directly from the fridge, cube and place in lukewarm water for 10 minutes (A tip from the baking goddess herself, Mary Berry)

1 cup caster sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup milk

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp dark brown soft sugar (or light brown sugar which will give it a lighter taste)

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tsp crushed black peppercorns- and believe me they need to be crushed, you definitely don’t want to bite into one of those mid slice

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and grease and line a  29.5 cm length by 11 cm width and 8cm deep loaf tin (if you don't have greaseproof paper, whack a little more grease in there!).

 Beat the softened butter (easiest with an electric hand mixer or one of those wonderful and expensive kenwood mixers- definitely not jealous, wooden spoons are great) till it is soft and lump free.

Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about five minutes.

Add the eggs and beat till you see some volume in the mix. If you dare try the mix with the raw egg (I am yet to suffer from any raw mix related ailment, apart from over consumption, so don’t over think it- but I’m not promoting it! So ‘don’t do it’ ) it should have a texture similar to that of meringue mix-quite silky and smooth.  When the mixer goes round the bowl it should create a ripple effect. Then, alternate the dry ( flour, spices, baking powder) and wet (milk) ingredients, folding them in so as not to knock out all of the air you have just whipped up in the mixture. Mix in the brown sugar and pour into the greased loaf tin. The cake should be of a dropping consistency, as shown in the picture above, if it is not, then add a splash more milk.

Bake in the centre of the pre-heated oven, until a thin stick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow to cool, slice, and serve with a spread of butter or marg and a cup of tea bigger than life itself. 

These pictures took 45 minutes to load. I could have saved the world in that time! but I needed a shower...

Swedish Rice Pudding with Apple Sauce

A few simple ingredients making a delicious thing, the way it should be.

Delicious apples, fancy risotto rice, milk and a pint, yes a pint of tea. oooooh yeaaaah....

I feel like I should explain why my first post is not actually a bake. There are a couple of reasons why. Firstly, as much as I love baking, I love all cooking and eating and looking at food, and thinking about it and reading about it.... which is fine... I think. Secondly, sometimes rice pudding is just what you need when you're trying to revise but then need something to do which means you're not revising. A well deserved (with a stretch of the truth) bowl of rice pudding.

In Sweden, rice pudding comes in a tube. Food from a tube is just brilliant, and they're big on their tube food there... Kalles caviar, gingerbread dough, rice pudding. In Sweden, the name for rice pudding translates as 'rice grain porridge' and can therefore be justifiably eaten for breakfast... or lunch...or dinner, as a snack, any excuse works. My grandad eats it for lunch followed by a sleep... he knows how to live! So might I encourage you to stop working, take a break, make some rice pudding.

This recipe is a bit of a kerfuffle(who knew that was a real word.. kerfuffle), given that you first par boil the rice before straining it and then cook it with the milk, but since we're procrastinating, that's alright. This recipe is less sweet than a lot of recipes but still relatively sweet. The tartness of the apple sauce works very well with sweetness of the rice pudding and the cinnamon makes it beautifully fragrant.

Serves 3 comfortably

Swedish Rice Pudding with Homemade Apple Sauce

Rice Pudding

1 cup risotto rice

2 cups water

1 knob butter

pinch of salt

2 cups milk

1tsp vanilla extract

2 and 1/2 tablespoons of sugar

1 tsp corn flour

cinnamon (in my case, a lot, but it really depends on your tastes!)

Apple sauce

2 cups water

3 cooking apples

2 tablespoons granulated sugar
 

Rice Pudding

1. Put the rice in a saucepan and add the water, the butter and a pinch of salt. Counting from when you turn the heat on, cook for 13 minutes on a medium heat. Remove from the heat and drain in a fine mesh strainer.
2. Return to the saucepan and add the milk, another pinch of salt and the vanilla extract and cook for a further 13 minutes. And mix it, nurture it, love it, otherwise it’ll stick. If it starts to get too sticky or dry before the end of cooking time, then add a little more milk.
3. Towards the end of the cooking time, about 12 minutes in, add a tsp of sifted corn flour, which will just slightly help to thicken it. Give it a taste, since you may not think it needs anymore salt, personally I think just a small pinch more really brings out the flavour. Then add the 2 1/2 tablespoons of sugar, or to taste. It does make it relatively sweet but the tartness of the apple sauce works well with it.
4. Put in a bowl, cup or mug and add the apple sauce and sprinkle with cinnamon. Pour on a little milk and enjoy with a bit of bbc iplayer and a pint of tea. 
5.  

Apple Sauce

1. Chop the apples into cubes. You can remove the skins, but the thing with apple skins is that they’re mind over matter, if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
2. Add to a saucepan and cover with water and add the sugar.
3. Cook for five minutes, or until a sharp knife inserted into an apple piece goes in with ease. If in doubt, remove a piece of apple and squish it! If it squishes with ease, then it's ready, then…
4. MASH
5. Ladle lavishly on rice pudding, or straight from the saucepan into your mouth! 

Christa x

An Introduction and A tribute

An Introduction and A tribute

I am Christa and I love to bake. 

This is my Grandma (who I call Mormor) and this is my Grandpa (who I call Morfar). And it is to them that I credit my love of baking. My Grandpa would spend hours picking blueberries, cranberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants deep in the Swedish forest for hours and then my grandma would bake it into something tasty and I would eat, and eat and eat. From her I caught 'the baking bug'. Both a curse, and a blessing. A curse because sweet lordy, do I work my way through flour, butter and sugar, and a blessing because I LOVE it! It crept up on me, and the moment of realisation came when, at the age of 14 or so, I started baking two or three things at once, so I could freeze some of it so that there would ALWAYS be delicious eats! Here I hope to pass on to you the recipes she passes on to me and some more, for good measure. And, if you will indulge me, offload some of my baking talk, which I think is beginning to bore my family (yeh, I don't get that either).

Recipes will follow soon, from me to you as a thank you, for visiting. 

Christa x