Lemonade

Lemonade

Lemonade is the taste of summer. This sweet and sour refreshing drink is not just for kids. We have a Meyer Lemon bush in our yard, it surpluses me the lemons for most of the year, but it might run out this year if I keep making lemonade. 

I had the best  lemonade on my very first trip to San Francisco. We were sitting at a restaurant in Sausalito on a terraces over the water, a sunny January day, overlooking San Francisco - it was perfection. I spend this afternoon on my terrace reading and sipping lemonade.  

Here is my version of the perfect summer drink.

1 pitcher full 

Ingredients:

Simple syrup:

• ½ cup (1 dl) water
• ½ cup (1 dl) sugar

Lemonade:

• 3-5 lemons, the juice of (I used Meyer lemons)
• 3-4 cups water for diluting
• ice cubes

Direction:

Make the simple syrup first, by heating the water and sugar, while stirring until the sugar dissolves completely. Let the syrup cool down.

Juice the lemons. Pour lemon juice into a pitcher with water some simple syrup and ice cubes. Add more water and syrup to the lemonade to your taste

Enjoy.

Kiksekage - Chocolaty Biscuit Cake

Kiksekage - Chocolaty Biscuit Cake

Kiksekage is an old classic non-bake cake very popular in the 70's and 80's in Denmark. But it's not a Danish cake. It's actually a German cake called "Kalte Hund" or cold dog, and the British has a similar cake, the chocolate fridge cake.

My chocolate loving husband, asked if I could try to make a kiksekage, and I was somewhat reluctant, chocolate is not my thing, but I promised to look into kiksekage. My only experience with Kiksekage, was the one my mom made, and to be honest, I didn't care for it. Weird - I loved everything sweet back then.

A traditional kiksekage is made with coconut oil (palmin), eggs and cocoa powder, but why not make the cake with premium ingredients. It's not like good chocolate is hard to find. During my research for the perfect kiksekage, I found Lone Kjærs recipe. This one was made with condensed milk instead of eggs and she used about ⅓ of the butter other recipes called for. So I decided to go with Lone's recipe.

Ingredients:

• 300 g dark chocolate (I used Valrhona 61%)
• 1 can condensed milk. 400 g
• 35 g butter
• 1 orange, the zest of
• about 20 squared vanilla biscuits
• sprinkle: chopped pistachios

Directions:

Line a loaf pan (9x5 inch or 22x12 cm) with parchment paper (Spray the inside of the pan with cooking spray, so the parchment sticks to the pan, don’t spray the inside of the parchment paper). You can also use plastic wrap to line the loaf pan. Chop the chocolate coarsely and put it in a small saucepan with condensed milk and butter. Let the mixture to melt over low heat. Be careful not to burn the mixture, stir occasionally until the mixture is homogeneously, then remove the pan from the heat and mix in orange zest. Pour a thin layer of chocolate in the bottom of the pan. Add then a layer of biscuits. Continue to layer chocolate and biscuits until you have 4 layers in total, ending with a chocolate layer. Sprinkle with the chopped nuts and cover the cake with a piece of parchment paper. Store the cake in refrigerator at least 4 hours before serving.

Serving:

Flip the cake out onto a pretty platter, remove any parchment paper. Do this about 10-15 minutes before serving. Slice the cake with a sharp knife. Tip: heat the knife in hot water, to ease the cutting.

Enjoy.

Chocolate Mousse - just two ingredients!

Chocolate Mousse

Get a perfect creamy chocolate mousse using just water and chocolate. It sounds crazy. I've always been told that you never mix chocolate and water, because the chocolate gets grainy and ruined. But this recipe from the french chemist Hervé This make you rethink your chocolate truths. You can watch Heston Blumenthal explain and prepare the mousse here.

My husband is a chocolateholic, so chocolate mousse is one of his favorite desserts, but I rarely make it. Maybe, maybe I’ll make more often, when it's as easy as this. I definitely have to try making it again, with different chocolates and different flavor profiles. The mousse has a very intense chocolate taste, you might tone it down with some sugar or adding cream with the water.

I didn’t have a 70% chocolate, so I used the 61% Valrhona, I just got, instead, and it worked perfectly.

Serves 2-3

 Ingredients

• 265 g (9⅓ oz) chocolate (70 %)

• 240 g (1 cup) water

Directions:

Place a mixing bowl on top of another slightly larger bowl filled with ice and cold water, (you can add a teaspoon of salt to get a cooler ice water). The bottom of the top bowl should touch the ice water, but the ice water shouldn't be able to get into the top bowl. Set aside.

Chop the chocolate finely, adding it to a small sauce pan with the water. Slowly melt the chocolate while whisking. When melted, pour the chocolate into the bowl sitting in the ice water, begin whisking.  Whisk vigorously until mousse begins to thicken. In the beginning it looks like nothing will ever happen, but after 2-4 minutes it starts to thicken up.  Be careful not to over whisk as the chocolate can become grainy.  I used a hand mixer in the beginning and a hand whisk in the end. If you over whisk the mousse, you just have to remelt the chocolate mousse and start whisking all over again. You don't have to throw it all away. 

When you have the desired texture, pour the mousse in to the serving dishes. You have to do it pretty fast, because the mousse thickens. 

Serve the mousse immediately or let the mousse thicken up some more in the refrigerator. 

The chocolate mousse will keep, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. (But not in my house).

Hot Chocolates

Hot chocolates

On a lazy sunday afternoon I stumbled over a tweet from madsymfonien with a hot chocolate with marshmallows and liquorice. It looked so good, and I had just bought marshmallows the other day, so I had to try to make it.

My hot chocolate was made from ⅓ milk chocolate, ⅔ dark chocolate and whole milk. I added three different sprinkles on top.

The first had freeze-dried  blackcurrant, which added a nice tangy flavory to the sweet chocolate. The second crushed Raw Liquorice Drops, giving the chocolate a nice liquorice aftertaste, without being overpowering.The third had a very light dust of Ghost Pepper, which added a hotness to the chocolate without being to hot. Actually this one was the best chili hot chocolate I have ever had. 

Classic Fragilité Cake

Classic Fragilité Cake

The classic fragilité cake with coffee buttercream originates from the same Danish pastry chef, Johannes Steen, who also made The Sarah Bernhardt cookie. And must originate from the beginning of the 1900s, when Denmark was very influenced by everything French. 

Fragilité means fragile, and it describes the cake well. It's made with delicate layers of crispy meringue with hazelnuts, layered with a mocha/coffee buttercream. The cake feels very light and fluffy, but don't let it fool you, it's filled with great tasting calories😋

Ingredients:

Meringue:

• 100 g hazelnuts
• 200 g confectionary sugar
• 4 egg whites

Mocha buttercream:

• 3 pasteurised  egg yolks
• 100 g confectionary sugar
• 150 g butter, salted and room temperature
• 3 teaspoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1,5 teaspoons instant coffee 

Directions:

Preheat the oven for 400℉ (200℃).

Chop the hazelnuts. I used the mini chopper that came with my immersion blender, and ended up with a coarse hazelnut flour. Mix the hazelnuts with half of the confectionary sugar.

Whip the egg whites, in a stand mixer, until you have soft peaks. Add the sugar and keep whipping until you have a shiny meringue with stiff peaks. You should be able to turn the bowl upside down.

Fold the hazelnut mixture in.

Line a baking pan with parchment paper, spray it and sprinkle with sugar. I used a 9" x 13" (20x30 cm) pan.  

Spread the meringue evenly in the pan, and level of the top.

Bake the meringue for 2 minutes at 400℉ (200℃), then lower the temperature to 305℉ (150℃) and keep on baking foe another 40 minutes.

Buttercream:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, and whip the buttercream until thick and fluffy over a double boiler. I used a saucepan with very hot water, and placed my bowl on top of that. I didn't have it on the stove. It takes some time to get the buttercream nice and fluffy.

Cut the meringue in two, and place the one part on a cake stand, spread all the buttercream  on it in an even layer. Put the other half of the meringue on top. 

Decorate the cake with some melted chocolate or a sprinkle of confectionary sugar.