Cherry sauce - kirsebærsauce

Cherry sauce - kirsebærsauce

This cherry sauce can be used on ice or puddings, but I always make this for my christmas dessert, risalamande. 

Growing up my parents had a cherry tree in their yard. Every year, my mom would preserve cherries to use for Christmas. The best part of my moms preserved cherries was the small nuts from inside the cherry-stone. After being preserved, the tasted like almonds, so yummy.

When I turned 9, my parents decided to move, and in their new yard, there were no cherry tree. And this was the end of homemade preserved cherries in my family. Now we had to eat store bought cherry sauce, like most other danes. 

Moving to the US, gave me a challenge with the cherry sauce, but one of my Danish friends, who moved to the US 4-5 years earlier than me, had the answer. You make your own cherry sauce from caned cherries. 

This is Mrs. Olsen's recipe for cherry sauce - well I might have tweaked it a bit, but the credits goes to Mrs Olsen. 

Ingredients:

• 1 can pitted cherries in heavy syrup
• 1 cup (250 ml) concentrated cherry juice
• 2-3 tablespoons sugar
• ½ lemon, the juice from
• cornstarch
• water

Directions:

Heat the cherries, cherry juice and sugar in a saucepan, bring it to a boil. Dissolve the cornstarch in cold water. Thicken the sauce with the cornstarch. Add lemon juice and sugar to taste. A spash of cherry liqueur only makes the sauce better.

Serve this sauce with ice cream, puddings or on risalamande.

Risalamande - Danish Rice Pudding

Risalamande - Danish Rice Pudding

December 22. - I think, I need to plan the hunt for the almond carefully this year. I really want the marzipan pigs from Summerbird.

Risalamande means rice with almonds, and even though the name sounds french, it is a danish dessert, dating back about hundred years.

This is the dessert 90% of danes have at christmas dinner on christmas eve. Normally the cook will put one whole blanched almond in the the bowl with Risalamande, which  is served family style. The person who gets the whole almond gets a special gift. In many families the gift is a pig made from marzipan, or at least some kind of sweet or candy. As if you need more sweets and candy at christmas time.

Before risalamande was invented the norm was to start the christmas dinner of with a bowl of rice porridge. Maybe to fill you up with an inexpensive dish, so you wouldn't have to eat so much of the more pricy goose or duck roast. The Danish royal family still to this day start their christmas dinner with rice porridge. 

Risalamande is served with a hot or cold cherry sauce.

This is how my mom made risalamande.

Serves 6-8 people

Ingredients:

• Rice porridge made from 1 l milk, cold

• ¼ liter heavy whipping cream (use organic, without any other ingredients other than cream/milk)

• 1-2 tablespoons sugar

• 1 vanilla pod, the seeds from.

• A large handful chopped blanched almonds

Directions:

Whip the cream in a large bowl, until stiff peaks are just about to form. If you over-beat the cream, it will leave you with butter. (been there, done that).

Spilt the vanilla pod lengthwise and scrape out the seeds with the tip of a knife. Using the knife, mix the seeds with some sugar. This helps the seeds to distribute in the risalamande. You want an even distribution of seeds in the risalamande, like small black freckles.

In another bowl mix the rice porridge, sugar and vanilla. Use s couple of dollops of the whipped cream to soften the porridge. Fold in the whipped cream and the chopped almonds a little at a time. Taste the risalamande, so you won't put in to much. You want a fluffy light dessert, but not a bowl full of whipping cream.

Serve the risalamande cold from the refrigerator with hot or cold cherry sauce.

Enjoy.

Peppermint Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Affogato

Peppermint Ice Cream and Hot Chocolate Affogato

December 4th and the cold front hit northern California. So what is the best drink for keeping warm? Normally I'm not a big hot chocolate person, I would rater have a good latte. But the peppermint lightens up the hot chocolate and makes it scrumptious . My husband loves ice cream, so we made this treat as a compromise. I really hope you will enjoy it.

In December you see peppermint everywhere, and I learned that peppermint is the holiday flavor of choice for americans. And why not adapt the seasonal flavor in a decadent dessert? 

I love a normal affogato, an espresso poured over a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It's a perfect ending to a great Italian dinner. So combining the affogato and the peppermint hot chocolate, I see in every coffee shop this time of year, must be a perfect match.

Here I flavored a classic ice cream with peppermint and topped it off with a decadent hot chocolate. 

Ingredients:

Ice cream:

• 1¼ cup (300 ml) Heavy whipping cream

• ¾ cup (180 ml) whole milk

• 4 egg yolks

• 85 g sugar

• 1 pinch salt

• 1 - 1¼ teaspoon peppermint extract

• crushed candy cane

Hot chocolate:

• whole milk

• milk chocolate (use a good one like Valrhona)

• dark chocolate (use a good one like Valrhona)

Directions:

Making the custard:

Pour the cream into a metal bowl placed in a larger bowl of ice, set aside.

Warm milk, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. Make sure the sugar and salt is dissolved completely.

In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, while whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan, and heat the mixture over medium heat, until it thickens. Stir constantly in this process and make sure to scrape the bottom of the saucepan. 

Pour the egg/milk mixture through a sieve into the cold cream. 

Cool the custard in refrigerator. 

Add the peppermint extract, ½ teaspoon at a time, taste the custard.

Pour the custard into a ice cream maker and freeze it according to manufacturers instructions. Sprinkle with crushed candy cane just before you scoop out the ice cream.

Freeze the ice cream in the freezer a couple of hours before serving.

The making of the custard is a basic step in the ice cream making. You can flavor your ice cream to your liking after the custard is made. It's also possible to add flavor to the milk while heating.

Hot chocolate:

Heat whole milk and chocolate in a saucepan, whisk while heating.

Serve the ice cream in a glass, pour the hot chocolate over and sprinkle with crushed candy cane.

Lemon Scones

Lemon Scone

It's really hard to find really good scones. They have to be flaky and soft. One of the only places you can get these in Copenhagen is at Reinh van Haun bakery. Well you can probably get real scones in the UK.

Recently I had a really god and flakey scone at Tartine Bakery & Cafe in San Francisco, but it's not just around the corner from here, so I won't be hanging out there a lot. But if you're ever in San Francisco stop by Tartine, even if you have to wait in line, It's worth the wait.

I got this recipe at a cooking class in Sur La Table from Chef Nikki B. Frias. I'm sad to see that she's no longer at the Los Gatos Store - I miss you Nikki! 

Makes 10-15.

Ingredients: 

• 450 g all-purpose flour
• 85 g sugar
• 30 g baking powder
• 7 g  salt
• 115 g  cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 475 ml heavy whipping cream
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest

Topping:

• heavy wipping cream
• demerara sugar (raw cane sugar)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F  (205°C) For a convection oven. Non-convection preheat oven to 425°F  (220°C) 

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl, by hand. Add the butter. I used a pastry cutter to incorporate the butter in the flour mixture. Mix until the the butter resembles small pebbles.

Getting ready for the oven.

Add in your cream and lemon zest and mix until it just comes together and resembles biscuit dough. This step is very important because if you over mix, the dough will become dense. If you use berries in the scones, add them now

Using an ice cream scoop, take the scones dough and place the dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
Brush the top with heavy whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown in the mottle of the oven.

Note: 

You can make the dough and set them on a baking sheet and then freeze them in advance. When you want fresh baked scones - just take the frozen scones out and brush the top with heavy whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar, and bake. No need for defrosting.

You can add fruit to the batter. Use about 115 g, but don't use strawberries, they contain to much water. 

Crepes - pandekager

Crepes or danish pancakes

I grew up on crepes like these. We had them for dinner when my dad worked nights. Normally it's a dessert, but my brother loved them, and it was so much easier for my mom, than making a real dinner, after a long day at work. If we were really lucky we could get a scoop of ice cream inside of one of them. But normally the crepes was served with sugar and/or jam and roiled. 

Makes 10-12 crepes mad in a 8" skillet. 

Ingredients:

• 4 large eggs, room temperature

• 250 ml (little over 1 cup) whole milk, room temperatur

• 15 g butter, melted and cooled slightly, plus more for crepe pan

• 160 g all-purpose flour

• 1 teaspoon vanilla paste

• 2 tablespoons sugar

• ¼ teaspoon salt

Directions: 

Add all the ingredients in a blender. Blend until combined. 

Let the batter rest for 20 minutes. OK - I always forget to rest the batter, and it works fine. 

To cook crepes, heat a crepe pan or 8-inch nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Brush bottom of pan with a thin layer of melted butter. Using a ladle, pour just enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, tipping it to coat evenly. Place pan back on heat and cook until batter is set and turned light brown. Flip the crepe with a spatula and cook another 30 seconds to 1 minute. Transfer cooked crepe to a plate and continue with the rest of the batter, brushing the pan with more butter as needed and stacking finished crepes on top of each other.

Serve crepes with jam, sugar, fresh fruit, nutella or ice cream, or mix and match.

Enjoy!