Vanilla Honey Butter

Vanilla Honey Butter

As a Dane growing up in Denmark I didn't know the existence of Honey Butter, and I was ok with that. First time I encountered honey butter was at a brunch, where they served it with biscuit and bacon - and OMG it was a party in my mouth. How could I not know of this????

Now I see that you can use this for many things - like cornbread, American pancakes, bagels, and of course biscuits. The addition of vanilla just makes it even better.

Depending on which butter and honey you use, you get different color and texture. I just used what I had in the house, and that was European style butter, and it was a bit more yellow. I used a dark raw honey, and it made my butter yellow. But you can easily end up with a beautiful white butter - there is no wrong color in honey butter.

ingredients:

• 2 vanilla beans, use the seeds scraped from pods

• 225 g (1 cup) butter, salted and room temperature

• 170 g honey

• 1 pinch salt

Directions:

In a Using a stand mixer, beat all ingredients for a 3-5 minutes until smooth and combined. Serve immediately or refrigerate.

Enjoy!

Hasselback Potatoes

Hasselback potatoes is a Swedish dish invented in the 1950’s created at the Hasselbacken restaurant in Stockholm. And they were very popular during the 70’s and 80’s, but do no deserve to be forgotten. Personally i love them for their crispy outer and creamy center.

Normally I won’t add any flavors to the butter, but fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme goes really well with the potatoes, as do garlic. If you like another flavor profile, you can use other types of fat or oil, like olive oil and duck fat.

Serves 3-4 depending on the size of the potatoes.

Ingredients:

8-10 potatoes, the size of a golf ball, I used Yukon Gold potatoes

60 g salted butter (About ½ stick)

salt

Direction:

Preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃), and line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper, set a side.
Place a potato up against a handle of a wooden spoon. Slice the potato into thin slices, not cutting all the way through. The handle of the spoon helps you not slicing the whole way through. Repeat with the remaining potatoes.

Place the potatoes on the baking sheet and brush them with the melted butter, making sure to get in between all the slices. Sprinkle with salt. Bake potatoes for about 55 to 60 minutes, brush the potatoes with more butter every 20 minutes. Bake until crisp and tender.

Serve them as a side.

Enjoy!

Fastelavnsboller - Lent Buns

Fastelavnsboller, Lent Buns.

Fastelavnsboller comes in many shapes and sizes. There are the pastry kind, filled with custard, or a fruit jam, the choux pastry kind, filled with a custard or another whipped cream-based filling, or the ones made with an enriched dough baked with remonce and/or custard. This one is a mix of the two latter ones. It’s basically an enriched dough with remonce and filled with a raspberry whipped cream.

Back in Denmark this year have been crazy, and the newest trend is selling the most fancy fastelavnsboller. There are huge lines to the bakeries to get your hands on these cakes, maybe the Corona restrictions made people want to have some extra special, I don’t know. Here is my contribution to this craziness.

Makes 15-18

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 500 ml milk

• 150 g butter, salted

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

• 50 g fresh compressed yeast, or 4 teaspoons dry yeast

• 800 g all-purpose flour (hold some back, to see if the dough need it all)

• 150 g sugar

• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom

• 1 pinch of salt

Remonce:

• 75 g butter, salted, room-temperature

• 75 g sugar

• 75 g marzipan or almond paste (with over 60% almonds)

Raspberry whipped cream:

• 500 ml heavy whipping cream

• 4 tablespoons raspberry jam

• 2 teaspoons chambord (raspberry liqueur)

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

• 1 tablespoon confectionery (powdered) sugar

Directions:

Remonce:

Mix the sugar and marzipan well. Add butter little by little until it’s just incorporated. Be careful not to over mix or the remonce will be runny when baked.

Dough:

In a large bowl mix most of the flour, I save about 1 cup, with the rest of the dry ingredients including the dry yeast if using.

In a saucepan heat milk and butter until finger warm, you want all the butter melted, remove pan from heat. Mix in the fresh compressed yeast, if using, and vanilla bean paste.

Mix in the milk/butter mixture and knead the dough in a stand mixer on medium for about 10 minutes until you have a soft, shiny elastic dough. The remaining flour should be added while kneading, if needed. Let the dough rise in a covered bowl for about 90 minutes until it doubled in size.

Divide the dough in two, roll each portion into a rectangle and divide it into 9 squares.

Preheat the oven for 400℉ (200℃).

Put a teaspoon remonce in the center of each square. Fold the four corners up to the center and press to seal all edges, letting the air inside escape. Put fastelavnsboller onto a parchment paper lined baking sheets with joint side down. Leave to rise covered for about 30 minutes. Brush with egg wash  and bake for about 10-12 minutes until golden. Let the bun cool completely, before cutting and filling.

Raspberry whipped cream:

Mix the raspberry jam with the liqueur and vanilla bean paste in a little bowl and set aside. Whip the heavy whipping cream with the sugar until you have s medium stiff cream. Gently fold in the raspberry mixture, and put the cream into a piping bag with a star tip.

Cut the top of the buns, and pipe some raspberry cream inside, place the top back on, put a little dot of cream on the top as decoration and sprinkle with freeze-dried raspberry or confectionary/powdered sugar. Serve the fastelavnsbolle with a nice cup warm tea or coffee.

Enjoy!

Cinnamon Custard Rolls

Cinnamon Custard Rolls

I totally forgot about custard cinnamon rolls, until I stumbled upon a picture of them when browsing on Pinterest. Then I decided to try to make my version, with a vanilla custard, using some of my newly purchased plumb vanillas beans. Honestly the custard could be eaten, directly out of the saucepan, maybe with some berries. But it worked perfectly in the cinnamon rolls too. Transporting me back to my childhood. These cinnamon rolls is a great updated version to the traditional cinnamon rolls, making them a bit more fancy.

I would recommend to remove the rolls from the oven a bit earlier than I did, to prevent the custard from getting browned.

Makes 18-20 rolls.

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 50 g live yeast ( 4 teaspoons dry yeast)

• 175 g butter, salted

• 500 ml milk

• 175 g sugar

• 2 teaspoons cardamom

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 800-850 g all-purpose flour

• 1 egg, for egg wash

Vanilla Custard:

• 200 ml milk

• 1 vanilla bean, the seeds (or caviar) from (or use 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract)

• 3 tablespoons sugar

• 2 egg yolks

• 3 teaspoons cornstarch

Cinnamon Remounce:

• 150 g butter, salted and room temperature

• 100 g brown sugar

• 2 tablespoons cinnamon

Chocolate Icing:

• 85 g confectionary (powdered) sugar

• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

• about 2 tablespoons varm water

Directions:

Dough:

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Warm the milk in a saucepan until finger-warm, remove pan from the heat. Melt the butter in the warm milk. Crumble the yeast into the warm milk and stir to dissolve. 

Add the liquid to the dry ingredients, and knead the dough for 3 minutes, to form an elastic dough. 

Let the dough rise for about 60 minutes until doubled in size. 

Cinnamon Remounce:

Mix all the ingredients with a hand mixer, until smooth and creamy, set aside.

Vanilla Custard:

if using a vanilla bean, split the bean and scrape the seeds (caviar) out. Mix the seeds with some of the sugar, this will help separating the seeds, and spread them throughout the custard. Place the empty bean in the milk in a small saucepan, and heat the milk until it is warm, but not boiling. Remove from heat, and let sit to cool down and the bean to infuse the milk with additional vanilla flavor. When milk is room temperature, remove bean from the milk. Whisk egg yolks, sugar, vanilla seeds, and cornstarch into the paste, and add it to the milk. Heat the milk mixture up over medium heat, while whisking until it thickens and starts boiling. Transfer the custard into a shallow bowl, and cover it with plastic wrap. Place the the wrap directly on top of the custard, so it won’t form a skin. Let the custard cool in the fridge until you need it.

Making the Rolls:

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and roll it to a large rectangle (16x16 inches/40x40 cm).

Spread the filling in a thin layer onto the dough, leaving a thin edge closest to yourself, without filling.

Roll the dough into a large log, pinching edges together to seal. Cut the log into 20-24 slices. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Place the slices fairly close together. Cover and leave to rise for another 30 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 400℉ (200℃) - I used convection when baking these, heat oven to bake 420℉ (215℃) if you don't have a convection oven.

Brush the rolls with egg wash.

With a little spoon make a little dent/well in the middle of the cinnamon roll. Place about a teaspoon of the custard in each well.

Bake the rolls for 10-14 minutes until golden brown. 

Leave them to cool in the pan. 

Chocolate Icing:

Mix sugar ans cocoa with just enough water for it to form a tragic paste.

Frost the cinnamon rolls before serving.

Enjoy!

Danish Pancakes version 2 - Crepes

Danish pancakes.

Danish pancakes are thin like crepes, and is kinda of a dessert. But in my family we occasionally had pancakes for dinner. Maybe not an healthy option, but it was not on a regular basis.

I like my pancakes to be soft like the ones my mom made, but if you want the edges to be a little crispy (the edges mostly) then add a tablespoon regular beer, like a Pilsner. My mom didn’t do that, maybe because we rarely had any beer in the house, so I don’t do that either.

Right now this is my favorite recipe for Danish pancakes. I often make a double portion, and save the extra in the freezer, for an easy treat another day. When freezing fold each pancake in quarters, with parchment paper between each pancake, so you easy can defrost one or two at a time.

Makes 10-12.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs

• 400 ml milk

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract

• 4 tablespoons sugar

• 165 g all-purpose flour

• 1 pinch salt

Directions:

Add all the ingredients to the blender and blend it until a smooth batter. If you don’t have a blender, just whisk it by hand, until you get a lump free batter.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Brush the skillet with a small amount of 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 the other side for additional 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 the crepes with sugar, jam, or even ice cream.

Enjoy!