This is an absolutely gorgeous chocolate fudge cake for one of those days when you just neeeeeed a choccie overload… =) Chocolate sponge sandwiched with chocolate and topped with even more chocolate! Yum scrumm for all us chocoholics out there…

Ingredients:

• 100g spreadable butter
• 250ml milk
• 1 tbsp red vinegar
• 100g plain chocolate, melted
• 15g cocoa powder
• 300g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• Icing: 225g plain chocolate, 100g butter and 142ml carton double cream

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Grease a round deep cake tin and line with baking paper
3. Mix milk and vinegar
4. Place all other cake ingredients in a large mixing bowl
5. Pour in the milk mixture and whisk until smooth
6. Spread into the baking tin and bake for an hour until firm in the centre
7. Cool for 10mins, then turn out on a rack to cool completely
8. Meanwhile, make the icing by melting the chocolate and butter together in the microwave for 3 minutes on medium heat, stirring after 90s. Stir until smooth then beat in the cream. Cool slightly.
9. Halve the cake through the middle and spread half of the icing on the bottom half and sandwich together.
10. Spread the rest of the icing over the top and sides of the cake
11. If you want to, you can sift a little icing sugar over the cake and decorate with strawberries or something.

Sour dough bread is a very healthy, and very tasty, bread that is quite common in Sweden. It is very easy to make, but it does take its time to make. Once its baked you have a tasty bread that stays fresh for up to a week. At least. Save a piece of the sour dough in an air tight box or jar and you’ll have the base ready for next time.

Sour dough:

• 4 tbsp rye flour
• 2dl finger warm water
• Mix flour and water and leave to rest in an air tight jar or box for at least 48 hrs. Do not put it in the fridge – it has to be warm!
• After 2 days, add another 2 tbsp of rye flour and leave to rest for another 24 hrs.

Directions:

1. DAY 1 – In the evening, take your sour dough and mix it with 3dl finger warm water and 200g rye flour. Leave to rest over night.
2. DAY 2 – In the morning, take away 1dl of sour dough, put in an air tight jar och box and put in the fride for next time. Add 3dl finger warm water and 200g rye flour to your dough and leave to rest for 5-10 hrs.
3. DAY 2 – In the evening, add 5dl finger warm water, 1 tbsp salt, 2dl flour and 500g rye flour. Leave to rest for an hour.
4. Cut the dough in four and mould into loaves.
5. Put the loaves in greased or papered baking trays and sprinkle them with a little flour.
6. Leave to rest for about 40 mins until you can see little holes emerging in the dough.
7. Set the oven to 250 degrees C.
8. Put the loaves in the oven and reduce the temperature to 200 degrees.
9. After 40 minutes, reduce the temperature to 180 degrees and leave the breads in for another 10-20 minutes.
10. Take the loaves out and let them cool.

You can freeze the bread, but it stays fresh for a long time, so unless you’re a small household or nor very hard on the bread you can keep it wrapped in a plastic bag for at least a week.

This is a heavenly dessert that is close to a cheesecake but much easier to do. You can choose what flavour (if any) you want and decorate it with whatever suits your chosen flavour.

Ingredients:

• 10 digestive bisquits
• 50g butter
• 4tbsp sugar
• 800g cream cheese
• 3/4 cup icing sugar
• flavouring (try juice and zest of a lime, Bailey’s cream, finely chopped stravberries, a vanilla pod or whatever tickles your tastebuds)
• 600ml double cream
• decorations (choose whatever matches your flavouring – for my lime cake I caramellise blueberries and strawberries – see instructions below)

Directions:

1. Turn the digestives into crumbs in a mixer or by beating them in a bowl
2. Caramellise the sugar in a saucepan
3. Add butter and digestive crumbs and stir quickly
4. Spread the mixture in the bottom of a spring form
5. Mix cream cheese, icing sugar and your chosen flavouring into a smooth mixture
6. Whisk the double cream fluffy and fold into the cheese mixture
7. Spread over the bisquit base
8. Leave in the fridge for 3-4 hours to set
9. Decorate and serve

Lime glazed berries:

• 1/2 cup caster sugar
• juice of a lime
• berries

Caramellise the sugar in a saucepan and add the lime juice. Stir and fold in the berries quickly – don’t let them get hot! Spread over the cake and leave in fridge to set.

This cake serves 8 people

This is one of my compromise cuisine creations – an orange sauce with a hint of rum and dark chocolate. Tastes lovely with poultry but is also quite interesting together with “meatier” fish. As usual, I don’t really measure the ingredients, so you’ll have to tweak it a little and taste your way to your perfect blend.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of orange juice
• juice and finely grated zest from 1 orange
• juice and finely grated zest from 1 lemon
• dark chocolate (I love Green & Blacks Maya Gold) about 1/2 a bar
• spiced rum
• double cream
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tbsp arrowroot

Directions:

1. Bring the  orange juice and squeezed lemon juice to boil and let it simmer until half the fluid remains
2. Add dark chocolate, rum and the orange and lemon peel and leave to rest for about half an hour
3. Bring to boil again and add a dollop of cream, salt and pepper to taste
4. Mix 1tbsp arrowroot with the juice from the orange and add to the sauce
5. Stir for a minute and allow the sauce to thicken

Serve the sauce on the side or pour it over the chicken. Looks lovely with a few thin slices of orange and some finely chopped orange zest for decoration.

Edit Post ‹ Evalena’s Scandiribbean Kitchen — WordPress

In Sweden we have a dish called Sailor’s Beef. It’s basically cheap pieces of meat cooked in light beer with onions and potatoes. Here’s my Scandiribbean version of the same dish – very tasty if I may say so myself… =)

Ingredients:

• 2kg oxtail
• 4 onions
• 500g haricot beans
• 1l Guinness
• 2-4 Scotch bonnet peppers (or a healthy measure of pepper sauce)
• 1tbsp salt
• 4 Maggi cubes

Place all of the above ingredients into a casserole dish and bake for 6-8 hours in an oven pre-heated to 140C/gas mark 1. Alternatively, cook it in a slow cooker.

For the hard food:

• 8 slices of yam, peeled
• 8 slices cassava, peeled
• 2 slice plantain, peeled
• 8 handfuls okra
• salt
• 2 maggi cubes

Boil the yam, plantain and cassava for 20-25 minutes. Top and tail the okra and steam them for 5 minutes and serve together with the casserole.

In the West Indies it seems any hot drink can pass for tea. Coffee tea, cocoa tea… John even calls mulled wine “wine tea” which I find hilarious! =)

Anyway, here’s a lush cocoa tea that has corn starch in it making it thicker than normal chocolate, but if you don’t like it thick you can leave it out.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup grated local cocoa stick (or 1/4 cup cocoa powder)
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup cream or milk
• Sugar to sweeten
• Vanilla
• Bay leaf
• Cinnamon
• Nutmeg
• (1 Tablespoon cornstarch)

Directions:

1. Put water to boil with cinnamon and bay leaf. Boil for about 15 mins.
2. Grate cocoa stick and add to the boiling water; boil for another 10 mins.
3. Add cream (or milk).
4. Sweeten to taste.
5. (Mix the cornstarch with water and add slowly to the boiling mixture, stirring all the time.)
6. Add vanilla.
7. Strain and serve.
8. Add whipped cream and flaked chocolate to make it extra yummy.

These little balls have been my favourite sweet treat for as long as I can remember. We always used to call them negerbollar (negroe balls) which, admittedly, was not a very politically correct term. I just read in a paper the other day that the word has now been taken out of the Swedish Academy’s Dictionary and the balls are now to be called chocolate balls.

Ingredients:

• 100 g butter
• 3 dl oats
• 1 1/2 dl caster sugar
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
  
• 1 tbsp cocoa
• 1 tbsp strong coffee
• dessicated coconut

Directions:

1. Leave the butter out to get room temperature (or micro wave it a little)
2. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl
3. Roll into little balls
4. Rolls the balls in the coconut to give them a nice coating
5. Keep cold and serve with coffee or eat them just the way they are
   

Enjoy!

With Christmas, or Jul (Yule) as us Swedes call it, closing in, I thought I’d share one of my seasonal favourites with you. There is no Jul without Pepparkakor!

These Ginger snaps are lovely biscuits that can be eaten all the year. Lovely just the way they are, they can also be decorated with iceing as in the picture, or eaten with butter and/or cheese. Try them with Gorgonzola for a true taste bud treat. Or put them in the Christmas tree!

The dough needs to rest for at least a day, so it has to be prepared in advance.

This recipe will give you roughly 300 delicious snaps.

Ingredients:

• 300 g butter
• 5 dl caster sugar
• 1 dl syrup
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tbsp ground cloves
• 2 tsp cardamom
• 1 tbsp bicarbonate soda
• 2 dl water
• 15 dl white flour

Directions:

1. Leave the butter out to get room temparatured
2. Mix butter, sugar and syrup
3. Add ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and bicarbonate soda and mix.
4. Add water and mix into the butter/sugar/spice.
5. Work the flour into the mix and knead it properly until you have a nice biscuit dough.
6. Wrap the dough in foil and leave in the fridge for at least a day.
7. When the dough has ‘rested’ for at least 24hrs, take as much as you need and flatten it out with a rolling pin.
8. Make biscuits either using templates cut them out with a knife. They can be round, heart-shaped, or look like Christmas-trees, men, women, pigs, stars or whatever you can think of.
9. Put the biscuits on a paper and bake them in the oven for 4-5 mins in 225*
10. Allow them to cool off and decorate them or eat them plain, whichever you prefer.

Granita is a simpler form of sorbet from Italy. Lovely for dessert or just as a snack  on a hot summer’s day.

Ingredients:

• 1 kg of watery fruits (eg. melon, currants, citus fruits etc)
• 200-300 g caster sugar
• 200 ml water

Directions:

1. clean and peel the fruit, put into a blender and mix into a smooth paste
2. pour the sugar and water into a pan on medium heat and stir until the sugar crystals have dissolved
3. mix the cooled sugar syrup with the fruit paste and put into the freezer
4. take out every 15 minutes and give it a good stir – repeat for about 2 hours until it’s got a crystalline texture
5. Garnish with some fresh fruit or berries

This is a quick and cheap delicious pasta dish for the whole family. An old family recipe that I’ve altered a bit just to add a bit more umph to it. The kids called it kladdpasta (sticky pasta) when they were babies, and to this day this dish is called sticky pasta in this house.

Ingredients:

• 500 g wholemeal pasta
• 5 dl double cream
• 100g butter
• 1 pkt smoked bacon or pancetta
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 dl frozen green peas
• 2 eggs
• salt & black pepper to taste
• chilli pepper or pepper sauce to taste
• parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. start the pasta water and don’t forget to add salt
2. put a knob of butter in a frying pan and turn up to mark 5
3. grate (or finely chop) the onion and garlic and add to the pan
4. slice the bacon or pancetta and add to the pan
5. season with black pepper, chilli powder (or pepper sauce) and salt to taste
6. toss the pasta into the now boiling water and give it a god stir
7. when the onion and garlic looks translucent you add half of the cream and turn down the heat to mark 3
8. mix the rest of the cream with the eggs and as much grated cheese as you like/can afford
9. strain the pasta, but save a ladle of pasta water wich will help thickening the sauce (because of the starch from the pasta)
10. mix it all together: first you need to mix in the egg cream and the saved pasta water in the sauce – give it a good stir and pour over the pasta