Tag Archives: guest post

A Boy and His Pie (guest post)

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My third guest on Kokblog is Jules Clancy, who lives and works in Sydney and the Snowy Mountains, Australia. Jules is a food scientist, writer, minimalist, photographer and the author of the site thestonesoup.com. I really enjoy Jules’ minimalistic approach to cooking and her concept of 5 ingredient recipes is inspiring! We met on twitter about a year ago. Since then we have kept in contact through emails and tweets.  I also have the honor to make drawings for her web site and her Virtual Cooking School that started in Autumn last year. Last week we finally met for real and went for brunch here in New York City.

A Boy and His Pie
by Jules Clancy

Mention that classic dessert, Lemon Meringue Pie and my thoughts turn instantly to my gorgeous not-so-little brother. For as long as I can remember Dom has been fanatical about his pie, think Homer Simpson and his devotion to beer or doughnuts and you’re not even in the same ballpark as to how much Dom loves LMP.

From when he was little, whenever Mum would give Dom the option of what to have for dessert there was only one answer. I can’t remember him ever having a normal Birthday cake, it was always LMP.

One year, I think it was around his 21st, when Mum asked Dom what he would like as a birthday present he somehow convinced her to make him one pie a day for 21 days.

So she did and not even that sort of over exposure was enough to dampen his love for the pie.

It’s a bit of family legend that Dom was so good at asking for his favourite dessert that he was able to get it out in just one syllable ‘lemeringuepie’. No mean feat for a small boy, try it yourself.

Last year we had a bit of a belated Birthday dinner for my favourite (and only) brother and there was no question when it came to the dessert decision. It was my second attempt a recreating my Mum’s legendary LMP, using the recipe she had lovingly hand written into her little cook book. And while it came nowhere near close to looking like my Mum’s creation, I’m pretty sure for Dom it was better than no pie at all.

Think rich lemony goodness in the filling balanced by light-as-air-sweet sweet meringue and you’re there.

mum’s legendary lemon meringue pie
serves 1 if you’re my brother or approx 6 normal people

I was always impressed that my mum went to the effort of making her own pastry, and one of my strongest memories is of her is how clever I though she was balancing the pie on hone hand while trimming the pastry edges with a knife. The sound of the knife rubbing down the ceramic pie edges still reminds me of her.

I’ve copied this across from my mum’s recipe book and this is exactly as she had it written down. Apologies if it seems a little confusing but it felt wrong trying to re-organise it.

Sift together 1 cup plain flour, pinch salt.
Rub in 2oz (60g) butter until like fine breadcrumbs.
Add 2 tablespoons water and mix well.
Roll dough to fit an 8in pie plate.
Prick base lightly with a fork.
Bake in a moderate oven for 15mins only, cool.

Combine:
1 400g (14oz) can Nestles condensed milk
1/2 cup lemon juicegrated rind of 1 lemon
3 egg yolks
Place in shell
Beat egg whites until stiff. Gradually add in 1/4 cup castor sugar. Beat until dissolved.
Place meringue on top of filling.
Bake in moderate oven 15 minutes, or until golden.

It seems a little sacrilegious to admit it, but I have always thought of the pastry as the weak link in her pie. If you’re looking for the crunch of a more of a classic short crust try my favourite sweet pastry recipe here. And bake blind for about half an hour before filling.


You can follow Jules on twitter, @jules_stonesoup

 

Semlor for Fat Tuesday (guest post)

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My second guest to write here on kokblog is Anna Brones who is a Swede (like me) living in Portland, Oregon. Anna is a writer and co-funder of Under Solen Media (New Media Marketing company). We just met on the Internet and immediately started a conversations around Swedish treats such as knäckebröd, gravlax, and the Swedish Fat Tuesday bun called Semla.

Semlor For Fat Tuesday
by Anna Brones

In my family, as with many, food represents tradition. As a child growing up with a smorgasbord – pun intended – of Swedish foods all year round, I found nothing unusual in our repertoire of dining choices. There should always be hard tack in the pantry, pickled herring and aquavit indicate a good party, and open-faced sandwiches are a perfectly acceptable way to start the day. In Sweden, yes. In the U.S., maybe not.

The same goes for seasonal traditions. I can’t have Christmas without meatballs, and I can’t have a winter without a semla.

A semla, also known as fastlagsbulle or fettisbulle, is a flour bun filled with almond paste and topped with whipped cream and powdered sugar. Historically the decadent pastry was intended for consumption on fettisdagen, Fat Tuesday. But in modern day, the tradition of semlor has gone far beyond just fettisdagen, allowing for Swedish pastry shops and bakeries to fill their windows with the baked good from just after the New Year all the way through Easter. Several months of pastry bliss.

But tucked into the forest of the Pacific Northwest, we were thousands of miles from a Swedish bakery. And yet, I remember that antsy feeling that would come in the late winter months, as my mother would whip out the baking supplies and create masterpieces of almond paste and whipped cream. I would inevitably end up with powdered sugar on my nose.

And thus tradition was born. If Fat Tuesday comes and goes without having eaten one, something is wrong. But with a food savvy mother, my own food traditions come with high expectations.

So in preparation for fettisdagen this year, I figured it best to make some semlor in advance, fine tuning the recipe and ensuring that come Fat Tuesday, I could successfully produce a baked good that would live up to my own standards.

A misread recipe and a bag of whole wheat flour later, I had a batch of cinnamon rolls and a plate full of mini-sized semlor buns on my hands, small enough to be bite size for a five year old. Failure.

“You used whole wheat flour?”

“Well yeah, you know how guilty I feel about buying regular flour,” I responded to my mother on the phone. Along with food tradition, she has also instilled a continued expectation of stocking my apartment full of healthy food. Things made with white flour and sugar are out of the ordinary.

“Did you even buy whipping cream?”

“Umm… no,” I quietly added. What am I going to do with an entire bowl full of whipping cream by myself? I thought.

“Anna, if you’re going to make something decadent, make something decadent. It has to be a real semla!”

And that is where tradition wins. No need to use organic agave instead of sugar, or switch out unbleached white flour or even attempt to make something that doesn’t use butter and eggs, because when it comes to baking and cooking in the name of tradition, you stick with what works, and you get what you expect: a celebratory moment with a cup of coffee and a semla.

semlor
(20 buns)
400F (200°C)

250 ml (one cup) milk
100 g (3 ½ oz) melted butter
25 g fresh yeast (2 teaspoons dry yeast)
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon cardamom
1 egg
850 ml (3 2/3 cups) flour

1 egg, lightly beaten, for glazing

filling
200g (about 1/2 lb) almond paste
insides of the buns + 200 ml (7/8 cup) milk
100 ml (½ cup) whipped cream

Melt butter and add in milk. Heat until lukewarm. Pour over yeast and let sit for 3 minutes. Add rest of ingredients and work the mixture into dough. Leave dough to rise under cloth for 15 minutes.

Knead dough on floured surface. Separate into two sections, then each section into 10 small balls. Place on greased baking pan and let rise for 20 minutes. Glaze each bun with lightly beaten egg. Bake approximately 15 minutes. Cover the buns with a cloth and cool on a wire rack.

To fill
Cut off a circular “lid” off of each bun and set aside. Scoop out inside of bun with a spoon or fork. Mix in a bowl with almond paste and add milk to make a smooth mixture.

Fill buns with mixture and top with whipping cream. Place lid on top of whipping cream and garnish with powdered sugar.

•••

You can follow Anna Brones on twitter, @AnnaBrones

More Swedish baked classics

Kanelbullar – Swedish Cinnamon Bun
Pepparkakor – Ginger Bread Cookies (at EcoSalon)
Lussebullar – Saffron Buns
Mazariner – Guest post by Anna Brones

Murder Cookies (guest post)

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For a long time I’ve had the idea to invite friends and others I think are fantastic food personalities to post here. The idea is to have them write and me illustrate the post.

My first guest is the Swedish food journalist Alice Brax and the woman behind my absolute favorite Swedish food blog Brax on Food. Alice blogs about  restaurants, food shopping, seasonal food products and whats happening behind the scenes as a food journalist in Stockholm. We met for the first time through our blogs in 2005  at the cafe Vetekatten in Stockholm. Since then we have shared many fantastic food moments, either in our own kitchens or in restaurants in NYC and Sweden. At the moment Alice Brax is visiting NYC.

kokblog_deckare

Murder She Baked
by Alice Brax

I spend my summers in a small red cottage near Sweden’s biggest lake Vänern. During the long summer nights, it has become a tradition to make cookies while watching British murder mysteries on TV, such as Miss Marple or Midsomer murders. A murder mystery takes about an hour to solve, as does a batch of cookies. At least if you like your cookies pretty and your murder mysteries wrapped up nicely.

Traditionally in Sweden, you are supposed to offer your guests at least seven different kinds of cookies. But who has the time for that much baking? My secret is to use Swedish classic dough to create at least seven different kinds of cookies.

seven types of cookies
(this dough makes about 80 small cookies in different colors and shapes)

3 ½ sticks of butter (14 oz)(400gr), room temperature
1 cup (250 ml) sugar
4 cups (950 ml)  flour
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tbsp water

Mix butter, sugar and flour into a dough. Put aside two thirds of the dough. Stir cocoa with water and mix with the remaining dough until it becomes brown.
Put the two pieces of dough in plastic bags and let them rest for at least 30 minutes in the fridge. This makes the dough easier to handle.

Seven Variations

schack

Chess Squares
Take 3 oz (85 gr) of each dough. Form two ¾ inch (2 cm) rolls out of each of them. Put the four rolls together to form a small chessboard (2×2). Carefully press the roll against the table on all four sides to form a square roll. Cut less than ¼ inch (0.7 cm) thick cookies and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color! When I really want to impress my guests I make the chessboard 3×3 instead, still keeping the cookie the same small size.

thinkpink

Think Pink
½ cup (120 ml) sugar
4 drops red food coloring
Form 5 oz (140 gr) of the light dough into a 1 ½ inch (4 cm) thick roll. Mix sugar and food coloring until it becomes pink. Pour the sugar on a plate and role the dough until it is covered with sugar. Cut less than ¼ inch (0.7 cm) thick cookies and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color!

CAVE

Jam Caves
4 tbsp of your favorite jam
Form 5 oz (140 gr) of the light dough into a 1 ½ inch (4 cm) thick roll. Cut ½ inch (1 cm) thick cookies and place on a greased baking sheet. Use your little finger to carefully make a dimple in the middle of the cookie. Fill the dimple with less than half a tsp of jam. Bake for 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color!

tanned

Tanned Top
Form 3 oz (85 gr) of the light dough into a 1 inch (2,5 cm) thick roll. Roll out 1 ½ oz (ca 40 gr) of the dark dough 3 inch (5 cm) wide and as long as the roll (about ¼ inch thick). Roll the dark dough around the light roll. Cut less than ¼ inch thick (0.7 cm) cookies and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color!

pigsnose

Pig’s Nose
Form 2 ½ oz (ca 70 gr) of the dark dough into two thin rolls. Roll out 4 oz (113 g) of the light dough 4 inch (10 cm) wide and as long as the two dark rolls. Roll the light dough around the dark rolls, one at a time. Cut less than ¼ inch (0.7 cm) thick cookies and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color!

FINSKPINNE

Finish Cocktail Sticks (Finska pinnar)
½ cups almond
2 tbsp pearl sugar
Roll out 7 oz (200gr) of the light dough to a 5 x 5 inch big square (about ¾ inch (2 cm) thick). Chop the almonds coarsely. Sprinkle almond and pearl sugar on top of the square and pat it in with your palm. Cut the dough into 1 inch thick strips and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C) – they should not get much color!

JITTERBUG

Jitterbugs
It’s not only a swing dance, it’s a classic Swedish cookie as well.
1 egg white
4 tbsp sugar
6 drops red food coloring
Roll out 7 oz (200gr) of the light dough into a 7 x 5 inch (18×13 cm) big square. For the meringue, beat an egg white with an electric beater. Gradually add sugar, and beat until the meringue is shiny and very stiff. Add the food coloring and stir carefully until the meringue is pink. Spread the meringue evenly on the dough and loosely roll together. Wrap in saran wrap and let it rest for at least 30 minutes in the freezer. Cut the dough into 1 inch thick strips and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes at 350°F (175°C) – they should not get much color!

Tips!
1. Don’t use too much flour. If the butter is too warm the dough feels sticky. Try putting it in the fridge for a while.
2.  Don’t overwork the dough or you will end up with chewier cookies.
3.  Size matters! The cookies shouldn’t be bigger then 1 ½ inch in diameter.
4. You can make the dough in advance. Form it into a roll, cover with saran wrap and put into the freezer. When you want to make cookies, just take out the dough, cut them up and bake them.

kokblog_chess_instr

Follow Alice on twitter, @BraxonFood