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!

Lagkagebunde version II - Sponge Cake

Lagkagebunde - Sponge Cake

Danes have Birthday cakes like everyone else, and it’s called a lagkage or layer cake. It is made up of layers of sponge cake with some kind of filling between the layers. Most common is a vanilla or chocolate custard ans some kind of jam or fruit, a thin layer of icing and whipped cream on top. But pretty much anything goes. Growing up I always had a strawberry layer cake. My birthday correlated with the first local strawberries of the year, so my birthday cakes were very simple, 2 layers of sponge cake with smashed strawberries folded into whipped cream between and on the top. Not a picture perfect cake, but extremely delicious. My brothers birthday was during the winter months, so his birthday cakes were more classic with vanilla custard and jam., making it a pretty cake with a nice cut.

Some of my fiends had more interesting birthday cakes filled with chocolate custard, banana and even crushed chocolate meringue. A proof that anything goes in homemade birthday cakes.

I like that this cake have some texture, while being light. But if you want it lighter, use half all-purpose flour and half potato starch.

Makes 1 large sponge cake, to be divided.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 eggs, room temperature

• 180 g sugar

• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or the seeds (caviar) from 1 vanilla pod

• 160 g all-purpose flour (or use half all-purpose flour and half potato starch)

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1 pinch salt

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350℉ (180℃).

Spray a 9-inch (22 cm) springform. Place a piece of parchment paper in the bottom and spray this too. Set aside.

Whisk the eggs light and foamy with sugar and vanilla bean paste for 10 minutes in a stand mixer, this part is important, you want to incorporate as much air into the eggs, as this is where the most rise will come from.

Mix and sift flour and baking powder together, and set aside. 

Very gently fold the flour into the foamy eggs. Be very careful not to deflate the egg mixture too much.

Pour the batter in the prepared springform

Bake the large cake for about 40 minutes, until light brown.

Cool the cake upside down in the spring form on a wire rack. This will prevent the deflation of the cake.

When cooled completely, place the cake on a sturdy work surface. Using a long serrated knife and using sawing motion, cut the layer horizontally to make 2 or 3 layers. Don't worry if the layers are not perfectly even. The filling and frosting will mask that. 

Use this sponge cake for the traditional danish birthday cake or for any cake or trifle.

Enjoy!

Homemade Vanilla Bean Paste

Homemade Vanilla Bean Paste

When I first moved to California, one of the things I had a hard time finding, was vanilla beans. In Denmark I never used vanilla extract, only real vanilla beans or vanilla sugar. So I always got vanilla beans sent to me in Care Packages. Eventually I discovered vanilla bean paste, and used that for most things, except for vanilla wreaths and our Christmas dessert Risalamande. Here I wanted the truer delicate vanilla flavors from the beans. Around the month of December you can find ok vanilla beans, but they aren’t as thick and plump, as the onc’s I got from Denmark. Somehow I got dragged into a vanilla cult, and now i buy the most beautiful thick and plump vanilla beans to a reasonable price online. Access to great vanilla beans, made me want to try making my own vanilla bean paste without any extract, and this recipe from Karas Couture Cakes is the most clean recipe i have found.

Makes about 250-300 ml (8½-10 fl oz)

Ingredients:

• 16 whole vanilla beans

• 250 g water

• 300 g sugar

• 50 g glucose

Directions:

Cut off the ends of the beans, you can save these, dry them and use them for vanilla sugar.

Chop the beans into a 1/2-inch (~1cm) long pieces. Using a food processor, spice grinder or Vitamix blender, grind the beans with about half the sugar. Work in batches, so you don’t overheat machinery or the vanilla and sugar mixture. You are looking for a grey/brown sandy looking mixture.

In a medium saucepan mix the rest of the sugar, water and glucose, and heat it to a boil, let it boil for a few minutes. Add the vanilla sugar mixture to the saucepan, and let it boil for another 2 minutes, before removing from the heat.

Strain the vanilla through a fine meshed sieve, and use a flexible spatula to massage as much of the paste through the sieve. You can save this pulp and use it to make extract or vanilla sugar. I didn’t do that as I allready had some extract brewing and didn’t need more.

Pour the vanilla bean paste into clean scolded glass containers, and close the lids tightly when completely cooled. Store the vanilla bean paste in a dark place like a pantry.

DO NOT REFRIGERATE

Use vanilla bean paste in cakes, custard, ice cream, and where you would use vanilla sugar or extract.

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!