kareina

When the car didn't start in the -30 C temps on Thursday I didn't worry about it--it was my own fault for not having changed the timer on the engine heater to run for longer than usual that morning. Therefore I changed the timer so that the engine heater would have more hours to run on Friday before I tried. Sadly, that turned out to not work either, and I drained the battery trying to start it (it got close to starting, which is why I kept trying).

At that point it felt like an easy problem to solve--just get the battery charger from the basement. However, I didn't know that the car I bought last month doesn't come with a lever inside to open the hood--instead there is a key hole under the logo. Or, rather, there is supposed to be! This is what I saw when I opened the logo:



If one pokes one's key in there, one feels nothing. I contacted the previous owner for a hint. He said use a screwdriver, press, twist left first, then right. I still couldn't feel anything in there to press with the screwdriver in as far as it would go before the handle hit the edges of the hole. Went into the shop a found a narrow metal rod about the same length as a screwdriver, but no handle, and tried again. Still couldn't find anything in there to press.

So I gave up for Friday and decided to ignore the problem till David came over on Saturday.

Friday evening I attended Dharian's zoom bardic, which started at 19:00 my time. I got sleepy around 02:00 and said goodnight to those still present at the bardic and went to bed.

On Saturday David tried opening the hood using the screwdriver, and he was able to find a protrusion that was just at the end of the reach of the screwdriver, but he couldn't actually follow the advice to press and turn and accomplish anything. So he went to the shop, got a scrap metal rod and used the angle grinder to shape one end like a screwdriver. This worked, and we were able to open the hood. The tool now lives in the car, so I will always be able to open the hood if I need to.

Then it was a simple matter to plug in the charger, and a couple of hours later the car started up just fine, so I used to go pick up my package (a Viking food cookbook) and some fresh veg and fruit.

Sunday morning I woke up to a message letting me know that the Avacal Bardic was still on, so I hopped into Zoom and spent a couple of hours singing and sewing, till I saw a reminder that it was time to host the zoom crafts afternoon session for the Shire of Reengarda, so I switched meetings.

The part of the weekend I wasn't at zoom bardics ( I mostly spent playing with NoteworthyComposer )

My other accomplishment of the weekend was yummy!

A caramel-almond pear tart:

1 recipe joulutorttu dough (see below)

Filling:

1 l chopped pears
2 T brown sugar
2 dl water
36 g butter
1 dl almond meal
84 g brown cheese, grated
2 T rice flour
a little cold water


Chop the pears and cook on the stove with the water and brown sugar. When it is boiling add the almond meal and the grated brown cheese. When the pears have started to soften mix the rice flour with just enough cold water to make a liquid, and stir that in.


Line a large pie plate with just over half of the dough, pour in the filling, and cover with the remaining dough. Bake at 150 C with the fan running. If you let it cool before slicing you get nice pretty cut edges. If you are impatient (like me), the filling oozes out into the empty part of the pan. Either way it is yummy.



Joulutorttu dough

1 c flour
1/3 c water

Mix the flour and water to make a soft dough and chill in the refrigerator.

1 c flour
1 c butter (226 g)

Soften the butter, mix with the flour to make a soft dough, and chill in the refrigerator.

Roll out water-flour dough to a large thin rectangle.

Roll out butter-flour dough to the same size rectangle

Stack the butter-flour dough onto water-flour dough and fold the combined dough in thirds. Roll it out again, and fold in thirds again. Repeat enough times to make lots of layers of with and without the butter. Take breaks to chill the dough again as often as needed to keep the butter from softening too much (how often depends on your kitchen temperature).

I have been baking lots of fruit crumbles lately, and they have all been wonderful. The other day I felt for something different, and did something a bit more cake like. Then I made another crumble when I finished the cake.

This weekend I am heading to Skellefteå for my apprentices möhippa (bridal shower), which will involve lots of adventures. I volunteered to bake something to share for fika in between the climbing wall and the salt room. My first thought was yet another crumble, but since we will be eating it somewhere in town, it made sense to bake something with a bit more structural integrity. Therefore I decided to do a fusion of my last two creations, to see how they work together.

The result was a Caramel Apple Cake with Blueberry-Almond-Oat topping

First I made the crumble part:

1 c oats
0.5 c almond slivers
0.5 c almond meal
50 grams butter
2 T blueberry powder

Worked that together by hand till it is well blended. Then pressed into the bottom of to cake pans (I opted for two--a large springform pan with a central tube, to make something kinda pretty to share, and a smaller one in an 8" round cake pan to leave at home to eat next week).

Then I got the dry ingredients for the cake batter ready:

2 c wheat flour
2 t baking powder
dash salt
3 T butter

Work that together with hands (like for a pie crust) till it is well blended

then I added the "caramel":

1 c grated Gudbrandsdalsost (about 120 g)

and worked it in well.

Then I added

3.5 c chopped apples

and finally

1.5 c buttermilk
2 eggs

(I beat the eggs into the buttermilk, before adding it to the rest of the cake batter.)

Then I carefully spread the very-apple rich batter over the crumble part and baked it.

I will report back later how others like it. Perhaps the fact that I didn't add any sugar that wasn't naturally occurring in the fruit or cheese will make it less popular than if I had made a sweet cake? Perhaps it will be more popular? All I know is that if it is even half as good as the two dishes that inspired it, I will be happy.

While I was off in Bergen the black currants achieved ripe enough to pick. Therefore I got up early Saturday morning and went down and picked about 10 liters of berries, which was enough to freeze two ice cream boxes, fill all five trays of the dehydrator, and cook 1.5 liters down to 0.75 liters of jam (to which I added one small Swedish apple, but no sugar other than what the fruit grew on its own, so it is nice and tart. In addition to that, David had picked about 4 liters of black currants just before I got home and put them into the fridge till Saturday, when he had time to process them. He put his into the steam juicer and steamed out lots of nice dark red juice, which he then cooked down a little and added a sugar-pectin blend to make some nice clear jelly (traditionally served with moose here).

When he was done steaming his berries that left about 4 cups of berry mush, which I set aside till today, when I finally managed to go to the store, and I used half of it in a pie:

Svartvinbärspaj

Crust:

1 cup oat flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup slivered almonds
100 grams butter

Blend oats, nuts, and butter together and press into the bottom of a large (12 " or 31 cm diameter) pie plate.

Filling:

1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
250 g mascarpone
250 g ricotta
1 t gelatinen soaked in 1 T water
2 cups mashed black currants that have had the juice extracted via steam
1/4 cup milk

Beat the eggs and sugar till light and fluffy (I used an electric mixer), add the cheeses one at a time, then the other ingredients and blend well. Pour into the crust and bake at 150 for 30 to 35 minutes.

I got a late enough start on making this today that while I was still hungry enough to lick the bowl and the beaters (yum!!!), I decided not to taste it tonight but instead let it cool down and put it into the fridge. However, if it tastes half as good after baking as it did going into the oven it will be amazing.

This time L., from Handcrafted History did a workshop on "riktigt tajta kläder. There were six of us students in the course (at least one other who had planned to attend was sick). L. commented to me "you probably already know this stuff", and I admitted that I have, in fact, helped others fit patterns for Greenland style gowns, but I have never gotten around to making one for myself, and this seemed like a reasonable opportunity. Besides, I am one of the few in the shire with a key to the classroom at the Uni that we were using.

I arrived at 09:30 to let her in, arriving in perfect time, as I saw her pull up to to door and park just as I was about to turn into the parking lot next to the door. By the time she had her supplies set up (and I had eaten my breakfast) the others arrived. She did a short lecture and then we paired up to start fitting patterns. I got the first fitting, then we enjoyed an hour lunch break, and I pinned fabric onto my partner, who, at first glance looks to be about the same size and shape as I, but oh how different her pattern pieces are than mine! Never mind that if we walked into a modern clothing store together we would probably both fit into the same items.

After we got the first draft done we traced them onto fresh fabric, adding measured seam allowances, and markings for waist, under bust line, etc., then stitched them quickly together so that we could start work on the sleeves. We all got a very rough sleeve ready for fitting by 16:00, but we also decided that tomorrow was early enough to finish that part of the process, and went home.

I was feeling tired, having stayed up too late the night before talking with O. (who never did go to sleep--once I quit distracting him with conversation and went to sleep myself he stayed up cutting out leather pieces for his new armour, but the 3 hours I slept wasn't quite long enough for him to have finished them all before I got up). So when I got home I did my yoga and crawled into bed at only 17:00, giving myself permission to sleep all night if it happened.

It didn't. I woke only an hour later, so I got up, ate something, and then got a message from the Shire herald, wondering how many signatures have been obtained on the petition for the registration of the Frostheim Coat of Arms*. I let her know that we are now only missing the signature of the A&S officer, and that we have 15 total signatures of combined officers and members so far, but we have the Smithy Day coming up next weekend, at which we could probably get a few more. She said that she wants to ship the paperwork off to Kingdom this week, so that it can go with the next batch from Kingdom to the Society level. Therefore I suggested that we advertise on FB free cookies to anyone who can stop by the day two of the workshop to sign, and then after the workshop I can take the petition to the A&S officer on my way to Folk Dance (he lives across the street from the dance hall), and he can hand it to her at work tomorrow (they are both doctors at the local hospital). This is much simpler than my handing it to her, since she lives a 30 minute drive south of me, and doesn't pass any where near my neighbourhood on her way to work.

So then I baked cookies and let the shire FB group know. It will be interesting to see how many, if any, stop by to sign tomorrow.

*I am still totally baffled as to how we can possibly be a shire if our arms were never registered (never mind that have been using them anyway for more than 20 years; the last attempt at registering arms for the shire was 1994). I know that back in those days it was a requirement that the group arms be registered before a group could go from "Incipient Shire" to "Shire" (though back then we were a Canton of the Barony of Nordmark--we didn't become a Shire till Nordmark transformed into a Principality). How did we manage to avoid that hurdle?

Back in the summer of 1990 I attended the Oslo International Summer School for their Norwegian language course. The summer school comes with (or did a the time) a number of extracurricular activities for the students to introduce them to Norwegian culture. One of these was a mid-stay weekend adventure--students choose from among a variety of destinations and activities. Since I love mountains more than anything I picked the trip to the Brimi Fjellstugu, a cute timber cabin at the edge of the tree line. The place was decorated with traditional Norwegian decor, and the food I tried was yummy and very Norwegian. They had for sale a cookbook, in Norwegian, sharing the recipes of much of what they served, and since I was particularly find of both Rømmegrøt and their flat bread, I bought the book, hoping these two would be in there. Besides, the photos of the food had some of the nice carved furniture of the cabin for backdrop, so it was just plain pretty.

But soon thereafter I wound up moving to Ashland, Oregon, and was no longer able to continue my Norwegian studies, and I never got around to trying any recipes from the book. Yesterday, late afternoon, I was hungry, but feeling uninspired and didn't know what to cook. lord_kjar had driven to a small town just over three hours from here for work, so I knew he wouldn't be home for a while, so I would have time to something more elaborate if I felt for it. The first cookbook I picked up was the Norwegian one, and, unsurprisingly, after four years living in Sweden I can now easily read most of the recipes, though there are some specific words that elude me.

Now, I had been thinking in terms of dinner when I opened the book, but the photo that caught my eye was for Sviskekake med jordbærpuré, which translates to "prune cake with strawberry puree", but the cake pictured looked more like the dense Swedish style oven pancakes I am so fond of, or perhaps more of a tart (note: in the photo one can't really see the prunes--only two sort of break the surface of the cake to hint they may be there). So I looked at the recipe:

1 l mjølk
100 g smør
200 g sukker
200 g kveitemjøl
6 egg
100 g svisker, steinfrie

Kok opp mjølk, smør, og sukker, rør det lett saman med mjøl og egg. Slå røra i ei kakeform som er tett, legg i svisker. Steid i omn på 175 C i ca. 40 minutt til kaka er fast of pent brun. Kan severast både varm og kald.

Which I think means:

1 liter milk
100 g (not quite 1/2 cup) butter
200 g (~3/4 c) sugar
200 g (~1.25 c) wheat flour
6 eggs
100 g prunes, without pits

Boil the milk, butter, and sugar, stir it gently together with the flour and egg. Pour batter into a cake pan that doesn't leak, put in the prunes. Bake in an oven about 175 C for around 40 minutes until the cake is solid and nicely brown. Can be served both warm and cold.

After glancing at the ingredient list, but before reading the text, I hesitated, since, with sugar in it (and based on which section of the book it is in), it is clearly meant to be a desert, and I am not a huge fan of sweets. However, while it has the same mass of sugar as flour, it is noticeably less sugar than flour by volume, and there is far more milk or egg than either flour or sugar. Comparing this to our normal oven pancake recipe this one contains the same amount of milk, 3 to 6 times as many eggs (we vary how many we use from one time to the next), only about 1/3 as much flour, and, of course, we don't put in any sugar or dried fruit.

Then I read the instructions, and saw that one is pre-cooking the ingredients before putting it into the oven, and I wondered how that would effect things. So, of course, I had to try. I even resolved to not give into the temptation to cut the sugar, because I was curious as to just how sweet it would taste. However, I did make one change. Neither lord_kjar or I are all that fond of prunes, but we both like dried apricots. The two fruits aren't that different, so I decided to swap these--after all it was the behavior of the batter I was really curious about, and how it interacted with any dried fruit at all.

So I ran to the store and bought more milk, eggs, and some apricots, since we didn't have enough on hand to try the full recipe. Then I realized that the recipe is lacking all kinds of useful information. Boil the milk, butter and sugar for how long? Is the goal just to bring it up to temperature and stop? Or do we want to keep going long enough to trigger any of the next stages that can happen when cooking such ingredients? Do we put the hot milk etc. into the eggs and flour, or the eggs and flour into the hot milk? Or should we let the milk etc. cool before adding the eggs and flour? Add eggs one at a time as they come out of the shell, or beat them together first? Leave the fruit whole, or cut it up? set them on top of the batter, or stir them in? Should one grease the pan? Why did the author feel the need to specify the pan shouldn't leak? Does he have one which does? What size pan, anyway? The photo had it in one of those cute white tart pans, but they come in a variety of sizes, and this recipe makes more than a liter and a half of batter.

So I went with some guesses:

I decided to let it heat till it was clearly boiling, not just the first sign of simmering, but didn't leave it any longer than that.

I decided to beat together the eggs and flour first, mostly because I wanted to avoid lumps of flour in the batter, and adding flour to hot liquid without wetting it first with a cool one is a good way to get lumps. Besides, this gave me something to do while waiting for the milk etc. to heat. I didn't cool the milk, but did take it off the heat, and then poured in all of the beaten eggs/flour at once.

I decided to chop the fruit into small chunks, both to finish filling the time while waiting for the milk to heat and so that it would be more evenly distributed throughout the cake. However, based on other types of cake recipes I have tried, I thought it would be ok to sprinkle the fruit on top and let it sink in during baking.

The other question was about cake pan--I have one of those white pans, but I checked, and while it easily holds the first liter of liquid, the full batter wouldn't fit, and I don't have two in that style. I do, however, have a much larger, thicker brown ceramic pie plate I inherited from my step-dad that was *just* big enough to hold it all, so I went with that.

While it was baking I also mixed up some dinner and put it into the other oven to bake, and then made the strawberry puree while I was waiting (that recipe I will stick on at the bottom)

So, how did it all work:

When I described adding the flour and eggs "all at once" what I really meant was "pour in most of it, and stir quickly, since the eggs were already starting to cook and the batter was turning rather fluffy, then scrape in more of the batter, and stir again, then add the last little bit and stir again". If I had had someone else present then I probably would have had one stirring the whole time while the other scrapped the eggs in. I think I am happy with the texture result from this step (and really enjoyed licking the bowl), so I would be willing to take this approach again.

Was it too sweet? Nope, not for a for a desert--it is about as sweet as I ever want my deserts to be--it has about 8% sugar by volume (not counting the fruit sugar), and that is plenty, without over doing it. However, I am curious to try it again with zero sugar (and no fruit) to see how this approach compares with our oven pancakes.

How about that fruit? Chopping it was a good idea, but I should have stirred it in. The pieces never did sink into the batter, but stayed perched up on top, and while the rest of the cake was only starting to get brown they were already crossing line into rather black.

Pan size? Too deep! It took much longer to bake to set than I would have wanted--not only did the fruit over cook, but the top is browner than I would have preferred. I think next time I will use the large rectangular pan in which I bake oven pancakes so that the batter is thinner and cooks more evenly. Or I might make only a half recipe and try that white ceramic tart pan, since that would be prettier.

In actuality, I don't think I actually let it set as well as the recipe called for through baking alone--when it was already quite brown, and I was thinking it was nearly set enough I decided to just turn off the oven and let it finish setting in a cooling oven while I waited for the other food to finish baking in the other oven.

As a result it was still warm when we sat down to eat (three hours after deciding to try the recipe), and one needed a spoon to serve it, since it didn't really hold together yet. However, I like that texture (and, indeed, liked it just fine before it went into the oven, too), it just didn't look like what was in the photo. However, after leaving the rest of it sit in the fridge overnight, this morning I could cut a slice, pick it up and eat with my fingers if I wanted. However, it is good with that strawberry puree, so instead I put it in a bowl and ate them together with a spoon for breakfast. While this is sweeter than my normal breakfast, it is no where near as sweet as the sugar cereals I ate as a child.

And, before I forget, that strawberry recipe, since they do go so well together, especially when the one is warm and the other cold:

Jordbærpuré

500 g friske eller frosne jordbær
1 ss melis
1/2 sitron utan skal og stein

Vask og reinsk bæra. Ha det i hurrtigmiksar/food-processor saman med melis og sitron. Mos till puré, press pureen gjennom ei sikt. Set pureen kjølig, med lokk, til han skal serverast.

which I think means:

500 g fresh or frozen strawberries
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
1/2 lemon without peel or seeds

Wash and (hull?) berries, put them in a food processor together with the powdered sugar and lemon. Process till it is a puree, press the puree through a sieve. Put it in the fridge, with a lid, till it is time to serve it.

I did only half a batch, since there are only the two of us. I didn't have any fresh lemon, so I just used a tablespoon of lemon juice. I used frozen berries (which I had washed and hulled before freezing), so I just tossed them into the food processor still frozen, which meant that it took a while, and a fair bit of scraping to get it to transform into shush instead of fluffy ice bits. We never did get it liquidy enough to press it through the sieve before the rest of the food was ready, but neither of us mind the seeds, so we left them in.

Just like with the cake (which an American might call a custard, and which could also be called a pie in Swedish, since their word for pie doesn't require a crust), this wasn't too sweet--that isn't much sugar compared to the amount of berries, yet I think I would have enjoyed it without the sugar, too.

PS, thank you to northernotter for translation help yesterday!

The local grocery store today actually had a few pumpkins available (I think there were perhaps 8 or 10 of them when we got there). I love fresh roasted pumpkin seeds, so one of the pumpkins followed us home. Oh, my, I had forgotten just how much more seeds a pumpkin has than the little butternut squash they normally carry! Yum!

We cut the pumpkin into large chunks and put it into the oven to roast, and set the seeds in another pan above them to roast. The seeds were, of course, rescued much sooner than the pumpkin, which cooked to a very soft texture and generated a fair bit of pumpkin water, which I then combined back into the pumpkin with a staff mixer (after removing the peel). I had intended to just freeze all of it, since we had butternut squash risotto and bread rolls just last week, but then it occurred to me to try an experiment with a bit of it before freezing the rest for later use in soups, bread, and risitto.

I have never liked pumpkin pie, because it is so sweet, but I like plain custards. How about if I try mom's pie recipe without any sugar at all (instead of the 1 cup! of brown sugar she uses), but with just the three eggs, two cups of milk, spices, and a couple cups of the pumpkin puree?

I wasn't feeling motivated enough to do a pie crust, so I just buttered a 13 x 9" glass cake pan, and it is getting close to done baking in that. Looking good so far, I will report back later...

Edited to report: I like the custard as it is, and combined with savory dishes as part of a meal. My housemates like it as desert, with a bit of sweet syrup poured over it.

Some of the folk from our choir are planning on coming over here this evening to play musical instruments, just for the heck of it. Therefore I decided I wanted to make a coffee cake to feed them (to encourage them to do it again on another occasion). This time I decided that I would look for inspiring recipes on line first. The phrase "not too sweet coffee cake" is so common that google suggests it for you if you get as much as "not sweet coff". However, most of the first few hits called for a cup and a half or more of sugar. Not going there. This vintage coffee cake, on the other hand, only wants 1/2 cup sugar in the batter and another 1/4 for the topping, which sounded much more reasonable, so I gave it a try. I can report that the batter was yummy, the cake rose up nicely, and it smells great as it sits cooling on the counter. Sadly, by the time we get to eating it it will be too late in the evening for me to be hungry enough to taste it, but if I record the link here I can make it again on another occasion.

As I mentioned a while ago, I am trying two versions of a bagel dough today. I assumed before trying it that my dough would rise at least as much as the published version, since while I am using much, much less sugar, I am also using lots less salt. The published version of the dough has been rising for a full hour, mine for 15 to 20 minutes less than that. Even with the shorter rising time, mine was sitting slightly higher in its bowl than the published version. Letting them rest a bit before shaping. Stay tuned for further updates after baking...

Today was a nine hour work day, during which I accomplished printing that thin section report I mentioned yesterday (it is about 1 cm thick when printed double-sided--130 pages will do that) giving a 30 minute presentation, listened to two other presentations by my uni colleagues, met briefly with my colleagues at the mine (who say they are pleased with what I have accomplished over these past two years, which is a relief, since I, of course, think it isn't enough), and rode in the car two and from Boliden (two hours each way).

I got home well early enough that I could have made it to jodo training tonight, but realized that if I wanted to bake a cake for tomorrow's dance practice tonight way my only opportunity, so lord_kjar went to practice without me and I stayed home, baked the cake, ironed my Lucia robes for Friday's choir performance, washed a load of laundry, typed up the lyrics for the songs we are singing so that I will have thought about the words once before the performance, and found clip art to represent each song and printed the two songs I actually need help with the words and all of the clip art, in the correct order, onto a piece of paper the same size as the paper plates we use as a candle base. The other kids in the choir tend to hand-write the lyrics they want reminders for onto the plates, but I thought it made more sense to print it.

I really ought to have been working this evening, since I didn't do any modeling all day, nor have I made any progress on my report, but I left my work computer at my office after getting back to town this evening--it seemed like a smart idea, since I need to meet a student tomorrow morning to talk to her about helping with the petrology part of my research. I rather enjoyed the evening off.

One of my friends asked me today for the "recipe" for today's bread.

I can still sort of remember what I did to make it, so I thought I would write it down. Measurements are approximate, since I don't actually measure stuff while I bake breads.

First I started a bread sponge by mixing yeast with 1 cup of flour and enough hot water to make a liquidy dough.

While the yeast woke up I combined 1/4 cup of powdered milk with a packet of saffron (they sell it here as a powder in little tiny foil packs, which I have been amusing are intended to use the whole thing at once, since there is no way to close them again once they are open) and added two cups of water (a little at a time, of course, to make certain the milk powder actually dissolved.

Then I microwaved the milk/saffron for a minute. Then I cooled the milk/saffron by putting in thin slices of cold butter from the fridge (I used a cheese slicer). plus a a couple of heaping spoonfuls of cold honey from the fridge. I am not certain how much butter it was, but given that the glass two cup measure I used for the liquid got very full it could have been as much as 1/2 cup of butter and honey combined.

in the time it took the butter and honey to melt I ground some almonds and then some oats in the food processor. Perhaps one cup nuts and two of the oats?

I then combined all of the above with two eggs, and added enough white flour to make a good bread dough.

I let it rise a good hour, punched it down and let it rise again before shaping bread rolls. I made the rolls using 1/4 cup of dough each, rolled them into balls, flattened them a bit, brushed the tops with butter, and let them rise again before baking.

This made made 30 rolls (plus an additional 1/2 cup of dough which got baked while the rest of the dough was doing its first rising), which I managed to bake all at one go, since my oven has a fan in it. I baked them at 150 C till they were just starting to get a golden soft colour. I brushed them with more melted butter as soon as they came out of the oven.