This Year's Model (well, last year's, really)

Just to show you how a "kransekage" looks, when it hasn't been on the floor...(compare to previous New Year's eve-post here).

And while I'm at it: Happy New Year and welcome to 2009! Hopefully it'll be a year filled with heavenly mouthfuls.

'Tis the Season, lah dee dah

Can you believe these shots? I can't, and I was there.
This is how we spent Christmas at my inlaws', including my mother. Or rather, this is what we ate during the holidays. For here in Denmark it is customary to rank food right up there with the gifts, and the older you get, the more "foody" it turns. Judging from endless Thanksgiving specials on just about every tv show from the States we're not the only ones to make holidays all about the food (who could forget those dinners at the Walsh residence, where Brandon would bring a homeless guy to the table and pass him the cornbread like he was Jesus or something?). Anyway, this is a peek into our traditions. The first shot is from Christmas night which we all celebrate on the 24th with a pork roast or a roast duck as in this photo. In my family we used to have turkey because my mother's Australian, but I do like a good duck too. Here it's dressed in the traditional cuff made out of cut, white paper and to top it: A fresh sprig of pine. Served with a Waldorf salad, caramelized potatoes and a sauce that was to die for (made on roquefort cheese, red currant gelly, cream and the tasty drippings from the duck-tray, [drool]).



Yup, that's my mother's hand going for the juicy duck. Can you blame her?

Next day's feast was a Christmas lunch, complete with roast pork, "rullepølse" (the pink thing in slices, a kind of pork roulade with a pepper filling. Sounds strange, but is delish when served with fresh onion rings and mustard), fried, pickled herring and carpaccio (admittedly not a classic in the Danish kitchen, but a classic all the same). Great stuff, I tells ya! And on a side note: How campy is that roaring fire place in the background?! But it warms the heart, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas, or "Glædelig jul" as we say in this country of ours.

Christmas Baking

So this is how it all went down (and I swear we wore our "Nissehuer" all the time!).

Weighing, mixing, stirring, tasting, baking, cooling, tasting, tasting, tasting and finally some impatient photographing in the bad lighting of a dismal December afternoon. My friend Britta and I ended up making the following four things:

* Several trays of ANZAC biscuits - with my Australian grandmother's secret recipe
* Lots and lots of biscotti (see above) with chocolate, almonds and different spices
* Russian apple cake (German link) with cocoa and rum - also made as muffins
* Two chocolate cakes baked with a chocolate truffle "drizzle"

Naturally we were pretty exhausted by the last cookie tray, but then we had to go deliver most of the goods at a Christmas art gallery on the other side of Copenhagen, so we stuffed the bics and cakes in brown paper bags and went away. Only to find that I had gotten the time wrong and the place was going to close for the day half an hour later! Hopefully the goods behaved well on the next day too.

And So I'm Back, From Outta Space

Honey, I can't begin to tell you how great it is to have handed in the third draft of my travel book today. It's finally looking up for our relationship! With the book almost done I finally have a bit more time for producing pictureworthy pastry that can land a place on this blog. Now I can't wait to show you the result of my Christmas cooking on Saturday. My friend Britta is flying in from Munich and we'll be baking and tasting our way through the day, wearing our "nissehuer" with pride as we go along. Until then I'll leave you with my favourite comfort drink ever: Hot and spicy chocolate with a big bouncy dollop of whipped cream and a bit of cinnamon on top. Enjoy!

Sweet Add-Ons

In these crazy deadline times, I haven't had much time for cooking. But somehow this tiny experiment found its way into my tight schedule. I've made these vanilla biscuits umpteen times, but only recently I thought of making a tiny indentation in the dough and adding a teaspoon of raspberry conserve before baking them. I used to love these Swedish-style things - sometimes even with a bit of icing sugar on top. And my friend's 10 year old daughter seemed to like them too. She chomped them down in no time! Now that's the best compliment any cook can wish for.

It's Show-and-Tell-Time

Remember how I told you, I went to Falsled Kro while researching for my book? Well, I finally think it's time to show you one of the best dishes of the evening - and there were quite a few so that makes this one all the more special. This was actually "just" an appetizer: Potato wafers on an apple-celery salsa and most importantly - a scoop of densely whipped cream / sour cream with water cress, lemon zest and some other ingredients I couldn't quite put my finger on. Now that's really something to lift up the second scoop of Calvisius caviar on top! The mere consistency of the discretely zesty cream was heavenly and just the right buddy for the burst of caviar on the tongue. Dammit! Why does this place have to be so far out of my economic and geographic range? Btw. please excuse the oddly displaced focus on the photo - it seems as if my dreamy-eyed state has influenced on the lense...

Eat This! (you heard me)

Here's what I do, when my writing skills don't agree with me or the silly material just won't budge: Make melting miniature marcipan cakes. That and I take pictures of them from so many different angles and with so much (food) porn in mind, I feel like a real pedofile - this shot might just as well be an upskirt of a six year old! Please let me in on your procrastination tricks - are you getting any good dusting done, do you prefer filing your cd's after colours or are you finally giving Stallone's "oeuvre" the time it deserves? Or could it be that I'm the last dinosaur out here still doing work that's vaguely similar to an exam, however long-lasting this one may be? Pleez tell me it isn't so!