baking

Brunsviger- Danish Breakfast Cake

How did I live for almost 40 years without tasting brunsviger?! So delicious and so easy to “whip” together!

You see, our little girl turned 2 months yesterday and although it was a crappy day (I didn’t get enough sleep and was cranky as hell, Sam had the runs and so on), I did manage to bake a cake, mostly to ease the pain and take my mind off of things- haha. The fact that I could eat it outside in the sun with a glass of Cremant de Jura helped a lot. In the picture you see the cake before it hit the oven, I didn’t have the patience to wait for it to bake in case the baby should wake up. You’ll have to trust me when I say it looked like a pretty focaccia. ❤

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A Newborn in the House and Baking against Corona Anxiety

These past three weeks have been eventful and strange. Their newness and uncertainty propelled me into one hell of an anxiety carousel. Here I was, heavily pregnant, nesting with a fervor I’d never known before, worried about petty things as the right measure on her bed linen- little did I know she won’t want to sleep in her bed at all- and all of a sudden the world seems to be ending amidst my long awaited happiness.

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Just three weeks ago I was busy complaining about pelvic pains and feeling fedd up with being huge and now I had to find new ways of reassuring myself we won’t all die of starvation if the virus doesn’t get to us first.

She came into our world on the 7th of March, she rushed in 8 days before the due date, almost as if she’d known that if she’d linger any longer, her dad wouldn’t be allowed to see the birth and stay with us in the hospital any longer. The first days were hard, I had the chills 4-5 times a day and she wouldn’t nurse, so we eventually had to feed her formula from a small cup (and it’d take hours!) hoping things would improve when the milk came. It didn’t. (But that’s an entirely other story.)

After an extended stay,  we could finally leave the hospital (after 7 days!), just in time for the Corona quarantine. That evening F shopped for groceries and there was no more toilet paper, nor tomato sauce, nor pasta or rice. Panic! After that, things went back to a sort of normality, at least when it comes to finding food on the shelves. But the longer it dragged on, the more somber the statistics all over the world, the less we saw of friends and family, one day I wasn’t able to control my anxiety at all. Some days it took the best of me and I could only sit there with a huge black hole inside of me. Other days, when the weather was sunny, we ventured outside and realized the world was still there, humanity had not evaporated and I came back lightheaded as though I’d had a pint or three. Today I decided to get back on medication, after spending all yesterday’s hours when Madeleiene didn’t need me either baking bread, baking a cake, washing clothes, all in order to avoid agonizing.

I’m heading to the pharmacy in an hour’s time, but I already feel better. I don’t read the news any more, I try not to think of how “non-essential” people will pay their rent, I ordered some stuff online and I’m doing my best to use all the ingredients we have in the house in a smart way. Meanwhile, I’m kissing my daughter’s chubby legs and sniffing her scalp. And thinking how I’ll start saving money and making room for a pantry when the times are better.

And here’s the recipe for the cake I baked the other day. I used the stuff we had, like 4 overripe plums and apple juice instead of orange juice.

Ingredients

100g walnuts

250 dates ( I had some dates, some dried figs and some dried apricots)

the zest from an orange/lemon

300g flour

1 tea spoon baking powder

1/2 tea spoon cardamom

1/2 tea spoon cinnamon

200 ml orange juice

100g butter

150 g brown sugar (I only had white)

1 egg

(I used 4 plums as well)

Bake the walnuts in the oven on a parchment paper around 15 minutes at 150 degrees C.

Cut the dates (and the other dried fruit plus the plums). Add the walnuts, the orange/lemon zest and one spoon of the flour. Sift the rest of the flour with the baking powder and the spices. Put it aside.

Use a kitchen aid/mixer to “fluff the butter up”. Add the egg and mix them well together. Add the flour, then the orange/apple juice. Then add the walnuts and dates (dried fruit and fruit) into the dough. Pour the dough (it’ll be a bit runny, it’s fine) into a cake form lined with parchment paper and bake at 180 degrees C for 1 h. Sometimes it needs a bit longer, check it with a chopstick. 😉

Bon appetit!

PS. Go for a walk if allowed in your part of the world, here it’s still ok (but we have to keep the distance). With a newborn I don’t get to do it every day, but when I do, I feel sanity rushing back into my veins. Today I even crossed the street to avoid other humans. But since I had to go to the pharmacy, I ran into people after all.

Stay safe and I hope we’ll all make it to the other side. I know, it sounds like something you hear in Sci-fi movies. 😉

xxx, Alina

 

 

 

Romanian Apple Cake

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Yesterday I had a crappy day and if I ruined yours, too, with my entry, I apologize. In the end I managed to calm myself down and from shaking with rage I was able to find my camera, make a still life arrangement, take a picture and ease myself into serenity again. The 2 h nap did its trick, too. 😉 Haha! Continue reading →

Christmas Break

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Phew, done with everything (that counts)! From today on I’m officially off duty and I’m enjoying it to the fullest. Outside it’s snowing, I’ve walked Sam and made myself a ham and cheese sandwich, the apartment is warm and the gifts are all wrapped up, the tiny tree is decorated and I’ve even remembered to buy pantyhose for the Christmas dinner. 😉 Haha! (I always forget!) Continue reading →

Madeleines

How are you, my darlings? I feel nobody’s reading blogs anymore, at least nobody seems to be interested in anything I have to say, or am I mistanken? Anyways, I like to write, so I’ll keep on writing regardless of readers. It’s mainly for therapeutic reasons, to keep me from talking to myself- haha! 😉

I’m living my best life for the time being, going to photography courses twice a week, working either too much or too little and in between sitting with a beer or a glass of wine in cafés and writing short stories. I think I might just have cracked the code, writing comes easier and so do the stories that want to be put down on paper. (No, I don’t write them down with a pen, I’m not that old-fashioned!)

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American Biscuits

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Good morning, Saturday! 😉 It’s been snowing for a couple of days now, big, wet flakes dancing down, I’ve watched them from the comfort of my home and felt happy that I have a place to call my own

Yesterday I felt like writing, and so I started reminiscing about that one time when my father came home with a huge suitcase and told us to pull down the blinds, before revealing its contents: green bananas! It was the communist era and we hadn’t seen bananas yet, but it was easily understood they were a black market find and consequently something to cherish. 😉 Continue reading →

Apple galette

So I made this amazing galette last week, but it didn’t turn out as pretty as today, which is why I had to wait to share the recipe with you. I found it here and I only dropped the salt caramel, although I had more than a week to find the time to make it, but either I didn’t have enough butter, a clean pan or the disposition for it, ’cause it never materialized.

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Whole Wheat Bread

For the longest time, I’ve been struggling to eat bread from the shop, since after a couple of days it gets too hard and with my braces, I just can’t chew it. So after attending Marte Marie Forsberg’s workshop in England, I got hooked on no-knead bread. No need to tell you that it was such an eye-opener that I started experimenting with other types of bread- don’t get me wrong, I’ve been baking bread occasionally before, but now I’m talking about baking every other day or so. But hey, when the result is this good and the effort is minimal, why the hell not?

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Recipe for two hearty breads

2 breads made i 2 liters’ forms or baked round on a parchment paper

500 g wheat flour
450 g whole wheat flour
200 g rye flour
1 ½ tea spoon salt
50 g linseeds
1 bag of yeast, dry or fresh
8 dl water, around 30 degrees C

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Mix the dry ingredients in a large baking bowl. If you use fresh yeast, you can crumble it in the mixture as well. Add the water and set the mixer on its lowest speed. Knead the bread for 15-18 minutes. (I’ve done it by hand, even though I have a Kitchen Aid, and it worked just fine. I must have kneaded it for 5 minutes all together, I’m an efficient mother f*. haha!)

Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rest for about an hour, until it doubles its size. If you have a silicon form like me, just sprinkle it with flower, if you have the classic metal one, butter them with oil or butter.

Use some flour on your baking table and knead the dough once, then divide it into two parts. Roll them into bread and place them into the forms, making sure you stretch them to fit as good as possible. Let them rest for 40 more minutes, covered in a towel, until the dough rises over the edge of the form.

Bake for 45-50 minutes at 180 degrees C, until the temperature inside is 98-99 degrees C. Take the bread out of the form and let them rest under a towel.

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Bon appetit!

 

Apricot Galette

For me, summer equals baking. I usually have a long holiday- there’s little to do in my branch when the courthouse is closed and although “crime never sleeps”, I can’t be bothered to take on just any assignments only to get out of the house. So I walk Sammy, I go to the beach, I read, I practice driving, I go to yoga and I bake. 😉

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The English Countryside

As I probably mentioned before, I was going to England for a baking and photography workshop with Marte Marie Forsberg, hoping to get away from my somewhat stressful interpreter life and to catch up a bit with Lavinia, my ex high-school frenemy, now one of my dearest friends. And so I packed a few things to wear- obviously the wrong clothes and shoes, ’cause I’m a notoriously bad packer- two books and off I went. The first two days I stayed at Lavinia’s in London, in Burnt Oak, aka Little Romania, in a charming townhouse with a giant fig tree and two teenagers too shy for their own good. We chatted long into the night and I tried to sleep in the day after, but the planets aligned against it: the groceries got delivered at 7, then I had to use de bathroom upstairs when all the house was up, and then, when I was nearly falling asleep, the neighbour’s dog started barking and then again, when I had finally managed the deed, the vacuum cleaner started and it felt like the cleaning lady was hoovering the inside of my brain. So I made myself some coffee and read a bit in my pjs. By noon we went to Hampstead, where I did a bit of vintage, charity and regular shopping and then we all had lunch at this charming Italian restaurant. It was hot, too hot for England, and I so I rolled my pants up like a child to be able to bear with it without complaining. And the glass of rosé sure helped some.

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