Being half-Australian, I have a lot of fond and hazy memories of pavlovas, though most of them are from Denmark. They were these festive and monstrous meringue disks with piles of whipped cream, passion fruit and kiwi-slices on top. (Growing up in the 80s will do that to you either way, though possibly with more mini-umbrellas.) Anyway, they were also one of the things that made my Australian mother exotic back in the days when the cream of Danish youth had yet to go backpacking up and down the East coast of Australia. And when phenomena like Vegemite and smoko were still reserved to our family home and our trips Down Under. I still remember how we huddled around the phone for the Christmas call to my grand parents, each of us trying to strike up meaningful conversation with the minute price of 5 Danish kroner (about 65 cent €) looming over our heads.

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Tags: berries, dessert, marengs, meringue, opskrift, Pavlova, recipe, skovbær

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As fond as I am of innovation and progress in the kitchen, there are times when I’m just as pleased to rearrange a classic from the repertoire. A while back T and I went all in to dish up a three-course menu for my cousin and her husband. Since I remembered that she’s a fan of lemon curd and T is too, I thought I’d remix some old staples, inspired by a marvelous lemon-and-meringue-blob of a dessert we once had at Restaurant Marv & Ben. Well that and a dash of laziness. It was prepared in advance and only took about two showy minutes to plate (everyone loves the promising flame of a crème brûlée torch).

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Tags: citronis, lemon curd, lemon ice cream, meringue, rå marengs

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So I have this list of kitchen challenges. Yes, one of those, and a thing that I’ve really been itching to try out is Nougat de Montélimar (“fransk nougat” in Danish). Waaay back in the ancient and vaseline-lensed days of my childhood, my mother would get these flat round tins of turrón/torrone from work, which is the Spanish/Italian version of what you can see above. Roasted almonds enveloped in a glossy, meringue-adjacent honey boil-up of chewy-hard deliciousness. Hell, anything that needs three hyphens for a description must be good, right? My fingers (“the old flippers” as my grandmother would have said) certainly made the trip to the candy plate about a gazillion times, when I served the first round of homemade nougat this Sunday.

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Tags: fransk konditorkunst., fransk nougat, French Pastry Arts, Nougat de Montélimar, Paris-Brest

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Ready to get started.

Six months ago, my brother approached me with a solemn wish: Would I make a cake for his summer wedding in Stockholm? Not THE three-tiered wedding cake monster, but something for coffee after dessert? Both flattered and excited I said yes and started plotting right away: What should I make? Sponge, meringue, choux, tart, mousse? Chocolate, berries, nuts, or what? But then I realised the amount of obstacles reducing my options and everything changed….

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Tags: Blueberries, hazelnut genoise, lemon mousse cake, Wedding cake

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This Saturday we invited a couple of friends over for dinner and some silly-time. It was a great excuse to go mad in the kitchen and so we skipped our fancy plans of museums and bicycle browsing in favor of shopping and cooking. Just my kind of Saturday.

First thing I did was to go through the folder of recipes I compiled during my recent months of BBC iPlayer-addiction. Luckily I found Lorraine Pascale’s lemon and blueberry millefeuille: Flaky caramelised puff pastry gently sandwiching vanilla cream, lemon and blueberry.

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Tags: blåbær, Blueberries, lemon curd recipe, Lorraine Pascale's millefeuille, mascarpone, puff pastry

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Welcome to my 100th post! Yup, that’s what the countdown was for. Since I started posting odd tidbits back in July 2007 it has amounted to a whole lotta rambling about cooking and craziness. Today I’m celebrating my milestone with some great news and a wedding cake (or: a cake I made for a wedding – don’t expect any tiered white horrors with sugar flowers fit for a coffin).

But first, the news:

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Tags: dark chocolate, hasselnødder, hazelnuts, hindbær, mascarpone, mørk chokolade, passion fruit, passionsfrugt, raspberry

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