Now that I’m done venting my social observations from the symposium, I’d like to talk about one of the many great privileges we were handed in a bag. Literally. There were all sorts of goodies from our sponsors. One of them deserves a special mention, seeing as this company also took a fair bit of verbal beating on that day: Arla.

Arla, or “Evilcorp” as it may be known as by many purists, is the giant in dairy products in Denmark. It’s a company with many bad things on its conscience, but  luckily it really knows how to make amends. In each of our goodie bags was an innovation cheese called “Troldhede Ask” from the Arla Unika series that has been “developed in cooperation with some of Denmark’s finest chefs”. While I was participating in the symposium, little did I know that a cheese of this caliber was waiting to happen. On the next day, hungover from wine and conversation, I presented my other half with this thing and thought “how nice of me to give him these treats, so he can fully appreciate them on my behalf”. Because the thing is, I’m not that into cheese. There. I’ve said it, now let the derision roar. But when you’re done, hear me out, because this cheese turned out to be the bee’s knees. When I tasted it I was suddenly converted. From a cheese-neglecter to someone who has now twice found herself voluntarily having some more on just a dull slice of bread. Can you believe it?

What you probably don’t know is that I was seriously traumatised as a child, when I, not liking cheese, was rubbed in the face by my brother’s cheese fingers and could just smell that out of place stench on my features for the rest of the day. Since then I’ve only gradually begun to venture into the odorific landscape but only with tiny, tiny amounts of cheese every time.

The downside is, that I really lack the necessary vocab to describe cheeses and my only reference points include “räkost” (Swedish “shrimp” cream cheese in a tube-hate the stuff) and cottage cheese (love the stuff). But what I can say is, that it has just the right amount of mouldy-yeasty flavour without that hard aftertaste of ammonia that some blue cheeses seem to have. The texture is unbelieveably smooth with a salty and smoky twang that lingers on in a good way. In short: The next time you go out gourmet dining, look for Troldhede Ask on the  menu, because it is only distributed to selected restaurants in Denmark.

From time to time it felt like sitting in the waiting room of a job interview, where everyone is friendly on the surface but underneath that either preoccupied with the big sales pitch ahead or sizing up the competition. It struck me that maybe we aren’t that social after all. Maybe Trine-Maria Kristensen (the specialist in social media who spoke at the foodbloggersymposium) was actually wrong in dismissing the “bloggers-are-too-self-centered-to-master-human- interaction” notion.  I at least heard of several instances where a blogger came up to another blogger only to have his or her comment silenced by a monosyllabic answer.

Come on guys, we can do better than that! It’s not a competition but a network, remember? We should be sharing our faults in order to learn from each other and get better at this game. At least that’s what I expected from my experience with foodbloggers from other countries. Share the love, people!

If I’m jumping to conclusions here, please set me straight. I’d love nothing more than to be wrong on this one.

That all being said, I still had a wonderful time and found the whole weekend very stimulating.

Thanks for a great time Rasmus & Marie!

If you want to read more of this historic event (it really is!) – read on here (Danish):

http://www.madbloggersymposium.dk/ or to those brilliant people among you who’ve already noticed a new feature on the right column (hint: there’s a tomato on it) – it’s a link to the same website.

As part of my anniversary bonanza (I kinda hate that word but nothing else seems to say “it’s party time and there’s free 80s cocktails for everyone” quite like bonanza) I’ll be splurting out a whopping three posts in one day so get seated, there’s more to come. Such as the bread companion above: Crispy-Chicken-Skin-Butter (yup – that’s what I choose to call this treat. Get used to it!).

This is a thing I first tasted at the gourmet restaurant in Dragsholm Slot (slot=castle) and when I had chicken recently, I finally remembered to save the skin for this butter. Even though there are no exact measures, you really can’t miss with this recipe. Just use the ol’ tastebuds.

Crispy Chicken Skin Butter

• Cooked chicken skin (from yesterday’s roast or similar)
• Rapeseed oil
• Butter
• Chicken stock (make the most of the chicken bones: boil up your own stock)
• Sea salt

You don’t have to take the best, most crispy, golden skin bits from your chicken. Just use the boringly grey and flabby stuff that tends to end up on the side of the plate “for later”. Heat some rapeseed oil in a pan, add a bit of sea salt and fry the skin until it’s crispy and golden. Now this is a dangerously addictive snack in itself, but seeing as it shrivels into nothing on the pan, the butter is a much better way of stretching the flavour. Let the crispy chicken skin drip off on a paper towel and chop it into little bits. In a separate bowl, take the wanted amount of butter and churn it until soft (or leave it out until it reaches room temp), add a tablespoon or two of cold stock along with the crispy skin and mix it well. Season with more salt and stock if needed. Finally, move the butter into a small and shallow cup or bowl and scrape the surface flat with a metal spatula. Refrigerate until dinner’s ready and you serve it along with freshly baked bread as nibbles.

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: On Wednesday I’m kicking off my new career as a Ph.D. student! Sweet, innit? I think so anyway. For the next three years I’ll actually be paid for studying public service and nation building in the early years of Danish national radio!

But sorry, let’s get to the truly important thing on today’s menu: The cake gallery. Here’s a short tour through my three evenings of labour with a home-spun cake that I made for my friend’s wedding. It’s a hazelnut-sponge cake (this part came from Mette Blomsterberg) with a filling of mascarpone and passionfruit cream and an “icing” of reduced and de-seeded raspberry compôte mixed with whipped cream. As decoration I made little “leaves” of dark chocolate sprinkled with cocoa nibs and just added some fresh berries. Enjoy the show and the following post-bonanza!

100 posts down, a million more to go. Weeee!

Last night I had my little half-sister over for some baking and Kung-Fu Panda-watching. In keeping with the black and white theme, she wanted to make a marbled cake and brought a recipe. And now I have the perfect kiddie-cake for you to try. It’s dead easy and different enough for the adult to be entertained too. Well, it probably also helped that we did the baking in the roles of Eric, the brutish male baker and Connie, the annoying customer who kept asking if the cake was done yet. 

Marbled Cake

Adapted from Lademann’s “Bagværk”

• 200 grams butter (and a knob for the cake mould)
• 160 grams sugar
• 1 tsp vanillasugar
• 4 eggs
• 200 grams regular flower
• A pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp good quality cocoa (I used Valrhona)
• 40 grams melted chocolate

Turn the oven on to 170 degrees Celcius. Rub a cake mould/muffin tray of your choice with some butter and put it aside. Cut the 200 grams of butter into smaller pieces and beat it fluffy in a bowl along with the sugar, vanilla and salt. When it has turned creamy, add the eggs one at a time and keep mixing until the mixture has an even texture (the eggs will make it more runny). Finally add the flower slowly until the batter turns more firm and smooth. Then spoon about half of the batter into a second bowl and mix in the cocoa.

Now it’s time to get creative. Layer and/or mix the two different batters as you like to create a marbled effect. I made a vanilla base (in the photo the cake is upside down) and dug holes in it that I filled with the cocoa batter and then I spread the rest of the cocoa batter on top and made discreet waves from the bottom and up through the batter with a fork. But you’re the boss and can make it any way you like.

When you’re done with the creative outburst, put the cake mould in the middle of the oven and let it bake for about 30-40 mins (my oven is a lot faster than most other ovens so depending on the mould/muffin tray/handbag you choose, you might have to give it a little more/less time).

Check it with a wooden cooking pin and when it doesn’t stick, it’s done.

Drizzle some melted chocolate on top and serve warm. It’s one of those cakes that is definitely better when fresh, but it reheats very well in the microwave (one minute).

Though the dough was very easy to stretch out and the pizza stone was practically fuming, the result was just “meh”. As thin and crispy as the “Margherita” above looked, it just didn’t hit the mark. And it’s not like we haven’t made pizzas before – the results just seem subject to the whims of our pizza stone and the alignment of the stars. And so I turn to you, my wise readers (yes I’m buttering you up):

Do you have any advice for a foodie who desperately wants to learn the art of pizza making? 

Is the secret in the order in which you layer the pizza (“tomato sauce, filling and cheese” or “sauce, cheese and then filling”)?

Do you prebake the pizza base?

Is it better to put less filling on it before it goes in the oven?

Is my only option to buy a real pizza oven complete with a heavily gesticulating chef who keeps on slapping his lazy sidekick Luigi?

Tell me everything and I’ll (just about) do it!

The first one involved the classic Danish flødebolle-brand Samba, that most Danes will remember bringing to school on their birthday. Though I’ve developed my taste for flødeboller in a much more, should we say “expensive” direction since then, I still like the odd relapse to the flavour of the past. And so it was that I bought a box of Sambas hoping to find them as fresh and crisp as I remembered them (back then they were much better than any of the no-name flødeboller). But no, they were old, chewy and waaay too sweet, considering that they still had a couple of weeks in them before the best-before date.

Because of my childhood loyalty to the brand I wrote to them on their website, explaining both my fondness of the brand and my unfortunate experience. I offered to send them the remaining flødeboller along with the receipt and then I waited for an answer. Not long after that I received a letter in the mail (yes, snail mail!) where they said something along the lines of sorry for your experience-blah-blah-nothing wrong with that particular production blah-blah-here’s a cheque to cover your expenses. Yup – a cheque, this antiquated form of payment that is at best an inconvenience for the receiver, since one has to get it to the bank (of which there are very few physical ones these days). And what was worse, it for the ridiculous amount about 30 kr (~4 Euros)! And that was it. No little extra dime or even better - a box of fresh flødeboller to show me how they should taste. Just my money back. Needless to say I spent the money on a completely different brand of flødeboller and won’t be trying Sambas again anytime soon.

Luckily I also have a real customer-fairytale for you.

It was only an hour ago that I decided to get a fragilité cake from our local Rheinh. van Hauen bakery (on Nordre Frihavnsgade). Quite an expensive little treat, but they’re usually so good that one forgets all about one’s mortal worries for a while. I also bought a “linse” for my boyfriend and that turned out to be nicely crumbly, buttery and with just the right amount of vanilla custard. My cake on the other hand, had a stale tasting butterstick where there should have been fluffy coffee flavoured buttercream. So naturally I went back after three equally bad bites and explained my case to the young lady behind the counter.

To my surprise she was very understanding and said she was very sorry for the bad cake, that she was quite sure had been made this very morning. “What would you like as a compensation?” She went into the backroom and returned with a full-size fragilité for about 8 people (mine was for one) and offered it to me. “I can’t possibly eat all that. Can I have a small linse like the one I also bought this morning instead?” I replied. She promptly wrapped one for me and asked “is there anything else I can offer you?”. I hesitated, because I think the gesture alone was enough of a compensation, but thought I might make her feel better if I agreed. “Can I have one of the strawberry cakes then, just the little one please?”. Her face was surprised – “don’t you want the large one?”. I reclined and then she added ”I’m sure you won’t go wrong with this one – the strawberries are practically sparkling!”.

And so it was, that I returned to my apartment, happier that my complaint had been acknowledged and one cake the richer. Can you believe it? For the cost of one tiny cake and an understanding smile, I’m still a happy customer at Rheinh. van Hauen!

(And for the curious ones – yes, the cake didn’t disappoint me. It was sweet, fresh and very delicious.)

As you can see from the three posts in the link, I have never fully mastered the art of the perfect icing, but when I saw the Danish tv-show called “Det søde liv“, I had to give it another go. Now, if you look at the icing, it’s almost uncannily white and fluorescent. Toothpaste couldn’t have made a whiter result and it’s all in one tiny detail: The beating.

Blomsterberg’s Classic Kransekage (makes 8)

This recipe is entirely from the talented pâtissier Mette Blomsterberg. You can find it here in Danish, but I have also taken the liberty of translating it, cutting it in half and adding a tiny tweek of my own.

Cakes

• 250 grams pure marzipan
• 100 grams fine cane sugar
• 50 grams egg whites (I used the pasteurised kind, so I can’t say how many regular ones it would take, but in Denmark you need the pasteurised kind for the icing anyway).
• The grated zest of half an organic lemon

Icing

• 50 grams icing sugar
• a drop or two of pasteurised egg whites

Mix the egg whites and the cane sugar well and let it sit for about an hour while the sugar dissolves. Mix it into the marzipan along with the lemon zest by hand or spoon, a little bit at the time until you have an even mixture. Spoon it into a piping bag and spray onto a lined baking tray in your preferred size (a good bite size is approx 5 cm long and 2 cm wide) with plenty of space in between. Leave them to dry for 30 mins, turn the oven on to 200 degrees Celcius and then adjust the shape with a finger dipped in water so it doesn’t stick. Bake them until they’re golden, about 8-10 mins depending on the size. Leave to cool completely.

Meanwhile, beat the icing sugar and a bit of egg white fluffy with an electrical mixer or a very energetic hand. Make sure the texture is smooth but still firm enough to keep its shape. Fold a piece of  baking paper into a thin cone, pour in the icing and cut a tiny snippet from the tip of the cone. Then decorate your “kransekager” as you like and leave to air dry for a while. Enjoy with some creamed grandma coffee and make sure you keep that pinky finger erect while lifting the frail porcelain cup. That’s part of the game.

Everything ages, even seemingly ageless beauties such as myself turn 29, 30 and last Tuesday – 31. Hurray for me. On that occasion we finally had the perfect excuse to go spend 1500 Danish kroner à pop (~200 Euro) on a gourmet meal and some fancy wine at the latest Danish star on the Guide Michelin map: AOC. Short for Aarø og Co., the name doesn’t exactly do much for the branding process. It’s too non-descript and really doesn’t stick or create images in one’s head. Luckily the real experience was a different story…

The overall impression was very nice, but the next morning when the booze had worn off I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit silly about two things. One, the servings were in some cases ridiculously small to the point where a 4-course menu would not make one feel full and satisfied. Two, the second part of the menu (from the main course with shaved beet root and frozen white marrow shavings on top) was a tiny bit underwhelming. But let it be said, I’m often bored by main courses. Even the fanciest restaurants tend to go for a more rustic and simple look and palate on the main courses and my silly little princess-taste buds are not amused by that kind of brutish behaviour.

That, and the two desserts were a bit meh. I liked the first one, that looked like little white balls on some green stuff. It was wheat grass granité topped with drops of frozen crème anglaise (fine vanilla custard) and some rhubarb “foam” on the side. The watery granité and its ever so tiny flavour were very fresh and together with the hint of vanilla custard (when frozen it loses a lot of flavour) and slight rhubarb taste the dish served as a good intro to the sweet part of our dinner. But the second dessert didn’t fulfil the expectations set up by the granité. It was a carrot sorbet placed on some crumbled, frozen liquorice cream. Or: Pale orange on dark grey. The look didn’t do much for the eye or the taste buds, no siree. It may seem like a bold serving, but both components were much too bland to make it into my history books (though the boys in our company were very pleased with it). I personally missed both some acidity and/or sweetness to enhance the carrot and instead of using what seemed to be English liquorice in the “crumbled cream”, I would have preferred the deep earthiness and brownish-beige colour of liquorice root. All in all the desserts lacked some oomph or even backbone. Luckily we ordered some petits fours with our coffee and out came these balls of soft sea salt caramel in a thin shell of dark chocolate rolled in bits of peanuts and what seemed to be crunchy and not-oily croutons. Very delish and a great way to use what are essentially just stale bread crumbs.

Anyhoot, I’m deliberately messing up the serving order, so I can end up telling you about the best part: The entree. This night’s wild card was the very discreet dish consisting mainly of two crunchy white asparagus with a charcoaly surface, one deliciously and perfectly poached egg yolk topped with ashes and a fluffy-light sauce with Vesterhavsost (a Danish cheese that gets its flavour and crystallized flakiness from the salty air on the west coast of Jutland and is in very high demand these days. It tastes a bit like the blue Prima Donna.). When it was put in front of me I thought “Come on guys! Two asparagus and an egg yolk – are you serious?” but when I tasted it, I literally had to close my eyes and press my ears shut in order to keep every little bit of the flavour in, squeezing every tiny little detail out of the sensation for as long as possible. It was just that good. So if you don’t try anything else (you will, the minimum is 4 courses) – make sure you try this. And enjoy the slideshow. Parce que tu le vaux bien.