It’s easy enough that you’ll wanna make it even if it is too hot for cooking: Make a pot of good, strong green tea. While still hot pour it over a handful of fresh mint leaves. Season to taste with sugar – 2 or 3 tbsp – while still hot and leave to cool, first on the counter then in the fridge. When ready to drink, pour through a sieve and serve with additional fresh mint leaves, a couple of slices of lemon and ice cubes. Ahhh!

And so I did. This has been a crazy month with too many hours at work, L’s exams and not the least no babysitting for J, as all kindergartens are closed due to strikes. Ay! But at least I had my rhubarbs – and help and support from friends and family. I’ve made a handful of rhubarb-things, but I think the winner of the month must be the incredibly moist and yummy cake stuffed with rhubarb seen above. (I made it twice… – and it’s a big whopper of a cake!)

It’s very straight forward: A classic dough of beaten butter and sugar and then added eggs. Flavored with cardamom and stuffed with a whole lot of rhubarb. Finally it’s sprinkled with sugar – a lot here too!

I did a little experimenting with rhubarb juice, too. The recipes I had at hand all said, only make juice when you have rhubarbs growing out your ears. I overhead that advise and bought some for juice and made two variations. Only one photo – for obvious reasons they look pretty much a like.

First up I did a straight rhubarb-vanilla combo. Great, it was! Vanilla does wonders. The second variation was a rhubarb-lemon-mint combo. Also good, but not as great as the first. It didn’t have the intensity, as a lot more water was added. The technique for both is the same: Clean the rhubarb and cut into 2 cm pieces. Put in a pot and cover with water and add the flavorings. Add to the boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Turn down the heat and let rest for half an hour before straining. Then add (enough!) sugar and cool.

Third up was rose-scented rhubarb compote. I an incredibly huge fan of an classic Danish summer ol’timer: Koldskål – literally meaning a cold bowl. It’s a sweetened mixture of two old fashioned dairy products – I’ll have to get back with the English translations. The mix is flavored with lemonzest and whipped cream is added for texture. The whole thing is eaten with biscuits and – if you’re anything like me – rhubarb compote. This one is a straight-up compote: wash and trim the rhubarb, place in a baking dish and sprinkle liberally with sugar. Add a couple of leaves of rose geranium, cover with aluminum foil and bake until tender but not totally mushy. There should still be a little bite left. Taste, and if too sour add sugar while still warm.

Finally, and this is sort of cheating as this is an old photo, the compote is also great on individually sized tartes topped with a vanilla-studded sweetened cream of sugar, strained yogurt and cream. Even though I made this during Winter, I’m sure it’ll also be a winner in June!

Right up till last Sunday I knew what I wanted my entry to be. I was well organized and ready, had even done the photography. All ready except the writing. Then we celebrated baby-J’s first birthday and the plans changed. In stead of the saffron infused breads, known in Scandinavia as lusekatter, they are certainly yellow (!), I opted for the lemon fool layer cake we made for the birthday. It was yellow, we all loved it and we’ll make it again. But just as an added Taste of Yellow bonus, I’ve included the photos of the lusekatter as well.

When Spring has almost arrived – but hasn’t quite broken the spell Winter – I find myself a little bewildered food wise. We try to cook by the season but the period leading up to the arrival of Spring is difficult around here. The apples aren’t that exciting anymore, the oranges are lacking in taste and texture, yet the crunch of the first green asparagus hasn’t hit the palate just yet. It’s L who then reminds me of lemons. The zing will get the Spring sensation going. They are in season just know, when not so many other things are.

So a lemon layer cake for baby-J’s first birthday it was. Maybe we went a little overboard – in the cake department, anyway. We had sour dough bread (more on that another time), cheese, hot cocoa and two types of cakes, homemade hindbærsnitter or raspberry cakes (also more on that some other time) and the lemon fool layer cake. But hey, it’s only your first birthday once, right

The cake was a joint venture – I stirred the pots and made the genoise, while L assembled and dressed. With all the lemon going into the cake it might sound a little zingy and sour. It isn’t! It’s zingy, yes, but in a Spring-is-almost-here kinda way.

Lemon fool layer cake
1 cake serving 12

First you make the lemon fool (recipe for the lemon cream is from Camilla Plum’s Mors mad):

3 lemons
100 g butter
4-5 eggs
350 g sugar

cream for folding in

Grate the lemons and squeeze out all the juices. Combine in a saucepan with the rest of the ingredients and stir over medium heat until thickened. Be careful not to let it boil as it will split! When cool fold in whipped cream to taste.

Then you make the genoise (recipe from Camilla Plum’s Sødt):

4 eggs
175 g sugar
1/4 vanilla pod (the seeds)
grated zest of a quarter lemon
25 g finely ground almonds
100 g butter
125 g flour
1 tsp baking powder

Butter a spring pan (24cm) and heat the oven (175 C). Whip the eggs with sugar and vanilla until very light and fluffy. No stopping before the sugar is dissolved! Otherwise the sponge will collapse. Fold in the lemon zest and ground almonds. Sift in the flour mixed well with the baking powder. Be sure that flour and egg mixture it is well incorporated, but be gentle. Pour the batter in the spring form and bake for about 30 minutes. Cool completely before splitting in two or three, depending on how courageous you are. I went for the first option…

Now assemble the cake. Drizzle the bottom genoise with a little lemon syrup made from simmering sugar and lemon juice until the sugar is dissolved. Add the lemon fool and the top genoise. Make an icing from icing sugar and lemon juice and ice the cake. If you’re feeling a little extravagant drizzle with edible gold for that finishing touch. Let the cake rest and enjoy.

Now for the added bonus, lusekatter. We – actually L did – made these a couple of weeks ago. Traditionally they are made in celtic shapes, but L made them as small birds. rolling out strips of dough, tying a know and cutting the ends with a pair of scissors. One snap for the beak, two for the tail. Use currants for eyes.

It’s a traditional sweet bread dough with sugar, milk and butter infused with saffron. They are to be eaten straight away – and they were indeed!

I was one of the lucky winners of the great blog event Menu for Hope. The prize was a signed copy of Baking, a book that really has caught on fire in the blogging community. There’s even a weekly foodie event where eager bloggers try out recipes. And there are loads to choose from. Dorie hasn’t exactly been holding back as there are more than 500 pages of recipes and glossy pictures.

My copy had a little trouble getting here. Dorie was a little worried when she checked and it seemed that the book was enjoying some Brazilian sun in Sao Paolo in stead of Danish rains. But eventually it made it and as I opened the package I was a little surprised. It was bigger than I thought. Much bigger! So choosing the first thing to try was a challenge. Enter Saturday craving: I opted for Dorie’s version of the all time classic Madeleines and I wasn’t let down

The flavoring in this version is the classic lemon zest and vanilla. The cookies were fluffier than the ones I usually make, and that was a definite improvement. I managed to acheive the classic “hump” on the back of the cookies thank to a small but effective tip: Let the dough rest a couple of hours and fill the molds almost to the top. I didn’t have any linden tea around but I still think Proust would have been satisfied. I was.

As I haven’t tried more than one recipe from Baking it really isn’t fair writing a review. I have been spending quite a few evenings looking through the book, though, so by now I have a pretty good idea of what kind of book it is. Too me, one of its strenghts is the breakfast chapter. There are loads of different muffin recipes, morning loafs and crumble cakes. A category that uptil now has been sadly missing in my cookbook collection. That said, I think the next thing I’ll make isn’t from the breakfast section though, but Dorie’s version of lemon meringue pie. She uses a different technique when making the lemon curd using a tip from French pasty super star Pierre Herme that I’ll have to try. It involves a blender, something I don’t have around. But when I manage to get a hold of one, I’ll go for it.

Summing things up, Baking is highly recommended. It has an encyclopedic width covering both cup cakes and classy dinner party cakes. The thing that tie everything together is the homey feel in every recipe. No foam, fuzzy things or little neat art works of caramel. This is down to earth baking, and it has recipes I’m sure I’ll come back to time and time again.

L had an all-day baking workshop with kitchen guru Camilla a couple of weeks ago, so it only seemed natural to try out one of the things they didn’t get around making do a repeat of one of the stars of the day: cinnamon bread packed with cardamom and buttery-sugar filling. Cinnamon rolls are a breakfast stable at many a Danish breakfast table on weekends, as it is in other parts of the gastronomic world. (Check out Keiko’s flawless cinnabon look-a-likes here). In stead of the normal roll-shape, this is a rather different take where you change a little and end up with a rather different result. The bread/loaf – call it what you like – is great for serving as the sweet part of brunch. We also used it alongside a traditional saffron infused bread (more on that later on when A Taste of Yellow approaches) for an afternoon treat.

Cinnamon bread
350g flour
10g fresh yeast
50g melted butter
1 egg
50ml sugar
half a tsp of salt

an egg for the egg wash

Dissolve the yeast in the luke warm milk; add the rest and knead thoroughly. Hold back on the flour, you might not need it all – keep the dough on the sticky side. Let the dough rest until doubled.

Filling (remonce)

75g softened butter
150 ml sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cardemom

Combine all the ingredients.

On a floured surface or silipat roll out the dough into a square shape that will fit the bread pan when rolled up (approx. 20cm will fit this portion.) Spread the filling evenly and roll the dough. Make sure the ends aren’t opon. Otherwise all the filling will ooze out during baking. Place the dough in a buttered/non-stick/lined baking form and cover with egg wash. Let it rise until wobbly and bake at 200 C for 25-30 minutes.

In stead of using a porter, as the recipe called for (I turned to everpresent Claus Meyer, for Danish speakers, check out his homepage for the original recipe), I used a stronger, darker and umpf’er imperial stout from the magnificent Norwegian brewery, Nøgne Ø. The result was great, but I thought it could be better. I wanted to stress the caramel tones and hints of dark, unrefined sugar. Making a beer-pear syrup did the trick. Pears are pretty much over and out this time a year, but if you’re lucky enough, like me, to get your hand on a couple Doyenne de Comice. Don’t you hesitate – slice ‘em up and bath them in beer!

By the way, this is not the place to cut down on sugar, cream or egg yolks. They all need to be there to balance out the bitterness of the beer.

Pears in dark beer
Peel and pit a couple of pears, then slice then into 1-2 cm slices. Meanwhile heat half a bottle of dark beer (I used Nøgne Ø’s Imperial Stout) with 150 ml moscovado sugar and 50 ml of ordinary light cane sugar. (Using two kinds of sugar provides you the zing of ordinary sugar and the deep, dark aromas of moscovado; please note, that different beers might need different amounts of sugar.) When the mixture is boiling, add the pears and simmer gently until cooked. They don’t take long, and you don’t want mush but texture. Remove the pears and reduce the liquid into a syrup.

Ice-cream with beer
150g sugar
8 egg yolks
500ml full fat milk
250ml cream
1 vanilla pod

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until the sugar has dissolved. In a small saucepan combine milk, cream and the pod and seeds of the vanilla and bring to the boil. Discard the pod and slowly and while whisking, pour the mixture over the eggs. Return to the saucepan and gently (VERY gently!) simmer until it thickens. Using a thermometer might do your nerves a world of good: when it reads 84 C pour the mixture into another bowl to stop it cooking. Let the cream cool in the fridge and add as much of the syrup as you like. Start out with 50ml or so.

Churn the mixture in an ice-cream maker and enjoy on a windy, cold night. Luckily, they are almost outnumbered now, but better to be on the safe side and keep a little ice-cream in the fridge. Besides, it isn’t bad in sunshine either.

I made the pie from the last apple quinces I could get my hands on. Yes, I know, I’ve been babbling on and on about quinces ever since I started this blog, but I just can’t help it. Really, I try – and then there they are again, ideas bumping around in my head of what to do with these fruits of magic. There is just something elusive and magical about them, that keeps on stirring my interest. Maybe it’s the way they are unapproachable when uncooked, maybe their sweet apple-like aromas?

Quinces take quite a while cooking and a lot of sugar, too. I made the pie partly from a recipe, partly on the spur of the moment. First, I made a quince compote. That took a while. And then a while longer. Actually, so long, that I had to stop cooking and continue the day after. So if you plan to do this, make sure you have at least three hours on hand.

The idea is the following: Wash the quinces (for a 24 cm pan 3 if using apple quinces, half as much if using regular) and remove the pit. Dice into 3 cm cubes and put into a pot and cover with water, two handfulls of sugar or so. Now, decide on what kind of spice you want to use. I recommend vanilla and lemon zest – both is great with quinces. Cinnamon is another, but after Christmas, you might have had enough. I know I have. Lemon zest is essential, I think, as the fruits need a little acidity.

Cook the quinces slowly until reaching a compote like consistency. It might take a while, as I mentioned. The pieces should retain their shape, you’re not making mash here. When happy with the compote, drain completely. Keep the liquid, it’s great on yoghurt or other places where you use sweet sirups.

Meanwhile, make the pie dough and refrigerate. You probably have your own favorite recipe for that, so I won’t bother. I didn’t prebake the pie, lazy me… – and the world didn’t come to a stop and the pie was great. So up to you. Fill the pastry shell with the compote and slice up a couple of apples very finely, discarding the pit, and cover the pie. Bake for 30 min. or so at 180 C until nice and golden. Serve with a little whipped cream and maybe a drizzle of the left over sirup. Tea is nice, too. Not fruity but black, Ceylon would be my choice.

But, sometimes I have a little extra time, giving me the chance to visit some more interesting places in our lovely capital (Read more on Copenhagen and foodie related stuff at Bea’s who just visited the place, took some great pictures and met up with fellow Danish food blogger Zarah.) One of the places I go back to often is Meyer’s Deli. They have an outlet at Magasin and even though I like the original on Gl. Kongevej better, the one in Magasin does the trick and gives me my occasional Meyer fix.

This time around I opted for a cabbage soup with puy lentils. It was a great lunch dish with crunch from the fresh green cabbage garnish and the lightly cured goose providing the filling. I assume this was made from simmering a lightly cured goose in a stock, removing the goose when done and cooking the cabbage in the stock afterwards. The stock and cooked cabbage was then pureed and seasoned, the plucked meat of the goose added, and then served with finely chopped, fresh cabbage and cooked puy lentils. Serve with bread on the side.

For dinner I went to the Deli on Gl. Kongevej. You might say I have a slight obsession for Claus Meyer’s books and deli’s – and you’d probably be right.

Well, in my humble opinion anyways. Jokes aside, there are tons of great chocolatiers around, and we’re lucky enough to have a couple close at hand. Summerbird is our absolute favorite with their innovative twist on the chocolate side of life. It’s never over the top but always a little different than those mainstream products you pick at the gas station because you forgot the gift for grand ma.

The star of the trio above is the egg covered in white chocolate. The inspiration is the spices of the Middle Ages, it may sound a bit strange but any reservation will be put to instant shame by this complex chocolate ganache filled baby – try one!