Festive coconut cakes (kokostoppar)

Coconut cakes, or kokostoppar or kokoskakor in Sweden, are festive small cakes that I usually make for Christmas. They're super easy to make and take very little time to prepare. In almost 30 min you could have them done!
They're great as small dessert with coffee or tea, and taste great :-) They're crunchy outside and soft inside.

Merry Christmas!

Recipe for about 30 coconut cakes

50 g butter
2 eggs
1 dl sugar
200 g shredded coconut

Melt butter.
In a bowl mix eggs and sugar.
Add coconut, mix and then add melted butter, and mix.
Let the mix sit for about 15 min so the coconut swells a bit.
Place parchment paper on an oven plate.
Make small cakes of the coconut mix with 2 spoons (they're meant to be eaten as bites).
Bake in the oven 10 min at 175 C.
Make sure the cakes are detached from the parchment paper before they cool down.

Julgröt for Swedish Christmas breakfast

 

Swedish Christmas starts with Julgröt in the morning. Julgröt, also called risgrynsgröt, is a classical rice pudding made with milk, sugar, and cinnamon. You can eat it cold or warm, with or without milk, but for sure with cinnamon on top.

I like to make a lot of it so I can have some every morning and every afternoon before and after Christmas :-) In any case, it's a very easy recipe, and it takes a bit of time to prepare. But for the last 40min of cooking you can also turn off the fire and leave the rice in the pot on its own and do something else in the meanwhile. So it really requires only about 30 min of attention.

God Jul!

Recipe for 8 portions of Julgröt:

6 dl water
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
3 dl round rice
1.4 l milk
2 sticks of cinnamon
3-4 tbsp sugar

Bring water, salt, and butter to a boil. Add rice and cinnamon, bring to a boil again and then lower the heat. Let cook for 10 min with lid on.
Add milk and bring to a boil again (mid temperature). *Then lower the temperature to the lowest possible and let it cook (lid on) for about 30-40 min. Don't lift the lid at the beginning.
Towards the end you can mix a bit with a wooden spoon and add sugar to your taste as well.
Serve with some cinnamon on top and some milk as well!

*At this point, you could also turn off the heat and leave your rice to cook slowly for about 45 min.

Classic Tiramisù

Tiramisù is one of my absolute favorite desserts. I actually make it quite often and meant to post the recipe a long time ago but I was never quite satisfied with my pictures. This week I made a big Tiramisù for Thanksgiving so I thought it was a good opportunity. Plus Tiramisù makes for a great Holiday dessert to share with friends and family.

Tiramisù is composed of a mascarpone cream (mascarpone, fresh eggs, and sugar) layered with coffee-dipped ladyfingers and chocolate. You can make a number of variations around this recipe, including skipping egg whites if you want your cream heavier and more mascarpone heavy, swapping ladyfingers for another kind of biscuit of your choice (ginger snaps, petit beurre, digestive) or skipping them altogether, and you can also sprinkle the cream with the kind of chocolate you like and also include nuts if you like.

Recipe for a big Tiramisù

900 g mascarpone, room T
9 tbsp sugar (generous)
9 eggs, whites and yolks separated
400 g ladyfingers (savoiardi)
2 mugs of coffee
200 g dark chocolate
powder cocoa
*optional: 2 handfuls of roasted pine nuts

Cream preparation
In a clean bowl beat up the eggwhites until stiff and towards the end add a pinch of sugar to finish off beating. It is important that there is no fat or any eggyolk in the eggwhites.
In another bowl beat up sugar and eggyolks until light and fluffy. Add the mascarpone and beat until incorporated.
Carefully incorporate the eggwhites into the mascarpone cream: the obtained cream should be homogenous and light.

Layering
Dip the ladyfingers one after the other and place them tighly together in a dish. The ladyfingers have to be soaked with coffee and place them with the sugar crust facing down.
Cover the ladyfingers with have of the mascarpone cream.
Sprinkle with powder cocoa and chopped chocolate.
Repeat the above steps for the second layer.
Here I replaced the chopped chocolate with roasted pine nuts for the second layer.
Refrigerate for at least 3 hours (overnight is better) before serving.
I recommend eating it within 2 days.

Zucchini bread with nuts and raisins

This Summer I made zucchini bread. I'm not sure it qualifies as "bread" per se given the amount of sugar in it but I guess it's just like banana bread and pumpkin bread which are called bread to make people think they're eating bread when they're actually having cake :-)

This zucchini bread has lots of fresh zucchini, hence the green color, raisins and nuts. It makes for a great snack or breakfast. If you've never had it - if you live in Europe probably you haven't - you should try: it tastes great and has lots of good stuff in it! Plus it's super easy to make and you can freeze it down if you want to keep a portion for another time.

Recipe for a 28 cm-long bread

2 eggs
1.6 dl colza oil
2.8 dl sugar
3.2 dl zucchini, shredded
4.8 dl flour
2/3 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 dl dark raisins
1.5 dl chopped pecans/walnuts

Beat eggs in a bowl. Add oil and sugar, mix.
Add the shredded zucchini and mix.
In another bowl mix flour, salt, baking powder and soda, nuts and raisins.
Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix.
Transfer the batter to a greased and floured cake/loaf pan.
Bake at 175C for 55-60 min (until a toothpick comes out clean).

Banana-nut muffins

Sometimes I bake because I want to and sometime because I need to. Last weekend I baked because I had to. I had no food in the fridge for breakfast and I was too lazy to go to the grocery store. I took a brief look at my kitchen and fridge and found some old bananas. So I set to make banana-nut muffins for breakfast. I really like them, they're super easy to make, and all you need to make sure of is to have overly ripe bananas. I included toasted pecan nuts in them, but you can also use walnuts or peanuts, or skip them entirely.

They're great for breakfast or as snack during the day. You can keep them for a few days and I would recommend storing them in a ziplock bag to make sure they don't dry. I also froze them down and ate them a week later, and they were still moist and excellent. Try them !

Recipe for 12 banana-nut muffins

3.6 dl flour
1.5 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten
4 very ripe bananas, mashed
1.2 dl sugar
0.6 dl brown sugar
1.2 dl melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 dl pecan nuts, toasted and chopped

In a bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt.
In another bowl mix mashed bananas, sugar, egg, butter and vanilla extract.
Add the flour mix and mix until just incorporated.
Finally add the chopped pecan nuts.
Divide into 12 muffin forms in a muffin pan and bake 20-25 min at 175C.

Classic apple tart with apple compote

Last week was my birthday so I wanted to celebrate it with a big apple tart. I have often made simple apple tarts but I sometimes find them too dry. This recipe here is composed of a nice pie crust, covered with a homemade apple compote, topped with a geometrical layer of thin apple slices, the whole thing finally glazed with quince jelly to add a shiny touch. This tart almost looks like it comes from a bakery shop :-)

The apple tart is easy to make and you can also prepare certain parts ahead of time: the dough can be stored in the fridge for several hours or even days and the apple compote as well. Also, if you are worried your compote is too "wet", you can pre-bake your pie crust 7-8 min in the oven before spreading the compote and placing your apples. The only challenge here is to slice the apples thinly and to place them tightly enough on the compote. Try it, I really liked it!

Recipe for a big apple tart:

Pâte brisée (dough)
250 g flour
130 g butter
30 g sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 eggyolk
some water (2 tbsp)

Apple compote
600 g apples (about 4 apples)
1-1.5 dl sugar
a few drops of lemon
some cinnamon
some water

Garnishing
700 g apples (4-5 apples)
some sugar
some quince or apricot jelly

First prepare the dough (pâte brisée). In a bowl mix flour, sugar and salt. Add cold butter pieces and mix with your hands making crumbs. Add the eggyolk plus some water and mix into a stiff dough. Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Peel all apples and sprinkle some lemon on them to prevent oxidation.

Cut up 600 g of apples in big pieces and place in a sauce pan, along with sugar, cinnamon and some water. Adjust sugar and cinnamon to your taste. Heat up and let apples cook under lock for about 15-20 min. When apples are well cooked, remove the lid, crush and mix the apples with a wooden spoon, mixing until the compote/purée has "dried" (no water left). You want your compote to be quite dry so it doesn't wet your dough. Let it cool down.

Slice thinly in quarters the remaining apples.
Grease and flour a tart pan.
Take out the dough from the fridge and roll it out onto a floured table. Transfer to the tart pan and prick it with a fork.
Spread the apple compote on the dough and then place the thin apple slices tightly together in a geometrical pattern (make it tight because apples shrink while baking).
Sprinkle some sugar on top and bake in the oven at 200 C for about 35-40 min.

No-bake, passion fruit cheesecake

When I arrived in Sweden last week I found about 2 kg of ripe passion fruit in the fridge. I remembered a nice cheesecake with passion fruit coulis that I had tasted a while ago. Since I had no eggs in the fridge I set to come up with a cheesecake recipe without eggs and that required no baking. I have already tested and posted the classic cheesecake recipe (which requires about 1 hr of baking) so this one is quite different in that it takes a lot less time to prepare and is a bit lighter and fluffier.

The passion fruit coulis is great with this no-bake cheesecake and you can also top the classic cheesecake or panna cotta with it too. The cornstarch will enable the coulis to thicken a bit and stay on top of the cheesecake when slicing, but if you like your fruit coulis more fluid you can skip the cornstarch. I also used the leftover passion fruit coulis in my breakfast the next day it was great :-)

In any case, try this no-bake cheesecake recipe, I really like it and makes for a nice dessert in Summer!

Recipe for a 24 cm springform cake

Base:
250 g digestive biscuits
150 g melted butter

Filling:
600 g cream cheese, room T
150 g sugar (1.5 dl)
1 vanilla pod
2-3 tbsp passion fruit juice
2 tbsp water
3 leaves gelatin
3 dl liquid cream, whipped

Topping:
200 g passion fruit pulp
1 tbsp maizena (corn starch)
1 dl water
60 g sugar

Crush finely the digestive biscuits, add melted butter and mix a bit with a spoon. Grease a spring form and cover the base and sides of it with the biscuit mixture. Refrigerate for at least 10 min (leave it in the fridge until you need it).

In a bowl whip cream cheese (it has to be at room T), sugar and seeds from a vanilla pod.
In a small saucepan, heat up a bit the water and passion fruit juice. Add pre-wetted gelatin sheets and swirl until melted.
Add melted gelatin to cream cheese mix while mixing. Finally fold in the whipped cream.
Transfer the cream to the spring form and even out the surface. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours (overnight is better).

Place sugar and passion fruit pulp in a saucepan. Mix maizena and water in a bowl and add to the fruit. Heat up while stirring (don't stop) on medium heat and stir for about 3-4 min until thickened. Let the fruit cool down and then transfer on top of the cake. Refrigerate for another 2 hrs.