À la Dankertier

This is an all time favorite. I have made this cake many, many times and it was always appreciated. Also, one can easily replace the flour with gluten free flour and it will be just as good! This recipe is actually a family recipe. I remember the first time I tasted it, I was 8 or 9, my step mom made if for either my birthday or my sister's birthday. That time, she had some plastic figurines on top. She made this every year and was always putting money (coins) in the cake: she knew where she put the bigger coins and always manage that the "birthday girl" would have the coin with the most value in her piece of cake... Bref, a good cake: a perfect cake!  Initially, the cake is meant to be prepared in a torus/donut form but I also prepared it in a regular spring form, cut it and iced in between the 2 pieces. For André's dissertation, I prepared it in a 38cm x 34cm pan. It was not extremely thick, so you might want to prepare it in a smaller pan, but then you will have ...

Last week was André's thesis defence. It (of course!) went very well and we celebrated afterwards by cooking for 45 people. Of course, we bought waaaaaay to much food and now we eat "Sauerkraut" every other day, but who cares! It happened, and it went well. I was on desert duty, I made 2 different things, one of which is this one that I found on the internet. I was looking for a brownie recipe, that I found here , and I also use this icing recipe . The original recipe for the brownies is calling for a 9in x 9in form. Since it was "cake central", I triple the recipe and put it in a form that was 38cm x 34cm, which is more or less 2.5 times the surface. I have to say that the brownie was maybe not as thick as I would have liked. I think one could put the following the recipe in a 9in x 9in (25cm x 25cm) form and it would be perfect. Keep in mind that it will be very sweet so you will want to cut the pieces small! I also modified the recipe so the sugar in the ba...

Second post in that "comfort food" series of post! This is a real sunshine in this dark grey January. It is actually the first recipe André shared with me, our very first exchange on Facebook message was about this. I was reminded of it recently when I eat a similar soup while in Bergen, where it was also grey and humid! The recipe is for 4 peoples. Heat a pot or big pan (I use a big pan) to medium-high heat and add a dash of olive oil . Slice up 1-2 garlic cloves , an onion (or a third of a leek),    a pepper bell (mix of green and red) , add to the pot as well as 500-600g of mixed sea creatures , cut in bite size pieces if necessary. In our case, we had 200g of salmon, 200g of cod and 150g of mixed seashells. Fry everything until golden. Deglaze with roughly 200ml of wine or saké . Add 2-3 diced tomatoes and a bunch of chopped fresh basil . Add salt and pepper to taste and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the water is reduced: it's more of a stew than a soup mayb...

This is not the first time I am trying this Swedish classic at home but somehow, the sauce was never right. I took this in a couple of restaurants in town and always enjoyed it so much that I had, at some point, to find THE  recipe. I think this is it! It will need some small adjustments, but it's almost perfect!! The recipe should give you 4 good portions and is adapted from this recipe . I made the dish in one of our nice "ultra", the baking dish we have from Tupperware that we can put in the oven/fridge (very nice to have!). Also, stuff does not really stick to it so its nice. If you do not have it at home, butter a baking dish (size roughly 1.5-2 L, or 20x27 cm). Peel and cut roughly 700 g potatoes . Cook with your preferred method. In my case, I boiled them because there was just to much! In the recipe, they put quite a bit of butter and mash the potatoes, but instead I used 50g of butter (instead of the 200 g recommended in the original) and some of the deli...

This recipe is simple and straight forward - and on top of this even delicious. My mom used to make cabbage roulades not just cooked (in water), but nicely fried on top of this to release the delicious sweet taste of the cabbage (I hope one day I put the original here). This makes it incredible good, but also needs to roast slowly since you don't want to burn it and you need to know exactly how much spices you'll need, because spicing after is almost impossible and you risk to get a bland food... So my mom came up with this "fake" solution: instead of making rolls you simply cut everything small and fry it together in the pan. If you think it's not spicy enough at, you can always add more. For 4-6 portions separate 500g of minced meat and cut about 1kg of cabbage in 2x2cm large pieces. Heat up some vegetable oil in a big pan, add meat and cabbage and start roasting it slowly while stirring it often. When it softens start adding about 2tsp. salt, 2tsp. groun...

Many years ago, I started doing my own bread at home. I always looked for the perfect recipe for cheese bread. I looooooooove cheese bread, but when you put the cheese directly in the dough, you don't "feel" it really when you eat the bread. And then I took a bread cooking class at the community center, and the guy that gave the class was previously working at "La mie de la couronne" (sorry for non-french speakers, this is an inexplicable word game), a very nice bakery in downtown Sherbrooke. This place, for me, is know for it's fabulous bread, in particular the cheese bread (and chocolate bread, more on that later...). I was thrilled! There was no other word: I was going to know the secrets to the perfect cheese bread! It starts easy enough. You need to prepare a ball of your favorite bread . There is a simple recipe on our blog here , but you can do whatever recipe you want. I sometimes like to put bacon bits in the dough, or sun dried tomatoes... ...

This is a Canadian goody which has to be here. When I tasted it the first time, there was nothing comparable. It was so good and with an incredible texture, I couldn't believe it's self made! Even more, our first trials failed sadly, it was too sticky and we needed to throw most of it out (luckily the sugar can simply be dissolved in water, just takes time). Nevertheless, the last possible problem seemed the baking soda, which we couldn't find in Sweden. So on our last trip I brought it back all the way from Chicago :) - and voilà, it came out perfect! We made 2 forms, a pie and a spring form, and figured, that not only the spring form is much easier to remove and the sponginess is more uniform. An original recipe can be found on that page . In a big pot (minimum 3 liters) warm up on medium heat 625ml sugar   160ml light corn sirup (we don't know if corn is important, and the only we found here was dark pancake sirup - it works) 80ml of water and stir consist...