After a long hiatus we’re back on the blog! What more fitting way to start off than with one of the very best and most classic cakes from our little kingdom? Of course I am talking about Danish strawberry cake with vanilla cream and chocolate. Honestly, I can’t come up with a single reason not to like this cake. Imagine this: a sweet cake base with a crunchy crust, a soft middle and a layer of rich dark chocolate. On top of this you add a smooth vanilla cream and finish off with a generous layer of fresh strawberries. Hungry to try? A Danish baker who fails to have one…
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Nougat praline and almond crunch
Of all the sweet treat temptations you might offer me, there is only one I’ve never ever been able to resist: hazelnut nougat praline filled chocolate. And of all my favorite nougat filled chocolates (and there are oh so many good ones), this nougat praline crunch remains at the very top of my list. Hazelnut nougat praline is different from white hazelnut nougat, which contains egg whites, is kind of chewy and originates in southern Europe. By contrast, hazelnut nougat praline contains no egg whites, has a very high content of hazelnuts (over 30 percent) and is more rich and less sweet. Now, this is the type of nougat you…
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Mozart’s little shooting stars
Mozart chocolate balls are these old school chocolates from Vienna that used to be the ultimate luxury when I was growing up. I remember how friends and family would often buy them if they visited Austria or southern Germany, and they were quite expensive, almost like good quality Belgian chocolates these days. You can still get them of course, but as with many other chocolate brands, the quality has unfortunately gone downhill, often leaving you with a overly sweet product with way too much sugar and hardly any real almonds in the marzipan or hazelnuts in the nougat. The good news is, it is very very easy to make your…
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Last week we shared our recipe for brown Christmas spice cookies – Danish ‘brunkager’. Here’s another wonderful recipe for Christmas cookies, this time straight from my great grandmother Inger’s old recipe book. I guess most people are familiar with the Danish vanilla butter cookies that you can buy in typically blue tins, often with photos of famous Danish places on them. Whether these mass produces cookies leave a positive or negative impression of Danish baking on those who try them, is not for me to judge, but these homemade ones are definitely a much more interesting taste experience, and I think far more worth the calories. And they are super…
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Spicy Christmas cookies
It’s time to start planning which Christmas cookies to bake this year! Danish ‘brunkager’, literally ‘brown cakes’, have always been my favorite Christmas cookies. With all their warm aromas from cinnamon, cloves, ginger, all spice and nuts, these wonderful little treats smell and taste like real Christmas to me. Just wait till you put them in the oven, and you’ll see what I mean. There are tons of variations of these cookies, and you can find cousins of these all over Scandinavia and northern Germany. But since this recipe for these spicy Christmas cookies comes from my ancestors, of course I think it’s the best. A ‘brunkage’ is also a…
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Spooky Halloween treats
These little sweet treats are very common in Denmark, the rest of Scandinavia and Germany, but I have yet to find a similar product in an English-speaking country. The classic version is with plain marshmallow filling covered in dark chocolate. But these are fun and different little spooky Halloween treats if you want to be the favorite place for the neighborhood kids to visit on Halloween. The version I made here is with lemon, but all sorts of flavors can be added to give the marshmallow the taste of your desire. The classic plain soft marshmallow with dark chocolate cover are also very delicious, and if you want to switch…
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Tea time apple and blackberry cake
This apple blackberry cake is inspired by a recipe from an Irish Pub cookbook I bought one time I visited Dublin. I bought the book for only 5 Euros, and it was well worth the money, because it is the cookbook in my collection that I have used the most. As I often do with recipes I come across, I’ve ended up making my own version of the cake with an added twist of blackberries. However, the blackberries can easily be left out, if you’re not a fan. I have often made this apple blackberry cake for when my mother-in-law comes over for tea, so for me it is a…
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Happy birthday cake
Are you celebrating a birthday and want to make a really yummy festive cake? This vanilla custard layer cake with chocolate is my absolute favorite one and no birthday seems right without it. In Denmark birthdays and layer cake go hand in hand. For Danes a really good layer cake usually consists of mouse with thin layers of sponge cake and lots of whipped cream. The mouse may have added flavors or be plain vanilla. I normally don’t use a recipe when I make this type of cake for family and friends, but that is easy for me to say since I have made hundreds of these layer cakes over…
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Little cognac ganache gems
Good quality handmade chocolates are such a luxury, but they can be hard to come by even if you’re willing to pay a lot of money for them. With this easy recipe you can make the most gorgeous homemade cognac ganache chocolates that are perfect as after dinner treats, or for an amazing hostess gift or perhaps for the upcoming Father’s Day? Chocolate making is really fun and creative, and I have a lot of fond memories of always making homemade chocolates for Christmas. It was my grandmother who taught my sister and I the basics of how to do it, and she would buy the most wonderful sprinkles and…
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Rich Father’s Day chocolate beet cake
What to make for Dad on Father’s Day? Well, cake of course! Here’s the perfect Father’s Day chocolate cake to pamper all the great dads out there, and the best thing is, it’s big enough for sharing. This rich and scrumptious Father’s Day chocolate cake is made with lots of chocolate and cocoa, yummy cream cheese frosting and crunchy salty almonds on top. I love a good carrot cake, and I find that using veggies in cakes adds an interesting complexity in taste as well as a natural moisture that keeps the cake from going dry. Therefore we’ve taken this chocolate cake a notch further and added a bit of…
