Cupcakes

I am going to bake some cupcakes for my friends wedding this weekend. So now I practice my baking skills. By the way, these cupcakes tastes heavenly!  ;)

Recipe for cupcakes batter:

Ingredients:
3 eggs
3 1/2 dl sugar
225 g (8 oz) margarine
2 dl milk
5 dl flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 teaspoons vanilla extract


Procedure:
1. Whisk eggs and sugar until it is fluffy.
2. Melt the butter and add the milk.
3. Add the dry ingredients into a bowl.
4. Add the dry ingredients and the mix of butter and milk alternately to the fluffy eggs.

5. Poor the batter into paper liners placed in a cupcake tray, filling each liner 3/4 full.

6. Bake the cupcakes in the middle of the oven at 180 ° C (356 F) for approx. 20 minutes.

Recipe for Butter Cream

Ingredients:
100 g (3.5 oz) margarine
300 g (10.5 oz) sifted powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk

Procedure:
1. Whisk the tempered margarine, powdered sugar and vanillaectract mixed with sugar.
2. Add the milk. Whip until the cream is light, airy and smooth and easy to work with.
3. Add some food colouring if you want the butter cream to be coloured.

fish au gratin

Serves 4

Ingredients

Approx. 5 dl (2 cups) cod fillets
Approx. 1.5 dl (0.6 cups) macaroni
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons flour
4 dl (1.7cups) milk
Salt
Pepper
A little grated nutmeg
2 eggs
Breadcrumbs

Procedure

Boil water in a pan. Add a little salt and the cod fillets. Simmer for 5 minutes. Drain the fish in a colander and cool.
Boil 1.5 dl macaroni according to the package directions. Drain the macaroni in a colander and cool.

Make the white sauce as follows:
Melt the butter in a pan. Whisk in flour and let it sputter a little bit. Add a little of the milk. Stir well to make sure there is no lumps in the sauce. Add the rest of the milk a little bit at a time. Let the sauce cook for a little while, to be sure it does not taste of flour. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in one egg yolk at a time. Mix the sauce, the macaroni and the cod fillets. Let it cool.

Whisk egg whites stiff and stir them lightly into the mixture. Grease a casserole dish and add the mixture. Sprinkle bread crumbles on top.

Gratin at 200 C degrees (392 F) for 40-50 minutes.

Serve with potatoes, bacon and a green salad.

welcome drinks

This summer I have the pleasure of being the maid of honor twice! In one of the bachelorette parties we served these delicious welcome drinks!


You need:
1 liter of orange juice
Ca.150g powdered sugar
400g frozen raspberries
The juice from 1/2 lime
1/2 - 1 liter lemon flavored soda

Procedure:
Add orange juice, frozen raspberries, lime and powdered sugar into a blender and mix well.
Taste and add powdered sugar if it´s too bitter or sour.
Right before you serve the drinks, add lemon flavored soda and
stir with a spoon. It will give the drink a little sparkle.
Pour the drink in glasses and add an umbrella or other festive decorations!

You're welcome!

american blueberry muffin

 The ingredients are lightly whipped together by hand, and you only need two bowls and a large balloon whisk and some muffin liners. This recipe will be enough to make 6-12 muffins, depending on the size of the liners.

The dry ingredients in one bowl:

4.8 dl flour

1, 5 dl sugar 

3 large teaspoons of baking powder

One pinch of salt

The wet ingredients in one bowl:

1 egg

3/4 dl canola oil

2.5 dl milk

You can choose any kind of flavor.

For instance, mashed banana (in the wet bowl) with chopped almonds and 4-5 drops of almond essence.

Other options are baking cocoa (chocolate muffins), raisins, chopped chocolate, walnut, cinnamon, blueberry, and so on.

I have used frozen blueberries. 

Procedure:

Preheat the oven to 200-225 C degrees (390-440 Farenheit) 

The dry bowl and wet bowl are mixed separately,

then stir it very lightly together in one of the bowls, stop stirring when it´s partly mixed together. Put the mixture into muffin liners with a spoon. The liners must be filled to the top.

The muffins are baked on the bottom shelf for 15-20 minutes.

Sweet Chilli Pork with banana and cashews

I just love Sweet Chili Sauce! Sweet and hot at the same time.. got to love it!

This dish is easy to make and requires very few ingredients. If you also enjoy cashews and banana you should have a try. I promise, you will not regret it!

To make Sweet Chilli Pork for 4 persons you need:

600 g (21 oz) sliced ​​pork fillet
4 tablespoons oil for frying
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger
4 bananas
1 dl (3 1/2 fl oz) cashews
10 tbsp sweet chilli sauce

 
Fry the pork with chopped ginger in a wok.

Add the sliced ​​bananas and cashews, and stir gently with the meat.

Add the chilli sauce.

Serve with rice or noodles.

Salvation Army thrift store

I love to shop second hand if I have the opportunity to do so. I like to hunt treasures at our lokal Salvation Army thrift store. Once in a while I also go to some neighboring towns to look at their Salvation Army thrift stores. It feels good to shop good stuff at low prices, give money to charity and be eco friendly at the same time. ;-)

Recently I have bought two new cookbooks from the thrift store. They are both in Norwegian, but you can get the one by Tessa Kiros in English at Amazon. In English it is called "Falling Cloudberries: A World of Family Recipes".

I just love cookbooks in bright colors with nice pictures of wonderfully presented food.. Inspiring but still a little bit challenging.

 I hope to share some of the dishes from my new cookbooks with you soon.

Meringue

This Easter we had lovely weather. Sunny and warm. I have been walking the beach several times. One early morning I found these treasures. They instantly reminded me of meringue and I decided to share my meringue recipe with you.

The first one I wanted to pick up crushed when I grabbed it. They are so fragile and beautiful. I picked a lot of them and tried not to crush them in my pocket. An english gentleman that walked his dogs gave me a plastic container to keep my fragile skeletons. It felt like Easter egg hunting.

I later found out that the skeletons came from a kind of sea urchin called sea potato. Funny name. Love that they are so fragile and their shape. They have got a neat pattern. Beautifully feminin just like meringue.

When I got home and had washed them, trying not to break them all, I could not resist to colour some of them with food colouring. They look just like Easter candy and it is easier to see the pattern.

To make meringue you need:

4 egg whites
1 small pinch of salt
250g (9 oz) sugar
1/2 tablespoon cornstarch flour
1 teaspoon vinegar
Pink food coloring

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celcius.
Beat the egg whites and the salt stiff.
Add the sugar little by little.
When the mixture is smooth, add vinegar and cornstarch flour.
Add a few drops of food coloring and stir it.
Place baking paper on a tray and sprinkle powdered sugar on it.
Use a spoon or a syringe bag to create small peaks of meringue.
Place meringue in the middle of the oven and turn the heat down to 120 degrees celcius.
Bake for about 20 minutes.