Month: February 2012

Butternut squash soup with roasted garlic

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One of the most popular cookbooks in Sweden in the autumn was Lotta Lundgren’s amazing Om jag var din hemmafru (translates: If I was your housewife). The design of the book is very spectacular for a cookbook with glossy sexy pictures, not just of food, and the texts are amazing as well as the recipes. It is no surprise that Lotta has a background in advertising.

I bought this book as soon as it was published but haven’t have time to properly read it until now. Love it though! And it was also about time I tried one of her recipes, this fabulous soup with roasted butternut squash, garlic and onions.

The only changes I made to the recipe was to exchange a regular onion for a red onion, and to use less stock as my butternut squash was rather small.

Butternut squash soup with roasted garlic, serves 4

1 butternut squash

1 regular onion (or a red onion)

4 garlic cloves

1 lemon, the zest and juice

400-600 ml chicken or vegetable stock

200 ml cream

salt, pepper

Place the squash, onion and garlic cloves whole with the peel on on a roasting tray. Place in 200C oven. Roast the garlic for 20 minutes and the rest for 50 minutes. Leave to cool a little. Cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. Scrape out the flesh. Cut off the roots on the onion and squeeze out the whole thing. Peel the garlic. Grate the zest off the lemon and purée the squash, onion, zest and garlic. Heat up the stock in a saucepan and add the purée, then add the cream and bring to the boil. Season with salt and pepper and add a few drops of lemon juice.  Lotta suggests serving the soups with parmesan shavings or crispy bacon, I just added a dollop of creme fraiche.


Almond cake with milk chocolate ganache, chopped almonds and seasalt

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The third cake for work last month was very popular; my colleagues are crazy about almonds.

The recipe for this cake is from a wonderful Swedish food blog called Anne’s food, and yes, it is in English. I made some slight changes to the recipe though, as I couldn’t find any good substitute for the chocolate with nuts in (Marabou’s Schweizernöt). Instead I used regular milk chocolate for the ganache and added some chopped almonds to it as well as some seasalt at the end. Toasted chopped almonds would have been even better, will do that next time.

The salt I used was a vanilla salt from Halen Môn, but using regular Maldon salt is just fine. I was just intrigued to try the vanilla salt. It is black from all the vanilla seeds and taste wonderful.

Almond cake with milk chocolate ganache, chopped almonds and seasalt, serves 8-10

2 eggs

270 g caster sugar

100 g ground almonds

75 g plain flour

100 g butter

Ganache:

200 g milk chocolate

5 tbsp cream

1 tbsp butter

Garnish:

chopped almonds

seasalt

Preheat the oven to 175C. Melt the butter and grease a round cake tin. Beat eggs and suga pale and fluffy with an electric mixer. Add the almonds, flour and butter. Stir to combine properly. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 20-25 minutes. Leave to cool completely before spreading on the ganache.

Melt the chocolate for the ganache in a saucepan on low heat or in a bain marie. Add the cream and stir, then add the butter and combine. Spread the ganache onto the cake and sprinkle with the almonds. Let it set and sprinkle with salt before serving.

Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting

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Cake number two for work last month was a recipe from the same great blog as where I found the lemon cheesecake; Matrepubliken [The Food Republic].

Both the cake and the frosting are sweet and if you don’t have such a sweet tooth as I, then I would recommend to make a less sweet chocolate cake (any recipe will do), but do keep the frosting as it is, becaus it is perfect. Perfect, do you hear?! Do not mess with perfection.

I can’t wait to try the frosting on some cupcakes next. Just make it, if you love peanuts or peanut butter this will blow you away!

Chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, serves 12

Cake:

120 g butter
200 g milk chocolate
100 ml peanut butter, preferably crunchy
50 ml cocoa
3 eggs
250 ml caster sugar
250 ml plain flour

150-200 ml crunchy peanut butter
450 ml icing sugar
200 g Philadelphia cheese

Preheat the oven to 175C. Butter a cake tin. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the chocolate and peanut butter. When it is all melted, add the cocoa. Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl and beat in the eggs, one at the time, with an electric mixer. Add the sugar and flour to combine. Pour into the cake tin and bake for 25-30 minutes. Leave to cool completely before spreading on the icing. 

Mix the peanut butter, cream cheese and icing sugar together and spread onto the cake in a thick layer. Keep in the fridge before and after serving.

Amazing lemon cheesecake

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On Friday it was once again time to bake for the office, as we have cakes once a month to celebrate that month’s birthdays. I usually make three cakes; one chocolate cake, one cheesecake and one other.

The most popular cake this time was a lovely lemon cheesecake that I found on this Swedish food blog.

When I tried the batter (bowl licking is essential) I knew it would be good, as the flavour reminded me of my mother’s lemon mousse.

I made a few changes to the recipe; for one I prefer to bake the base as I like the texture more that way. Just let it cool completely (10 minutes in the fridge helps) before adding the creamy layer. I also omitted the passion fruit from the jelly because they didn’t have any in the shop I went too. I also used a vegetarian jelling agent instead of gelatine in the creamy mixture, but I prefer to give you the recipe as I found it. The simple – but effectful – decorations are bought sugar pansies.

Lemon cheesecake, serves 10

Base:

12 digestive biscuits (half a packet)

75 g softened butter

Filling:

400 g Philadelphia cheese
300 ml sourcream
1 lemon (zest and juice)
250 ml icing sugar
5 gelatin leaves or similar jelling agent
50 ml water

Lemon jelly:

100 ml fresh lemon juice
100 ml icing sugar
100 ml water
the zest from one lemon
a few drops yellow food colouring
2 gelatin leaves

Mix the digestives with the butter into crumbs and press it onto a a greased springform base. Bake for 10 minutes in 175C. Leave to cool completely.

Place the gelatin leaves in water, squeeze out the excess water and let them melt in the water on low heat. Leave to cool. Mix the cream cheese, sourcream, icing sugar, lemon zest and juice with the gelatin in a mixer/with an electric whisk until smooth. Pour it over the base and leave to set in the fridge for at least an hour.

Place the gelatin leaves in water and squeeze out the excess water. Melt the icing sugar in a pan with the water, on low heat. Add the gelatin to dissolve. Leave to cool and add the lemon juice, zest and food colouring. Pour the yellow mixture onto the set cake and leave it to set in the fridge for at least two hours before serving.

Cocktails at Bob Bob Ricard

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Photo: Bob Bob Ricard.

On Friday the plan was for me, Laura and Jess to go to a nice pub in Chelsea, but we ended up having cocktails at Bob Bob Ricard in Soho instead, before heading to another bar for food and some more drinks.

 

Pear bellini

Once we decided to stay central we actually wanted to go to Mark’s Bar at Hix, but it was full and it was too cold to hang around waiting. Instead we walked two blocks to Bob Bob Ricard. It was the first time we were here, but we liked what we saw (and experienced).

When we opened the heavy door, at least four staff members greeted us, took our coats and showed us to our table in the downstairs bar.

The whole place is in art deco style and it looked really nice. The bar downstairs was all in red and had little booths with sofas and little flap chairs. The cocktail menu had lots of interesting English cocktails, as well as little nibbles like olives and popcorn.

Jess and I had a pear bellini each, which was lovely, and Laura’s choice of a Garden drink with Pimm’s, elderflower and mint was very refreshing and it was fun to see what else you can do with Pimm’s apart from serving it with fruit and lemonade.

We agreed that this is a perfect place to start a date or just go for a drink or two when in need for some instant glamour.