Grab a cup of brew with the coffee experts – the Nordic folks, who top the coffee consumption statistics of the world. 
Visit the Scandinavian forum on Food.com.
Coffee in Scandinavia
Vanilla Ice Cream (and no ice cream maker needed!)
Incredibly rich and delicious vanilla ice cream! The recipe reportedly comes from the New York Times – I came across it on Pinterest. Three ingredients, whip whip → freezer → ahhhhh….
Luscious Vanilla Ice Cream
1 cup heavy cream
2 ts vanilla extract
1 (398 g) can sweetened condensed milk
Whip heavy cream until soft peaks form.
Add vanilla extract and, with the mixer running, gradually add sweetened condensed milk. Whip until stiff peaks form.
Pour into a freezer-proof container and freeze for at least 4 hours.
“I’m just crackers about cheese!”
With this impossibly cheesy Wallace & Gromit quote I bring you: Pistachio Cheese Wafers! (Although I still want to think of them as crackers) I’ve adapted the recipe juuust a leetle; the original version can be found at Food.com.
Pistachio Cheese Wafers
120g butter, at room temperature
2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon grated black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup chopped roasted & salted pistachios
Using an electric mixer, beat together the butter and cheese.
Add 1 cup of flour and mix (and be good about measuring the flour: no scooping from the bag with the measuring cup!).
Add the salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper to the mixture and beat until blended.
Stir in the chopped pistachios.
Turn the dough onto a floured surface and divide in half. Shape each piece into a log, about 2,5 cm across. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the fridge until firm (I chilled for 40 minutes).
Preheat oven to 175 C.
Cut each chilled dough roll into 12 slices and place the slices on a lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges.
Transfer to a rack to cool.
Makes 24 deliciously savoury, cheesy and nutty crackers.
I Hate Silicone Cake Tins
(Whine wine: Fernway Sauvignon Blanc Marlborough – nice, albeit a touch more herbal than I prefer)
Anti-stick my foot! Never, ever trust in the supposed releasing magic of silicone tins, for it does not exist. You still have to butter & flour the tin if you wish to get your cake out of it. As an added aggrevating bonus, if your cake does stick to the silicone tin, there is no way, no way at all, you can get it out in one piece. With your trusty old metal tin, you could try the cold towel trick, and in most cases it would actually work. Nothing can be done to save a cake that has become stuck to a silicone tin: you can forget about pretty cake slices and start planning a trifle.
Silicone tins are also bendy and twisty: this means that they only work with very sturdy baked goods anyway. A delicate cake is going to start going to pieces when you try and invert the useless, spineless mould, because it won’t hold its shape. Oh, and let’s not forget that you must always place the tins on a cookie sheet, for the very same reason. How handy.
Unless you only and exclusively bake very hard bread, the only thing silicone tins have going for them is the fact that they don’t go ”clangggg!!” when you put them in the cupboard.
Margarita Pies
No-bake nomness – with alcohol! Whee… Recipe adapted from Food.com; makes 16 cupcakes (or one 9″ pie, if you’re so inclined).
Miniature Margarita Pies
Crust:
1 cup digestive biscuit crumbs (about 8 biscuits)
2 tbls sugar
5 tbls melted butter
Filling:
1 (398 g) can sweetened condensed milk
40 ml Triple Sec or Cointreau
40 ml tequila
¼ cup fresh lime juice
2 cups heavy cream , whipped
green food colouring (optional)
Line muffin pans with paper muffin cups (the American style, as always).
Combine the crust ingredients and press into the muffin cups. Use a little less butter than you think you need; the crust should be a bit crumbly. This is because the pies are frozen, and if you use plenty of butter you will end up with crusts that are rock hard and all but unbreakable. 
Combine filling ingredients. Add a few drops of food colouring at a time (and mix) until the batter is tinted a gentle minty green.
Cover cupcakes and freeze for 4-5 hours or overnight.
Garnish with whipped cream, lime slices, mint leaves, and other pretty things. Let stand at room temperature for about 15 minutes before digging in.
The Curious Bucket
Last Saturday, I was sitting in a bus on my way to the city centre. A woman got on the bus, carrying a handbag and a bucket. A bucket. It’s March, so she clearly couldn’t be planning to go berry picking. For a moment I figured she had just bought the bucket (who doesn’t need a bucket?) and was on her way home, but it was before 9 am and the shops weren’t open yet. So, what?
Some theories:
Friend: ”Hey, I’m spring cleaning this Saturday, come and help out! It’s BYOB, bring your own bucket!”
An ultra-modern fashion statement: instead of a boring old tote bag, she decided to put her groceries in a way cool bucket.
Perhaps there is a source for some super fresh milk somewhere in town.
It was interesting. Whatever the reason for the bucket, I hope she did not intend to kick it. Oh harity-har.
Mud Cupcakes
Another one of my serving size solutions: I’ve had a hankering for some seriously rich chocolate cake but am unfortunately all too capable of eating a whole cake by myself in a matter of days. Which would be immensely enjoyable but very, very naughty. Hence, another cupcake rendition of an old classic – mudcake! Makes 24 decadent cupcakes.
Mud Cupcakes
250g butter
200g dark eating chocolate (will try 60% cocoa solids next time)
400 g soft brown sugar (scant 2 cups, firmly packed)
1 1/3 cups milk
1 ts vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 ts baking powder
1/8 ts baking soda
1 pinch salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
Preheat oven 150°C. Line two muffin tins with paper cases.
Combine chopped butter, chopped chocolate, sugar, milk and vanilla extract in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until smooth.
Transfer mixture to a large bowl and let cool for 15 minutes.
Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, salt and cocoa powder. Whisk in the sifted flour mixture.
Add eggs, mix until just combined.
Pour mixture into paper cases. (You can fill them quite generously, as the cupcakes don’t rise all that much.) Bake for about 20 minutes, or until the tops just begin to look dry. Do not overbake. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.
I adapted the recipe from The Australian Women’s Weekly, whose muffin tins are apparently a lot bigger than mine, since their recipe makes 12 cupcakes.
These are quite rich, so I prefer to top them with plain whipped cream – but if double richness is your thang, go with chocolate ganache or buttercream, (see AWW link above). Or both.
Mini Cheesecakes
For when you really, really want cheesecake, but really, really can’t justify making, and consequently eating, a full size cake – cheesecupcakes!
Mini Cheesecakes
To make 6 cheesecupcakes, you need:
a muffin pan
6 muffin cups (For fellow Finns: the big American-style ones, not the regular ones.)
6 LU Digestive Rye biscuits (The rye variety are smaller than your regular Digestives and fit the bottom of the American muffin cup almost perfectly. No reason why you couldn’t use another type of digestive biscuit/graham cracker – I just didn’t want to try and cut a crumbly biscuit down to the right size.)
Filling:
200 g Philadelphia cream cheese, at room temperature
100 ml caster sugar
0,5 ts vanilla
2 ts lemon juice
2 eggs (the two smallest eggs in your carton), at room temperature
Preheat oven to 180 C.
Place six muffin cups into the muffin pan; place the biscuits on the bottom of the cups.
Mix together cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice until light and well blended. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Divide the batter between the muffin cups.
Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until the tops are just beginning to crack.
Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving with berries and whipped cream.
Try to find it in your heart to share at least one with another cheesecake yearning soul.
On queueing
Fuel: Malat Riesling Kellergärten 2008. Very lemony – my palate prefers the curranty rieslings, but hey, I’ll drink it.
Let’s review the purpose of queueing. The purpose of queueing is for a bunch of people to get to where they need to go, one at a time, in an orderly, fair & just fashion. Nobody particularly enjoys it, but most people keep their urge to jump the queue in check, because they realise that the other people in the queue are not enjoying the queueing any more than they are. In other words, it’s agreed that you must keep things fair in order not to be an asshole.
For some reason, however, even otherwise sane people constantly commit these queueing sins:
- Ignoring the one queue rule. Two (or more) desks, one line, and the space has been clearly organised in a way that makes the one-queue system feasible, if not recommendable. Sensible people have formed one queue. An soon-to-be-asshole comes in, decides that the queue is in fact 10 centimetres closer to desk 1 than to desk 2, takes this to mean that the five people are all queueing to desk 1, and promptly positions him/herself behind the person at desk 2, feeling all smug. No. This is a sin.
- Upon leaving, handing the unused queueing ticket number to someone who just walked in. A person walks in, takes a number from the ticket dispenser, and sees that there are 17 people in front of him or her. The person waits, 10 more people come in and take numbers, the soon-to-be-asshole decides not to wait any more, and… for some reason, hands their ticket to whoever happens to walk in as they’re leaving. No. No no no. You just seriously pissed off the 10 people who walked in after you and hence became a queueing asshole. Stuff the ticket in your pocket or throw it in the bin, but do not let someone jump the queue with it. It is a sin.
- Not taking out the papers, cards and whatnots needed at the desk in good time. The at-this-point-already-a-queueing-asshole finally gets to the desk and only then starts to dig through their purses/pockets to find the cash card, and, hang on, I have a post-it here somewhere with that info I need, then I have the loyalty card, just saw it the other day, hmm, hmm, oh oh oh, and I have a coupon, let’s see where I put it… No. Plenty of time to do the digging when you’re standing and waiting. Do not unnecessarily add to the queueing time of others. It is a sin.
This has been a public service announcement against queueing sins leading to assholeness. Thank you.
Red Wine & Chocolate Cupcakes
Deary deary me, only a few postings after I declared on my About Me page that I don’t see the point of red wine, I found a point. It makes delicious cupcakes.
Red Wine & Chocolate Cupcakes
90 g butter, softened
1 cup unrefined cane sugar (or a mix of soft brown sugar and white granulated sugar)
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
¾ cup red wine
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup cocoa powder (Dutch processed), sifted
1 ts vanilla sugar
½ ts cinnamon
½ ts baking powder
¼ ts baking soda
¼ ts salt
Preheat oven to 160 C.
Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add egg & egg yolk, mix well.
Add red wine and mix. Remain stoic when faced with what the batter looks like at this point.
Add the dry ingredients and mix well. The batter looks considerably better now, doesn’t it?
Pour into paper-lined muffin tins. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cupcakes test done. Cool and dust with powdered sugar.
Bake a day ahead to let the flavours to meld.
Makes 15 cupcakes.
