Apr
7
Easter dinner
by Sofia - in Cooking Party planning
I hope you all had a great Easter! Ours included lots of family time, many rounds of dominoes, some good food and great wine and we went to see some cute new born lambs and chicks. They were all just a few days old if even that and so adorable. All in all we had a fun and lovely time.
I really wanted to share a few photos from our dinner table setting from one of the nights that we dined in our house. Our menu was inspired by the spring. We had green asparagus for starters. I really love it with a mixture of great olive oil and butter heated up with herbs such as oregano, sage and thyme. Add some grated lemon rind and juice, salt and pepper and you are in heaven. Generous shaving of aged parmesan on top is a must! For our main course my dad prepared the lamb and the sauce for it. He is the best chef in the world. I made us a big salad of mesclun greens with a sweet balsamic dressing and garlic potatoes. No one in our family is really in to the creamy kind and everyone always just wants the crispy topping so instead of making it in to a casserole I sliced the potatoes very thin on a mandolin, spread them evenly on baking sheets and drizzled olive oil on top. Then I added plenty of garlic, salt and black pepper and put them in the oven until crispy golden brown. To die for-good. Mint jelly is a must with lamb in our household and we baked an Italian Easter bread to go with it. I actually used my friends challah recipe that is a little sweet and added boiled and coloured eggs for lovely original looks. I added some saffron to it for a lovely yellow colour. This was a suggestion from a colleague of mine and the colours looked very pretty together. I also braided a regular challah loaf to save for the morning and we made ridiculously good french toast from it for breakfast. For dessert I made some meringues to be served with pretty pale green pistachio ice-cream, whipped cream and red currants. I´m sharing the recipe for those meringues this week. We used the rest of the whipped cream at breakfast. What a feast!
I found my inspiration for the table setting on Pinterest. I chose a few photos that had a great casual and a little “farm table”-feel to them. Fresh and spring like.
Mar
16
Yup. You read right. All that in one cake. And it is good. Very good. The girls and I baked this goodness on Sunday for daddy. Making the salted caramel aka dulce de leche was very easy but a bit time consuming. Otherwise it´s a pretty easy cake to make. In my opinion it sounds like more trouble than it is. The recipe for the cake is here in English plus you add a layer of salted dulce de leche. I found many different ways to make the dulce de leche ( here are 3 different variations). I used the oven version and added Maldon sea salt. You just add the caramel sauce on the cake layer(s) before adding the espresso frosting.
Teimme viikonloppuna tämän syntymäpäiväkakun ja se oli aivan erinomaisen hyvää! Suosittelen kokeilemaan. Itse tehty dulce de leche oli helppo valmistaa uunissa. Kaadoin kaksi purkkia kondensoitua makeutettua maitoa kakkuvuokaan ( mikä tahansa uunin kestävä vuoka käy) ja peitin tiukasti foliolla. Asetin kakkuvuoan vesihauteeseen toiseen uunin kestävään vuokaan ja sitten 220 asteiseen uuniin 90 minuutiksi. Kondensoitu maito muuttuu kullanruskeaksi. Siirsin sen kulhoon ja vatkasin tasaiseksi. Lopulta maustoin karamellikastikkeen merisuolalla. Ihanaa, paksua, kullankeltaista merisuola dulche de lecheä.
Feb
27
Ice-cream floats
by Sofia - in Cooking Party planning
I can not believe I had totally forgotten about this childhood birthday party favourite. Ice-cream and soda floats are so much fun! The newest edition of a Finnish cooking mag ( Glorian Ruoka ja Viini) had a little article about them and we had to make them for our hotdog picnic last weekend. Now I re-created some to take photos and added a sprinkle rim for extra fun! ( The thank you for the inspiration goes here. I think she is yet to publish those lovely photos on her blog but she did it first and I copied her with pride. Loved the idea!) On the mag they suggested making adult versions with alcohol. Like ice-coffee, a cream liquor and vanilla ice-cream, or elderflower juice, ice-cream and champagne. But even these super simple lemonade and ice-cream ones are yummy! And they are super duper easy to make. If you never made them before at parties as kids ( I´m an 80´s child so an ice-cream cake covered in candy and a glass of soda were pretty much the thing everyone served at a kid´s birthday and we just mixed the ice-cream in to our soda glasses) just drop a ball of ice-cream in a glass and pour your favourite fizzy drink on top. I like a nice, real vanilla ice-cream and some lemonade. But you could use whatever rocks your palate! The rims were made using candy melts and sprinkles but you could use white chocolate too ( candy melt just hardenes very well). You don´t need instructions here I´m sure.
