Another South African classic!

Good morning everyone!

This autumn in Sweden has heen beautiful! This time last year we had already had snow for over a month here in Jönköping, but this year we have had really mild, pleasant weather. Which makes it seem crazy that Christmas is only 1 month away today! YAY! 

But before this blog becomes to Christmassy I thought I would put up another South African classic...Milktart! This is for you, Sara. Thank you for requesting the recipe! Feel free to request away!

Milktart is one of my absolute favourite South African recipes! There is just something about the creamy, vanilla flavour that I love! And the memories that come flooding in when I think about milktart...there's too many to think of!

Here comes the recipe:

(to see the recipe in Swedish click here)

1 packet Tennis biscuits (or if you're in Sweden then 1 pack Brago original biscuits and 1 dl coconut will do the job)

100 g butter or marg, melted

Filling:

2 eggs
50 ml water
1 tbsp maizena
1 tbsp flour
1 salt salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 cups (5 dl) milk (3 %)
½ tin condensed milk
30 g butter

Cinnamon

1. Crush the biscuits finely. Add the melted butter and mix around. Press themixture into a pie form and put it into the fridge.
2. Filling: separate the yolks and the whites. Mix the yolks, maizena, flour and salt together. Add the water and mix a little bit more. 
3. Beat the egg whites until they are stiff peaks. Add the sugar and beat for 2 more minutes. 
4. Put the milk, condensed milk and butter in a pot and bring to the boil. Add the yolk mixture and bring to the boil again, stirring constantly. Remove the pot from the stove and fold in the egg whites. 
5. Pour the mixture over the base and then into the fridge for at least 3 hours. Before serving sprinkle lots of cinnamon on top. 

Happy baking!

Love,

Heidi

Christmas is nearly here!

Christmas in Sweden is one of my absolute favourite times of the year! Partly because of the build-up towards the big day. The four Sunday's before Christmas the Swedes celebrate "advent" with lots of candles and good food! This Sunday is going to be "the First Advent" which means that here in sweden we are finally allowed to put up Christmas decorations. So now you know what I will be doing this week-end!

Today Jnytt Extra's Christmas issue came out, together with an article where I made some typical Swedish Christmas sweets but with my own twist.

Click on this link to check it out!
http://issuu.com/jnytt/docs/december_2011/35



Photo by Cathrine Levan

 Do you want to get into the Christmas mood? Here come some of the recipes: (to see these recipes in Swedish, click here: http://jnytt.se/nyhet/43934/heidis-julgodis)

Chocolate snowballs:

Photo by Cathrine Levan

150 g butter, room temperature
200 ml sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
5 tbsp cocoa
350 ml oats
100 ml coconut
4 tbsp espresso
100g Daim, roughly chopped (Daim is a typical Swedish chocolate, can be substituted by using normal milk chocolate)

200g white chocolate
200 ml coconut

1. Mix the butter and sugar together. Add the rest of the ingredients (except the white chocolate and 200 ml coconut) and mix them together well. Roll the mixture into small balls (about 3 cm in diameter). Put them into the freezer for at least 30 minutes so that they get firm.
2. Melt the white chocolate carefully. Dip the chocolate balls in the white chocolate and then in the coconut.
A TIP: Once you have dipped the balls in the chocolate, drop them into a deep bowl with coconut and shake it around...it's much less messy that way ;-)

Photo by Cathrine Levan

Mini red velvet cupcakes with gingerbread icing:

60 g butter
150 ml sugar
1 egg
100ml buttermilk
1 tsp red food colouring
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp white vinegar
250 ml (1 cup) flour
50 ml cocoa
1 pinch salt

Icing:
50 g butter
100 ml cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 tsp of gingerbread spices (like cinnamon, cloves and ginger)
200 ml icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Mix in the egg, buttermilk, food colouring, vanilla, bicarb and vinegar.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, cocoa and salt together. Add them to the wet ingredients and stir until they are just mixed.
4. Fill mini cupcake cases until just over half full.
5. Bake in the oven for about 8-10 minutes. Cool completely.

Icing:
1. Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. Beat all the ingredients together with an electric beater for a few minutes until the icing is creamy and smooth. Pipe the icing onto the cupcakes and decorate with some sprinkles.

Watch this space for some more recipes!


Have a great day!

Love,
Heidi

A real "braai"

Being in Sweden one of the things that I miss most from South Africa (excluding my family of course...and the warm weather...and the beach...) is a REAL braai. Now, don't get me wrong, people have plenty of "grill parties" here in Sweden and some of them produce some pretty good food...BUT!!!

They just don't compare to a REAL South African braai. And I think that one of the main reasons for this is the fact that there is nothing...NOTHING even close, to South African boerewors. For those of who who are underprivileged and have never tasted boerewors, or worse yet, don't even know what it is...let me explain.

Boerewors is a LONG sausage filled with minced meat and a delicious combination of spices. The fun thing with boerewors is that you braai the whole long sausage in one pieces (quite an art!), which keeps the wors nice and juicy and flavoursome.

Luckily I am blessed with lovely friends here in Jönköping. So during the summer, Lisa and I decided to have a go at having a real South African braai, boerewors and all!

So we bought in the necessary ingredients and got going and we had loads of fun along the way! Somehow we ended up without a working machine to stuff the sausages with so we had to do it by hand! Ha ha! It took a LONG time, but in the end it worked out so well!

What is a sausage without the sausage "skin"?

The mince mixture, ready to be stuffed

I was also lucky enough to have my mom here in Sweden so she made her DELICIOUS "pap en sous". Pap is also typically South African and is a type of maize/corn porridge which is eaten together with a sauce made from tomatoes and onions that has simmered together for many hours. Together with good friends and more good food, all in all, the braai was a success!!!

This is what a REAL braai looks like!

Delicious!!!

Boerewors recipe:

1 kg minced meat (50% pork, 50% beef)
25 ml whole coriander seeds, grounded
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black peppar
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1 tbsp brown sugar
100 ml (1 dl) red wine vinegar

Sausage casings, soaked in water

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.

2. Drain the sausage casings and put one end over a filling horn. Carefully pull the whole casing onto the horn, leaving about 5 cm off. Tie a knot in this end.

3. Having 2 pairs of hands at this stage is really helpful. Feed the filling into the filing horn while your assistant guides the casing on the other side, moulding the sausage by hand to make it uniformly thick.

4. Once all the meat has been stuffed, remove the casing and tie a knot on the end.

5. Braai over medium hot coals until the skin has a nice grilled, brown colour and the inside is still juicy.

Happy braaing!

Love,
Heidi

Firetruck fun!

So my little boy is not so little any more...over the week-end we celebrated his 3rd birthday party. It was so much fun. In the midst of the craziness of writing my thesis and extra jobs, somehow we managed to find the time to throw together a lovely party for Elias. 

He has really been into firetrucks lately, so he wanted to have a firetruck party. I got inspired to build a firetruck from boxes so that the kids could play with it at the party. So one night I came up from the basement with a bunch of boxes and put my dear man into work. This year, I must give him the credit with coming up with many ideas that made the party a success...like paper machèing the firetruck. It would not have looked nearly as nice without the paper machè. So after several nights work in the basement the firetuck was ready to go!

We sent out firetruck invites to a few of Elias' friends and prepared snacks for about 20 people. I also made cute little firetruck badges for the kids and organised fireman helmets. The kids got to eat and play around together and then it was time for the cake. 

The cake was vanilla sponge with chocolate ganache and cream filling. One of the layers also had daim balls (daim is a swedish chocolate with a crunchy caramel filling). I'm always trying to find ways to get around covering a cake with fondant as I think fondant is so sweet. So this time I coloured cream a light blue and covered the cake so that the background would look like the sky. It didn't look as nice as fondant but it definately tasted better. I then made trees and buildings from fondant covered with flames around the whole side of the cake. On top was fireman "Elias" with a hose. The cake made its grand entrance into the party on top of the firetruck with small firework candles on top. It was so much fun to see the expressions on the children's faces...priceless and definately worth a week of short nights. Unfortunately I forgot to take a good picture of the cake during daylight. Oh well...better something than nothing.

All in all it was a party with many fun memories! And I am so grateful to have the most precious son in the world and the most loving and helpful hubby in the world!

Stay tuned for some fun, home-made Chritmas present ideas and other goodies to get you into the Christmas spirit!

Love,
Heidi