Pig

27/12-2011

My new roomie likes pigs so I thought she deserved one such. Not easy to do a pig really... But it might depend on the fact that I am not very talended. :O)

Basically done out of one larger ball for the body, two small balls for the front feet, two small balls for the eye and black dots on the top of those two and a little curl for the back.


I did small triangles for the ears and bent them in half to create the ears.


As pigs bring luck as I understand, I decided to make two pigs for my mom's brother and his fiancée. One each. One was longer eared than the other... Do not know why I felt if was better with longer ears after the first two...
This is how they looked from the front:

27/12-2011

and here from the back:

27/12-2011

Christmas atmosphere....

I love Christmas! Ideally, I could have Christmas 6 months a year and I still wouldn't be bored by it. I always wish to have a lot of Christmas decorations already from the beginning of the month... But I may indeed start putting it up only when the house is clean. So now house clean, and I was allowed to do a wreath to put on my door! Actually with some delay as the cleaning took so long time, there was no time to go buy stuff for my planned wreath.
But last Saturday I made it! And up it was...

18/12-2011

It was the most difficult project this Christmas: first thing the frame.
I thought it was just to buy some metal thread and bend it suitably. Well, it turned out the metal thread I purchased was so hard, it was very hard to bend. So after I actually made the outer frame, I had no power in me left to do any more adjusting. It was formed as a heart. I connected two thick bent threads, with some piece of thread that was much thinner. In its whole it looked ok. Only issue, sometimes it simply folds.... In two... Gah... Strange. Anyways, now it seems it has not folded since I hanged up the wreath... Let us hope for the future....
Next step would be to make some kind of net to hang the moss on it. Basically impossible task without a welder. So I got something that looked like a chaos of very thin green metal thread and had to be satisfied with it.
Next step was to actually cover the chaos with moss. Started with white moss. Weee... what a trip. Janne had to help... things were sticking out everywhere. Could not keep where it was supposed to. And the wreath was not fully covered. And of course, the moss I purchased was not enough. Crap really!
So I was anyways planning to also use some Spanish moss....

18/12-2011

Not much easier to hold it on place, but there no way it could be harder than the white moss. Very very tricky... What an idea... And it could "bend in two" anytime... Ng...
So now the final finish: mountain ash berries... not a walk in the park either... but still not as hard as either white moss or Spanish moss... Going upwards...
Actually, I had made some hearts with clay for this thing. But in all that cleaning, they are now gone... not sure where really! Crap!
When I was in NY last month though, thinking of my future wreath, I did purchase some bow material... So there it is... :O)
Believe it or not... as long as this thing stays open, does not fly away, bend in two or whatever, I am very satisfied... now when I come home, there is no doubt. It is Christmas, the Christmas atmosphere is here!!!!

Just a regular Scandinavian December...

Over a week ago, my daddy published some images taken at the beginning of December in their Italian garden picturing some roses that were blooming. It sounded quite weird to me... but thinking back I realized I had seen some white spots in the area around my roses. So last Sunday, I just confronted the weather and under the wet snow, I went exploring the garden to spot if I had been imagining stuff...
And I was indeed not! There were roses, white roses in full bloom. Slightly covered by the light snow!

18/12-2011

 It was my new beloved rose Thérèse de Lisieux purchased during last Spring from a French mail order company.

18/12-2011

So isn't nature beautiful? This is just one more typical Swedish December I guess... ;O) Or is it a French rose that believes it is still at home?! Just really hope they will survive the Swedish winter, really!

Royal icing

This is the first time I try this kind of icing. Last time I needed to cement my gingerbread house, I actually used fat with it. That recipe was very "long lasting" as the house did not have any problems until April the year after. Not sure about this recipe, but let us see.... :O)
So far it hardened pretty quick and seems indeed very stable compared to the one from last year.
After 1-2 hours I could really move around my gingerbread house without bothering.

11/12-2011

Ingredients
3 tablespoons Meringue pownder
4 cups confectioners sugar
6 tablespoons warm water

Instructions
Mix for about 10 minutes with Kitchen Aid and whip. We whipped slowly half time and quick the rest of the time.

Gingerbread house

It has become a kind of a tradition at home to do some kind of gingerbread house. And so to keep up traditions and to give my architect talents some chance, we made one yesterday, too. After a lot of trouble with a terrible recipe turning out in 1,8kg crumbles, a recycling of those to a somewhat better recipe, resulting in a rather friable kind of gingerbread, a roof in pieces and somewhat bumpy way, the house is ready.

11/12-2011


As the recipe for the gingerbread did not turn out at all, I will not publish it at all really.
For cementing the sides and decoration, we used Royal icing, which so far seems to keep the house together. Let us see how long it will keep together without falling apart. Last years house made it to April, but we used a different recipe though.

11/12-2011

Lessons learnt

• Round structures are not easy to do
• As the roof is rounded, I believed it would be good to put it on place while it was still warm so that it would be much easier to bend it. It broke together and was beyond all saving. Next time, we let it cool down and then it kept together but was still able to bend a little.
• To keep royal icing from turning into "stone" over night, we closed the upper side of the decorating bag with a clip and kept the decorating tip in water.
• When using royal icing, be quick. It turns hard very quickly.

Caramel sauce

I used to work at McDonald's and their caramel sundays were to die for. I found caramel sauce in shops but they were not even near in taste. Until one day I went to work when I worked at Herrgår'n and somebody made caramel sauce. Sooooooo lovely. So I stole the recipe and have used for a long time until I lost it. It turns out Google is my friend and I actually found a very similar recipe, which is the one I have been using since.
Actually I took a picture of it but I happened to delete it from my camera... Well... you do know how caramel sauce looks like, don't you? ;O)

Ingredients
1 dl sugar
1 dl cream
1 dl light syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

Instructions
Melt sugar, cream and syrup and let it cook slowly for about 5 minutes until golden and smooth looking. Add vanilla sugar.
It can then be used warm with ice cream, to fill pralines, or whatever comes to mind really. I love it. I could actually drink it if it were healthy... :O)

Mh... it seems I had already blogged about this recipe. It seems caramel sauce is some kind of favorite. Even funnier is that I actually wrote very similar comments there, too!

Oat muffins alias "hälsoknäck"

One good day I had to bake for Janne's mom's birthday, and there are people in the family that cannot eat flour so I found a recipe for oat muffins, which is in its nature without any flour. They tasted very good and very much alike an healthier version of knäck. So now around Christmas, I thought of taking out the same recipe and try to make small small muffins with this recipe so they would look like the Swedish knäck.

11/12-2011

Ingredients
75gr butter
75gr muscovado sugar
1,5 tablespoons dark syrup
138gr oat

Instructions
Turn on oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
Melt butter, sugar and syrup. Add oat.
Put in baking cups. If you use muffin sized cups, bake for about 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. In small "knäck" cups, 10-15 minutes should be enough to reach the same status.
If desired you can decorate the muffins with melted chocolate.

Tiramisu'

Background
The first time I got to taste Tiramisu' was when my dear "cousin" Cristina made it when I was a teen. That was definitively the best dessert on earth. She had a simple recipe for it and I wish I had it written down somewhere. As long as I kept re-making Tiramisu' all the time, I had it in mind, but now it is definitively not there anylonger. I remember some few numbers and ingredients. That is it. Something like 4 table spoons of sugar, 2 or 4 eggs, 250gr or less than a whole container anyways of mascarpone. But I have not been able to reproduce it since a long time.
Now I actually found a modified recipe that sounds pretty much like it if you remove the "strange parts of it".

11/12-2011

Ingredients
2 eggs
4 tablespoons sugar
250gr mascarpone
espresso coffee
savoiardi cookies

11/12-2011

Instructions
Whip egg yolks with sugar until white and fluffy. Add mascarpone. Whip egg whites until stiff. Put whipped egg whites in the egg and mascarpone cream.
Dip savoiardi cookies in espresso coffee. I like it a lot when the cookies become very soaked I am no friend of savoiardi without coffee. Then I drip it. But normal people like savoiardi and try to avoid that trouble. Some think indeed it is not so good if you soak the cookies. But I do not care really... I love it that way no matter what! If they don't like it, more for me! :O)
Above I have made tiramisu' in portion forms, but if you are a real italian, you will probably stick it into a rectangular form.
Sprinkle with cocoa when they are ready to serve.
Not sure what happened this time but the coffee was incredibly bitter. Strange! Normally, it should not be.