Chocolate factory

Tags

Chocolate, Cooking, Date

For our tenth anniversary my husband took me on the perfect date: a chocolates and confectionary course. We learned a lot about chocolate; its history, blends, and also how to make different truffles and ganaches and how to treat melted chocolate. We agreed that we would have to experiment a bit at home after this, but just haven’t got around to it, until now. 

A romantic night in, after Son was fast asleep, we set to it, and chose a recipe from a book we got at the course. Starting off with pistachio nuts, raisins, dried apricots and dried pineapple, it all looked easy-peasy. Chopping everything and melting the chocolate was a walk in the park!

But then the recipe told us to add a pound of icing sugar. This resulted in blisters in Husband’s palms, and the chocolate that was to be made with love, now also had sweat and tears going in to the making (not in the chocolate, but into the making of the chocolate). 

Squeezing it into a form afterwards, leaving it to cool overnight and dicing the massive blocks of chocolate was done without harming any individuals. 

However, with the amount of sugar going into these cubes, I can not guarantee that no harm was done to any teeth.

Cooking and recommendations

Tags

Cooking, Food, Food blogs

At least a bit of cooking and baking happens in my kitchen every day. Not necessarily both, but that too rather often. I shared with you some of my bread recipes earlier, like this and this, and also my how-to rules for good, nutritious, no nonsense breads. I have been baking quite a lot lately, but very little have been my own recipes, and thus I would not like to take credit for them on my blog. But instead, I’ll give you a few links to some wonderful sites and also recommendations of recipes that I have tried myself.

First out is Tes. I have mentioned her and her Asian adventures before. Her recipes are to die for and she has through her blog given me the best recipe for sweet-and-sour sauce. It’s easy to make and it is absolutely wonderful.

My husband is not usually a fan of sweet-and-sour, but this he loved. Go try it out!

One of the last summer evenings we had I tried her vegetable noodles, though with a bit of a twist. Lucky Tes has easier access to certain vegetables and ingredients and consequently I have to improvise a bit every now and then. Noodles were great though, as expected, and they have now become a common addition to many dinners. 

I made my first batch of chocolate chip cookies a few weeks ago and used a recipe found at Trine’s blog. Trine is wicked in the kitchen and offers a new recipe every single day. She is a true inspiration, and I very often use one of her recipes for dinner or when I want to make something special. She has a translate button on her site which will google translate her site for you, thus I will only leave you a link to her cookie recipe and my picture of the delicious treats. 

Autumn will see more of my own recipes posted here including a few traditional Norwegian dishes.

Pizza dough

Tags

Cooking, Dough, Food, Pizza, Recipe, Staurday

Every Saturday is pizza day. Unfortunately we haven’t made pizza together, the three of us, for about two months. Saturday often ends up as the day we plan things with friends, and afternoon dinner gets scheduled out, and Husband has also been off working for some weeks. But next Saturday we’re back on!

This recipe is nothing fancy, and most of you probably have a pizza dough recipe you regularly use. A friend of mine sent texted me some days ago asking me for my recipe, and I thought I’d also share it with everyone else.

 

5 dl flour

2 dl water

Olive oil

Salt

Yeast

 

If you want something a bit different, replace half of the wheat flour with durum wheat. Durum wheat is used a lot more in Italy than here, and gives the dough a more exclusive taste and texture.

Mix the yeast and water. Remember correct temperature when using yeast; if you put your pinky finger in it and it feels rather warm nor cold, it’s perfect. If you’re using dry yeast the water can be slightly warmer, but still not too warm as that will kill it. Pour in somewhere between two and four tablespoons of olive oil. Add the flour and just a wee bit of salt. Mix and knead for a while, roll it out and leave it to rise for as much time as you have before adding the topping. Bake at 225 degrees (or more) until it’s done.