Right now I have a Tiramisù cheesecake in the oven. Review, recipe and thoughts will come tomorrow evening. I’m really excited, to bad that it has to rest for a few hours after baking….

Autumn is getting closer, the days are shorter and the rain is here. It’s time to cuddle up with a nice cup of tea and some buns. What about these lovely ones with bilberries? They are truly delicious; the filling is moist, sweet and the crumbles are crispy. Everything fits really well and their taste makes your mood a bit lighter during those cold dark nights.

Bilberry Buns with Lemon, Almond paste and Crumbles
(From Swedish magazine “Allt om Mat”, makes 40 buns)

Dough:
50 gr fresh yeast
150 g butter
500 ml milk
100 ml sugar
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp cardamon
840 gr flour

Lemon and Almond paste filling:
200 g almond paste
100 g butter, roomtemperatured
2 tbsp marsán powder (this is a vanilla cream powder that you mix with milk to make vanilla sauce or custard)lemon zest from 1 lemon
1 tsp of lemon juice

Crumble dough:
100 g butter, cold
100 ml sugar
300 ml flour

Bilberry filling:
150 g bilberries
2 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp maizena

1. Melt the butter and add the milk, heat to lukewarm (about 37 °C /99 ° F). Crumble the yeast in a bowl and add the milk and butter. Combine until the yeast dissolves. Add sugar, salt and cardamon. Add the flour, a little at a time and stir with a wooden spoon until mixture is smooth and not sticky, but still soft and pliable. Knead for 5-10 minutes. Dust the top of the dough with flour, cover with a clean cloth and let rise in a warm, dry place until double in size, about 30 minutes.

2. Lemon and Almond paste filling: Grate the almond paste and combine with butter, lemon zest, marsán powder and lemon juice. Roll 40 small balls and put in the fridge.

3. Turn dough onto a floured board and knead for some minutes adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking. Divide the dough into 40 pieces and roll the dough bits into round buns. Place buns in paper baking molds. Cover buns with a clean cloth and let rise about 30 minutes.

4. Preheat oven to 225 °C (425 °F).

5. Crumble: Combine butter, sugar and flour to a crumbly dough

6. Bilberry filling: Combine bilberries, icing sugar and maizena

7. When the buns have risen, press down a lemon almond ball in each bun. Brush the tops of the buns with a whipped egg and then add the bilberry filling. Sprinkle some crumble dough. Bake the buns in the oven for about 8 minutes until golden brown.

It’s time for weekend cat blogging again. Each weekend food Bloggers around the world share pictures of their cute cats. Just send your permalink in a comment to Clare at Eat Stuff and add a “Weekend Cat Blogging” tag to your post.

Last weekend we went to Uppsala to get our new sweetheart Gideon. We borrowed Fredrik’s parents car and first drove up to Stockholm, driving from home at noon. I think that it took us 6 hours of driving to get there, but we stopped a few times to stretch our legs and to have a nice picnic by the lake Vättern. Saturday evening we spent in Stockholm with some friends where we also slept and on Sunday morning we went to Uppsala, first to visit Fredrik’s grandmother and finally to meet Gideon for the first time. He was absolutely lovely and it felt unreal to meet him. We didn’t stay long as we had a long drive home, and then we put him in our cat carrier and started the ride home. He was very calm and sweet during the trip. We stayed a few times and let him out in the car. We didn’t come home until 11:30 PM. You probably want to know how Yoshi and Tanuki reacted? Well, they were really nice and kind to Gideon but as he’s 9 months old and hadn’t met any cats since his “kittenhood” at Anne’s cattery Hufflepuffs, he just snarled and screamed everytime he got close to the other cats. We didn’t sleep much the first night… Fredrik had to catch the first flight to London next morning and I felt really sorry for him. Myself I took the day off to supervise the cats. The cats were never aggressive towards each other, but Gideon snarled all week even if he still was very curious and followed the others. Each day was better and better, and it was really relaxing to see the progress.
Today, after one week it’s still not perfect but they still don’t fight and Gideon only snarls sometimes. He actually manages to sniff on the other cats without a sound. At night he sleeps with us in the bed and he’s really social. The only bad thing about him is that he can open doors, so we have to keep the outer door locked all the time :-)

Langos with sour cream, chopped red onion and grated Västerbotten cheese.

Langos is a kind of bread, or actually deep-fried bread puffs. They are originally from Hungary and they are always for sale at festivals and events in Sweden. They are very popular and people stand in long queues to buy one instead of a boring hot dog or hamburger. You can choose between various toppings and I always choose sour cream, grated cheese and chopped red onion. They are really delicious. When I was a kid my mother used to deep-fry dough, long before we knew about Langos. Yesterday I was very hungry and didn’t know what to eat for dinner when I realized that I had yeast and sour cream in the fridge. So I dediced to do Langos. Real Langos contains cooked potato, but my Mother always used normal bread dough and so did I.

Quick and easy Langos

25 gr fresh yeast
250 ml lukewarm water
~500 ml flour
salt

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add flour and salt, combine to a flexible dough. Add more flour if needed. Let the dough rise for 10-15 minutes.

Take a piece of dough and roll it out to a rather thin oval. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Heat oil in a pan and fry each Langos separately until both sides turn golden brown. Serve the Langos with sour cream, grated cheese and chopped onion.

It‘s time for weekend cat blogging again. Each weekend food Bloggers around the world share pictures of their cute cats. Just send your permalink in a comment to Clare at Eat Stuff and add a “Weekend Cat Blogging” tag to your post.

Say hello to S*Hufflepuffs Gideon Grevé! He’s our new baby :-) We’re picking him up tomorrrow and we are so excited. He’s actually from Anne’s (Anne’s food) cattery Hufflepuffs, but he now lives with a family in Uppsala. Unfortunately one of their baby’s has gotten asthma so they can’t keep him.

Please keep your fingers crossed that everything will go well and that Gideon, Tanuki and Yoshi will be good friends… I really hope so.

(sorry for not posting anything about food this week, but it was my first week after my vacation so I’ve been rather busy. But of course I’ve eaten :-) )

Petite Apple Casserole from Le Creuset

It’s time for weekend cat blogging again. Each weekend food Bloggers around the world share pictures of their cute cats. Just send your permalink in a comment to Clare at Eat Stuff and add a “Weekend Cat Blogging” tag to your post.

This week we bought the cats new cat furniture. They can now easily access the top of the cupboards, where they love to sleep. Earlier it was only Yoshi that sleept there because Tanuki is a bit clumsy and had problems jumping up on the kitchen fan and then further up… But now he can take the new easy way.

Oh, and by the way. If everything goes well Yoshi and Tanuki will get a new friend!!! :-) Isn’t that great?!!!

Espresso Cake

Espresso Cake

200 ml pine kernels and blanched almonds
200 gr butter
300 ml sugar
100 ml cocoa powder
2 tbsp vanilla sugar
3 tbsp espresso ground coffee
3 eggs
180 gr flour
1 tbsp coffee liqueur (Kahlua)

1. Heat the oven to 175 °C. Roast the pine kernels and the almonds in a dry hot frying pan until they get coloured.

2. Melt the butter in a big pan. Remove it from the stove and add sugar, cocoa, vanilla sugar and ground coffee. Stir, don’t whip. Add an egg at a time and finally add the flour mixed with the pine kernels and almonds. Add the coffee liqueur.

3. Pour the cake mixture into a buttered and bread crumbed pan.

4. Bake in the bottom part of the oven for about 25 minutes. The cake should be moist and sticky in the middle. Serve the cake lukewarm with whipped cream.