No, I’m not that depressed over my job.. yet… :-) But I just had to show you this Voodoo Knife Display that I saw on the Swedish blog Brax on Food. You can order it at Firebox, but it seems to be out of stock.
*must have now*
Sorry for not updating during the last week, I havn’t been inspired to neither cook or bake. This spring my company was sold by it’s Swedish owners to a foreign investment company. We were merged with two other companies with the same profile. You can guess what happened among other things: 70 of 290 people at our headquarters in Gothenburg were given notice in August. This Wednesday the negotiations between the company and the union were finished. I’m very sad to say that I’m one of those 70 people. My company prefers to outsource my knowledge and competence to our consultant company that we hire when needed. I was rather prepared that I would be one of the noticed, as I’ve only been working for my company for 2 years and Swedish law says that the last person employed will be the first to go. But I still was hopeful. I wasn’t prepared to hear that they didn’t want my competence which we at the IT department know is needed. At the same time I was told that our consultant company wanted to hire me; of course they want to hire me now when my company still needs the competence, but from the consultant company that doesn’t have anyone with the same knowledge. I think that everything is so stupid. To hire a consultant is so much more expensive, but I shouldn’t care. It’s their decision. At least I’m not alone… My period of employment will last until last December which means that I will get my last salary at the end of January. I’m only going to work for another week, just to finish up some things and then I will just be at home with full salary. I’m glad that I’ll get payed even though I won’t be working. I will bake, cook and think over things. Do I want to continue with SAP R/3 programming and integration? Or what do I do? I won’t be having trouble finding a new job within SAP, but I’m still sad that I have to go. I’m going to miss all my colleagues, we had so much fun together and I had a really great time. I feel exluded. I’m sad. But I’ll get over it, I know.
To comfort myself I went on a small shopping spree which resulted in a small spring form (16 cm) with two bottoms, 3 small jars for jam and a lovely large heat-resistant silicone spatula from Le Creuset.
This month’s Sugar High Friday is hosted by Elise of Simply Recipes the theme is custard. Read about all the other participants entries on the round-up page.
As I wrote in an earlier post today, it’s my beloved Fredrik’s birthday today and of course he needs a birthday cake!! This year I wanted to try a new recipe and over at the Swedish food blog Cissis Gott och Blandat I very recently saw a post about a Rice Crispies cake that sounded wonderful.
The cake tasted great, even though it was just a tiny bit too sweet. But meringue is sweet as you all know :-) The custard was lovely; smooth and with just the right tangyness.
Here’s the recipe, translated:
Bottom:
4 egg whites
200 ml sugar
300 ml Kellog’s Rice Crispies
Lemon Custard:
4 egg yolks
100 ml sugar
1 tbsp flour
100 ml cream
75 gr butter
juice from 1 lemon
Decoration:
300 ml cream
Fruit or chocolate
Beat the egg whites until they form stiff firm peaks, add the sugar and continue to beat for a while. Add the Rice Crispies. Spread out everything on a buttered oven paper that’s been placed on a baking pan. Bake in the oven for about 80 minutes, 125 degrees Celcius. Let the cake cool a bit in the pan before you turn it up and remove the paper.
Mix all the ingredients for the custard, beside of the butter, in a sauce pan. Heat gently and whisk constantly until the the custard thickens, don’t allow it to boil. Remove the sauce pan from the heat and add the butter. Let the custard cool.
Cut the cake in half, put the lemon custard on one half and cover with the other one. Whip the cream and spread it out on the cake. Decorate with Strawberries or what ever you like.
My brother has been very busy the last weeks as he’s selling his house so we havn’t had our weekly dinners. But yesterday we finally had our dinner for the first time in a long time. The dinner that I served was the salmon and potato gratin that we had at Andreas’ place some time ago, I’ll post a recipe for that the next time I’ll make it but actually it’s really easy as you can read in the old post. For dessert my brother had bought the above fabulous cake from Conditori Chocolatier Steinbrenner & Nyberg, and it was delicous! Me and Fredrik just ate the leftovers from yesterday with a nice cup of tea. The cake is called Björnbär i Pannacotta (Blackberries in Pannacotta) and it is so yummy! The cake contains a lovely almond bottom, blackberry mousse and an Italian vanilla Pannacotta. It is decorated with white chocolate, green leaves, Blackberries and some jelly. Delicious delicious!!! I just love the cakes from Steinbrenner & Nyberg.
As some of you know, I baked a Tiramusù Cheesecake last week. I was dissapointed with the taste, because I follwed the original recipe and used Philadelphia Cheese instead of quark and too bitter dark chocolate. So I made it again, this time with quark and less bitter chocolate. For my views regarding cheesecakes, just read the first attempt on this cheesecake. Most people would probably love the first cheesecake with Philadelphia cheese, but I didn’t like it at all.
This time the result was just PERFECT, light and fluffy and no saltiness at all. It crumbles a bit when slicing it, but that’s probably because of the recipe not being completely adapted to quark. All Americans can continue using Philadelphia Cheese and I will continue with quark instead, at least I’ve tried the other variant :-)
Tiramisù Cheesecake
(adapted from Maxine Clarke’s book Cheesecakes)
Crust:
275 gr Amaretti Biscotti ( I used Swedish Mandelbiskvier as my store didn’t have these).
75 gr unsalted butter
Filling:
750 gr Kesella 10% (quark)
2 dl sugar
3 eggs, separate the yolk and eggwhite
0.5 dl flour + 1 tbsp flour
0.5 vanilla pod
175 gr Marabou Dark Chocolate, melted
3 tablespoons of Coffee Liqueur (Kahlua)
Oven temperature: 200 degrees Celsius.
Using a food processor or blender, process the biscottis to fine crumbs. Melt the butter and combine with the crumbs. Press into a springform pan and put the pan into the fridge for 30 minutes.Beat the quark and sugar, using a food processor. Add the egg yolks. Transfer half of the batter to another bowl. Add melted chocolate and coffee liqueur to the batter in the first bowl; stir until well blended and then add 1 tbsp of flour. To the second bowl, add 0.5 dl flour and the interior of the vanilla pod. Beat the eggwhites until they form stiff firm peaks. Combine half of the egg whites with the white filling and half with the chocolate filling. Pour the two fillings into the crust, taking turns so that you form a nice pattern. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes, until sides puff slightly and center is softly set but still appears moist. Turn oven off. Allow cheesecake to cool in the oven with oven door ajar. When cheesecake is completely cool, cover with plastic wrap and chill overnight.
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.
I love the above photo of Yoshi and Tanuki, they were about 6 months old when the photo was taken and now they are almost 2.5 years. They always slept together when they were kittens, but nowadays Yoshi wants to sleep alone. I really hope that Tanuki will be able to sleep with Gideon some day, because I know that he miss to cuddle up. Unfortunately the 3 cats are not best friends yet, but I really hope that day will come soon. One hour ago they all had a big fight (for the first time thought) that we had to interrupt so I’m a bit sad at the moment. But I’m still hoping that everything will be fine, and that they just have to settle their order of rank. Most of the time they just look at each other in peace.
The below photo was taken during the same period as the above one. Notice that the left “radiator bed” is empty and that they prefer to crowd in the right one :-)
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