I’ve never been a great fan of pure dark chocolate, it’s hard to tell if I’ll enjoy anything with dark chocolate or not until I try it. As I really love fruit, and especially raspberries which is a great combination with chocolate, I gave this recipe a try. Unfortunately the truffles didn’t suit my taste, but Fredrik and his grand mother for whom I made the truffles were thrilled. The raspberry flavour is really nice and goes perfectly with the creamy dark chocolate, but if you don’t like dark chocolate that actually doesn’t matter :-)

Raspberry truffles
(makes about 45 truffles. Source: Dansukker)

250 g dark chocolate (I used 125 gr of 70% chocolate and 125 gr of 55% chocolate)
125 g raspberries
50 ml concentrated raspberry syrup
100 ml whipping/double cream
3 tbsp caster sugar

tiny paper cups
Pink sprinkles for decoration (I used Strawberry scented ones)

Finely chop the chocolate. Mix raspberries, syrup, cream and sugar in a saucepan and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Strain the mixture and let it boil without a lid until 50 ml of liquid remains. Add the chocolate pieces and stir until the chocolate has melted. Take the saucepan off the heat and let it cool for a while. Pour the chocolate into tiny paper cups, I piped it using a pastry bag. If you want you can sprinkle some pink sprinkles on the truffles.

A raspberry cave is a typical Swedish short bread cookie filled with jam. In this variant the common raspberry jam is substituted with lingonberry jam and there’s cinnamon in the dough which make the cookies quite Christmasy. The cookies are very easily done and you are quickly rewarded with delicate and delicious cookies. I always use butter, never margarine, when I bake to get that extra nice flavour.

Lingonberry caves with cinnamon
(makes 30 cookies, source: Arla)

200 gram butter, at room temperature
100 ml caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
450 ml flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
75 ml lingonberry jam (or substitute with your favourite one)
30 medium paper cups (“småbrödsformar”, about 4 cm wide)

Heat the oven to 200° C.

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla sugar. Add the flour, combined with baking soda and cinnamon. Divide the dough into 30 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball and put in a medium sized paper cup (the ones I used are called “småbrödsformar”). With your finger, do an indention and fill it with jam.
Bake in the middle of the oven for about 12 minutes.

I can promise you that no matter which Swedish café you’ll enter, they will most probably have kärleksmums. It’s a typical Swedish cake, which translates to the cute name love yummies. In the book Sju sorters kakor (Swedish cakes and cookies, which you can win here) they are called Snoddas and some people even call them Mocha Squares, but I’ve always called them love yummies becuase that’s what they are :-) They are not as rich and dense as the rather similar chocolate gingerbread from Nigella; but they are much lighter and have a rather mild chocolate taste. I really like the frosting and my mother often use the frosting from this recipe on other cakes and cookies.

Kärleksmums / Snoddas / Mocha Squares
(makes 30-35 pieces. Recipe from “Sju sorters kakor” aka “Swedish cakes and cookies)

cake:
150 gram butter
2 eggs
300 ml caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tbsp cocoa, sifted
450 ml flour
2 tsp baking soda
150 ml milk

frosting:
75 gram butter
2 tsp cold coffee
1 tbsp cocoa, sifted
2 tsp vanilla sugar
350 ml icing sugar

garniture:
shredded coconut

Heat the oven to 175 degrees C.

Melt the butter and let it cool. Whip the eggs and sugar until white and fluffy. Add the dry ingredients varied with the milk and the butter. Pour the batter into a buttered and breaded rectangular pan, about 30 X 40 cm.

Bake the cake in the lower part of the oven for about 15 minutes but not too long as you don’t want a dry cake.

Let the cake cool. In the meantime melt the butter for the frosting. Add the remaining ingredients. Spread the frosting over the cake and sprinkle a lot of shredded coconot. Cut the cake in squares.

My offer to the campaign is a Swedish tea kit and a cookbook, this kit can be won if you donate at least $10 to the Menu for hope III campaign. The kit contains four unique and delicious tea blends from cosy Old Town in Stockholm, Swedish blueberry honey, archipelago sweets, a cute tea infuser and the cookbook “Swedish Cakes and Cookies”. The perfect kit for cold dark winter nights when you need some comfort! Post and package will of course be provided by me, no matter where you live. Just make sure that your country’s customs allow a private import of the contents.

The Swedish tea kit and cookbook, prize code EU17, contains:

~4 bags of unique tea blends from Gamla Stans te- och kaffehandel in Stockholm, Old Town:

Gamla Stans te (= Old Town’s tea). Black tea with wild strawberries, strawberries and mandarin oranges. 100 gram
Rimfrost (= Hoarfrost ). Black tea with cranberries and violet. 100 gram
Stora Nygatan Special (= Big New Street Special). Green and black tea with lemon and peppermint. 100 gram
Grönt Kvitten (= Green Quince). Green tea with quince and marigold. 100 gram

~Swedish honey with blueberries from Klas-Olof Ohlsson, Tillinge Uppland. 130 gram.

~Skärgårdsblandning (= Archipelago assortment). Hard sweets in mixed flavours from Spikarö Karamell & Pralin. 150 gram

~A cute tea infuser with a red miniature tea cup. For a close-up look here.

~For an authentic Swedish tea break or fika as we call it, you need 7 different kinds of cookies. To obtain this I’ve included a brand new copy of the popular cookbook “Swedish Cakes and Cookies”. In Sweden it’s known as “Sju sorters kakor” and it’s a must in every home. It contains 298 recipes of delicious Swedish cookies, cakes and sweet breads. Every recipe comes with a colour photo.

Tada! Here is finally our little family project: a Moomin gingerbread house! We found the template here and we used some of our normal gingerbread cookie dough. We had great fun doing the Moomin house and next year we’ll try something more difficult :-)

Yesterday was the first sunday of Advent. Christmas is getting closer and closer and it’s time to get into that Christmas mode. We bought new Advent star lights for our windows which we hang up, we baked ginger bread cookies and we started on building a ginger bread cookie house which we’ll finish this evening. And for our Advent breakfast I baked Lussekatter which means Lucia Cats. They are basically S formed Saffron buns which are very common in Sweden before Christmas and especially on Lucia day. I always use the same recipe, the one from Arla which contains quark (Kesella) as it makes the buns moist and nice. I really recommend this recipe, the saffron buns becomes very moist and juicy, far from the dry ones found in stores. The only thing I’ve changed about the recipe is that I add more saffron, which both I and Fredrik like a lot.

Lussekatter

50 g fresh yeast
100 g butter
500 ml milk
250 g Kesella lätt (quark)
1.5 g saffron (3 Swedish “bags” of saffron).
150 ml caster sugar
abour 1700 ml flour

For garnishing:
raisins

For brushing:
1 beaten egg

Melt butter in a pan and add the milk. Make sure that the mixture is lukewarm (37 degrees C). Pour the mixture over the finely divided yeast. Mix and then add the remaining ingredients. Work the dough so it becomes smooth and nice. Cover the dough with a kitchen towel and let it rise for 40 minutes.

Knead the dough, divide it into 32 pieces. Form each piece of dough into a string, 15-20 cm long, then arrange the string in a double S. Place 2 raisins at the ends of each bun. Cover the buns with a kitchen towel and let them rise for 30 minutes.

Brush the buns with the egg and then bake them in the oven at 225 degrees C, about 5-8 minutes until they are golden brownish yellow.