Last Sunday I finally decided to harvest my rhubarb plant. As the plant was beautiful it was actually quite sad, but I hope that more stalks will grow up this and coming years. After trimming the stalks I only ended up with 300 grams of rhubarb. So what to do with 300 grams of precious home grown rhubarb? I recalled a rhubarb crumble recipe from the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, apparently a Gordon Ramsay recipe, which I modified and then baked.

My mother on my wedding day last year.

Waiter, there is something in my… is a food blogging event which I’ve never participated in earlier. This online event is much more broad then the other food blogging events and should appeal to more people regardless of which cooking level you’re at. Waiter, there is something in my… (WTSIM) is organised by Andrew , Jeanne and Johanna and this is the fifth round with the theme stuffed fruit/vegetables, hosted by Jeanne at Cook Sister! This time I actually was able to remember the event and I choose a really easy thing to do.

Stuffed oven baked apples is one of the first desserts I ever made when I was young. It’s easy, cheap and the variations are endless. In this variant I’m using hazelnuts and macadamia nut syrup which is a great combination. As the apples bake in the oven a delicious gravy is created which is delicious to spoon over the vanilla ice cream which is mandatory when eating oven baked apples.

Baked apples with hazelnuts and macadamia syrup
serves 2

2 apples (Jona Gold)
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp hazelnuts, coursly chopped
2 tsp macadamia nut syrup
2 tsp caster sugar

Pre heat the oven to 175 degrees C.

Mix all ingredients, except for the apples which you wash.

Using an apple corer, or a small knife, hollow each apple so you have an vertical hole running through the apple where the core used to be. Save two small end pieces (about 2 cm long) of the apple core, so that you have a sort of cork. Put the “cork” in the bottom of each apple, this will hopefully keep most of the stuffing in the apple when the butter starts to melt in the oven.

Pack the holes with as much stuffing as they can hold, be careful so that the apple won’t crack. If you’re not able to pack them with all stuffing then put the rest on top of the apples.

Put the apples in a small baking pan, make sure that they stand up.

Bake the apples in the oven for 25 minutes or until they are soft. Baste the apples once or twice with the gravy that appears in the baking pan after about 10 minutes.

Serve the apples warm with vanilla ice cream, topped with the gravy which has been created in the baking pan.

I just wanted to remind all of you living in Sweden that Jamie at home is on air Sundays at 9 pm on channel 5. I wasn’t impressed after the first episode but now I’m hooked and I always take notes while watching. I’ve tried some of his recipes and they are great, especially the oven baked potatoes and red onions in balsamic vinegar. The book with all recipes from the series will be published during the autumn.

Bowser.

My mother is visiting us this weekend so we’ve been busy sightseeing and eating a lot of goodies. Both we and the cats are very happy to have her here, especially after shopping flowers at the market as they love flowers. Now we just have to keep an eye on them so they don’t eat them :-)
Yesterday we went to the great restaurant Grill which I really recommend, the food is grilled in different ways depending on which dish you choose and it’s super tasty. The coctails (many with polish bison grass vodka and champagne) were really yummy and the whole place is really loungy and cosy, it’s like a mix of different living rooms.

I hope that you’ve all had a nice weekend. Today I realized that I have a huge back log, so my plan is to blog about Japan and Rome during the coming weeks and of course food.

If I understand it correctly a cupcake is quite small and light with frosting while a muffin is large and heavy without frosting, often containing fruit or nuts. I found a funny quote in a post on a forum:

If you threw a cupcake against the wall, you would hear something of a “poof!” If you threw a muffin, you would hear a “thud!”

I don’t know where to place these large moist cupcakes with filling and topping, so I call them fluffins just like the author Jacob Gray of the book Fluffins which I bought on the book sale earlier this year. It’s a book with muffins/large cupcakes that have different toppings (or “fluff” as the author writes), hence the name fluffins. I really like the photos in the book which inspire a lot. I’ve made some changes in the original recipe; for exampe I use both raspberries and bilberries, I substitute jam with syrup and instead of normal meringue I make raspberry meringue. And of course I use my own lemon lime curd instead of store bought lemon curd.

Bilberry-Raspberry Cupcakes with Raspberry Meringue
(Adapted from “Fluffins” by Jacob Gray)
makes around 10-12 large cupcakes

Cupcakes:
350 ml wheat flour with extra protein (“Vetemjöl Special”)
0.5 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
200 ml raspberries and bilberries (defrosted or fresh)
125 gram butter
200 ml caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla sugar
150 ml milk
50 ml lime and lemon curd
5 tsp raspberry syrup/cordial (I use a Polish one from the producer Łowicz)
10-12 large cupcake paper cups

Raspberry Meringue:
2 egg whites
a pinch of salt
150 ml caster sugar with vanilla (I have a jar of caster sugar where I always put my left over vanilla beans/pods, which makes a lovely caster sugar with vanilla scent and taste)
6 tsp raspberry syrup/cordial (4 tsp to mix into the meringue and 2 tsp to pour into a pastry bag)
a pastry bag with star shaped tip

Preheat the oven to either 200 degrees C (ordinary oven) or 175 degrees C (fan oven).

In a bowl, combine flour, baking soda and bicarbonate soda.

In another bowl, beat butter and sugar with en electric mixer until white and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, while beating. Add vanilla sugar, milk, lemon and lime curd. Combine. Add the flour mixture and the berries, combine everything until it’s well mixed, just make sure not to over work the mixture.

Fill the cupcake tins up to 3/4 with the help of a spoon. Make a small hole in each cupcake (this will be quite sticky) and pour a small amount of raspberry syrup into each hole. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes, depending on the size of your tins. Just make sure they won’t get dry as you want moist and nice cupcakes. While the cupcakes are in the oven beat the egg whites and salt with an electric mixer until the mixture form satiny peaks. Keep beating the egg whites while adding sugar little at a time until the meringue is stiff and shiny. Add 4 tsp of raspberry syrup and fold in gently. Coat the inside of a pastry bag with swirls of 2 tsp raspberry cordial/syrup (this will make the meringue look more beautiful with pink stripes) and then carefully fill the bag with meringue mixture.

When the cupcakes are done decorate each one with raspberry meringue and bake in the oven for another 5 minutes. I’ve baked these fluffins twice now and I always have left over meringue. You can use it to make a couple of raspberry meringues if you want to.

This is my rhubarb plant, planted in the middle of April in a big pot on my small balcony. I can’t believe how fast it grows, from only 2 stalks to 6 ones in less than a month. Rhubarb is a really easy plant to grow and even if you only have a small balcony I promise you that it will grow (with some help of sun and water of course). I still havn’t decided what to do with the future harvest, but I will probably bake a (small) delicious pie.

This is how the rhubarb plant looked like on April 10th.