Last week I needed to decrease my stress levels so I decided to spend some relaxing time in the kitchen baking cookies for my colleagues. I choose to bake three different cookies: these yummy Blondies, thumb print cookies (or jam caves as they are called in Sweden) with cinnamon and forrest jam and chocolate cookes. The Blondie recipe I found at Anne’s and they are really easy and quick to make. I added dark chopped Toblerone, walnuts and Frangelico liquer to the Blondies, but any chocolate or nuts will be fine. They travel really well and managed my harsh treatment including the flight abroad to the office without any problems. You’ll find the recipe here.

Plum clafoutis

For a delicious and quick dessert, do try Pille’s clafoutis. I used plums instead of apricots and it was very tasty. A perfect dessert when you have dinner guests on a weekday and don’t have much time.

Here are 3 recipes from fellow food bloggers that I’ve done during the last week:

Banana Maple Muffins from Anne’s Food are perfect breakfast muffins. I know that mine look a bit dry, but they’re not. Easy peasy to bake, moist and rather fat free.

Toffee Apple Cake with Cranberries from our apple cake queen Pille at Nami-Nami. This was delicious! I did some small changes: I pre-baked the crust and I used my vanilla caster sugar (I always put left over vanilla pods, without seeds, in a jar with caster sugar). Next time, because there will definitely be one, I’ll make sure to use some more sugar and butter on the top so that I’ll get more of that toffee-ish sauce which appears when baking.

Parmesan Shortbread with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Marinated Goat’s Cheese from Anne’s Food. This was the first course at the 13 courses dinner we were invited to at Anne’s. If you make them for your guests they will love you! I’ve already done the shortbreads twice and they were a huge hit. My only change is that I’ve been using feta cheese instead of goat’s cheese. I always roll out the dough between plastic wrap, which makes it much easier as the dough then won’t stick.

The last week has been extremely hectic at work, but luckily for me and unluckily for Fredrik he caught the flu last Sunday and therefore didn’t fly to Stockholm this week. So I had an ill boyfriend at home all week when returning from work every day. But as most ill people he didn’t have any appetite so the food this week hasn’t been very exciting and thus no posts to my food blog. But today I realised that I havn’t written about my adventures as a food blog copycat during the past weeks :-)

The upper lasagna is the one from Anne’s blog
and the lower is the vegetarian one.

The first recipe that I tried was found at Anne’s Food, she made an amazing lasagna that we just had to try some weeks ago. Fredrik got the whole lasagna for himself as I made a vegetarian one for myself. I will post that recipe another time. Fredrik said that Anne’s lasagna was truly amazing and that it was the best lasagna that he has ever eaten!

Saffron and Black Pepper Pasta with grated Parmesan

The second recipe that I tried was from Jennifer at Domestic Goddess , a wonderful pasta with saffron and black pepper . I got very inspired while reading her post and recipe, and as I don’t owe any pasta machine I asked my mother to bring her when she came to visit me the same week. The result was a delicious pasta that I ate with parmesan. Very yummy and very pleasant to make as well, as the scent of saffron and pepper spread while the pasta is made.

Today I just had to make the cheesecake that Zarah Maria at Food & Thoughts tried some days ago, White Chocolate and Dulche de Leche Cheesecake. She found the recipe for it at Santo’s blog Scent of Green Bananas . Just as in Denmark we don’t have Dulche de Leche in Sweden, as far as I know. So I did just as Zarah Maria, I boiled a can with condensed milk… I was really scared that my boiling can would explode, but that of course never happened. I made sure that the can was covered with a lot of water during the 3 hourse that I boiled it. It was very exciting to open the can when it was cool enough, and a lovely caramel appeared. The cheesecakes (I made two) were easy to make and I whipped the cream, but I’m not quite sure if it was supposed to be whipped, as the original recipe didn’t say anything about it. I also baked the base in the oven for 5 minutes and only used 200 grams of white chocolate as that was all that I had.

So how did the cheesecake taste? Well, I’m a cheesecake purist (!) and I believe that the cake didn’t taste very “cheesecakey” at all. But it was a really nice cake, but just didn’t taste like a cheesecake. Fredrik on the other hand isn’t so fond of cheesecakes, but he really liked this one, because of the high amount of chocolate and partly because it’s fluffier than ordinary cheesecakes.

Boiling can with condensed milk

Two cheesecakes ready to put in the refrigerator

One of my darling cats, Yoshi, supervising me while making cheesecakes.