Marzipan cake for New Year's Eve

The guests will be here in a few hours. The only thing left for me to make is the foccacia. I want it warm and fresh, and wait till the last minute to bake it. Everything else is finished, I even found time for a nap, and I can feel the partymood filling me. Once more we will welcome the New Year, together and with good friends.

I have been busy in the kitchen all since I woke up early this morning. Not much time yet for reflections and lists of New Year's resolutions. That will have to wait till tomorrow. Today I am busy, today I am counting my blessings, today I look back and I look at what I have here and now.



When I woke up this morning it was snowing outside. After weeks of dirty old snow and ice, the world is again white and new. The garden looks beautiful and the snowflakes has a taste of heaven - yes, I've tasted them :-)

The snow and the festive colours of New Year's Eve inspired my cream cake.


My cake is made of eggs, sugar, white flour and baking powder. Cut in two layers and filled with strawberry jam and whipped cream, Covered in more whipped cream and then clothed in marzipan. And I know it will taste good.

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Music for a New Year's Eve:

Fresh bread and Christmas herring

After the first busy Christmas days with celebrations and parties with family and friends, life is slowing down. It is time to enjoy the peace and the quiet, time to play some music, read the Christmas cards, time to sit down and talk. Our kids are growing, and more and more Terje and I find ourselves home alone. Still all four kids are home often enough to avoid the empty nest feeling, now we just enjoy the "nights for two". Like last night. Early in the evening we decided to have a night in front of the fire with a nice supper. There were still Christmas herring left, I always make several jars, give some away and enjoy the rest, and with fresh homemade bread and the sweet, fizzy,homemade limonade Terje makes for Christmas, it really became a feast.

Especially with Schubert in the background.

Julesild / Christmas Herring

6 fillets of herring, spiced
2 onions
1 dl oil (soya or olive)
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1 dl vinegar
1 dl tomato ketshup
3 dl sugar
4 tablespoons of water
pepper
dill

Cut the herring and the onion into small pieces.
Warm the rest of the ingredients except the oil, till the sugar has melted.
Add the oil.
Let it cool.

Mix everything.

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music for the food:

Schubert's Winterreise
with Ian Bostridge and Leif Ove Andsnes

The party is over

Fruitsalad with figs, oranges and avocado

We are in the middle of the Christmas celebrations, and the table is filled with goodies for several meals a day. After a light breakfast and a long walk out on icy roads, I was ready for a light lunch. Reading Lucullian Delights is a daily pleasure I treat myself, and today Ilva gave me the idea to use dried figs. We always buy dried figs and dates for Christmas. I love eating one or two at a time, but they are rich and I can never have many of them at once. Searching through the fruitbowl and the vegetable shelf in the fridge, and I knew what my salad would consist of; fig, orange, avocado, walnut and orange juice. I made two small bowls for me and Terje, and we ate it with a piece of fruitcake.

Fruitsalad with figs, for two

8 dried figs

3 oranges

1 avocado

10 walnuts

orangejuice

a few drops of balsamic vinegar

Cut the figs, two of the peeled oranges and the avocado fruitmeat into small pieces, squeeze one orange and add half of the juice to each bowl, add a few drops of the very best balsamic vinegar. Top each bowl with the walnuts.

Rislapper, rice pancakes

Today is "tredje juledag", 3rd day of Christmas. In Norway Christmas starts with Christmas Eve, or rather the day before when we decorate the Christmas tree, and then it last for 13 or 20 days (we have both traditions). So when many of my friends around the world say good bye to Christmas these days, our celebrations have just started. I am off work all untill the 5th of January, so I have a long time to enjoy the tree and the music, the family parties and the Christmas food, and long days for reading. The cold room in the basement is filled with leftovers after the celebrations so far, and it is always alot of fun to see what I can make from it.

Today is our annual family juletrefest, Christmas Tree Party. We all bring along food, and as my mother will bring a huge plate of small breads with meat, I decided I could bring the marzipan cream cake I made for Christmas Eve. There were so much else on the late night coffee table then, so only a small part of the cake was eaten. Terje and I had two small pieces for our morning coffee today, and it tastes just as good as it did 3 days ago. I will also bring rislapper, small rice pancakes, made from the leftover from the rice porridge we had for lunch on Christmas Eve.

Rislapper

cold left over rice porridge

eggs

white flour

melted butter

sugar

salt

Mix all, let it rest for half an hour, fry small cakes in the pan just like when you make pancakes.

I am sorry I don't have any better recipe, these rislapper are typical "make as you go".

Christmas cake tabel in Norway

A typical Norwegian Christnas Eve: church, home to dinner, gifts, coffee and cakes, singing and dancing around the Christmas tree.

Everybody eats too much for sinner, we save the dessert for the coffee table where it has to compete with too many cakes........

Creamcake decorate with marzipan, chocolate cakes, krumkake, lefse, cookies, sweets, nuts, dates. figs....... what did I forget?




Too many cakes, too mcu sweets, and now we take long walks only to come home and feast on leftovers.....

Happy Christmas season.

About having a food blog

Some days I ask myself what I am doing with a food blog. Am I pretending to be one who knows how to cook and bake or what? There are so many food blogs out there, how can I believe that what I scribble down, the photos I show, the recipes I share, can be of any interest at all to other than myself?

I wonder if I shall stop food blogging, or if I shall close my foodblog down. It takes alot of time keeping up with all my blogs, and my family keep on teasing me when I line up our food for photos...........

But I keep on. Year after year. At least I have some recipes to show my children, I say to myself. The boys both have kitchens of their own, they call me from time to time asking how to cook this, how to bake that. May be I shall gather some of my recipes and make them a very special "Recipes, with love from Mum"-book?

Still I keep on food blogging. If you are once smitten, it is hard to stop. And then things happen. I get comments, I get emails. Questions. How do you do this? I like your blog? How do you make that? You have inspired me to start blogging, come and have a look....... And I know that food blogging has become a part of my life I will not leave behind.

Like when I write a post about our first Christmas cookies, and people from around the world take time to contact me, to comment, to help me with the words I don't know in English. UP, an extra Thank You, for the link which explains hjortetakksalt

Balisha, you have asked me about the colouring of the cookies in my previous post. It is so simple. We drip a few drops of food colouring into an egg glass, then we use the back of a match stick, dip it in the colour and use it as a paint brush. Good luck!

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The recipe for these kokosmakroner, you ask? Well, I shared them last year. Take a look here.

Kakemenn, the first Christmas cookies

Cookietime is here. Terje and Marta made the first cookies yesterday. A traditional recipe from Terje's childhood, a recipe he has payed forward to all his children. And to his wife. A sweet and spicy smell fills the house. I sit in the livingroom, knitting on a pair of socks, enjoying the sounds from the kitchen. Father-daughter chatting and laughing.
"Thank you God for giving us the moments of here and now."The best moments can't be bought for money. The best moments are given us and must be lived.

Here is Terje's recipe for kakemenn:

1/4 liter milk

325 gr sugar

1 teaspoon "hjortetakksalt" (I have found no translation for this, but it is a powder, much like baking soda, with a terrible strong smell)

1 dl oil or melted butter

1/2 kg white flour

Mix and let the dough rest in the fridge over night.

Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 0.5cm. Cut out figures.

Bake for a few minutes at 200C