Dessert By Candy

The Comfort Of Home

My two weeks at Denmark have come to an end and I am back in the comfort of my own bed and the convenience of my own kitchen. What I really miss most though was my washing machine with all its bells and whistles. I am much more calm and collect when I have a huge supply of clean laundry! The minute I came home, I started a big load of laundry, showered, and then made myself a lentil salad. You can tell I have my priorities.

I have plenty of travel stories to tell including a very memorable meal I enjoyed at Noma. During my last 24 hours in Denmark, I threw caution to the wind and ate way too much. How much is too much? Two thirds of a Neapolitan-style pizza topped with Norwegian salmon and shrimps, sorbet of Danish strawberries and dark chocolate, Danish-style hotdog with all the fixings, hot chocolate with whipped cream, strawberry tart from Cafe Norden, and half a dozen Danish pastry as TB and I meandered our way from Hillerod to Copenhagen airport with stops along the way. I clearly won the pastry showdown with TB. People are often surprise at my appetite for sweets. Just because I refuse to over-indulge in my normal daily life doesn’t mean my stomach room is incapable of handling it!

I can’t say I am much affected by jetlag. Since I hopped on the plane, I’ve been dozing off in 3 hours increments with about an hour of awake time in between. That continued until 5am this morning. It’s not jetlag. My sleep pattern is just messed up. However, once I was finally awake for good, I itched to bake. My house was neatly devoid of almost all perishables so my options were limited. I am even out of butter! Fortunately, my trusty Fruit & Nut Bar does not require much and I changed it up enough to reflect my current preference for whole grain baking. The result is a wholesome yet mouth-watering Fig & Almond Buckwheat Oat Bar. With its abundance of Calimyrna figs, whole almonds, oats, whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour, wheat germ, sesame seeds, and maple syrup, this bar is packed with fibre and nutrients. This is the perfect snack to tie my over until I get around to stock up my kitchen in the next couple of days.

Brief Day Trip In Copenhagen

I enjoyed a rest day from inline speed skating training on Monday. Instead of putting my feet up for a day of rest and relaxation, I made a quick unplanned day trip to Copenhagen. Unlike most of my typical travel experiences, I did zero research on my trip to Denmark since I expected to keep a pretty rigid schedule of training at Sk8skool in Gerlev sports academy. I did not bother to look up transportation logistics, shopping destinations, tourist attractions, or even places for good eating. Talk about being unprepared! The one exception was snagging a lunch reservation at Noma.

Despite my lack of preparation, it was not exactly rocket science to figure out direction from Slagelse to Strøget, the major shopping district in Copenhagen. As soon as I stepped out of Nørreport Station, I was in my element. The sight and sound of a big cosmopolitan city brought over a wave of familiarity. I was no longer in quiet countryside, skating by the never-ending fields of farmland. I finally felt like my travel adventure has begun! Before I even got my bearings, I made a beeline to Lagkagehuset Bageri & Konditori, a pretty fancy looking pastry shop merely steps away. My inner sense just knew exactly where to go. Like most bakeries and pastry shops in Denmark, there is a heavy emphasis on loaves, buns, and Danish pastries (of course). There is a small percentage of more elaborate tarts and cakes like those one expects in a French patisserie but the baked goods are overall on a more rustic side. It was a hard decision to figure out which to order. All the sweet and savoury buns in various shapes and sizes all seemed so inviting but stomach space is limited. It was not easy to narrow down my selection to two! I enjoyed a strawberry tart and a marzipan bun (boller). The tart consisted of an almond cake base coated with thin layer of dark chocolate. A dollop of whipped cream sat proudly on top studded with juicy sweet Danish strawberries. It was so simple yet the sum was greater than its parts. As for the marzipan bun, all I can say is this trip to Denmark made me fall in love with marzipan. This ingredient is not commonly used in North American baking but quite popular among traditional European pastries. I love sweet fillings in yeasty buns and using one of my new favourite ingredient just made it so much better.

Fancy Name For Familiar Meal

Pot au feu is often associated with hearty winter dish of beef and vegetable in broth. I did not even know it is simply a cooking preparation for things cooked in broth. Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table offered multi versions of pot au feu, ranging from beef to seafood to vegetarian versions. My take of her Warm Weather Pot Au Feu is not quite “warm weather” enough since spring and summer are slow to arrive this year in Ontario and I’m still enjoying many winter vegetable. My pot au feu is made with leeks, onions, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, morel mushrooms, asparagus, and kale topped with soft boiled egg. See how it’s a party of winter and spring vegetable all together in one bowl?

Even without the soft boiled egg, this vegan main course has plenty of robust flavours from the different sweetness of various vegetable. There is a certain meaty quality from the morel mushrooms which I absolutely adore. It used to stump me what to do with all the Jerusalem artichokes I receive from the CSA until I discover how much I like them simply boiled in broth. They are perfect alternative to new potatoes. I used kale leaves instead of spinach and they are more toothsome with less mineral taste. As for the soft boiled egg, I can now confidently claim that I’ve mastered the technique to reliably produce perfectly gelatinous centre every time! I am so excited about this skill that I want to top every dish out of my kitchen with soft boiled eggs. Someone please stop me before I go totally overboard.

Despite the fancy name, this dish is actually a very standard item on my regular menu. Whenever I don’t know what to cook, I would line up all the vegetable that I want to eat and cook them in one pot of broth. This one-pot meal has a huge variety of vegetable providing great source of nutrients. To supplement on protein, egg is the answer. I’ve been eating this way since my days as a university student and only learn of calling it pot au feu this week. Does it make my meals any fancier just because I can now call it in French?

If you want to know what other French Fridays with Dorie members did with their Warm Weather Pot Au Feu, check out the link here!

Two Styles Of Strawberry Shortcake

For the longest time, my idea of strawberry shortcake is made with airy sponge cake sandwiching Chantilly cream and fresh strawberries. It was not until a few years ago that I learned for many people, strawberry shortcake is made with warm cream biscuit, Chantilly cream, and macerated strawberries. Cream biscuit has always been elusive to me because I’m rarely happy with my own handy work. There’s always something I’m not happy with. Perhaps the biscuit spread too much during baking, or it wasn’t perfectly round and tall, or I overworked the dough and ended up with tough biscuits. In recent memories, my one and only success came a few years ago when I made a whole bunch of biscuit-style strawberry shortcake for a friend’s birthday.

For visual impact, I’m partial to strawberry shortcake made with sponge cake or butter cake. I can make a large sheet cake, a round layer cake for a small gathering, or even individual servings all equally appealing. Taste-wise, it’s not shabby either! Just the other day, I made Flo Braker’s Favourite Buttermilk Cake from her book Baking For All Occasions. This was not the first time I followed that recipe. In fact, I used it before to make Lamingtons. This is such a versatile cake with tight crumb and a slight tang from the buttermilk. It’s the perfect foil for so many different fillings. I filled mine with whipped crème fraiche and macerated strawberries for a hybrid. The filling is similar to what I would use in a biscuit-style strawberry shortcake yet the additional structure provided by the buttermilk cake makes the whole thing visually stunning.