Swedish Coffee and Semlor

If you’ve read a few posts, you might notice that I try not just to share a few recipes, but also share a little bit about myself—where I’m from, who my family is, what I do.  New tidbit: I love traveling. Dane and I have been lucky enough to do a fair amount of traveling together. Our latest trip was to Chicago to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. 

I could make this post all about Chicago—it was beyond words—but oh my goodness. The food. Let’s talk about the food. I am a type A planner, so not only did I study maps, research attractions, and create itineraries, but I also scoured the internet and grilled friends for the best places to eat. Yes, we had a food itinerary as well. (You can follow me on instagram @engquistm if you want to see all of the great food we ate.)

One of my favorite breakfast experiences was Ann Sather, a Swedish diner known for their cinnamon rolls (they have their recipes online). Dane’s family is full of proud Swedes, so I was excited to take him there.

These are a side dish!

The cinnamon rolls were divine. But that Swedish coffee. This was best coffee I’ve ever had in my life.

Heavenly.

We also loved Ann Sather because it reminded us of another trip we’d taken.  In 2009, Dane and I were college kids traveling through Europe while I studied abroad. We went to Sweden, which is where we got engaged, and have loved that country ever since.

Way back in 2009!

The Swedes love coffee, and the coffee break is a sacred time of day when people relax, socialize, and of course drink coffee. They even have a word for this ritual: fika. (I think Americans should adopt this practice.) While we were in Sweden drinking coffee (or other libations), we discovered semlor (semla in the singular)—cardamom rolls filled with an almond paste mixture and whipped cream.

When we first discovered semlor.

So I’m recreating Swedish Coffee from Chicago’s Ann Sather and Semlor from Stockholm’s many coffee houses.

Swedish Coffee

If you Google "Swedish coffee," you will find egg coffee. Don't do this. I tried to make this just for posterity's sake, and it was not worth the effort. To make Swedish coffee, just brew your normal roast. Since Dane used to work at Starbucks, we are coffee snobs and stick to Starbuck's espresso roast.

To taste, stir in a sprinkling of cinnamon, cardamom, and brown sugar (light or dark). You can also add a dash of vanilla.

Spice is nice.

I mixed cinnamon, cardamom, and various sugars together to keep in a jar for whenever I feel like adding a bit to my morning coffee. If you do this, go sparingly on the cinnamon and cardamom--they bring the spice. You'll need at least twice as much sugar. I did not realize this, so I still have to add another 1 tsp (ish) of brown sugar to every 1 tsp of spice mix.

Sooooo good.

The crowning glory is homemade whipped cream. I don't normally have heavy whipping cream on tap, so you could easily make a more "everyday" version by just adding half and half to your coffee (which I do always have on tap).

Semlor (Semla)

These look elaborate, but they’re not. I follow this recipe. It makes about 16 schmedium (ha) buns. However, when it comes to almond paste, it was easier to make my own (using this recipe) than to find it in the grocery store. 

The dough is pretty simple--just mixing ingredients, but the dough is sticky, so while every recipe cautions against using too much flour, I found I needed plenty to keep it from sticking to everything.

The hardest part is waiting for it to rise.

For sizing purposes. This is before they rise.

You end up sawing the tops off of the buns and hollowing them out. The inners are used to make the filling (so don't let yourself, your husband, dogs, children, or anyone else eat them all #thestruggleisreal). 

This is a good job for your kitchen helpers.

I used my food processor for the whole almond paste process (first blending the almonds into meal, then adding sugar and warmed milk). My paste was a little soupy, but once I moved to the next step adding in the bread from the rolls, it thickened up. The original recipe calls for you to add milk to the almond paste, but I found mine didn't need that much milk added.

Almond paste before adding the bread and extra milk.

All that's left is to fill the rolls--first with the almond mixture, then the whipped cream--then put their tops on, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. 

And of course make a mess. 

Enjoy! (How could you not?!)

-Madison

Blog Posts That Never Were: Cake Pops and Ultimate Cookie Cake

It’s the first blog post of the summer! If you don’t know me personally, I’m a teacher, so this is a momentous occasion.

I’ve been a little preoccupied for the past 2 months, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been cooking up ideas for posts (ha, #sorrynotsorry about the pun).  So rather than just abandon these half-baked posts (and again), I’m resurrecting them. These two treats come from the last days of school.  It’s fairly entertaining to read back over my writing and see what I would say differently now. From here on out, my original bits are bolded and interspersed with present-day-me. 

So during the absolute busiest part of my year, I find myself making cake pops—something totally new to me and in my mind, utterly complicated. But also exciting, because these aren’t just any cake pops—they are superhero themed. One of my students who is a budding chef has repeatedly challenged me to a cook-off, and I have repeatedly told her, “Maybe at the end of the semester.” Well. It’s here. The end of the semester. (Thank goodness).  Being the competitive kid she is (we wouldn’t know anyone like that would we?) we decided to 1) make something totally new to the both of us and 2) make a themed food—Cupcake Wars style.

I give you: Marvel’s Black Widow Cake Pop. Of course thinking in my head “teachable moment!” (or soapbox moment?), I declared that I’d be choosing a female superhero, because duh, feminist.

Black Widow Cake Pops start with a red velvet cake with traditional red velvet icing (not the heavy cream cheese stuff—this is a bajillion times better, promise), then are dipped in dark chocolate, and finally are decorated with black sugar sprinkles and a red icing Black Widow mark.

Ha. What actually happened? Dipping cake pops in melted chocolate results in a gloppy cake pop, and it takes a ton of chocolate.  I had to finesse the chocolate with a spoon to get a smooth, even coating. It's quite possible I needed to thin out the chocolate to get a coating that would smooth out and which I'd easily be able to tap off the excess chocolate. Also, my black sugar sprinkles turned everyone’s mouths black, and the red gel icing I bought didn’t even show up, so I ditched it. However, they were a hit.

Here is the recipe. Ree’s sheet cake (which I will definitely make on its own sometime—was very quick and easy) makes about 52 cake balls. You will only use about ½ of the icing (I suggest eating the other half with graham crackers).

Yep, I have already made the sheet cake again.

Here is my process, which I totally researched and borrowed thanks to this blog. 

1. Crumble up the cooled sheet cake in a food processor. It will look like this.

Makes me want to snort this cake like crack.

2. Hand mix the icing in until you get this consistency. You don’t want it too wet.

This is what it should look like if you press your thumb into a ball of the dough.

3. Refrigerate the balls at least 3 hours. Store them on paper towels instead of wax paper so any oil is soaked up.  

4. When I was ready to go, I took a few out of the fridge at a time. Dip your stick in chocolate before pushing it into a cake ball. After you dip your pop, stick it in a Styrofoam block to dry. Store in the fridge.

This is what my little stations looked like. Dip, sprinkle, stick.

I didn’t dip all of my cake balls, so I froze them. They held up well, except for some of the larger ones which were a little weird and oily. I thawed them overnight in the fridge, and this time, I used Wilton Candy Melts to dip them in (dipped a little better than the chocolate, but generally the same notes). Recreated, they look like this:

I got a little adventurous and tried to decorate them. . . 

Some turned out better than others.

But wait, there’s more. I don’t want to let cake pops steal the show. As good as they were, what I typically make for my students at the end of the semester is cookie cake. Chocolate chip cookie recipes are not hard to come by, but you have not lived until you’ve had this precise cookie cake.

If I may say so, Mrs. E makes the bomb cookie cake, and the kids know it.

You guessed it, I forgot to take pictures, but I have pictures from last year, when the cookie cake made its debut at school for my grammar and composition class (which had a whopping 8 kids in it, including my TA).

Evolution of the colon.

Also I’m a nerd. (A proud nerd.)

I make this cookie cake in a round or square pan, either 8 or 9 inches. I usually end up needing to bake it about 5 minutes longer than the recipe suggests. In a square pan, you can get away with cutting it into 16 pieces. I usually don’t ice it, even though I did above.

Three things make this cookie cake ultimate. The cookies have a richer, more caramel-y sweetness thanks to the dark brown sugar, and the cornstarch and small pan mean a thicker and chewier cookie cake. Seriously you guys.

By request, the recipe for Mrs. E's cookie cake #lastpiece #nomnomnom http://t.co/lJBC74fYNQ pic.twitter.com/Ts302VrxFV

— Madison Engquist (@MrsEngquist) May 19, 2015

Seriously.

I love cooking, but I love teaching (read: getting to be a part of these kids’ lives, even if in the smallest ways) more.

Yep, that part stands as is.

Enjoy your summer! 

-Madison

Anna Belle's Angel Food Cake

This might be the most important recipe I share with you. I’ve already written about both of my grandmothers (here and here), but this recipe is the one truly at the heart of my Dad's family. My grandma McGraw would always have an angel food cake around--I think I even remember her keeping them on-hand in her freezer. Cooking is something I enjoy, but it really was her gift. We have her on old family videos measuring with eggshells. Crazy! Everything in the kitchen was so intuitive to her.

So, to master this somewhat tedious recipe is really to see what wealth of knowledge she had that was so second nature to her.

Notice all of my notes I've had to add--it's a science!

Is it a little intimidating? Yes, but do it anyway! Just imagine how tasty that cake will be--heavenly, some would say. Ha! I couldn't resist.

So, let’s get started . . . Here's what you need to know before baking. It’s imperative that you set your eggs out the night before you plan on making your cake. They need to reach room temperature. If you forget to do this, then bake some cookies instead and save the cake for another day. Speaking from experience . . . just don’t even.

So how many eggs will you need? I buy a pack of 18 jumbo eggs to use; this gives me an extra or two if I mess one up (again, speaking from experience). Also, invest in one of these doo-dads. Using that thing was seriously the highlight of my morning.

Can I use a hand-mixer? Only if you plan on getting ripped at the same time. I let my kitchen aid whip the egg whites for 10-15 minutes.

Now, with all that said, these are the tips I’ve gathered from my family and my own experience. I’d love to know if you have any secrets for the perfect angel food cake!

 Anna Belle's Angel Food Cake

Verbatim from recipe card. My notes in italics.

Sift cake flour and measure: 1 1/3 cup + 3 tbl. cake flour and 1 1/3 cup + 3 tbl. granulated sugar. Sift together 7 times. 

Yes, you will be wearing some of this by the time you're done.

Have eggs at room temperature (leave out at least 6 hours, preferably overnight) and measure 2 1/3 cups egg whites (about 16 jumbo eggs). 

Beat with 2 tsp. cream of tartar, 2 tsp. vanilla, and 1/2 tsp. salt (until foamy). (Foamy means a solid, white foam, not egg froth.)

Beginning to beat the egg whites, 6-8 speed.

This is what foamy looks like, when you add the sugar.

Slowly add 3/4 cup sugar (about 4 speed). Should stand at high peak once thoroughly whipped. (Total whipping time is about 10-15 minutes.)

Folding in sifted mixture; pull from sides and bottom of the bowl.

All combined.

Don't skip this step! Run a knife through it to get rid of air bubbles.

Fold in sifted flour mixture little at a time and put in angel pan. Run dinner knife through mixture and bake at 350, 45 minutes or a little more. (Never take out early! Bake full time even if it looks browned.) I put a ring of foil around pan before baking. It should keep it from running over. (I don't do this.) If it's a little moist on top, bake until it's firm to the touch. Put over funnel to cool (or a beer bottle or soda bottle; cool inverted for about 30-45 minutes; dislodge from pan by running a dinner knife around the edge; scrape the crumbs on the side of the pan into a bowl for the best treat ever).

At 45 minutes, nice and fluffy, but I gave it 10 more to make sure it was done.

Mr. Adams is cooling bottle of choice today. Ignore the messy kitchen!

It's so tall! Egg whites, you did your job! 

The moment I flip this cake over to cool is always the most terrifying moment of my life, but by some miracle (all those egg whites), it works! Now it's time to relive my childhood and scrape the pan. 

Happy Easter weekend to everyone. Enjoy!

-Madison