The Nordic Baking Book

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So much here to discuss. This recipe intrigued me because it said I needed a liter of “brewer’s wort”, which apparently is readily available in Sweden. After scouting around online and enlisting the help of my friend and beer-brewer Tom, I bought a pound of dry malt extract (concentrated brewer’s wort) for a traditional dark beer. The recipe said it made four loaves, so I mixed up just a half liter of wort and started the dough…only to decide that the proportions in the recipe seemingly had some errors, as that half liter of liquid was supposed to suffice for 1.25 kg of flour (about 2.75 lbs). Uh, no way. And the yeast amount seemed to be far too little – only 1.25 tsp of instant. So too much flour, can deal with that, but what about the yeast? Certainly there was no yeast in my wort. I wound up halving the flour, doubling the yeast, and hoping the spice amounts were ok as is, and came up with a pretty acceptable pair of loaves, although I think they should have been a touch sweeter. Take #2 Bake the gingersnaps for 12–15 minutes, until they are cooked, but not dry. Once they start to brown a little around the edges they are generally done. Leave to cool on the baking sheet before moving. Chewy caramel shortbreads Kolakakor/kolasnittar (Sweden) Make the topping by mixing the golden syrup and 1⁄2 tablespoon water together in a bowl. In a sepa- rate bowl, mix the sugar with the cardamom. Step 6 This was a very lovely read. This is my first introduction to Magnus Nilsson, and he did not disappoint. He has an enjoyable writing style that is informative. This book has just about every Nordic baking recipe you could imagine. In a twist from the usual cookbooks, Nilsson includes gorgeous pictures of various locations across Scandinavia. I looked at some of the recipes I'm familiar with making, and the recipe ingredients and amounts seemed consistent.

Update: I did manage to let this sit for a week, and in one word, wow! It definitely has the spiciness that you’d expect in a mulled wine, but the citrus does make it bright and complex. I’ll be making more!I was scouting around for something to do with some leftover marzipan (besides just eat it outright) and eggs, and found this one bookmarked in the book but not yet tried. (And then discovered it had been 8 months since I last tried something new in this book. That is undoubtedly a result of spending a lot of time the last year plus with MasterClass.) Anyway, this cake is heavenly, and not just because it is called a Lemon Moon. Moist, buttery, and very lemony. I’ll admit I broke the cardinal “make it the way the recipe says the first time” rule, poking some holes in the finished cake and drizzling limoncello in it before glazing. Definitely a keeper. Kladdkaka—or Swedish Gooey Chocolate Cake—is a home cook's dream. It's five ingredients, plus a pinch of salt and some breadcrumbs to line the pan (which, in a bind, you could skip in lieu of just butter). The cake batter comes together in just one pot in roughly five minutes, or as long as it takes you to melt chocolate and butter, then stir in some dry ingredients. It cooks for about 15 minutes meaning, all-in, you're never more than a half-an-hour out from a warm, fudgy slice of it. There are as many conflicting ideas on how to eat this cake as there are recipes for it," he writes. "Some like it warm with ice cream, some like it at room temperature with nothing, and I like it as my wife will tell you to eat it: cold from the refrigerator with whipped cream on the side."

An Icelandic classic that is eaten all year under the same name. Nilsson says the old-fashioned version only has raisins in it, but more recent recipes include both raisins and chocolate. Needless to say, I chose chocolate. It was very nice with morning coffee. I used a slightly smaller loaf pan (8.5 x 4.5″ vs 9×5) and had to bake it considerably longer that he stated, more than I’d have thought.When a recipe calls for Yeast, Fresh Yeast is used throughout the book. Personally, I prefer using fresh yeast if I can get hold of it. But I have used Fast Active Dried Yeast for making this Easy White Bread Recipe. Update 12/10/2020: I made this again to nail down the changes…I used over 800g of flour (over 6.75 cups), a mix of all-purpose and bread flour (just because I had some). The dough worked up to a much nicer consistency. I divided the dough into three rounds instead of two, but still had to bake for 65 minutes to get a good internal temperature (Nilsson suggests generally up to about 205F for a bread such as this, mine were a bit over that). The finished product was nice and springy, and just done. I found some other recipes online, one used as much flour as I did, or more; one was mostly consistent with Nilsson’s; both had baking times of 40-45 minutes (one at 375F vs. 350F). What can I say, at that timing those loaves aren’t baked through in my kitchen. One of these days I’ll try one of the internet recipes to see how it turns out. In the meantime, this one as locally modified is pretty tasty! Danish Almond Tart Leavened with Yeast