Cakes: Redcurrant or blackcurrant cake

Before the Christmas baking set seriously in, my mother had to have a birthday cake. Mum does not particularly care for cream cakes, so this was an easy choice to bake. It first came into the family when Sister started Home Economics in sixth grade and it has been with the family since then. Especially since we usually end up with more redcurrants than we can reasonably eat. (Personally, I’m not a big redcurrant fan, but I like them in this cake.)

It is a quick and easy cake to make, and if you don’t have blackcurrants or redcurrants, I would think you could substitute with blueberries or other similar berries. Given the season, it might not be easy to get fresh berries, so frozen berries work perfectly.

I ended up making double the size to fill a Bundt pan. (Otherwise, it is the recipe for two 22 cm round cake pans)

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Norwegian cooking: Sitronfromasj

Or, lemon mousse in English, of which there seems to be oodles of recipes on the internet.

I think the first time I really made this dessert, was back in home ec. in seventh grade. I remember it, because the other dish my group had to prepare, boiled fish of some sort, ended up being inedible, and so it was really pure luck that the lemon mousse turned out splendidly.

This time around, many things seemed to go wrong, and it did not turn out perfectly in consistency – the mousse refused to set properly. But as it tasted absolutely delicious, and tart, I’m still sharing

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Healthy Cooking: Carrot patties

After really binging this weekend (why, oh, why?) I felt the need for something healthy for dinner today. I landed on carrot patties – made from the same principle as hamburger patties, I guess, but without meat.

If you have a food processor, this is not a time-consuming recipe. If not, like me, you’re going to be spending some time shredding the carrots and potatoes.

Carrot patties (gives about 6-7 patties)

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Literary cooking: Miss Trunchbull’s Chocolate Cake

For this year’s Halloween bash, it was a goal for us to have a thoroughly gross fare on the table.

We borrowed Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes by Felicity Dahl and Josie Fison, illustrated by Quentin Blake (in Norwegian) from the library and glanced through it. While a lot of the recipes were decidedly revolting, there was also a limit as to what could be done easily, and what was really suitable for a party for adults…

We ended up making the chocolate cake from Matilda. It’s called Bruce Bogtrotter’s Chocolate Cake in the book, but I wonder if the more accurate name would be Miss Trunchbull’s Chocolate Cake?

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Norwegian cooking: Pearl Porridge

Growing up, I always loved going to my grandmother’s to eat. Not just the Sunday steak, where dinner was followed by dessert, which in turn was followed by coffee and cakes, but also for some of the more everyday meals. One of those meals was sago porridge, or pearl porridge as we used to call it.

According to Wikipedia, an ever reliable source, I know, the sago is “a starch extracted from the pith of sago palm stems, Metroxylon sagu.” It is a small, round grain, looking like a pearl, that apparently can be substituted for tapioca pearls.

This weekend, my sister and I decided to see if the porridge was as tasty as what we could remember from what we were younger, or if we just were idolizing the memories.
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Announcement

With the recent upgrades over at The Royal Twist, it seemed like the time to do something here as well.

I’m definitely going to try to be more present, and publish more stuff here.