The day Lukas came by

Sweet lille Lukas and his mother came by one Sunday afternoon, so my daugther and I baked some cookies and cakes: Kokos Makroner, Chokolade Snacks, Sukkerkringler and the delicious Gitzes Mini Muffins.

Gitzes Mini Muffins!

My daugther Regitze is very interested in cooking and baking and has been engaged in cooking like folding springrolls and making soups and cakes since she was 7-8 years old. Today she is 11 and these are her fantastic Mini Muffins:

Recipe:

3 eggs

2 dl sugar, prefereble ecological sugar cane sugar ( we dont use the white refined sugar- not much taste or soul to it!)

2 dl. flour ( again here she used ecological flour)

1 1/4 dl sunflour oil ( we use oil instead of butter as its less unhealthy than butter;)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar ( if you dont have the right stuff)

Rind of 2 lemons ( make sure they are ecological, so you dont eat all the fertiliser poison stuff they spray with)

1/2 dl juice of a lemon

Icing sugar for sprinkling on top when they are done

Mix everything together, dont whisk it but stir it loosely. Regitze started with adding the eggs, then sugar, the flour, salt, baking soda, vanilla, oil and then the lemon stuff. Pour it into small mini muffin moulds, in a mini mufifn paper cup and bake them till just firm and slightly brownish in a 180 degrees oven.

Serve them sprinkled with a bit of sifted icing sugar or make a lemon icing for them. They are delicious!

Kokosmakroner:

These coconut macroons made with egg whites, sugar, grated coconut and marcipan and coated with dark chokolate are really nice when eated on the same day as they are baked. They are surposed to be crispy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside- so dont bake them too much! I found this recipy in my daugthers cookbook and its actually quite nice;)

Recipe:

2 eggwhites ( use the pastorised to make sure you avoid samonella)

100 gr sugar

100 gr grated coconut

25 gr pure macipan

100 gr dark rich chokolate

Mix eggwhites and sugar well together in a  bowl, grate the marcipan and add it. Leave for at least 30 min.

Make 16 spoonfull of the mix on a baking tray ( use baking paper or it will stick), press them into shape with your hands and bake them at 175 degrees for about 15 or until slightly lightbrown.

Cool them off and when cooled dip the bottom of the macroons in melted dark chokolate of a good quality. Leave to cool and serve when completely cooled off.

Keep them in an airtight container if you have any leftovers.)

Chololate Snacks:

These chokolate snacks are very fast to make and extremely easily done- you can make it anyway you want it so there is no real recipy, but here is what I did on that day:

Wanna be recipe:

Dark chokolate ( rich dark and with a large % of chokolate beans)

Corn Flakes

Melt the chokolate- I have to admit I just throw the chokolate into a big thick bottomed pan and smelt it slowly, stirring all the time. When its all melted and cooled off for a minute or two ( it shouldnt be too hot as it will soften the cornflakes  or too cold as then it will stiffen when the cornflakes gets in) stir the cornflakes carefully ( dont break them) and pour the mix into little paper cups. Cool off and eat!

Keep them in an airtight container after cooled off completely.

You can use milk chokolates as well or mix the two that makes it very nice- not too sweet ( as I tend to find milk chokolate) and not too bitter ( as my kids tends to find the dark chokolates, which are my favorite). You can stir in roasted nuts ( unsalted ofc), coconut, candies fruits with the mix as well.

Sukkerkingler:

This in an very old Danish recipe for Sukkerkringler which I found in a book from 1922. In Jutland where I once lived ( its a part of Denmark) they have coffee breaks at all times of the day, all with the name of the time of day : "Formiddags kaffe" ( before noon coffee) "Eftermiddags kaffe" (afternoon coffee) "Aften kaffe" ( evening coffe) and always served with homebaked  "Småkager". Its a very nice ( and fattening tradition) and while living there I tasted these Sukkerkingler which the old grandmother made to perfection and never forgot them. I have looked for a good recipe ever since, and this one are ok, even though not as nice as the old grandmother of the Kjeldsen family. Her Sukkerkingler were very thin and extremely crisy and I dont think anyone else in Denmark can make them as she did.

"Småkager"  are a variation of Danish cookies ( there are so many!) which are little cakes basicly baked with butter, sugar and flour. Today most pleople buy them, but before ( and in my mind mostly in Jutland;)  everyone made them- big batches so they'd last for some time and for all the various coffee breaks.

Recipe ( taken from the old book from Carla Meyer):

500 gr flour

1/3 teaspoon of hjortetaksalt ( which is a baking agent used only for biscuits and cookies)

250 butter

1 1/2 dl of fresh fullfat cream

Sugar to roll the kringler in

Pour the flour into a large bowl, cut the butter into pieces and mix it with the flour and cream loosely till a dough. Leave it for a few hours, then devide the dough into a lot of pieces and roll each and form into a pretzel form and press them into the bowl/plate of sugar so the sugar sticks onto the cookies.

Note: its important to mix the dough loosely so it will become crumbly and crispy when baked.

Place the kringler/pretzels on a baking tray and bake in the oven untill sligthly browned. The recipy is as random as me as it says: "on modarate heat untill the end where you turn the heat up until the sugar starts to caramlize". I think I put the oven to 200 max.