Kanilkaka

Cinnamon-cake

I already have a recipe for " cinnamon cake " on the blog, as a sheet cake with a layer of sugar cinnamon in it and a lot of cream cheese cream on top. This is a simpler version that can be prepared in half an hour , using ingredients that I usually have in the house anyway.

So it's the ideal cake when you have a nice visitor coming up at short notice!

Ingredients

150 g melted butter

160 g flour

220 g sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp ground vanilla

1 pinch of salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp powdered sugar for dusting

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) upper/lower heat.

Let the butter slowly melt.

Place the flour, sugar, eggs, ground vanilla, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl,...

...add the melted butter...

...and mix everything thoroughly.

Line a springform pan with baking paper and pour the dough into the pan.

Bake the cake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (180 °C) for 20 minutes.

Then sprinkle the warm cake directly with the powdered sugar. Allow to cool slightly and then carefully remove from the mold.

If you like, you can serve the cinnamon cake with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, but here I simply had a glass of milk with it.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Jarðeplamjöls-sandkaka

Sand cake with potato flour

We have successfully arrived back at our Iceland house. This time there were actually no incidents, so far everything has worked well, the water works, the toilet is tight, the hot pot is running. Perfect!

A dear friend came over for a moment on Monday. We hadn't expected him until the afternoon, but he actually came at lunchtime - but I was lucky, I had taken the cake out of the oven five minutes before he came. The whole house was still filled with the smell of cake. That was really a precision landing!

Our Icelandic friend was happy - such fresh cake, the smell... add a big glass of cold milk and the world is perfect! Well, our friend preferred to drink coffee, but raved about childhood memories with such freshly baked cakes and cold milk. And he was also happy to take a second piece. The fresh, still warm cake was also delicious!

Ingredients

130 g margarine

130 g white sugar

130 g potato flour

30 g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 Tbsp baking cocoa

2 Tbsp milk

Preparation

Whisk the margarine with the sugar thoroughly.

Separate the eggs.

Beat the egg white until stiff and set aside for now.

Mix the egg yolks with the sugar mixture.

Then add potato flour, flour and baking powder to the dough and mix.

Carefully fold in the egg whites.

Remove about 1/3 of the dough and mix with 1 tablespoon of baking cocoa and 2 tablespoons of milk.

Grease a loaf tin or similar well or line it with baking paper.

Pour half of the white dough into the mold, pour the cocoa dough over it and finally finish with the remaining white dough. Then run a wooden stick or something similar through the dough to mix the layers a little.

Then bake the cake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (180 °C) upper and lower heat...

... bake for about 30 minutes (test with a toothpick!).

Then let it cool down a bit and carefully remove it from the mold.

The cake tastes very good fresh and warm, but cold the next day it was also very tasty and wonderfully fluffy.

Bon appetit!

PS:

If you buy potato flour in the Icelandic supermarket today, it will say "kartöflumjöl" on the package. However, this recipe is from an old Icelandic cookbook in which potatoes were not yet called "kartöflur" but "potatoes" (= jarðepli) and, for example, tomatoes were not yet called "tómatur" but "rauðaldin" (= "red fruits").

[Translated from here.]

Kvöldverðarboð

Invitation to dinner

We had visitors last weekend and invited them to the “Icelandic Evening”.

Our visit is usually in the south of Europe, but they willingly embarked on the adventure of "Icelandic cuisine" and bravely even tried the Hákarl, the famous (infamous?) Icelandic "rotten shark".

As a starter I made green pearl barley salad.

On the one hand, my youngest offspring loves this salad very much, and on the other hand, pearl barley is really a big topic in Icelandic cuisine: Pearl barley used to be an essential part of everyday Icelandic cuisine, as a side dish, for thickening stews, for making sausages, in groats, but also in desserts . However, since the 1940s, pearl barley has been increasingly replaced in Icelandic cuisine by "modern" imported products such as rice and pasta. Today there is a movement that is consciously re-introducing the use of traditional Icelandic products in Icelandic cuisine, such as barley.

So - several good reasons why I chose exactly this green pearl barley salad as an appetizer!

For a bit of authentic Icelandic feeling, we specially bought Hákarl, fermented ice shark.

Everyone at the table tried it and found it really tasty... well. Some actually took a second or third piece, for others a small piece was enough and the smell was overwhelming. I really think it smells worse than it tastes!

There was also a bit of Brennivín to counteract the aftertaste...

The main course for our visit was Plokkfiskur with Rúgbrauð and salad.

For the traditional Icelandic plokkfiskur ("pounded fish") I used this recipe here, which is actually one of the first recipes here on the blog.

However, I modified the original recipe a little:

So when I fried the onions in the butter, I added ground cumin , which grows on the island of Viðey off Reykjavík, for example, and which found its way into everyday Icelandic cuisine in the 18th century thanks to the bailiff Skúli Magnússon. A wonderful spice that I now also like to use when baking bread!

I also used very spicy cheese and added a bit of the cheese to the sauce, as well as a handful of diced blue cheese for a more intense note. Sprinkle with the cheese, add some fresh parsley - and then put it in the oven!

As a side dish to the Plokkfiskur there was the classic rúgbrauð, Icelandic rye bread. Baked in milk cartons in the oven, I now prefer to use this recipe with curdled milk and baking soda. The whole thing is then baked overnight in the oven at 200 °F (90 °C) for about 11 to 12 hours...

You just have to start in good time if you know that visitors are coming - but it tastes really delicious and was very well received again this time! (And - no, it's really not chocolate cake!)

There was also fresh spinach salad with blueberries and the same blue cheese that I also used in the Plokkfiskur. (However, unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the salad last week, so there is now an older photo of the recipe here on the blog.)

For dessert there was skyr with fruit - easy, nice to prepare and looks nice too, I think!

Simply mix vanilla skyr with a little cocoa powder, a little cappuccino powder and a little syrup, then layer with berries in the glass and chocolate shavings on top. Wonderfully uncomplicated, definitely delicious and easy to vary. Always good, I think!

I also prepared these skyr strawberry slices, simply frozen strawberries and skyr and then covered them with chocolate.

(I'll have to submit the exact recipe in a few days, but before that I should optimize it a bit... or at least find out the optimal serving time, between "too hard" and "unfortunately it flows away"...)

The visitor thanked us with a very beautiful bouquet of flowers and it was an all-round successful Icelandic evening that calls for a repeat.

I just love cooking and am really happy when I have visitors that I can cook for!

[Translated from here.]

An Icelandic sweater in its natural environment

Lopapeysa

An Icelandic sweater (" lopapeysa ") is actually a hand-knitted sweater made from Icelandic sheep's wool. Traditional Icelandic sweaters are knitted in one piece with a round yoke and a patterned shoulder piece.

Knitted clothes in Iceland

Knitted clothing can be traced back to at least the 16th century in Iceland; it probably came to the island via foreign sailors. At that time, knitting was initially done with tightly spun wool yarn, and the garments made from it were coarse and heavy.

Unspun wool

Around 1900, when farms increasingly lacked workers to spin wool, some Icelandic women began experimenting with the outer coat and undercoat of Icelandic sheep and then knitting this wool unspun (to save time). This gave these knitted garments a relatively large volume with comparatively low weight, provided better insulation, and could also retain more water than other knitwear—thus keeping you warm for a long time, even in Icelandic rain.

Traditional Icelandic sweaters only since the 1960s

Icelandic sweaters, as we know and love them today, have only existed since the mid-20th century, with knitters likely basing their designs on traditional knitting patterns from Sweden or the Faroe Islands. Traditionally, however, an Icelandic sweater is still knitted from the thin, unspun wool of Icelandic sheep, usually using three of these threads at a time. While natural wool was once knitted in the various sheep colors, today the wool is often dyed, allowing for more variation.

The term "peysa"

Incidentally, it's said that the term "peysa" (= sweater) also originates from sailors, specifically French fishermen. They are said to have called the Icelandic farmers "paysan, paysan" (= "Farmer, farmer!"), and the Icelanders misunderstood the word, referring to their thick knitted sweaters, and started calling their sweaters "peysa." I like the story, but many linguists doubt it. The term "peysa" in Icelandic has been documented since at least the 16th century as a term for long tops made of knitwear or fur.

A theory on the patterns of the round yoke

By the way, I once read that the patterns on Faroese sweaters are said to have their origins in the fact that drowned sailors could be identified by their clothing, so each family used its own special pattern. A very practical reason for a visually beautiful tradition...

My current favorite pattern

My current favorite pattern actually comes from a Finnish knitting book for Icelandic patterns, which a German woman living in Iceland also contributed to (somehow, the Icelandic world is sometimes quite small!). The book states that the pattern is "easy to knit," and I actually find it wonderfully simple, and it develops so naturally that all you need to do is glance at the pattern in the book once at the beginning of each row, and the rest of the row practically follows itself. It's wonderfully quick to knit, I think—which is why I've actually knitted it several times now and I'm still thrilled with it.

First attempt - a hooded cardigan in purple and green

After the long winter last year, I was really craving color this spring, so I knitted the pattern for myself as a hooded cardigan, because I've found that I wear that more often than a warm sweater, and I love hoods anyway.

I used a beautiful, light green as the base color, and purple as the second main color—and the pattern is knitted in green, red, yellow, and purple. One more color than originally intended, but I simply wanted a bit more color and more contrast.

This photo is from when I was trying it out while knitting, and my husband had to pose as a model. The jacket has since been given colorful buttons and is being used successfully in Iceland.

Second version - a sweater in purple and grey

For a friend who lives in Iceland, who was already very enthusiastic about a previous sweater of mine and loved the colors (purple and gray), I then knitted the same pattern as a classic sweater (as I said, the pattern knits up wonderfully quickly!), but this time in three colors. I used purple as the main color and light gray and dark gray for the pattern.

Our friend sent me the photos of the Icelandic sweater in its natural setting from a tour of Snæfellssnes. The church in the background must be Ingjaldshólskirkja. The current church building, built in 1903, is the oldest surviving stone church in Iceland. The church is located about 1 km from Hellissandur.

The photo on the left was taken almost entirely under midnight sun; I love that light! Everything takes on a reddish-golden glow, from the sweater to the lupins to the church and the mountains in the background.

The second photo was taken the next day in daylight, so you can see the true colors better. Doesn't the lopapeysa fit perfectly into this setting, amidst the blooming lupins! Ah yes - I love both pictures, each in its own way!

Third version for my husband - in Iceland colors

And because the pattern knits up so quickly, I immediately knitted a third version, this time for my husband – with extra long sleeves. The sleeves that fit me and are comfortable are always too short for him, and then he looks like he's outgrown them – or as if the sweater shrank in the wash. Neither of these is ideal.

This time, it's a classic sweater in a men's version, with long sleeves. The base color is blue and the pattern colors are wool white and red – I just felt like knitting an Icelandic sweater in Icelandic colors.

In this photo, however, I borrowed my husband's sweater for a picture from the special issue of "Magic of the North" about Icelandic cuisine. I thought an Icelandic sweater in Icelandic colors would look really good!

Next time, I'll post a photo of my husband wearing this Icelandic sweater in Icelandic surroundings...

PS:

By the way, my sister has already signed up; she thinks my hooded jacket with its colorful pattern is so pretty. She's already picked out the colors for her jacket, and I already have the yarn here, which she'll knit before next winter!

[Translated from here.]

Rifsberjamarengs

Currant meringue

We baked at the weekend, the grandchild and I. The result is this cake with currant meringue. Almost everyone found it very tasty, even those who are not usually particularly fond of cake. Only the grandchild found the currants too sour and just ate cake base with cream.

It is said that currants came to Iceland in the 18th century with Skúli Magnússon (1711 - 1794):

Skúli was born as a pastor's son in northern Iceland, studied in Denmark and returned to Iceland in 1734 as an administrative officer in the service of the Danish king. In 1749, Skúli became the first Icelander to become bailiff of Iceland, i.e. the country's highest administrator. He lived on the island of Viðey for many years and created a garden here with many plants that he had brought with him to Iceland from Denmark, including bush fruits such as currants.

However, the red currants that are now mainly found in Iceland are traced back to a traditional old variety that was brought to Iceland from Norway at the end of the 19th century. The bushes grow well in many Icelandic gardens and are very productive with 6 to 8 kilograms of berries per bush per year.

Ingredients for the soil

200 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

110 g soft butter

2 egg yolks

Ingredients for the egg whites

2 egg whites

100 g white sugar

2 tsp potato flour

150 g currants

Preparation

Knead all the ingredients for the base (flour, baking powder, butter and egg yolk) thoroughly in a bowl...

...then let the dough set in the fridge for about half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 325 °F (160 °C) upper/lower heat.

Put the cold dough into a springform pan (approx. 24 cm in diameter), press it down thoroughly and, if necessary, prick it in several places with a fork.

Bake in a preheated oven at 325 °F (160 °C) upper and lower heat for about 25 minutes until the base has turned nice and golden brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the egg whites:

In a tall mixing bowl, beat the egg whites with the sugar and potato flour until stiff.

Wash and pick the currants and then carefully fold them into the stiff egg whites.

Spread the meringue mixture on the pre-baked cake base.

Set the oven to 400 °F (200 °C) upper and lower heat and bake the cake for about 10 minutes until the egg whites have a nice color.

Take the cake out of the oven, let it cool briefly...

... and then serve with whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream and fresh fruit.

[Translated from here.]