Gleðilega páska!

Við óskum ykkur gleðilegra páska!

We wish you all a happy Easter!

Easter is yellow, at least here in Iceland – yellow is the most important color for Easter. People like to decorate everything cheerfully with daffodils and chicks, a real concentrated dose of yellow color and good cheer.

My Easter is also yellow – I knitted myself a new shoulder warmer for Easter out of Léttlopi wool, a "medium-thick" Icelandic wool. It's bright yellow, with a purple bunny on it for color contrast.

With that in mind: Happy Easter, gleðilega páska!

[Translated from here.]

Sweet recipes for Easter

I'm thinking about what I could maybe bake for Easter and I'm digging through my notebook for old recipes...

I just realized that my blog will be 10 years old in July, 10 years since I collected and tried out Icelandic cooking and baking recipes and shared and posted them here... I think I'm getting sentimental.. .

So it’s better to quickly get back to meal planning for Easter!

By the way, the very first recipe I posted here was Gulrótarkaka, Icelandic carrot cake, my daughter's declared favorite cake. I think we were able to lure her to Iceland for the first time with the prospect of carrot cake at Café Loki. So carrot cake is always an option when I'm thinking about what cake to bake for a special occasion.

A few years ago, especially for Easter, I baked this Páskakaka (= Easter cake), a sponge cake with two layers and yellow and orange butter-sugar-chocolate cream, because yellow is the typical color for Easter here in Iceland.

I decorated the cake with Easter eggs and bunnies, even though you rarely get small eggs in Iceland and especially not small Easter bunnies. Icelandic Easter sweets are big, literally.

I baked this Appelsínukaka (= orange cake) here for Easter two years ago, for a cozy coffee hour - thanks to the good weather, even on the terrace. A nice, quick recipe for a fruity sponge cake that can be prepared quickly even at short notice. Even my youngest, who isn't really a big cake fan, wanted a second helping of the cake...

8 years ago, when my mother was still alive and my sister was able to visit at Easter, I made a small peppermint ice cream cake with Oreo cookies and licorice as a dessert for the big family feast on Easter Sunday. It was also delicious, but I haven't made it in a long time...

This Húsfreyjuterta, the "housewife's cake", is also a very tasty but somewhat complex dessert cake. To be honest, I have no idea how the cake got its name, but I definitely like it and it looks good too, with the cream filling and the caramel icing. And you can have fun with the decoration on the cake if you like.

Or I'll just make the raspberry licorice cake that I baked recently...? With the mixture of fruit, chocolate and licorice, I found the cake wonderfully refreshing, fruity and really interesting with the licorice balls!

A classic option is of course Kransakaka. Such a "wreath cake" is a special specialty for festive occasions in many parts of Scandinavia and here in Iceland you can often find it on the cake buffet, especially at baptisms and confirmations. A cake like this actually has 15 to 18 stacked cake rings.

The cake consists of a lot of marzipan and sugar and is really delicious, but I don't like eating large portions of it in one go. That's why I only limited myself to 6 wreaths when baking - we're not such a big company and, to be honest, marzipan is pretty expensive here in Iceland...

Very important for an Icelandic Easter are of course these huge chocolate Easter eggs, filled with sweets and a note with a good wish or advice - either homemade Easter eggs ...

... or one of the many eggs in different sizes that you can buy everywhere in the supermarket. A huge Easter egg like these two, which a dear friend gave to our youngest and our grandchild, weighs an impressive 520 g!

Well, I still have two or three days until I have to decide what I want to bake for Easter this year...

Happy Easter, happy birthday!

[Translated from here.]

Lakkrísterta með hindberjum

Liquorice cake with raspberries

The recipe here is for a small but rich raspberry licorice cake. Wonderfully fruity, wonderfully chocolaty and with a distinct licorice taste! Yes, I know, not everyone loves licorice, even in our family - but those who do like licorice found this cake very tasty!

By the way, I have my husband to thank for the bag with the licorice balls:

On one of the last flights to Iceland something went wrong on the way to Germany, the plane had technical problems or a suspected defect, but in any case it only left Keflavík with a long delay. However, there were meal vouchers for the waiting time at the airport, and because despite a generous breakfast and delicious pizza for lunch there was still plenty of voucher left, my husband then used the rest for Opal schnapps and chocolate licorice.

I then used one of the bags of licorice balls (130 g) for this cake: about 30 g went into the melted chocolate cream, I then cut about 12 balls in half and used them for decoration. There were still a few balls left over to snack on...

Ingredients for the floors

2 eggs

180 g sugar

100 g melted butter

100 g wheat flour

2 Tbsp baking cocoa

1 pinch of ground vanilla

100 g raspberries

Ingredients for the cream

1 Tbsp butter

120 g chocolate with licorice

30 g licorice balls

100 g cream cheese

3 Tbsp powdered sugar

Ingredients for the decoration

150 ml mascarpone

200 g cream cheese

100 ml whipping cream

80 g powdered sugar

25 g raspberries

30 g dark chocolate

Liquorice balls

Preparation

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

Mix the eggs and sugar in a bowl until frothy.

Add the melted butter and stir.

Add the flour, baking cocoa and ground vanilla and work into a smooth dough.

Add another 100 g of fresh raspberries to the dough and stir in briefly.

Line a springform pan (approx. 20 cm) with baking paper, pour the dough into it, smooth it out and bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes (stick test!).

Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool thoroughly.

Meanwhile, for the cream, melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the cream cheese and powdered sugar until you have a nice, smooth cream.

Let the filling cool in the refrigerator.

Then cut the cooled cake in half to create two layers and spread the chocolate cream on the bottom cake board.

Place the top cake layer on top.

For the decoration, whip the cream until stiff.

In a second bowl, mix the mascarpone with the cream cheese, powdered sugar and the remaining fresh raspberries and finally carefully fold in the stiffly whipped cream.

Cover the cake completely with the raspberry cream - if you like, you can also fill a cake piping with cream for decoration and set it aside before covering the cake with the cream.

Then grate the dark chocolate over the cake.

Spread the cream from the syringe as decoratively as possible over the top edge.

Cut open the required number of licorice balls and spread them over the cream on the cake with the cut side facing up.

Chill the cake in the fridge for several hours...

...and then serve in small pieces (for me the cake was enough for 8 pieces).

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Góða nótt - counting sheep

I wish everyone a lovely evening and a good night! Góða nótt!

If you're having trouble falling asleep at the moment, I could help you count sheep with my new shoulder warmer.

I recently finished a new knitting project - this time it's another shoulder warmer, with a round yoke, very Icelandic, and of course made from Icelandic wool, this time again from the thin, unspun wool (plötulopi).

This makes my shoulder warmer very light yet still nice and warm. Especially in the evenings, when I'm starting to get tired, I find it very cozy to put something on and snuggle up before I start to shiver...

The shoulder warmer made of Plötulopi wool still smells a bit like sheep - but with sheep wool and a sheep motif, that's fine!

By the way, the pattern has 18 small and 18 large sheep, so when I count the sheep I now get 36...!

[Translated from here.]

Andasalat

Salad with duck breast

Today I have a slightly different recipe for you, not classic Icelandic home cooking, but a modern salad with duck breast. Combined with small tomatoes, orange, mozzarella and basil, roasted nuts - and dates and blueberries to sweeten it.

But tomatoes grow in greenhouses in Iceland, blueberries are also plentiful, at least in late summer, and dates can be found in many Icelandic recipes.

I find this mix of classic and modern very interesting - and we really enjoyed this fruity salad!

Ingredients for 2 servings

300 g duck breast

1 Tbsp nut oil

salt and pepper

1 organic orange

400 g piccolo tomatoes

300 g mini mozzarella balls

100 g blueberries

1 handful of fresh basil

2 Tbsp orange juice
Duck fat from roasting
1 Tbsp mustard

3 Tbsp salad mix nuts

6 dates

Preparation

First preheat the oven to 300 °F (150 °C) fan oven.

Fry the fresh duck breast in the pan with a little nut oil.

Place the duck breast in an ovenproof dish, season with salt and pepper, grate the orange peel over it and cook in the oven at 300 °F (150 °C) for about 15 minutes.

Wash the tomatoes and halve or quarter them.

Wash, pick and roughly chop the fresh basil.

Peel the oranges, divide them and cut them into pieces.

Wash the blueberries.

In a bowl, mix the tomatoes with the fresh basil, orange pieces, blueberries and mini mozzarella balls.

To make the sauce, mix the duck fat, orange juice and mustard thoroughly until you have a smooth, uniform sauce.

Roast the nut mixture in a pan.

Cut the dates into small pieces and add them to the pan. Stir briefly, then remove the pan from the heat.

Then add the nut mixture to the salad, add half of the sauce and mix everything thoroughly.

Cut the meat into strips.

Then arrange the salad on the plates, place the duck slices on the salad and pour the remaining sauce over them.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Möndlukaka (ofnskúffa)

Almond cake from the tray

I baked this almond cake for my mother's last birthday a few years ago and it was really well received. At that time I baked the cake in a round springform pan with 12 pieces.

Now I baked the cake for my own birthday last week. It should be enough for a lot of people and I also wanted to take some cake with me to work for my colleagues. So instead of a round springform pan (approx. 24 cm) I used a baking tray (approx. 25 cm x 35 cm) and twice the amount of dough (but the same baking time).

Ingredients

14 eggs

400 g white sugar

500 g ground almonds

2 ml bitter almond aroma

1 grated lemon peel

Preparation

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

Separate the eggs.

Beat the egg whites in a really large, tall container until stiff and set aside for now.

In a very large bowl, beat the egg yolks with the white sugar until fluffy.

Add the ground almonds, the bitter almond flavor and the grated lemon peel and mix thoroughly.

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Then put the dough in a baking pan lined with baking paper (approx. 25 x 35 cm) and bake in the preheated oven for about 50 minutes (stick test!).

Then leave the cake in the switched off oven for about 15 minutes, then take it out of the oven, let it cool down well and carefully remove it from the tin.

Then cut the cake into cubes and serve.

This was my mother's birthday cake...

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]

Skyrídýfa með fersku grænmeti

Skyr dip with fresh vegetables

Now is Lent, between Carnival and Easter. And even if I don't have the time and, above all, the energy for a real fasting campaign this year, like my Icelandic diet in 2018, my Skyr diet in 2020 or the vegan dishes during Lent in 2022, at least there are now and then Something relatively “healthy” like this Skyr dip with fresh vegetables.

Ingredients

250 g vanilla skyr
1 tsp honey
1/2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp chopped onions
1 tsp fresh coriander

1 Tbsp fresh parsley
1 tsp paprika powder
salt and pepper

1 tsp chopped parsley

fresh vegetables to taste,
e.g. cucumber, radishes, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, celery...


Preparation

Wash, clean and roughly chop all the ingredients for the dip...

...and put it in a blender and puree it thoroughly until it forms a nice, uniform mass.

Place the dip in a bowl, sprinkle with chopped parsley and chill in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes.

Wash, clean and cut the vegetables into pieces and serve with the cold Skyr dip.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]