Haustlitir á Íslandi

Autumn colors in Iceland

For me, it was back to Iceland yesterday with the youngest offspring at the start of the school holidays.

The last period in Germany has been very busy for us, and in my main job it is currently extremely stressful.

Therefore, I am pretty wiped out at the moment - last night I fell into bed at 9 pm and today I only got up again around half past 9. (Even so, I haven't really slept well.)

Tomorrow I have to work again, but today is simply all about peace and coziness. Lots of doing nothing.

So I just took a very little 'walk,' just a bit around the property, and enjoyed the beautiful autumn colors here.

The autumn in Iceland is shaped by rapid changes in nature, by magnificent colors, by the first snow on the mountains and by shorter days and longer nights. 

According to Veðurstofa Íslands, the Icelandic Meteorological Office, the four seasons spring, summer, autumn, and winter here do not each last 3 months, but summer and winter each comprise 4 months, while spring and autumn are both only 2 months long. But that really corresponds to the perceived reality here - it is a long, long winter (December to March), then suddenly spring (April and May) and immediately after that real summer. And the summer (June to September) is also long here, then there is - for a short time - autumn (October and November) and then the long, dark winter starts again. No wonder that the Vikings here had at all only two seasons knew - winter and summer! 

It isn't particularly sunny today, but the magnificent colors of nature in the short Icelandic autumn still shine beautifully!

No matter whether they are the last red leaves of this plant here in the pot next to our parking lot, ...

... or the bright yellow glowing trees at the neighbors'.

By the way, we currently have roadworks; our path is being newly gravelled on behalf of the homeowners' association. However, the work is progressing quickly!

Well then, back into the house again!

There is someone standing and waving - I am already expected!

Translated from here.

Karamellukaka

Caramel Cake

Here I have a recipe for a caramel cake for you, which I baked last month for my husband's birthday. The cake was really well received - sweet, thick cream, but overall not too heavy or too sweet thanks to the fluffy layers..!

The cake actually consists of two light, airy layers of pale sponge cake, plenty of sweet, thick caramel cream, and finally decorated as desired. I used salted caramel brittle, for a crunchy, crispy moment while eating with a slight salt note, as a contrast to the fairly sweet caramel cream.

Here I then decorated the cake with birthday candles - after all, it was also a birthday cake!

Ingredients

Ingredients for the dough

200 ml of milk

180 g melted butter

300 g flour

1.5 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

280 g sugar

ground vanilla or vanilla flavoring

Ingredients for the cream

70 g butter

250 g brown sugar

100 ml whipping cream

1 tsp ground vanilla or vanilla flavoring

200 g powdered sugar

40 g soft butter

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180 °C top and bottom heat.

Whisk eggs and sugar in a bowl until frothy.

Add flour and baking powder and stir.

Add the milk and the melted butter, ...

... also the ground vanilla, vanilla flavoring, etc., and mix everything into a smooth dough.

Pour the batter evenly into two springforms lined with baking powder (diameter 20 - 22 cm), ...

... and bake in the preheated oven at 180 °C top and bottom heat for about 20 minutes, until the bases have turned nice and golden brown.

For the cream, gently heat 70 g of butter and 250 g of brown sugar in a pan over low heat for just under 10 minutes.

Pour in the cream and stir for 1 minute. Then remove the pot from the heat and let everything cool down a bit.

Add the powdered sugar and the soft butter and mix everything thoroughly into a uniform cream. The cream should have a nice thick consistency. Then let the cream cool down a bit.

Carefully remove the first cake layer from the pan, onto a cake plate
lay down and pour over with cream.

Then carefully place the second cake layer on top and cover everything with the remaining cream.

Place the finished cake in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours and decorate with powdered sugar, chopped nuts, or the like to taste before serving.

In this sense then: Happy Birthday! Happy birthday!

Enjoy your meal!

Translated from here.

Súkkulaðibomba

Chocolate bomb

This here is an Icelandic recipe for a real 'chocolate bomb,' a two-tier rich chocolate cake with a delicious cream made from cream cheese and mascarpone. When decorating the cake, you can really let yourself go!

For us, for example, I decorated it to a real Brúðarterta (wedding cake) - for the wedding of child no. 2 and his newlywed wife.

In the original Icelandic recipe, AB-Mjólk is used, which is available in many different versions in Iceland. Here in Germany, I replaced the AB-Mjólk 1:1 with buttermilk. Alternatively, one could also use natural yogurt.

Ingredients

460 g of flour
180 g sugar
4 eggs
500 ml AB milk
250 ml sunflower oil

80 g chopped chocolate

60 g cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

vanilla extract

400 g cream cheese

350 g mascarpone

250 g powdered sugar

2 - 3 tablespoons baking cocoa

if necessary, some grated chocolate, chopped nuts, or the like

Preparation

Stir together all the ingredients for the dough.

Divide into two baking pans (24 cm in diameter) and bake in a preheated oven at 200 °C top and bottom heat for 20 minutes each.

Take the two cake layers out of the oven and let them cool thoroughly.

For the cream, put the cream cheese with the mascarpone and the powdered sugar as well as the baking cocoa into a large bowl and mix well so that a uniform cream is formed.

Divide the cream into two portions. Set aside one cake piping bag full of cream for the decoration.

Place the first cake layer on a cake plate or similar, use the pastry bag to pipe a pattern all around, and then spread the rest of the first portion of cream on the cake layer.

Place the second cake layer on top, spread with the second portion of cream, sprinkle with grated chocolate, chopped nuts, etc., to taste, and finally decorate the cake with the cream from the second piping bag.

Finally, if necessary, the special cake decoration is then fitted.

Then let the finished cake rest in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours and serve well chilled afterwards.

Alternatively, you can also bake one cake base with cocoa and the other without, to create a color contrast, and also prepare only half of the cream with cocoa. You can really let yourself go here!

Translated from here.

Grillsósa

Barbecue sauce

We had dear visitors here over the weekend and in the evening we grilled together, everyone had brought something and my contribution was, among other things, this barbecue sauce here, with bell pepper and onion.

I made the barbecue sauce, however, for a friend with a cow's milk intolerance without dairy products; for this, I replaced the crème fraîche with 200 g of 'vegan cream cheese' and about 50 ml of 'vegan cooking cream,' which I stirred together. Sometimes it's not that easy at all to get such substitute products here in Iceland in the supermarket – in Bónus we only found 'milk alternatives'; only in Krónan did we also find things like 'vegan butter' and 'vegan cream cheese'.

The result was really tasty!

Ingredients

200 g crème fraîche

1 yellow bell pepper

1/4 red onion

1 tbsp tomato ketchup

1 pinch of coarse sea salt

1/2 tsp chili pepper

Preparation

Wash and clean the bell peppers, peel the onion. Cut both into small pieces.

In a bowl, stir together the crème fraîche with ketchup, salt, and pepper, and fold in the chopped vegetables.

Serve the barbecue sauce as a side with grilled meat or sausages.

But the sauce also works well as a dip for small-cut vegetable strips. We tried it out for you specially, later on in the evening..!

Enjoy your meal!

Translated from here.

Perlubygg með arfasósu

Pearl barley with ant sauce

This dish is traditionally prepared with fresh bird droppings.

If you - like me - can't get fresh chickweed at the moment, you can also make do with arugula/rocket, lamb's lettuce, or young spinach. I have chosen rocket here (in Icelandic:burdock salad) decided, I got that in the supermarket in town.

Pearl barley or barley pearls (bankabygg resp. perlubygg) were a staple of Icelandic cuisine until around 1940, before they were largely displaced in everyday cooking by imported products such as rice and noodles. I now really enjoy using them in my meals.

Barley in the field in Vallanes

By the way, the barley pearl salad is a recipe from the category 'always vegan'. So not 'veganized', but truly traditional without any animal products. Also perfect if guests, for example, cannot eat cow's milk products.

Ingredients

300 g pearl barley

750 ml of water

1 apple

1/2 red onion

300 g fresh pennywort

200 ml apple juice

100 ml of rapeseed oil

coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preparation

Bring the water to a boil in a pot, add the pearl barley, and cook until soft for about 20 minutes. Then drain the water and set the barley aside to cool.

Peel and chop half an onion.

Wash half of the onion pieces with the honey or the arugula or similar, and put both together with the apple juice and the rapeseed oil into the blender and puree.

Quarter the peeled and core-removed apple and cut it into small pieces.

Mix the remaining onion pieces and the little apple pieces with the cooled pearl barley and pour over the green sauce. Mix everything thoroughly and season with salt and pepper. Keep the finished salad covered in the refrigerator.

With us, there was the green barley salad on weekends as a side dish for BBQs with friends.

Translated from here.

Ull und matur

Wool and food

This pink strawberry sofa cushion was my sister's special wish. 

Sometimes you can wonderfully combine two passions, just like I do here with this sofa cushion:

My passion for wool and knitting and my passion for Icelandic food.

I have loved Icelandic food since our first trip to Iceland in 2004. Since 2014, I have been writing about it here on the blog, trying out recipes, etc.

As birthday present for a friend who works here in Iceland in the strawberry greenhouse, I then had one collection of Icelandic strawberry recipes compiled - and from this gift, our book was created Icelandic Strawberry Recipes". 

The German edition appeared in April 2025. (You could currently order the book in bookstores or online, for example on Amazon.)

The English version"Icelandic Strawberry Recipes" then followed in May 2025.

It was a community work together with my husband and my sister - he translated the book into English, afterwards she worked as an editor or proofreader for the English version and sent it back to us with changes and comments.

Therefore, my sister also has a special connection to Icelandic strawberry recipes..!

My other passion is knitting, preferably with Icelandic wool.

Last year I had already knitted several pieces with strawberry motifs, for example this hat and the jacket with strawberries made of Léttlopi wool.

When I am now in the spring in matters hand-knitted lopapeysa sofa cushions in the style of Icelandic wool sweaters (lopapeysa) I got a little carried away, and my sister expressed the wish if she could also get a hand-knitted sofa pillow, pink, with strawberries..?

At first I thought that wouldn't work because the color 'pink' doesn't really exist in Icelandic Léttlopi yarn. There is the color 1412 "lead sampler Combed wool from a mix of various pink-dyed wool, but actually this wool is more bright pink than delicate pink.

In the thick Icelandic wool (Álafosslopi), there is the color 1239 "vetrarmorgun" (= winter morning), which should be light pink, but I didn't get it spontaneously. Besides, I actually didn't want to knit such a thick sofa cushion.

Finally, I then made for myself as Main color with double Plötulopi wool awkward, here is the color 1425 "lead sampler A little less marbled and lighter, at least in the part I got. (Besides, Plötulopi still smells really nice of sheep when you press your nose into it, I think!)

For the pattern, I used Léttlopi in the colors white (0051) and yellow (1703), for the strawberries garnet red (1409), yellow and dark green (1407), and for the green, I also added a thin strand of Fjallalopi wool in light green (3032).

I am definitely very satisfied with the result - I think the pillow has turned out really nicely!

Last week, the pillow traveled by mail to my sister. It has already arrived safely, and I am looking forward to the photos that will follow once she has gotten a pillow filling for the sofa pillow.

Translated from here.