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I have been really bad about blogging the last few pies I have made (I made the apple pie in September last year…), so this will just be a single picture and some links to the recipes – mainly to make it easier for myself to find them again.

All of them turned out great – especially the apple pie and the lemon meringue pie (the lemon filling was quite a chore to make, though). And a note about the lemon meringue pie recipe – use a different recipe for the pie crust as I wasn’t too happy about the consistency while working with it. Use this instead: Flaky pie crust.

• Apple pie
• Sweet potato pie
• Lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie

A made some muffins for the vacations. They turned out quite nice even though it was my first time making a real frosting. I also experimented with  putting a piece of fudge in the middle of a few of  the muffins but that can’t be recommended – it merely turned into a small lump a the bottom of the muffing and not a nice caramel center as I had hoped.

Muffins
300g butter
300g sugar
5 eggs
1dl milk
300g flour
100g cocoa powder
2 tbsp baking powder

Melt the butter and mix it well with the sugar. Add the eggs one at a time. Stir in the milk. Add the flour, cocoa and baking powder.

Pour into muffin tins and bake at 180C for about 15-20 minutes.

Frosting

120g butter
200g brown suger
1.4dl milk

375g confectioners’ sugar (at least…)
0.4dl milk

Melt the butter and stir in the brown sugar. Heat to boiling and reduce the heat. Boil and stir for 2 minutes then add 1.4dl milk. Once again heat to boiling and remove from heat. Let it cool for about 30 minutes.

Pour into a large bowl and mix in the confectioners’ sugar and the 0.4dl milk. Mix it thoroughly (at least 5 minutes). Add more confectioners’ sugar if needed to get the right consistency.

Put the frosting in the refrigerator for 15-30 minutes before applying it to the muffins.

To make muffins filled with frosting it is easiest to simply cut a cone out of the top of the muffin, fill with frosting and then reinsert the cone. Cover with frosting on top to hide any evidence of tampering.

Place muffins with frosting in the refrigerator to allow frosting to harden.

The son had spent some time talking about making a popcorn cake based on his own recipe (which for some reason included a banana but no popcorn). We set out to find a recipe and ended up with this (we only made a small cake using a quarter of this):

50g butter

1.25dl vegetable oil

500g marshmallows

4l of popcorn

500g peanuts

500g M&M’s

Melt the butter and oil in a pan. Add marshmallows and let them melt as well. Mix in the remaining ingredients and pour into a container of an appropriate size. Out in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

The result was… interesting… The wife and daughter actually liked it. I would go so far as to say that it wasn’t completely disgusting. The daughter is talking about making one for her birthday.

Yesterday I decided to buy some sushi on the way home from work. I went to Sota and picked up a “Choice 2″ from their To-Go menu. This amounted to 20 pieces of sushi which meant the wife and kids could have a taste of everything and there was still enough left over for me to end up feeling quite stuffed.

I am no food critic but to me the sushi was great. Everything tasted excellent – the tuna was especially delicious. The presentation of the food was anything spectacular but I guess there is only so much you can do in a small take-away box.

The biggest issue I had was that the menu came with 8 maki you get to choose yourself, but you aren’t free to choose just anything. They have 4 basic rolls you can mix, but if you want anything else (and I wanted unagi) you had to buy an entire roll of 8 pieces (and 8 pieces of unagi is a bit too much of the same thing).

I will definitely do this again some time – even if it means I have to work a bit late one day to be able to pick it up as Sota opens at 16 and I usually go home from work at 15.

Batter

60g dark chocolate
100g chopped, roasted pecan nuts
110g butter
225g sugar
2 eggs
65g flour
0.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
85g finely chopped dark chocolate

Cream cheese filling

400g cream cheese
200g sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoons vanilla extract

Sprinkle the pecan nuts on the bottom of a greased and floured springform pan.

Mix butter and sugar well. Add the eggs one at a time.

Melt the chocolate and add to the mixture.

Mix in the flour and vanilla and stir in the chopped chocolate last.

Pour mixture into pan.

Mix cream cheese and sugar well. Add the eggs one at a time. Stir in the vanilla.

Pour into the pan on top of the batter mixture.

Bake at 165C for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Let it cool completely.

Put chocolate glaze on top and place in refrigerator for 8 hours.

Chocolate Glaze

170g dark chocolate
0.6dl whipping cream

Melt the chocolate slowly in the cream and whisk until mixture is smooth.

Made two pies for the hard working folks at the office. A chocolate pecan pie and a banana cream pie. Both new recipes but my colleagues are usually up for eating pretty much anything as long as you call it a cake.

Pie Crust (for one pie)

• 155g flour
• A pinch of salt
• 115g butter
• 60ml cold water

Mix flour, salt and butter well. Add the water a little by little. Wrap up and put in the fridge for 3-4 hours.

Chocolate Pecan Pie

• 350ml pecans
• 200g dark chocolate (chopped)
• 4 eggs (beaten)
• 120ml sugar
• 120ml dark sugar
• 120ml glucose syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• A pinch of salt

Spread the pecans and chopped chocolate on the pie shell.

Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a bowl and pour on top of the pie.

Bake for 50 minutes at 190C.

Banana Cream Pie

• 150g sugar
• 40g flour
• A pinch of salt
• 475ml milk
• 3 egg yolks (beaten)
• 30g butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 bananas (sliced)

Pre-bake the pie shell.

Put flour, sugar and salt into a saucepan and gradually add the milk while slowly bringing the whole thing to a boil. Let it boil gently for 2 minutes.

Remove it from the heat. In a bowl mix some of the hot cream with the egg yokes. Pour the egg yoke mix back into the saucepan and stir vigorously for 2 minutes.

Add the butter and vanilla extract and stir until the butter has melted.

Put the sliced bananas onto the pie shell and pour the cream on top.

Bake at 175C for 30 minutes.

As gas become tradition the kids carved lanterns out of pumpkins – or rather the kids instructed the parents in how to carve their pumpkins. Great fun as usual and this year we had invited my sister and her son to join as well.

The pumpkin seeds were later oven roasted with some olive oil and salt.

Part 1 in a series. It has been a great week of vacation. So great in fact that I haven’t had time to blog any of it. Therefore this small series of blog entries.

I made pumkpin pie for the first time, and it actually came out quite good if I say so myself. There was some leftover filling so I added some plain flour and turned them into muffins (also quite delicious).

Recipe is from pickyourown.org.

Filling:
250g sugar
1.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 large eggs
0.7l pumpkin glop (1 pumpkin was enough for me)
0.5l evaporated milk

Cut the punkpin into large pieces and steam in a double steamer until soft (takes about 30-45 minutes). Scrape the cooked pumpkin off the skin using a spoon and blend the pumpkin until smooth.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl using a hand mixer.

Pour into a pie pan lined with pie crust and bake at 210C for 15 minutes and then at 175C for 45-60 minutes (until the filling no longer sticks to a fork).
Pie crust:
200g flour
2 tablespoons sugar
55g butter
2.5dl water

Mix all ingredients together. Mix in the water slowly until the dough has a sticky consistency. Put in refrigerator to make it easier to roll out.

397g (1 can) condensed milk

400g dark chocolate

1dl Baileys

Melt chocolate while heating the condensed milk. Add melted chocolate and Baileys to the condensed milk. Pour into a pan lined with baking paper and set to cool.

The result is great in the flavor department but the consistency is a bit too sticky.

The wife has been busy this weekend and has been converting our harvest of berries into jam (strawberry and strawberry/rhubarb) and juice (blackcurrant and redcurrant). To finish things of she decided to make homemade “æbleskiver” for us as well.