chocolate

havrekjeks

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havrekjeks2

Oats are easy to find in Norway. Havregryn (or rolled oats) comes in small and large varieties, havregrøt (oatmeal) is a common breakfast – the kind I like has cardamom to boot! Havremelk (oat milk) is a common non-dairy substitute, and my grocery store even carries an oat-based non-dairy creme fraiche. And then there’s havreflarn and havrekjeks, different types of cookies made from oats. Since making the havreflarn med choklad from Fika, I’ve been experimenting with oat cookie recipes, and now I’ve had one published in the Norwegian American Weekly.

havrekjeks3

My havrekjeks are thin and chewy, with chocolate chips. I never was a fan of oatmeal raisin cookies, but oats and chocolate is a combo I can get behind. You can find the full recipe for these over at na-weekly.com.

havreflarn med choklad

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I’m back in Tromsø after spending Christmas break in Seattle, but it was such a busy month with so much work and (literal) housekeeping to do that I didn’t have time to do any Christmas baking (boo). It’s been quite cold in Tromsø since I got back, however, which is the perfect excuse to be baking – nothing warms up the house like a hot oven, you know?

Since moving to Norway I’ve become rather obsessed with a certain local company’s havrekjeks – that is, oat cookies. They’re the perfect crisp and crunchy consistency with chocolate chips and I love them. I thought it’d be fun to find an oat cookie recipe to try from my Nordic cookbook library (so that I don’t spend all my money on Bakehuset’s cookies).

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I picked out the havreflarn med choklad from Fika, the book I introduced in my previous post. Unlike Bakehuset’s havrekjeks, these cookies don’t have chocolate chips, but they do form a cookie sandwich with a chocolate filling.

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This was a very straightforward recipe, with a few prep steps (my rolled oats needed to go through the blender for a minute to bring the size down, and the chocolate for the filling has to be melted once the cookies have cooled) but mostly instructions along the lines of mixing everything together and dropping dough on the cookie sheets. I made my cookies too big at first, which took me a little while to realize. I also stacked up my baking sheets in the oven, which meant that the cookies on top achieved the idea crunchy crisp consistency I was going for while the cookies on the baking sheet below stayed a little softer (still crisp, but with a softer texture, if that makes any sense). In the photos, the cookies that were on the bottom rack have a smoother texture with larger bubbles.

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The wild card in this recipe was that the chocolate filling contains ground ginger. I love ginger, but after making these cookies, I don’t know if I love ginger with chocolate. I feel like I might swap the ginger for cardamom next time I make these. Or perhaps I’ll skip the chocolate filling altogether and throw chocolate chips into the dough instead! Ginger aside, this was a really great basic recipe for oat cookies that I’ll happily make again in different iterations in the future.

You can find the recipe for these cookies in Fika by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall.

chokladkaka

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This post is a bit belated! But as I’m baking a new cake this weekend, it seemed the perfect opportunity to finally write this post and turn it into A Weekend of Cake.

I’ve made this recipe twice, both times in the spring. Chokladkaka is a Swedish chocolate pound cake – a really fantastic chocolate cake when you want something that’s light and not too rich. I made my first with my friend Alex when she was visiting – we lined the pan with butter but forgot to line it with crumbs, so the outside ended up a bit burnt (though the inside was still delicious). The second time, I made it for a dinner with some friends, and remembered not to skip this step! Vanilla wafers aren’t terribly easy to find in Hungary, though, so I wound up lining it with flour (which worked passably well).

I served it up with whipped cream and strawberries the first time, and the second time went for vanilla ice cream and strawberries – both worked very well. I love chocolate cake, and I love that this is a chocolate cake I can eat without feeling like I’ll get a stomachache.

mazarinkakor

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These are billed as “Swedish chocolate-frosted almond bars,” and they live up to their name! I never tire of recipes with almond in them, and this one was a fairly simple one involving a base/crust, an almond filling, and a chocolate drizzle on top. Ojakangas recommends using a 13 x 9 inch rectangular pan, but my Hungarian kitchen is still somewhat lacking, so I used what I had on hand – a round baking dish, probably closer to 10 or 11 inches in diameter. Whether or not this had an effect on the end result, it’s hard to say, but I would like to try this recipe again in a pan more like the one Ojakangas uses. The bars were definitely delicious, but the base came out more crumbly and the filling more gooey than I expected. I’ll probably try it out for my family at Christmas – my parents’ kitchen is sure to have the size pan the recipe calls for!

chokladtarta

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Baking for friends is truly one of my favorite things about baking recipes from this book, and this one was no exception. My friend Damien had a birthday earlier this month and I promised to bake him a proper birthday cake when he got home from tour. He picked out the chokladtarta, a nutty chocolate layer cake with layers of cream filling and a chocolate glaze over top. This is easily the most involved (and decadent) recipe I’ve baked from the book so far.

The recipe gives you a list of choices of nuts for your cake layers; I had walnuts and almonds on hand but in the end decided to go for the walnuts. The cake layers are prepared first, then the cream “filling” (which goes between your cake layers) and lastly the dark chocolate glaze is made and drizzled over the top of the cake. My wonderful friend Brad helped out with the glaze and a few supplies (I’ve just moved house and my new kitchen isn’t quite set up yet).

The resulting cake was extremely rich but super delicious, and enjoyed by Damien + friends at a local open mic night last night. After an amazing Thanksgiving weekend, it was a night I was very grateful to be with friends. Happy belated, D.