Cooking with Connie

It's time for another cooking with Connie post. My vacation is over, and yet I have today off. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I'm working this coming weekend, so that gives me a day off today, and again on Monday. 

During our vacation, we visited my brother. Jonas and I went down there on Friday, and Frank came on Saturday to celebrate my brothers birthday (his birthday isn't until November 14th, but my parents couldn't make it then, and since Jonas and I were all ready there it seemed easier).  In his backyard is a HUGE apple tree, and there were hundreds of apples on the ground. Since my brother isn't a big apple eater, he told Jonas he would get 1 kr (nearly 20 US cents) for every 10 apples he picked up and through in the garbage. When we were collecting and ended up getting a bag of the nice ones to make apple sauce. I think we picked 100 apples and there were still loads on the ground, but Jonas earned 10 kr for his piggy bank. 

With all those apples I made apple sauce. I found a super easy recipe online, just boiling the apples with water, adding sugar and vanilla and boiling a bit more. I ended up putting a blender through it, since I'm not a big fan of pieces of apples in my apple sauce.

And just because the recipe suggested to eat it with vanilla ice cream I did. I just had a small amount of vanilla icecream left in the freezer, so I had a little snack. 

 I always thought it was so difficult making apple sauce, but that was super easy, the worst thing was peeling the apples... so how hard can it really be:) Enjoy!

Cooking with Connie

Every once in a while I will do a post in the series Cooking with Connie. 

This last weekend we went to visit Frank's brother and his Colombian wife in Sweden (it's a long story, but short they moved there because she is not allowed to be in Denmark, she had to leave the country for 3 months or so, before she can apply for rights to live here). So now they live in a cottage far out in the country in Sweden. In the cottage was a bunch of old magazines, including a cooking magazine from 2010. 

I saw a really easy recipe for a pasta with chicken and blue cheese, so after we got home I had to try it out. You cook the chicken breast with salt and pepper, and cut it up. Boil the fresh pasta, and mixed it with blue cheese, chicken, chopped hazelnuts and fresh basil. 

sorry for the poor photo taken with my cell phone.

I know there is not fresh basil in my picture, I didn't have any, and the store I shopped at on the day didn't have any either, so we had to do without. But I have to make sure to buy some for my garden.

The result was surprisingly good, and so fast and easy to make. Of course you have to like blue cheese, but we do in our household, we had a cheese platter for dessert at our wedding! So I'm for sure making that again, and it might become my go to recipe on a busy day.

Cooking with Connie

Remember I used to have a series of post where I cooked/baked something, well it's been a while since I last did one of those posts, but here you have one again.

I made macaroons, I was really excited to make them, and I decided to make strawberry macaroons....

Okay I cheated, and didn't really make them from scratch, I bought one of those bake mixes. Usually they are pretty good, especially the brownie one... but this one not so much. 

Sorry for the bad cell phone pictures!

It was a bit dull, and the strawberry flavour was a bit artificial. I actually ended up throwing some of them away, and if you know me, I never throw away cake. I hope that the chocolate ones are better, but they were sold out the day I bought the cake mix.

Okay I promise to do a real cooking with Connie soon.

Cooking with Connie

Time for another cooking with Connie post. This time I made "Bacon & Cheese muffins", yep you heard me! 

For Christmas my husband got a Bacon cookbook from my Brother and his girlfriend. She is working at a company that makes bacon, well they make a lot more, but that is what they are famous for. So far it's only the employees that have the cookbook, but it should be on sale soon too. When Frank saw her bacon book he just loved it, and she just knew that she had to get an extra one for him for Christmas. Denmark is a big bacon country, though the sad thing is the best bacon is exported out of the country, United Kingdom is one of the big takers of our great bacon, and we are stuck with the not so good bacon, can you believe it?

I thought the "Bacon & Cheese muffins" sounded crazy, but good. To me a muffin has always been some sort of cake, but if you think about as a bread, well I must admit, they are crazy good:)

Here you got the simple recipe, yeah isn't it just great that the recipe is really easy as well?

150 g chopped bacon

250 g flour

2½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon paprika

100 g grated cheddar cheese

a small hand full chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon thyme

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 eggs

2½ dl milk

Fry the bacon, and save the bacon fat. Save 1/3 if the bacon to use as topping.

Mix flour, fried bacon, baking powder, paprika, grated cheese, thyme and walnuts in a bowl. In another bowl whisk together the bacon fat, olive oil, eggs and milk.

Mix the 2 bowls together and pour the batter into a muffin tray, sprinkle with bacon and, bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

Let them cool before serving. The only problem I had was that they stuck a bit to the paper muffin forms, but  that didn't stop them from being delicious. 

Cooking with Connie

Time for another "Cooking with Connie" post, this time I made Nutella truffles. I actually made those last year too, remember? Well this year I haven't made nearly as many cookies or candies as I did last year since we ended up throwing out so much last year. I did decide to make the nutella truffles since they were my favourite. 

They are super easy to make, all you need is:

125 grams of milk chocolate

25 grams of butter

2 tablespoons of cream

2 tablespoons of nutella

75 grams chopped hazelnuts

Melt the chocolate, butter and cream over a water bath, after it has all melted add the nutella and let it cool down. I ended up putting it in the fridge for about an hour. After it has cooled down you roll it into little balls and roll them in the chopped hazelnuts. The hazelnuts can be replaced with sprinkles like I did last year.

Enjoy!

I will be busy over the next week or so with work and Christmas, but for the first time ever I have actually scheduled some posts ahead of time, so you will actually get more regular post from me than I have been showing lately:)

Cooking with Connie

It's time for another cooking with Connie post, and again I have been baking, though this time I had a little helper. Jonas was helping me bake cookies.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of my little helper, I had my hands full trying not to get the cookie dough all over the kitchen, since Jonas wasn't the best at sitting still at the table, but what can you expect from a 21 month old boy? 

I do have a picture of the result, and I can't tell you how much I regretted not just putting plain white icing on all of them, but since I had started with the Christmas trees I continued... at least until I got to the stars and hearts.

So now we are a bit closer to being ready for Christmas. This weekend I also bought the last presents and got them wrapped. So we are getting closer to being ready, but there is still 2 weeks left, so I have to get my Christmas cards out soon:)

Have a great week everyone:)

Cooking with Connie

It's time for another "Cooking with Connie" post, and again it's not really a cooking post, but a baking post. On Friday I asked a colleague what I should make for dessert Friday night when a friend of ours were visiting.

She gave me a fast and easy recipe for something that I never got the name for, but I guess I can call it a "Strawberry and Raspberry crumble".

It was super easy to make, and tasted really great. I'm sorry for the poor quality of pictures, but I only got pictures with my phone.

As I said it's super easy and here you have the recipe:

60 grams of oatmeal

100 grams of sugar

140 grams of butter

a handful almonds

90 grams of flour

All of the above is mixed into a dough.

Frozen fruit (I used a small bag of strawberries and a small bag of raspberries)

Put the frozen fruit in an ovenproof dish, sprinkle the fruit with some extra sugar, or put the crumble dough on top. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius.

Serve with ice cream.

Enjoy:)

Cooking with Connie

It's time for another cooking with Connie post... well again it should be baking with Connie, but that just doesn't have a good ring to it:)

I am going to visit a coworker and friend (who is also in our little knitting group) had surgery done on Thursday. She had excess skin removed from above her eyes, so Jonas and I are going to visit her this afternoon, and I promised to bring cake.

I made Toblerone cupcakes, you can find the recipe here, I have used some of her recipes before, unfortunately Alicia stopped blogging about 1½ years ago, but her great recipes are still there for us to use:)

I had a bit of trouble with the piping bag, the first one broke, so I had to do with a plastic bag, then I hadn't chopped the toblerone enough, so it kept blocking the tip, so in the end I just use a plastic bag, and well they didn't turn out exactly how I wanted, but the taste will be the same:)

I made the same cupcakes for our Survivor party, though I just use a plain butter icing with a bit of food colouring, and that didn't stick in the piping bag, so here is proof that it doesn't always turn out too bad:)

Have a great weekend:)

Cooking with Connie

 Well I figured it was time for another Cooking with Connie post, and this time I am actually cooking and not baking! The nice summer weather has returned to Denmark, which meant we did a little BBQ. My go to recipe, which me and my husband loves in marinated chicken, marinated in a BBQ dry rub.

 Here we have the ingredients:

2 teaspoons of paprika

2 teaspoons of chili powder

2 tablespoons of brown sugar

1 teaspoon of onion powder

1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon of pepper

1 teaspoon of mustard powder

2 teaspoons of salt

 Mix it all together, and rub it on the chicken fillets, and let it set for at least 30 minutes.

 Put on the grill, first directly over the heat, and the move them to the middle, and put on the lid. I use a thermometer to check if they are done.

Served with some salad, bread and a glass of wine. How much better can a Sunday evening get? Except it looked like it might be raining so we had to eat inside, but I guessed we should have stayed outside, now dinner is over, Jonas is in the tub and it is still not raining:)

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend, and try this recipe, it super easy:)

Cooking with Connie

So I figured I would do my own series of post about cooking, well it will probably be more baking, but hey "Baking with Connie" doesn't have that good ring to it;)

It's not like I'm going to post this every Sunday, but whenever I try a new interesting recipe or maybe if I do one of the good old recipes, that is my go-to recipes. Today it is one of my go-to recipes, I'm going to make a banana cake... it is one of the cakes that never fails, and Jonas haven't been able to eat all the bananas that I bought, so instead of throwing them out I baked a cake.

Here you have the recipe, it's super easy, and I really doubt you can go wrong with it:)

3 eggs

170 grams of sugar

2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar

125 grams of flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

100 grams of melted and cooled butter

1 mashed banana (I used 2, but it's not necessary).

100 grams of dark chocolate (I only had milk chocolate, so I used that instead).

Mix the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar together so it's light. Mix flour, baking powder and butter in little by little. Then gently mix in the mashed banana.

Pour it into a tin and bake for about 55 minutes at 175 degrees Celsius.

Let the cake cool, melt the chocolate and decorate the cake with chocolate.

Yeah in Denmark we use the metric system, but here is a link to a place that will do the calculations into cups etc.

There you have it, enjoy:)