Last Crumbs

I made a Thin Mint Cake for Midsummer’s, and when I evened out the cake layers, I was smart enough to put the scraps in a bag in the freezer. For Fourth of July, I defrosted those scraps, and crumbled them. I added a little bit of milk and cream cheese, and mixed until I had a nice dough. I rolled balls, froze them for a short while, and dipped in dark chocolate mixed with a little bit of shortening.

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I’ve got a new oven. This is brilliant for 3 reasons. Firstly, it’s all clean and shiny; I mean, how often does your oven look clean and shiny on the inside? Not very often I think you’ll find. Not if you’re a slovenly layabout like me anyway. Second, my old oven was, quite frankly, a piece of shit. It had no numbers on the temperature dial and no symbols for the oven settings and it cookedunevenlyso that everything had to be turned around halfway through or it would burn on one side – not exactly ideal. Thirdly, importantly: this new oven was free. The best of all reasons, let’s face it. New ovens are expensive and I can’t afford one, so when someone from Appliances Online e-mailed me randomly to ask if I wanted one, I said YES PLEASE I LOVE YOU THANK YOU MARRY ME. In exchange for this, they want me to link to their oven page, so here’s that and they want me to say that they also sell dishwashers, just in case you’re in the market for one of those.

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This cake makes me drool a little, just remembering it. It was really awesome. I served it at our annual Crawfish party - after the salty and very lean crawfish, a hefty chocolate dessert is just what you need. It’s easy to prepare in advance, and thus perfect for a party.

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Remember three years ago? Dagmar, Lena and I won the cooking contest “Home Cook of the Year.” It’s a really fun contest, and winning was obviously fabulous.

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October Fourth is the national cinnamon bun day in Sweden - Kanelbullens Dag.

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My friend Lizzie and I recently went to check out the new menu at Polpetto and fell head over heels for a blob of salt cold whippy fun calledBaccal Mantecato. The cod had been transformed into a very light, mousse-like paste and we enjoyed trying and failing to guess how it had been made. The revelation was that it had been beaten with oil, in the same way as one would make mayonnaise. “It’s very labour intensive” we were warned but on holiday in Spain with so much salt cod at our fingertips we just couldn’t resist having a go.

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I know I don’t have to introduce Thin Mints to my US readers, but they might not be as available in the rest of the world. Definitely not in Sweden, that’s for sure. I remember having them in the US, and was thusly intrigued by the idea of the flavors transformed into an actual cake. I had to change the recipe quite a bit, since it starts out with a boxed cake mix and our cake mixes aren’t even similar (nor the same size). So, I started with a from-scratch recipe for cake mix, and winged it from there. It turned out great!

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Nduja is a spicy, spreadable, Calabrian sausage up there with the trendiest of ingredients. For months I’ve resisted its porky charms, the only reason being that my only other experience with a (different) spreadable sausage (at a very popular East London restaurant) ended in 3 days of food poisoning hell. The very idea of spreadable meat made me queasy, until I came across a nduja stall in Borough Market last week. The giant red lobes glistened seductively in the sunlight, I approached cautiously for a taste, then promptly kicked myself for being such a wuss and missing out on what is one of the most delicious pork products I’ve tasted in a very long time.

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Today, I want to link to a text written by Sbastien Boudet, a French baker in Sweden who’s putting a lot of hard work into reforming the way we think about bread. This text was refused by a Swedish bread magazine (BAKA), because they didn’t want the debate. Pretty sad! So, instead, head over to Sbastien’s blog and read it there. Swedish only, I’m afraid.

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Leftovers is not something that excite me, in general. I usually get tired of eating a dish and never want the leftovers on the next day. However… if you turn those leftovers into a totally new dish, that’s usually ok. And sometimes, it’s just brilliant.

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