SUNDAY BAKING: QUICK VEGAN BANANA CHOCOLATE CAKE

I run one of those households that often (or well, always) ends up with a banana or two turned so ripe they're too yucky to eat. But they can happily go in a cake!

So today we decided to bake one with Dag; a quick banana based chocolate cake that is - for being a cake, -not too unhealhty. Kids can easily participate here as things like getting to mash banana is fun and easy to do, and with a big enough bowl not necessarily even that messy.

It's a cake easily altered, for example, I add some more spices to this during the colder season.

You will need:
3 ripe banans
around 50g of dried dates + a hint of water
1dl coconut sugar (or brown sugar)
1-1,5 dl cocoa
3 dl spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 dl oil  - I use coconut oil
(+ a dash of cinnamon)

Now, to make the easy things hard, or at least a bit more confusing for you: I have made this with four small bananas and with just two bananas and both versions work as well. The more banans the less dates you need, so when I had four banana-nanas I used just five dates. Also adjut the amount of cocoa powder to your own taste; 1,5 dl of cocoa makes the  rather dark and strong so you can go with less if that suits you better. I have also made this without the soda and it turned out fine. I you don't care about it being vegan or not you will get a nice cake by using butter instead of oil too (and you can of course toss in an egg for more fluffyness but then again that is already another cake). For more spices try some ginger and clover and perhaps a little cardamom.

First,  pre-heat the oven to 200c. Chop the dates and put them in a pan with a hint of water so it covers the dates, and heat up. Let it boil for a little while so you get a sticky paste. Add a little water if needed so the dates don't burn.

Mash the bananas with a fork or a masher. Add the sugar and cocoa, then the date-mass, then flour and finally the oil (in a runny state). Put in a greased cake mold (or fold it with baking paper).

I don't think the batter on this one is very good raw (which is a good thing, because that means more cake later) but Dag was eager to lick the bowl.

Bake for 35-50 minutes in 200C, depending on your oven and the size of your mold. Try it with a stick and take out to cool.

You can eat this warm, as it is or with ice cream. I prefer it after a day or two in the fridge.
Pimp it up with salted peanuts (no that's not crazy!), jam or with a bunch of cherries and some chocolate coconut cream  frosting!

RHUBARB CHUTNEY

Rhubarb season is coming to an end over here, but as it has been colder than usually (have I said this already here? How many times now? I feel betrayed by my summer!) you can still collect and make use of the stems, especially for jams and such, as it does not matter if they have turned a little more blah and bitter in their taste when cooked with sugar and such.

Although rhubarb actually is a vegetable, it is pretty much solely used for sweet dishes over here.
But it makes a great chutney for salty treats as well! It's a perfect addition to the bbq dinner. It's really good.

It should be really good with meat; I've had mine with tofu and grilled halloumi for example, but also as an addition to nachos and salsa.

You will need:
500g rhubarb
1 (yellow) onion
2 big cloves of garlic
1 chili fruit
about 0,75 dl honey
2 tbs red wine vinegar
a pinch of salt
1-2 tsp fresh ginger
a little turmeric

(A little embarrassing that we have our own honey but it's not pictured here... there is an old saying here that the shoemaker's kids have no shoes. And we've run out of it actually, so I had to buy some.)


Clean and peel the rhubarb, chop that with the onion, garlic and chili into pieces. Put in a pot together with the honey and vinegar and salt and let it boil together for about 20 minutes into a thick chutney.

Add the ginger and turmeric and pour into a hot cleaned jar.

I want to fill more jars so I double the recipe. I can also recommend to chop some rhubarb and put in your freezer, take it out and make this in winter to spice your dinner up on cold days! Because most likely your summer batch will be finished before the leaves fall off.

AND SO IT WAS SUMMER

Summer had suitable started while I was away so I arrived home to apple blossoms and happy cowns out again after the winter.  Goodbye May and Hello June!

(It also turned out to be the first June in over 50 years when the temperature two weeks in had still not reached over +20 (and even sadly stayed way under), so it has been more jackets and less sumer sandals still..)

Brought my stuff over to the farm and had a couple of days off together with my little soon-to-be-three-years-old-fella.

I made him (oven baked) pancake the first day. That is his absolute favourite. And that little kid can eat pancake I tell you. Several plates!

Picked rhubarb with my eager little helper.


Made, among other things, rhubarb punch. When you make it by soaking and not by cooking you end upwith a beautiful strong pink liquid. I just let unpeeled bits of rhubarbs soak for three days with lemon and a little sugar, then strain and heat up the juice with some more sugar and bring it to a boil (so that the recently added sugar dissolves) and then bottle it.

Summer is so easy! You jsut go out and pick up things from the ground to eat. I made a salad of ground eldre, chives and dandelion leaves from the garden.

And here are some more pictures of the now already faded apple blossom just because.

And an apple tree cat to end this one:

5 x BREAKFAST

For me breakfast is the best meal of the day; my schedule is such that I usually have the most time in the morning.

Apple-banana porridge on oats from our farm with raisins and black currants plus a little bit of almond butter on top. I cook the apple with the oats and put the banana in about half way trough, but the berries and raisins after. A basic porridge becomes more fancy that way, almost like a dessert. A small spoon of peanut butter, instead of almond such, is also good.

But here we have it on bread instead; peanut butter banana sandwhich, an apple and a hot cocoa drink with almond milk, vanilla, charadmom, coconut sugar and some cinnamon.

And peanut butter with citrus! Who would have known those two tastes would blend together so well! Peanut butter banana-.sandwhich with cumqats - I have a little tiny tree in the house and Dag kept picking the fruits off. So they ended up on my breakfast sandwhich.
Also, avocado sandwich with sundried tomato paste and chive, lemon water and some strawberry-rhubarb compote.

First outdoors breakfast of this year! Black coffee and raw bars with berries and cocoa.

(And wowza, now I am totally going to renew myself and add a fifth thing instead of my normal four):
Brekkie no5 is a smoothie made of mango-orange oat milk (oat milk with mango pulp and orange juice in it. Nice in drinks but terrible on müsli. Just sayin'), banana and frozen strawberries, together with some dates with almond butter.

PUDDING

Chia chocolate pudding. The kind of dish (or even, perhaps, treat?) that I am not really sure if it's just kind of edible or actually good.

I've made a few sets of chia pudding, or porridge (or slime) and they have never been much to cheer about. Very 'meh'. So why would I still keep making it? A) Because I still have a lot of chia seeds left over to be used up and B) you know when you sort of get this feeling you should like something (happensa lot with so called "superfoods") because you would like to like it and everyone says it's really good and also good for you? I kind of got that going on with that pudding now.

God damn it a (very) long time ago I used to make a small cup of linseed slime that I tried to get down every morning because it's really good for the stomach. The first mornings it was rather OK but after a while it just got unbearable. I mixed it with porridge but I could still feel the slimyness trough. During the same time I was also drinking apple cider vinegar in the morning (yeah those were the gourmand-mornings of 2001); a couple of spoons in a big glass of water. Cleansing and good for metabolism and all that. So they say. But it was the same with the vinegar, after a while I had to start pinching my nose and thing happy thoughts to get it down. Yuck. But that was then and now is now -I eventually (quite fast actually) gave up on the linseed slime. And vinegar. So one'd think that I now at this age would just forget about any self torment when it comes to what I ingest and move on with my life without any more superfood slime or chia seeds.
But then we get back to point A and the fact that those small little f**ckers don't come cheap.

What I had been missing all the time was of course cocoa.  Because anything related to chocolate makes most things better. And  ta-da, that chia jar of mine is started emptying up and, like I said, it might even be that it does so in a very tasty way.

The chocolate chia pudding (< bolded for those who think there is way much text here by now and just want to know what's in the cup in the picture without having to read it all):
So my chocolate chia pudding consists of chia seeds (surprise!) and vegetable milk. I use almond, but hazel or maybe coconut milk (not the canned one but the runny milky one that for example Go Green sells) is next on the list to try.  Then in with some vanilla powder, cocoa powder (quite a lot) and coconut sugar. I make it semi firm, with the milk covering the seeds well before I leave it to set over night or at least for some hours. I have a jar of lingonberry powder that I also add a little bit of. That gives a some extra sting. You can also add a tiny little pinch of salt.

When the pudding is ready I whip it a bit and mix in black currants and sprinkle coconut flakes on top. This goes well with  banana too, and with some raisins or finely chopped dried apricots mixed in. I am thinking of perhaps running the pudding in the blender when done though, to get it smooth.

Also, I've noticed a lot of small things taste better when served out of a coffee up. How is that one may wonder? The reason is probably the same that makes any beverage taste better when had out of a mason jar (according to the young and hip at least).

Do you have any food or dishes that you can't really decide on, yuck or yum?

QUICK FRUIT ICE CREAM

Every now and then I put together some quick and healthy ice cream as dessert for the kids (not to forget myself) that you basically can put together with two ingredients only. I do tend to add a little extras as well.

You may have read about banana as a magic ingredient for this and that, like a substitute for pretty much everything else than the eggs in pancakes (I tried it, never got it to work, just something that reminded scrambled banana-egg...), chocolate (eaten when chilled/frozen for a while. Or so they said in the late nineties at least. I tried it and powdered cocoa powder on to increase the feel. it did not work. But then again I am very serious about my chocolate) and also as ice cream when whipped frozen. The ice cream I can vouch for!

I am often stuck with over ripe bananas that I chop and put in a box in the freezer for later ice-cream use. (Or, to be honest, sometimes I am just lazy and put the banana in the freezer as it is and then peel it frozen with a knife...) I have made this ice cream with room-temperatured bananas as well and frozen berries as the main ingredient for an instant treat -the consistence getting closer to sherbet then- and also by mixing in frozen pear and pineapple etc.

So, here's how to make a quick two-or-very-few-ingredients ice cream:

Put chopped frozen bananas in a mixer and blend. You can also use a hand mixer.
I used four bananas for five persons.

(Note to self: Frozen bananas waiting to be squished in the mixer don't tend to look very yummy on photo.)

Add a bit of vanilla (or some other spice, like cardamom) and blend until fluffy -you could enjoy it like this already if you'd want to.

I like to add a bit of some plant milk (rice or almond) for an even creamier result, but this time I put in a jar of lemon quark and blend it well.

Time for the berries! Any frozen fruit or berries will do - I prefer sour and add a few drops of lemon juice at this point as well. I added a couple of handfulls of frozen cherries from last summer. Tis time I mixed them a little bit only so the ice cream did not turn red but kept the cherries in bits.

*hint: cocoa nibs are a great extra little addition to any banana-blend ice cream*

But it in the freezer for a while to set for a while -
(I am very aware that this, once again, does not look too yummy. It is, though.)

-or serve right away and it is kind of like soft ice
*hint: from a chilled bowl so it does not get very runny too soon*

You can let the ice cream freeze for a longer time too, as long as you remember to take it out and give it a whip every now and then (it will turn very hard otherwise).

Eat and be happy!

RAW MANGO CHEESECAKE

Spring is here, Easter around the corner, pretty much all food featured anywhere is yellow.

So I am not going to be any worse - here's a yellow cake suitable for the season! (Or at any other time of the year, of course.)

You will need:


A couple of mangoes, cashews, pecan nuts and almonds, lemon juice, dried dates, dried pricots and cocoa butter.

This recipe makes for a rather small cake, 20-25cm in diameter.

Let the apricots and dates soak for about 10-15minutes in water so that they soften up.
I used six (small) apricots and 2 dates.

Make the crust first. Mix almonds and pecans in a mixer; I used 1,5dl of both. You can use just pecans too if you so like (and perhaps live somewhere where pecans are not ridiculously expensive). You don't need to mix them all smooth, leave a little crunch. Add the apricots and dates plus a pinch of salt and mix.


Press the crust out in a baking mold. Add a baking paper or plastic film if the mold does not have detachable edges. I usually put a bit of baking paper in the bottom anyway.

Put the crust the fridge while you make the filling.


First start by puttig the cocoa butter, 1-2 tbs, to melt in a cup or glass placed in a bowl with hot water.

Mix 200g cashews along with some squeezed lemon juice in the mixer (about half a lemon). You can add a few drops of lemon more after a while to make the mixing easier. Use a spatula to push down any cashew crumbs that rise along the edges of the mixing bowl. The mixture has to be very, very smooth. It has to be all smooth before you add anything else; you can not "go back a step with this one".  The mix will start forming a ball when it is ready.


Slice one mango and add it in pieces. Mix smooth.
If you want you can add in a spoon of honey or agave (or some sweetener of your choice), but it will be fine without.


When the cocoa butter has become liquid (add some more hot water to the bowl if it has not yet melted), pour it in a thin string while mixing. Mix for a while so the cocoa butter blends in well.
The cocoa butter is used for firming the filling. You could also do this with coconut oil.

Take a couple of slices of the other mango and put it in the mixer with the filling. Mix for a while so the mango gets a bit chopped up and mixed in, but it does not need to dissolve completely.
(Use the rest of the mango for decoration on the cake or just go ahead and eat it while you wait for the cake to be ready.)


Take out the crust and pour the fill on. Put in the fridge for a couple of hours or in the freezer for about half an hour before serving.

Then enjoy!



Next time I think I will take some bits of dried mango and grate in on top of the cake for some extra mango-ness!

The cake will stay fresh some 3-4 days when kept cool.

AFTERNOON TEA AND GIN & TONIC

Well I have been doing other things than working too. The other week I was invited over to the British Embassy for afternoon tea. Or, afternoon tea and gin tonics, to be more exact.

If you'd asked me a decade ago what my favourite drink was, I'd give you a standard answer (that, contrary to what some of you may think, did not come straight from the local tiki bar's list) - simply, "the free drink". On our late high school- and early student years we always used to participate in the season opening day at the university and hang out at art exhibition openings because of the free wine they'd serve.  (This actually sounds pretty bad now put into writing, but it was a lot of fun back then. And I did go to art exhibitions for other reasons as well, being an art student.). But, for a more serious answer, a good gin and tonic definitely makes my top five.


So I grabbed my passport and wore plaid (quelle surprise) and head up to the big pink house at the top of the hill in the big park in the city, where a bit of the UK faces a bit of America.

I'm a sucker for decor and that is always what I pay attention too  when arriving somewhere. I want that lamp.


And those huge windows too. The view is a quite amazing one of of the park with Finnish Bay opening up behind it.


Sibelius was here once too.

Now, I was not invited by the embassy but rather to it, but by Pernod Richard Finland for an event regarding the release of the new Beefeater 24 gin (which is, for those of you who know about, or are interested in these things, a premium gin distilled with - among many other things- grapefruit peel and two different kinds of tea. And thus goes surprisingly well together with tea too. It was good. Very round and soft to taste). The event consisted of a little introduction to the British tradition of afternoon tea as well as the history of gin and tonic and gin in general and the making of it (distilled by hand, in London). Most definitely one of those things that you never knew you wanted to know about before, but now do. Really interesting once you get into it, especially if told by a connoisseur with a passion for the subject, like bar tender-master Timo Siitonen from A21 Cocktail Lounge (one of the best in town btw).



Time for tea! Served by a silent butler who showed up to fill my cup before it ever got empty.


The cucumber on the sandwhich was infused with gin.


And then gin and tonics! Here a classic triple-citrus one served the Spanish way in a round glass. (You learn something new everyday). I got a big urge to go home and throw a fancy party with a proper bar and drinks. (My friends once hosted a cocktail party for new year's. 2007 I think. They had made an amazing amount of small cocktail bites to eat that were really good and we made drinks out of an 1960's drink recipe book. The drinks were all very strong it turns out, most tasted rather awful due to that.)

Well, anyway. I also got to notice the big difference between tonic water and tonic water.
After this event I will propaböy never be able to fully enjoy a regular GT at a bar knowing how it could taste...


Tasting and smelling the ingredients of the 24 gin.


Mr.Siitonen giving some tips and tricks on how to spice up the original gin and tonic - herbs and spices are easy ways to give the classic a new twist.

My cocktail party itch got even more serious by this point because all of the versions looked ridiculously inviting.

I went for a mediterranean inspired "forrest version".  It had a branch of rosemary, juniper berries and lemon in it. The ideal proportion is one part gin and two parts tonic.  I think I have to start pimping up my water at home too with other than lemon and the occasional mint or cucumber because this looks just as nice as it tasted.

For those of you who go virgin I'm sure a fine tonic (this was Fever Tree, Fentimans was also very good) with the same ingredients would most likely taste rather swell too.