Maple butter

Despite the name the maple butter does not contain any dairy butter. It is made of pure maple syrup that has been boiled to a certain temperature and then stirred. It is very very sweet and used as spread on toast, scones or glaze on cakes. I use it sometimes instead of honey. Tastes wonderful with sourdough bread.

Dark maple syrup

In Canada maple syrup is sold from light in colour to very dark in colour. The darker the maple syrup is the more intense the maple flavour will be. The colour depends on the time in the season the maple sap was collected, the later in the season the darker the maple syrup.

How is Maple Syrup made?

We had an amazing opportunity to visit a sugarbush farm in Ontario, Canada and saw the whole process of making maple syrup.

Buckets are hanging on the trees and collecting the sap that is literally dripping from small spouts that have been bored in the trees. Big maple bush farms have hoses that are connecting all the trees.

On a good day one tree can give about 12 litres of maple sap. The season runs usually between mid March until end of April, depending on the outside temperature.

The temperature must be minus during the night and plus during the day for the sap to flow. At some point starch in the trunk converts into sugar and when the temperature is plus degrees during the day the sugary sap goes all the way up in the trunk, and when the temperature drops during the night the sap goes all the way down and is caught by the spouts.

The sugar level is measured with an aerometer and the sap contains about 2 % sugar, no more. Basically most of it is water and that is why it does not have the nice colour the maple syrup has. We tasted it and it has absolutely no taste. 

After many many hours of boiling in special machines the most of the water evaporates and the end product is left with 67 % of sugar and it looks and tastes like the maple syrup we know.

Before visiting the maple bush I always thought that the maple syrup comes out of the tree looking as in the supermarket :-). But there is so much patience and labour behind the whole process. Thank you Canadian First Nation people for figuring out how to do this.

Favorite bakery in Munich

Hofpfisterei is my favourite bakery here in Munich. They make amazing breads, sweet breads, danishes, cookies...just name it. All bread is organic sourdough and they have so many variates. My favourite  bread is called '1331', a blend of rye and wheat. But to be honest I love them all.

And their poppy seed streusel and hazelnut-braid, oh my oh my, addiction for ever and ever.

Knäckebröd

In the recent years Swedish knäckebröd (crispbread) has become very popular in the rest of the Europe (world?). Here in Germany you can buy it in every supermarket, there are many different variations, but like with the most things there is difference between knäckebröd and knäckebröd. Let me tell you about the true knäckebröd.

The true knäckebröd is simple, ingredient list is short, taste is nutty and a bit of butter is all you need to enjoy it. I have actually never made it my self, few people do these days as you can find great knäckebröd in most Swedish stores. And everyone has its favourite.
Some great brands worth mentioning are Pyramidbageriet, Leksands Knäckebröd and Vika Bröd. These brands can be hard to find outside of Sweden so for me the time has come to start making knäckebröd at home. Recipe coming soon!

Tomatillos

Tomatillo is a vegetable native to Mexico and it is used when making green salsa. Although it looks similar to tomato it is nothing like tomato. It taste is tart and fresh, it is not juicy, rather spongy and it has many small seeds. The thin husk is peeled before use. If I would compare the taste to any another vegetable it would be the green pepper, but at the same time it does not have the bitter taste green pepper can have.

I have never seen tomatillos in Europe. I do not know why they did not make it to Europe (or maybe in Europe?) like tomatoes did long ago. It is an excellent vegetable and I have no doubts that many people here would love it.
The green salsa made of tomatillos is the greatest salsa ever. It is very easy to make it as well. Depending on what kind of taste you are after, the salsa can be made with fresh, cooked, roasted or pan fried tomatillos. And addition of coriander, onion, chili and garlic makes a true Mexican green salsa.

Wolfram Alpha

If you have ever wondered:

a) how much Vitamin C is hiding in one apple?
b) how much grams is 1 cup of chocolate chip?
c) how much iron there is in 2 tbsp of Nutella?

look at Wolfram Alpha, new knowledge engine!

Answers:
a) 13%
b) 168g
c) 1,62mg, or 9% of your daily iron intake...not bad Nutella, not bad at all!

Organic yeast

I have always thought that all yeast is organic yeast, pure natural product. So when I saw "organic yeast" in the store I was surprised. I checked the web page of the company that produces organic yeast and got more information. I am not a chemist but that stuff in conventional yeast sounds scary.

So one day I picked up the organic yeast and baked one of my favourite yeast-dough cakes, Swedish ring cake. I have made this cake many, many times so I knew that it would be easy to see a difference between organic yeast and conventional yeast, if any, when baking.

And yes there was a small difference. The cake did not rise as much as it does with the conventional yeast and the bubbles made by yeast were bigger, not fine like in conventional yeast. Usually the cake is quite round on the top and cuts can be seen nicely.
I am not sure if it all depends on the yeast or the flour, but in any case the difference was so small that I really can live with it. The cake tasted delicious as always.

I used kamut flour instead of wheat flour in the dough, and muscovado sugar instead of white sugar in the filling.

Ring cake
1 cake, 22 cm
50 gr butter
1 dl milk
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 egg
20 gr fresh yeast
0,5 dl sugar
pinch of salt

50 gr butter
100 gr almond paste
3 tbsp muscovado sugar

egg and sliced almond for decoration

Melt the butter. In another pan heat the milk with cardamom until warm (not hot, yeast doesn't like hot). Pour the milk over the yeast and blend until the yeast is dissolved. Add melted butter, lightly beaten egg, sugar, salt. Add flour and knead until smooth. Let rise until double size, about 1 hour.

Blend the butter with almond paste and sugar. Role out the dough, 40x15 cm, and spread the almond paste filling. Role and form ring. Put in a round baking pan and every centimetre make a cut, 1 cm deep. Arrange the cuts one to the left and one to the right, just a bit. Cover with a tea-towel and let rise 1 hour.

Paint with beaten egg, sprinkle with almond slices and bake in preheated oven, 200 C, for 20 minutes.

Blueberries and Bilberries...I had no idea

Last week when I made Conchas I discovered that there are blueberries and bilberries. All this time I thought they were the same berry, one just being a bit bigger. But was I wrong.

I realized that one of the biggest contributors to this confusion were their names in English and Swedish. Blueberry is sometimes called “blueberry” and sometimes “American blueberry” in Swedish. And bilberry is also called “blueberry” in Swedish. So you can understand where all this confusion starts.

Bilberries are very Swedish; they grow all over the forests, mostly in the north of the country. And they are very loved and appreciated berries. Sometimes I think that they were probably the first thing that started growing here in the North after all ice melted zillion years ago. And blueberries are imported, meaning more expensive, meaning less popular. You can find them in the stores sold in very small packages among all exotic fruits.

But last week I bought both, blueberries and bilberries. I thought that blueberries would fit better for conchas just because they looked more firm and would be easier to incorporate into the dough (and I was right).

So was I surprised when I saw that blueberries are actually white inside and taste differently? Oh, yes I was. I felt like I was living in a lie all these years :-) just because someone messed it up linguistically.

However, I like both, blueberries and bilberries. Blueberries are meaty and have this pleasant sweet perfume. And bilberries taste forest, in a good way. Bellow you can see the difference, blueberries to the left and bilberries to the right.

Anyway, I still want to know who messed up the linguistic part. How can blueberries and bilberries have the same name in Swedish? Do tell if you know.