Danish New Year's Eve Cookies (Kransekage)

Serves 12

Ingredients:
1. 750g almond paste (2 packets of marcipan of 375g each)
2. 100g sugar
3. 3 egg white
4. A few TBS flour to adjust the dough so that it is firm, uniform and doesn't stick to your fingers.
5. 1 pack of nougat (optional)

Icing for decoration:
1. 2 egg white pasteuriseret
2. 1 tsp vinegar
3. 110g icing sugar (flormelis)

Directions:
1. Mix egg white and icing sugar with a fork.
2. Portion the almond paste into bite size (easier to knead), and mix with the egg white mixture.
3. Knead into a dough by hand or mixer.
4. Adjust with flour get the consistency of the dough if needed (I had to add a few TBS flour)
5. Place in the fridge for 30 mins (optional)
6. Roll the dough into rods approx. 2 cm thick which is cut into pieces of 12 cm, 15 cm, 18 cm, 21 cm, 24 cm, 27 cm, 30 cm, 33 cm and 36 cm. Make a ball to form the top of the cake and flatten it lightly.
7. Use a chopstick or wooden stick to make an indent for the nougat filling.
8. Cover the nougat with the almond paste of the rod so that the nougat is completely covered.
9. Form into 9 rings.
10. Bake in the oven at 225 degree celsius for 8 minutes until the top turns golden. Don't bake for too long, as they will show cracks.
11. Remove and let it cool down completely.
12. Decorate with icing sugar or melted chocolate.

Additional Information:
If you are making a smaller portion, you can use 1 pack of almond paste (375 g) with 50g icing sugar and 1 egg white. As the almond paste is already full of sugar, I reduced the sugar compared to most recipes.

I had to adjust by adding quite a lot of flour, in order for the dough not to stick to my hands.

I didn't add vinegar and egg white for the icing to be used for decoration. It didn't turn out so well, as the decoration looked translucent. I then use melted chocolate for decorating the new year cake.

References:
https://www.valdemarsro.dk/kransekage
https://www.louisesmadblog.dk/kransekage/
https://www.dk-kogebogen.dk/opskrifter/217/kransekage
https://www.dr.dk/mad/opskrift/klassisk-kransekage

Healthy Banana & Oats Cookies

Banana & Oats Cookies

Adapted from The Healthy Chef

Makes 2 trays 

Ingredients:

1.  3 (300-350g) large ripe banana smashed

2. 1 tsp cinnamon powder (optional)

3. 2 full cups (200g) rolled oats

4. 1/2 cup raisins

5. 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

6. 1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 130°C / 270°F.

2. Mash the bananas well with a fork or a food processor.

3. Mix well all the ingredients into a large bowl.

4. Press and squeeze tight and form into bite size cookies and flatten.

5. Bake for 30 mins or until golden.

6. Cool and serve.

Additional Information:

I have some over-ripe bananas and decided to make them into banana & oats cookies. It can keep in an air-tight container for 4 days. I divided the dough into two and added 1 tablespoon of honey to the other half. The half without honey tasted sweet enough for me and Baby FECS. She ate a lot of it. So actually I don't need to add honey to sweeten it.

References:
https://thehealthychef.com/blogs/recipes/banana-oatmeal-cookies

 Add 3 large bananas into a mixing bowl

 Mash the bananas thoroughly well with a fork or a food processor

 Add 1 tsp cinnamon powder

 Add 2 full cups of rolled oats

 Add 1/4 cup of olive oil

 Add 1/2 cup of raisins

 Add 1/2 cup of walnuts

 Mix and squeeze the dough well

 Form into bite-size cookies

 Flatten the cookies

 Bake at 130 degree celusis

Bake for 30 mins or until golden. You can bake it for 45 mins before burning the raisins, since the oven is at fairly low temperature.

Let cool and enjoy. Store leftovers in an air-tight containers. They can last for four days.

Easy Ready-To-Bake Danish Ryebread

I am still experimenting how to make easy bread. I bought this easy ready-to-bake rye bread mix from Irma supermarket.

Here is the instructions in Danish

 Here is the white cap

Open the cap

Add 450ml of lukewarm water, cap back and shake well

Remove the whole cover and check that it is mixed well. I find that I still need to stir and mix it with a spoon. You can bake it straight from the paper pack.

I prefer to bake it in a bread dish. Oil the bread dish with olive oil to prevent sticking, before transferring the mixture into the bread dish.

Close-up

Cover and let the dough rise for 30 mins

It has risen :-)

Bake in oven at 190 degree celsius...

for 60 mins:-)

Now it is done :-)

As usual, I am running late. Supposed to get the bread baked by 9.15am this morning for our Little FECS to eat before his Chinese class. But I didn't make it. I was having a cozy time with Baby FECS this morning and only started the work around 8am.

Acts 20:24 - What We Put into Life is More Important than What We Get Out of It.

"However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me - the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace." - Acts 20:24

Commentary from the Life Application Bible:

"We often feel that life is a failure unless we're getting a lot out of it: recognition, fun, money, money, success. But Paul considered life worth nothing unless he used it for God's work. What he put into life was far more important than what he got out. Which is more important to you - what you get out of life, or what you put into it?"

During my QT (quiet time) with God today, Acts 20:24 spoke to me.

What is the task that God put into my life right now? Besides sharing the gospel, which is the task of every Christian, that's motherhood for me right now. And motherhood can come with all the mandane tasks that makes life feel unfruitful and unproductive.

I remembered, when Baby FECS was a baby, I struggled with that. I get nothing done in a day. The day was just filled with cycles of feeding, changing diapers and putting Baby FECS to nap. It is a little better now, but still feels unproductive. It feels like time is just spent getting Baby FECS home from day care and home is chaotic at dinner time. And before I know, dinner time is over and the day is over. And I feel like I have not achieved much, nor gotten much out of a day. And I can feel lousy that I have ended a day with nothing much accomplished.

God has reminded me through this verse that what I put into life (e.g. changing diapers, cooking, etc.) is more important than what I get out of life (e.g. planning and going on a fun trip for my family, written an article or blog post, learning a new course, completing a home project, getting recognition and making career, etc.)

Recently, I took a strength test offered by our HR at work that will help our career development. One of my strengths according to the result is Achiever. The report reads:

"Your Achiever theme helps explain your drive.... It is very likely that you possess the physical and mental endurance needed to spend hours studying, reading, or researching... By nature, you can mentally zero in on tasks for hours at a time when you have a goal to reach. You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. And by "every day" you mean every single day - workdays, weekends, vacations. No matter how much you may feel you deserve a dy of rest, if the day passes without some form of achievement, no matter how small, you will feel dissatisfied... Your relentless need for achievement might not be logical... But it will always be with you. As an Achiever you must learn to live with this whisper of discontent. 

It so describes me and helps me to understand myself better. It helps me to understand why I have this feeling of lousiness when the day ended not very productive seen from my perspective. It helps me to understand why I can't really implement a "Do nothing day" that some mommy posts advocate as a fun one-to-one time with children, even though I tried. It helps me to undersand how I can drive my family crazy by constantly putting more onto our "plates."

Of course, my "achiever" strength is also one of my major weaknesses.

God through today's QT has taught me that sometimes what we put into life is more important than what we get out of it. I need to learn how to re-define what a "successul" day is. A successful day can be a day that all I do is changing diapers and putting Baby FECS to nap. No time for Montessori activity, piano practice for Our Little FECS, or visiting a museum or going to a festival and that is also ok.

Also, I am reminded that I shouldn't feel bad putting in so much, even if I don't see the returns or rewards. In the area of parenting, for example, for the umpteen time, we told our kids not to do certain things, or to do certain things, and for the umpteen time, they forget or don't follow. I shouldn't feel that all my efforts are wasted. Our kids may not turn out as what we like them to be, but what we put in defines the success, not what we get out of it. We put in all the effort to train them in character-building and the rest we have to leave it to God. So what we put in is more important than what we get out of it.

While, I don't think I am going to be able to learn this lesson overnight, but it is at least a good start with the bit of clarity that God has given to me in this area of my life :-)

Homemade Hamburgers

Serves 4

Ingredients:
1. 400-500 g ground beef
2. 4 wholemeal burger buns
3. 4 slices of cheddar cheese
4. 2 iceberg lettuce leaves thinly shredded
5. 2 tomatoes thinly sliced
6. 1/2 red pepper bell sliced in ring
7. 1/2 onion sliced in ring
8. 1/4 cucumber sliced thin
9. Ketchup
10. Butter
11. 1 TBS cooking oil

Marinade for the beef patties:
1. 1 clove garlic pressed
2. 1/2 onion minced or blended
3. 1 TBS white wholewheat flour or 1 tsp cornstarch - adding corn starch helps the beef patties to be tender and not dry after frying
4. 1 TBS soy sauce (optional)
5. 1 egg (optional)
6. 50 ml fresh milk (optional)
7. Salt & pepper to taste

8. 1 tsp or TBS oregano, thyme, basil, dried pasley or dried wild garlic (ramsløg), or more as desired.

Directions:
1. Blend in a food processor all the ingredients for the beef patties.
2. Form beef into 4 beef patties by hand.
3. Heat pan with oil, fry beef on medium-high heat for 2 minutes on each side or until golden brown.
4. Place cheese on each patty to melt the cheese.
5. Toast the burger buns.
6. Spread butter or chili mayonnaise on each bun.
7. Build the burger by placing lettuces, tomato, red pepper bell, onion, beef patty, cheese and cucumber on the bottom burger bun. Place top bun.

Tip:
You can also add avocado in the burger.
You can serve with homemade french fries or sweet potato fries on the side.

Additional Information:
Our Little FECS requested for hamburgers for dinner tonight. Often, the most challenging part of making hamburgers is that the beef patties tend to be dry. The trick is to add corn starch to the ground beef when marinating it. That really helped to make the meat nice, tender and juicy to eat :-)

400g ground beef

Marinade the ground beef with pressed garlic, blended or minced onion, corn starch, salt and pepper. I also added 1 TBS of soy sauce (optional)

Form the ground beef into burger patties

Heat pan with cooking oil

Fry the beef patties until...

Done

Transfer to dish and ready to be build into burgers :-)

Spread a little butter and place some lettuce, red pepper fruit and tomato slices on the burger bun

  Place a beef patty

Place a slice of cheese

Place a layer of onion

Place a layer of cucumber slices

Place the top burger bun

31 August 2018: Baby FECS (2Y3M15D) and Little FECS (9Y5M26D) helping to marinade the ground beef

18 April 2020

Friluftsbadet Badesøen in Albertslund - Open-Air Swimming-Pool

The summer is over, and I am just archiving this information for my family for next year. 

If you only have a couple of hours to spare, and your kids want to go somewhere that they can have fun playing with water, but you don't want to spend a bomb driving a few hours to a faraway water theme park for only a couple of hours (for some reason, water theme parks in Denmark are far away, although there is plan to build one in Copenhagen), then Friluftsbadet Badesøen in Albertslund is a good choice that is fun for the kids. It is a relatively quick drive for us (less than 30 minutes from our place).

Currently, it costs 50 DKK for adult and 35 DKK for child 0-14 years old. There is BBQ evenings on Wednesdays where you can bring your own meat to grill for free. The water is always capped at 25 degree celsius. It is open only in the summer and last day was end of August. This year ,it was August 26 2018.

Here is the details:

Skallerne 14

2620 Albertslund

Tel: +45 43687288

Email: idraet@albertslund.dk

Website: https://xn--badesen-u1a.albertslund.dk/

 There is a Sauna, which is the wooden house behind, for you to warm up, should you get too cold after getting out of the water in the open.

 Here is a kiosk selling sandwiches and ice-cream.

 There are some slides for the fun factor.

 Here is the simple Baby pool that Baby FECS was very pleased with :-)

 There is also a playground for kids with slides, see-saw and swings

Here is the jumping float and some trampolines (not pictured)