A while back we spent a weekend on the island Gotland in southern Sweden. One of their traditional dishes is baked saffron pancake with whipped cream and dewberry jam. The pancakes are made on rice porridge, mixed almonds, whole milk, eggs, sugar, flour and saffron. They taste incredible, but won’t win any healthiest cake awards. Whenever we come across a great tasting dessert we always ask ourselves: “How could we do this our way?“, and last week we decided to give this one a try.

We have replaced quite a few ingredients in our recipe. They are significantly healthier now, and as far as we can remember they taste quite similar to the original. Maybe a little more dense, but on the other hand you can now eat them as breakfast as well, even though they were originally intended as a dessert. That’s always a good quality from a dessert! The saffron, the pieces of almonds and the shredded carrots are just great together. Warm, sweet and saffrony.

Since dewberries almost only grow on Gotland we instead made a jam out of the only berries that you can get in Sweden this time of the year. Frozen. During the summer we fill our home with as many fresh berries as we can get hold of (and afford). Nothing beats fresh berries, right? But frozen berries are not to be underestimated. They are both beautiful and a real life saver during the winter. Make sure they are unsweetened (in Sweden most berries are). We made a 15-minute-jam with a bag of frozen forest berries (with the beautiful Italian name “Frutti di Bosco”) and only sweetened it with some dried prunes. Ridiculously simple. If you have the pancakes for dessert, a dollop of mascarpone cheese tastes a lot better than whipped cream. You could also go for some turkish yogurt.

Swedish Saffron Pancakes
Makes 6 tartlets 

1 banana, large and ripe
4 eggs
½ cup (1,2 dl) soy milk
½ cup (1,2 dl) rice flour
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
0,5 g saffron
2 carrots
½ cup (1,2 dl) almonds

coconut oil for the tartlets

Making the pancakes: Preheat the oven to 350F (175°C). Mash the banana with a fork, add the eggs and whisk together. Add soy milk, rice flour, baking powder, salt and saffron and stir around. Shred the carrots and chop the almonds roughly, add to the mixture and stir around. Grease the inside of 1 large baking tin or 6, 5-inch tartlet tins with coconut oil. Pour the batter into the tins and bake for about 20 minutes. Serve the pancakes while they are warm, together with forest berry jam and a dollop of mascarpone cheese.

Forest Berry Jam
Makes 1 small jar 

2 tbsp water
1 lime, juice
15 prunes, finely chopped
250 g frozen berries
1 tsp cardamom, grounded

Warm water, lime juice and chopped prunes in a small pot on medium heat. Let it boil carefully for 5 minutes while stirring. Add berries and cardamom and let it simmer for 10, stir occasionally.

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Since we spent so many months traveling, this past winter, we agreed to stay in Sweden and Denmark this summer. It turned out to be a great decision. We can find one hundred annoying things to say about Sweden during the dark winter, but during the summer this country is pretty nice. Here are a few snapshots of some good moments.

We have been visiting our friends summer houses and eating late dinners outside. When it comes to food we have repeatedly been eating the same things this summer: salads and grilled vegetables (oh, and this falafel). And sometimes, when we felt like we needed some variation, we made salads with grilled vegetables.

Elsa’s favorite position has always been on the kitchen counter, keeping us company as we prepare the food. Give her a few months and she will probably do the chopping herself …

Here is one of the salads that we made this summer. Can you spot the marinated eggplant? Normally it takes half a day to properly marinate it, but we came up with a summer version that only takes a few minutes, and it’s great in salads. Here is how it is done: Put thin slices of eggplant on the grill until slightly burnt, soak them in olive oil, a dash of white wine vinegar, garlic, salt and fresh herbs for 10 minutes, done!

When one of David’s best friends turned 30, he arranged a 3-day festival with live music performances, great food and a snaps bar in the middle of the forest. That is how you celebrate a birthday!

Beetroot, Zucchini & Apple Salad
Serves 6 persons

This is a very light salad, suitable for hot summer days. The zucchini is grilled, but everything else is raw – even the beets – which gives it a very fresh taste and crunchy texture. Top it with macadamia nuts, Queso Manchego and herb dressing.

1 medium size zucchini
100 g macadamia nuts
3 apples
3 Chioggia beets
3 beetroots
100 g rucola
50 g Manchego cheese 

Herb & Mustard Dressing
1/2 cup olive oil 
4 tbsp white vine vinegar
1/3 cup fresh herbs
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 clove garlic
salt & pepper to taste

Preparing the vegetables: Wash the zucchini and cut it in ½ -inch slices. Grill them for about 1 minute on each side and set aside. Roast the macadamia nuts in pan on medium heat for a couple of minutes. Wash the apples and peel and rinse the Chioggia beets and beetroots. Slice them all as thin as you can.

Preparing The Herb & Mustard Dressing: Put all ingredients in a mixer or blender and mix until you get a smooth sauce. Taste.

Assembling the layers: Place a slice of apple, a slice of beetroot, a slice of grilled zucchini, a slice of Chioggia beet and some rucola leafs on top of each other. Repeat three more times. Drizzle the Herb & Mustard Dressing, shave some slices of Manchego cheese and top with a couple of roasted macadamia nuts.

Dessert
If the grill is still warm after the dinner, you can use the heat to make a quick dessert. Put some fresh strawberries on the grill and let them stay until soft. Serve on a plate, topped with a dollop of yogurt with fresh vanilla and cardamom.

Photos by David & Johanna Frenkel

Have you ever seen a group of people jumping like frogs around a leaf covered pole? You have?! Then you must have been visiting a Swedish midsummer party (or you have some weird channels on your tv). We know that it sounds like a strange tradition. It is. And we won’t be able to tell you the story behind these traditions, since we have absolutely no idea why we do it. It’s just … tradition. Normally we don’t take these things very serious, but this year we visited some close friends that had arranged everything. Even the pole and the frog dance. We had a blast. Dancing around the midsummer pole, making frog sounds, acting like our parents did when we were kids (and we swore that we would never do the same).

Swedish midsummer celebrations are a lot like our crayfish parties, except for the pole dancing. We cook, we eat, we drink, we sing. Instead of crayfish, most people eat pickled herring and small homegrown potatoes. We had prepared vegetable muffins, this time loaded with goat cheese, broccoli and olives. We also made a no-bake summer cake topped with freshly picked wild strawberries and blueberries. Here are a few photos from our midsummer, and if you scroll down you will also find the recipe for the cake.

Summer Berry Cake
Makes 1 big cake or 8 small

The crust in this cake has a very rich and sweet taste, so we kept the filling pretty natural with fruit and a fat yogurt. We love it like this, but if you have a sweet tooth you might want to add more honey to it. Also, if you won’t eat it immediately we recommend that you make edges on the crust that will keep the filling in place, since it might melt a bit after a while in the sun.

Crust:
300 g (2 cups) walnuts
10-12 fresh dates, pitted
2 tbsp coconut oil
a pinch of salt

Filling:
1 cup fresh (or frozen) summer berries, we used blueberries and wild strawberries
juice from 1/2 lemon
4-6 tbsp honey, agave syrup or maple syrup
2 cups greek yogurt or quark
1 tsp cardamom

Topping:
1 cup fresh summer berries

Grind walnuts in a blender or a food processor for about a minute. Add dates, coconut oil and salt and run the processor until it all comes together. Flatten it out on the bottom of an 8-inch non-stick spring form or in small muffin cups. Store in the fridge while you make the filling.

Mash the berries for the filling slightly, add lemon juice and honey. If you use a thick yogurt or quark you can use it as it is, but if the yogurt feels too loose and runny you can strain it through a cloth or a coffee filter. Stir together the strained yogurt and the blended berries in a large bowl. Pour it on top of the crust in the spring form and put it in the freezer for around 30-45 minutes (you want it cold but not deep frozen) .

Top the cake with fresh seasonal berries. Serve immediately.

Ps. We recently got the “Sites We Love” award by Saveur Magazine! Read the interview here.

We are back in our kitchen. Trying new recipes. Thinking back on six unbelievable months. While it is snowing outside. Snowing. In April. That is weird even for Sweden.

As you can imagine we are boosted with Asian inspiration. We have for example got a major crush on lemongrass, look out for it in our future recipes. But for a while now we have decided to take a short break from everything Asian. You know when you have been out traveling, and all you can think about on the plane home is a peanut butter & jam sandwich in the morning? That was us a couple of days ago. Except from that the sandwich in our case was rye bread. And instead of peanut butter & jam we dreamed of this super delicious Apple, Ginger & Cardamom Compote. Apart from being perfect on a piece of rye bread, it can also be used in a tart, or enjoyed as a fresh dessert together with some yogurt. It is sweet, but not sweetened. How sweet is that!?

Apple, Ginger & Cardamom Compote
Makes 2 jars
This compote is completely without sugar and preservatives, therefore it needs to be in the fridge in a closed glass jar. As long as you don’t open it, it will stay fresh for weeks (maybe even months), but after it is opened you probably want to finish it within a week.

2,2 lb (1 kg) apples
1 1/2 cups (4 dl) water
2 tbsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 tbsp cardamom seeds
2 tsp cinnamon grounded
2 cinnamon sticks
30 leaves of lemon balm, chopped
1/2 lemon, juice & zest

Chop the apples (with peel). Place apples, water and the rest of the ingredients in a pot. Bring it to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium and let it simmer for 40 minutes. Stir occasionally. The compote is done when the water is gone and the apples are tender. Clean the jars in boiling water. Pour the compote in the jars while it is still warm and seal the jars right away.

Photo by: Johanna Frenkel

Hi, it’s David. I have a confession to make. I don’t like apple pie and I have never liked it. I apologize to all my relatives and friends for saying that I liked your pies, I was just trying to be polite. The truth is that big pieces of apple – ovenbaked until soft – tastes gooey, slimy and kind of scary in my world.

I know that 99,9% thinks that apple pie is the best thing ever. But I don’t. I like my apples raw.

Luise loves apple pie. And because of that most apple pies are way sweeter than they need to be she wanted to make an apple pie her own way. My first reaction was of course No F-ing Way. No apple pies on this blog. Then I realized, hey maybe now I have a shot of making an apple pie that I actually could finish without hiding the apple pieces in a napkin. So here is our version of an apple pie.

Since I don’t like big gooey apple pieces we decided to use really small pieces in this pie. We also decided that we wanted a crunchy, nutty kind of pie, so we didn’t use any flour or egg. Just nuts, seeds, oat, coconut oil and maple syrup. Without thinking about it also turned out vegan. Luise insisted on topping it with baked crabapples, and even though I gave my apples to Elsa (she loved them!) I must admit that they looked pretty.

This pie is actually quite similar to a granola. Although the small apple pieces will be soft (almost melted) and the pie will hold together, but just barely. Try serving it with a greek or goat yogurt (soygurt if your vegan) instead of the traditional ice cream or vanilla custard, the tanginess in the yogurt tastes great together with the sweet crumble. Be sure to serve this pie while it’s hot.

Crabapple Crumble Pie
Serves 8

This is a two piece pie. Make the crumble in one pan and the crabapples on another. Put them together before serving each portion.

Baked Crabapples
8 crabapples (use small regular apples if you can’t find crabapples)
1 tsp ginger, grounded
1 tsp cinnamon grounded

Preheat the oven on 375° F/190°C. Cut the apples in half and place them on a greased baking pan. Drizzle with ginger and cinnamon. Bake them until they are soft on the inside and crispy on the outside, around 30-40 minutes. Start with the crumble while the apples are in the oven.

Apple crumble
1 1/2 cup almonds, finely chopped (or mixed in a blender)
1 1/2 cup oat
3 tbsp sunflower seeds
3 tbsp unsweetened coconut, shredded
2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tsp ginger grounded
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 cups sweet crispy red apples, remove the seeds and cut into 1/6 cubes (peel on)
5 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup (can be replaced with agave or honey)

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add apples, maple syrup and coconut oil and work it all together to a sticky crumble. Grease a pan with coconut oil (or use a parchment paper). Flatten the crumble out on the pan in a thin, tight layer and bake it, next to the pan with the crabapples, for 15-20 minutes.

Put a couple of spoonfuls of the crumble and 2 halves of the crabapples in small bowls and serve with any kind of yoghurt you prefer, we used a goat yoghurt. Enjoy!

And so we have left San Francisco. What a great time we have had in this city. Everyone has been friendly to us and we have found ourselves having long conversations with complete strangers on the streets and in food stores numerous times (which never happens in Sweden). We have constantly been eating good food and we even met a couple of new friends. And when we thought that the city couldn’t be sunnier or happier, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in Baseball. Such a perfect ending.

Now we have rented a car and started driving down south. Highway 1 is beyond beautiful and we have made our first stop is Santa Cruz, but we’ll tell you more about that in our next post.

Before we left, we made this chocolate cake filled and topped with blackberries. Actually it’s not very difficult to make a normal chocolate cake, you can probably find 5 zillion good recipes on google and at least 70 on Martha Stewart. But our cake is made without eggs, butter, sugar and flour, which made everything a little bit more challenging. We tried three different versions of this cake before finding the right balance between fruit vs chocolate, sticky vs dry and sweet vs dark and rich.

In the end it feels like we nailed it. This cake is sticky on the inside, has got a quite fruity taste and a rich chocolate spread. It’s gluten free and it’s vegan. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s healthy, but it is definitely more nutritious than your regular Martha Stewart cake.

Chocolate & Blackberry Cake

1 1/2 cup walnuts
15 fresh dates
5 tbsp cacao powder (unsweetened)
1 tsp cinnamon
3 tbsp coconut oil or olive oil
4 tbsp apple sauce (unsweetened)
2 cups blackberries (use 1 cup in the cake and the rest on top of it)

Chocolate frosting:
150 g dark chocolate (dairy free or regular)
1/2 avocado
1 tbsp agave syrup
a pinch of salt

Place the walnuts in a food processor and mix them until they get the consistency of a crunchy flour, add the dates and pulse for a minute so that they get mixed with the walnuts. Add cacao, cinnamon, oil, apple sauce and pulse everything for a couple of minutes. Add the blackberries and mix them shortly (you want them in pieces but not completely dissolved). Pour the mixture into an 8-inch non-stick spring pan and bake it for 40 – 50 minutes at 325° F / 175° C.

Let the cake cool off after it is baked. Meanwhile you can prepare the chocolate frosting. Melt the chocolate, pour it in a blender and mix with avocado, agave and a pinch of salt. Spread the frosting on top of the cooled chocolate cake. Decorate with the blackberries before serving. Enjoy!

Who would have known that you can experience so much by concentrating on doing nothing at all.

We could tell you a million stories about this week. About how crazy beautiful the weather has been, how many great places we have found in our neighborhood, how we have been taking long walks up and down and up and down and up and down (phew) the hills of San Francisco, how Elsa made the funniest face ever with fresh sprouts all over her mouth. Or the story about when David was helping a sweet old granny by carrying her blanket to her car from Dolores Park, and was offered a bag of pot! as thank you (it’s a true story).

But the story we will focus on this time is when we on a beautiful day decided to have a picnic at the beach.

As we wrote in our recent post, our kitchen is very simple. We found salt and black pepper when we moved in, any other spices we have had to buy. And since we are only staying here for another week we have been cutting corners, making it easy for ourselves and been trying to use the same ingredients in several dishes.

On this picnic we made a salad with brown rice leftovers from yesterdays dinner, adding a bag of trail mix and fresh pomegranate that we also use on our breakfast yogurt, and seasoning it with organic peanut butter that you apparently can’t live without in the U.S. Even though it’s kind of simple, this salad is really nourishing and tasty.

We made frozen fruit sticks covered in chocolate and pistachio and brought for dessert. Chocolate covered fruit is almost too easy to blog about, but the pistachios made it too good (and pretty) not to mention. Just imagine the combination; sweet fruit, bitter chocolate and salty pistachio. Yum.

Ocean beach is not like most other beaches. It’s kind of windy, at times it can be quite foggy, and honestly, as soon as the sun starts to set it becomes really cold.
Still, it’s a 4 mile long and beautiful beach that you during October can have almost for yourself. Take bus #5 way out west (they will let you bring the stroller if you beg the drivers nicely). Bring a sweater. Bring a friend. Be there while it is sunny. Watch the brave surfers (the currents are strong, the water is ice cold). And have a picnic.

Brown Rice & Pomegranate Salad
Serves two persons

3 handfuls mixed baby leaf salad (rinsed)
2 small leaves green kale (chopped)
1 cup brown rice (cooked and mixed with olive oil and chopped parsley)
1/2 fennel (sliced)
1/2 cucumber (chopped)
4 small plum tomatoes (sliced)
2 avocados (chopped)
2 carrots (sliced)
1 pomegranate (seeds)
1/2 bag trail mix (seeds, nuts and dried fruit)

2 eggs (hard boiled)
4 tbsp peanut butter

Put salad and kale in the bottom of a box. Pour over the rice and top it with cucumber, tomatoes, avocado and carrots. Drizzle over the pomegranate seeds and the trail mix. Toss it around lightly with your hands. Cut the eggs into quarters and put them in one corner and the peanut butter in another or in a little box.

Frozen Fruitsticks with Chocolate & Pistachio

dark chocolate 80% (melted)
mixed fruit (we used bananas, plums and strawberries)
salted pistachio (chopped) or coconut flakes

Chop the fruit in big pieces. Put a toothpick or a small stick into each piece and put in the freezer. Melt the chocolate. Dip the fruit into the melted chocolate, drizzle with chopped pistachio and put in the freezer until you pack it in a box.

Today is my birthday. I turn 29. And since Luise and Elsa still are in Denmark I didn’t really feel like baking myself a cake. Instead I bought a big big box of fresh Swedish blueberries and made myself a blueberry coconut super smoothie. It’s quick, easy, delicious and also super nutritious (seriously, look at the ingredient list). That’s a pretty good way to start your birthday, right?

Blueberry Coconut Super Smoothie
2 glasses

1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 cup coconut water
1 frozen banana
a big chunk fresh ginger, minced
juice from 1 lime
2 tbsp coconut flakes
a handful of walnuts

Throw all the ingredients in the blender. Blend it for half a minute. Taste it and add more ginger if needed. I used almost 2 inches, but I like it quite strong.

It’s done. We have booked our plane tickets to USA, we leave two months from now. It feels great knowing for sure that our trip together really will happen. First stop New York. Five days later we hit San Francisco. And after a while there we will drive south, meeting a couple of fellow bloggers on the way. We are so grateful for all your comments about what to see and where to go, and we will try to look up as many of your tips as possible. After 90 days in California we still don’t have a clue where to go to next. But when we know you know.

With America on our minds we made pancakes. Even if these look a little bit similar to traditional american pancakes with lots of syrup, sugar, butter and flour – they are not anything close to it. Our version is completely flour and sugar free. Instead these pancakes contain Kañiwa, a peruvian grain similar to quinoa – but with a higher protein level. Totally nutritious and gluten free. And what might look like maple syrup is actually natural fruit syrup from cherries and prunes.

We don’t need to write that pancakes are yummy, you all know that already. So let’s eat.

Kañiwa & Coconut Pancakes with Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup
Serves 4-6 persons

Make the fruit syrup a couple of hours in advance, since it needs some time in the fridge. Kañiwa can easily be substituted with quinoa or amaranth – all these grains are gluten free.

6 eggs, lightly beaten
3 bananas
1 cup coconut milk
1 cup Kañiwa (cooked according to the package)
1 cup coconut flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of cardamom

coconut oil

Mash the bananas with a fork and mix in a bowl together with all the other ingredients.
Or, pour eggs, bananas, coconut milk and spices in a blender. Blend for about a minute. Add the kañiwa and the coconut flakes and stir around.
Fry the pancakes on both sides in coconut oil on medium heat. Serve with a spoonful of Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup.

Chunky Cherry & Prune Syrup
12 cherries
7 prunes
1/2 lemon
1 tbsp agave syrup
a pinch of ground clove

Chop the fruit in quite small pieces and throw them in a bowl. Squeeze the lemon juice over the fruit and add agave syrup and cloves. Stir it all around with a spoon, you can mash it a little bit to help release the fruit juices. Cover the bowl with plastic and put in the fridge for a couple of hours.

As much as we love to spend time in the kitchen, this time of the year we prefer to stay outside. So when we are inside, preparing a meal, we usually make a short story out of it. Throw some salad in a bowl or blend a few vegetables into a soup.

One of the things that we’ve been quite obsessed about this summer is Gazpacho. We’ve tried different recipes every time; a classic recipe, a mango version, a white gazpacho (we might actually make a post of that too) … But the gazpacho that stayed in our mind was the one where watermelon replaced the tomato juice. It made it a little sweeter and a lot fresher than a classic recipe. And it is super easy to make: chop, blend, freeze, eat.

We served it in small glasses and had as a starter, but you could just as well put it in bowls and have it as a light dinner, maybe together with a slice of our lemon spelt bread?

Before we move on to the recipe I just want to say that I love these pictures! This time my talented sister helped us out and we took them in the evening sun. She works as a photographer, shooting for both glossy travel magazines and cool literary magazines. She has also been my photographic mentor, teaching me about natural light, reflectors and raw format. And when she helps us out she always seems to not only make the food look great but also catch that vibrant feeling.

Watermelon Gazpacho (adapted from simple blueprint)
Serves 8 as a starter or 4 as a dinner

6 cups watermelon, seeded and diced in 1-inch dices
2 stalks celery, chopped
3 medium size tomatoes, roughly chopped
1/2 cucumber, roughly chopped
2 red bell peppers, roughly chopped
fresh ginger, about 1 inch, peeled and minced
1/2 chili pepper
juice from 2 limes
handfull of fresh basil
salt & black pepper

Put 5-6 dices of the watermelon and a couple of celery pieces in each of the 8 glasses. Pour the rest of it in a blender or a food processor together with all the other ingredients. Pulse it until it’s got soup consistency, taste it and add more salt & pepper if needed. Divide it in the glasses and set them in the freezer or fridge (depending on how soon you serve it), it should be cold but not frozen. Serve with a thin slice of watermelon attached to the glass.

Photos by: Johanna Frenkel