Caramel Cake

This cake is a family favourite - the recipe is from a Swedish cookbook from 1979, called Köksalmanack 1979. It attributes the recipe to a photographer called Ulf Christer, and calls it Ulf's Caramel Cake (Ulf's kolatårta in Swedish). By any other name, it probably tastes as good, so you can probably call it what you like.

Ingredients

225 g almond paste
2 eggwhites

Caramel
2 deciliter thick cream
3/4 deciliter sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup


Finally
Whipped cream galore
Decorations according to taste

Mix the almond paste with the eggwhites (not beaten, just plain, runny whites) in a food processor. Put the 'dough' on a baking sheet and make it vaguely cake-shaped, about 20 cm in diameter. Bake for about 15 min in 175 °C. Move it onto a plate and let it cool.

Let the cream, sugar and syrup simmer for about 20-25 minutes, until it's thick (but not too thick unless you want your guests to break a tooth chewing).

Pour the sauce over the cake and let cool. Decorate with whipped cream and whatever looks good to you!

How To Successfully: Make Your own Cleaning Products

Last week, I posted a few of my favourite cleaning tips. Two of those was Get Good Equipment and Few Cleaning Products.

 Like I stated in that post, I use a solution of water and a little eco-friendly washing-up liquid for almost everything. I also use vinegar a lot - in Sweden we have concentrated vinegar called 'ättika' (24% acetic acid) and I dilute that about 1-1 with water, but I'm sure white vinegar works just as well. Both of those I keep in spray bottles in the kitchen. The washing-up spray is great for wiping down counters and and the table, and even the most burnt-in spots on the stove top comes off with baking powder and vinegar spray. Since the vinegar spray is also really hard on bacteria, I usually wipe down the counter with that occasionally.

More spray bottles I keep standing around is one with starch (cornstarch and water) for ironing shirts and the like, and one with water and a little lavender oil, also for ironing and to use as a room freshener.

I recently made labels for my bottles by getting pictures from old apron patterns (shhh) and making labels in photo shop. I glued them on the bottle and covered in self-adhesive plastic. Now I don't have to read the labels - I know that the pink apron is vinegar and the '20s looking girl is starch!

How To Successfully: Survive Cleaning Your House

Today, boys and girls, we are going to talk about the 'c'-word.

That's right.

C-L-E-A-N-I-N-G.

It's not your favourite activity, is it? I don't think anyone jumps up and down at the prospect of dusting or scrubbing the kitchen sink, actually. Still, not doing it can result in even less pleasant things, like food poisoning, asthma attacks and insect infestations. So clearly, it must be done. The question then, is how to make it less unpleasant?

I'm going to list a few tricks that help me.

1. Get good equipment. A good apron with pockets, gloves, a few spray bottles for various cleaning fluids, a duster, a good selections of rags... It makes all the difference in the world.

Who said cleaning gear had to be boring? Apron from IKEA; gloves, duster and brush from Swedish store Claes Ohlson; and cloth wipe from my local grocery store. I'm sure you can find similar stuff in a store near you!

2. Get multipurpose cleaning chemicals. I used to have a gazillion different bottles that took up a lot of space and cost me quite the sum, but now I'm down to 3 basic ingredients; mild and eco-friendly washing-up liquid, vinegar, and baking soda. OK, so I also use a little salt for clearing the drain, but that's it. It makes it easier to keep track of when I need to refill my supply, doesn't take up a lot of space and, last but not least, none of those things are very poisonous or harmful to the environment.

3. Have a plan. Again this sounds really trite, but making a list of what I have to do in each room actually makes me a lot more efficient. It also makes cleaning more manageable.

4. Work one room at a time. You don't actually have to clean your entire flat in one go; it's fine to do one room a day if you want to. And even if I do them all at once, working through my list one room at a time gives me the satisfaction of seeing results much quicker.

5. Play good music. I tend to go with the Puppini Sisters for cleaning, but you can do Meshuggah of Rhianna or whatever puts you in the mood. It's OK to sing along or wiggle your bum while you clean too.

6. Add a few finishing touches. Put in fresh flowers, spray a little lavender water (in the winter, you can smear a few drops on the radiator instead) or light a few scented candles when you're done. It makes all the difference.

7. Reward yourself. You know; chocolate, a glass of wine, a martini or a nice hot bath. Whatever you prefer. Because, after all that hard work, you know you deserve it!

Recipe: Simple Carrot Soup

Being in a hurry quite often means fast food, and while filling, the nutritional value isn't always top-notch. This is an option that's fairly quick, filling, and made from good – not to mention very cheap – ingredients. And it's yummy too!

Ingredients

3 – 4 carrots (depending on size)
1/2 onion, chopped
0,5 litre (about two cups) vegetable stock
the juice of 1 orange
1 tsp red curry paste
1/2 cup of whipped cream
a little oil
salt, pepper

How to

Peel the carrots and cut them into pieces, about 1 1/2 inch long.

Heat the oil and let the onions slowly turn golden. Add the curry paste and let it fry for just a few seconds. Meanwhile, bring the stock to boil. Add the orange juice, the carrots and onion to the stock and let them boil until the carrots are soft (about 15 minutes).

Remove from heat and blend until smooth, using a stick-blender. Add the cream and blend it into the soup. Taste with salt and pepper. If needed heat it (but don’t let it boil; you want to keep the fluffy frothiness of the cream).

Serve!

How To Successfully: Make Your Own Furniture Polish

 I'm an eco nerd and if there is a DIY version of almost anything, I'll prefer making it myself out of ingredients I recognise rather than buying some industrially produced version full of things you probably shouldn't eat.

Furniture polish is one of those things. The store-bought variety smells really funky, like gasoline, and it's rather expensive. Since I use polish on my furniture quite often (I love that shine and depth of colour it gives), I was happy to figure out a really good DIY-alternative that is both cheap and, in my opinion, more effective than the store-bought kind.

It's really, really simple. You need:

- olive oil
- lemon juice

Odds are you already have those ingredients at home. All you have to do is mix one part lemon juice with two parts olive oil and shake like crazy and - voilà! Polish! Just apply it with a rag and after-polish with a piece of fabric or clean rag.

Easy, right? If you make a double batch, you can actually use the left-overs on your salad!

How To Successfully: Get Rid of Candle Wax

This Saturday the yearly Earth Hour took place and that reminded me of how downright disgustingly cosy candle light is compared to harsh electrical light. One of the backdraws of candles, however, is the fact that they tend to drip wax rather liberally, especially if there's a draught.

You don't want to scrape off wax globs from delicate furniture (on my Formica-tabletop, however... I swear that table and the cockroaches are the only things that are going to survive the Apocalypse unscathed). I know there are lots of tips for this, but mine is really simple and you don't run the risk of harming precious wood or marble or whatever you have.

Recipe: Daim Cookies

I love cookies. I mean, who doesn't? They're easy to make, the dough is quite delish (I know people warn against eating raw cookie dough but that only applies if you have eggs in it - butter, sugar and flour are all quite harmless to eat as-is) and you can make an infinite number of variations on them.

These I made a while back when I had some Daim in the house. I'd call them 'milk chocolate cookies' because I took it a little easy with the cocoa and they turned out quite great, but the dough... OMG, the dough! I'm warning you; try it and you may end up without cookies!

Now you may ask - what is vintage-y about Daim? Well, this delish chocolate bar was actually first introduced in Sweden and Norway already in 1953, even though it didn't go global until much later, so these are perfectly appropriate for your 50s kitchen!