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!

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!

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!