Blueberry-Raspberry-Cinnamon Quick Bread (even for those with egg allergy)

A couple of days ago, on a cold and snowy day (they are all like that now, but I’d be the last to complain), I decided to bake something on an afternoon, because T was out in the freeze (or at least traveling home through said freeze) after a long day, and I though it would be nice if he came home to the scent of baking… something?

But by the time I had this brilliant idea, it was already late afternoon and I hadn’t even started, nor checked what I have in the pantry.  Having rummaged around, I came up with a couple of eggs, a half-carton of aging sourmilk (filmjölk, which is like a luxury version of buttermilk for those of you outside Scandinavia), and some flour.  Mhm.  And then, then I remembered that I had an opened box of a bilberry (wild blueberry) and raspberry mix in the freezer.  So, with time being short and me being lazy (I am always lazy), the solution presented itself – I would bake a quick bread loaf.

Quick bread, for those who aren’t American, is essentially a muffin loaf but with less sugar or fat.  More like the muffins were meant to be, long ago before Starbucks popularized the giant cake-batter muffin.  In fact I imagine it can be baked in cupcake molds for muffins instead of a loaf, but I don’t own a cupcake mold.  And I do own a loaf tin.  And I am lazy, have I mentioned that?  So, quick breads can be made with just about any flavoring – they are essentially a soda, buttermilk (sourmilk for me), and baking powder-leavened loaves that can be sweet, or savory, or plain or chock-full of nuts, berries, cheese, chilies, bacon bits or whatever.  Though you know, if you are baking a savory one, you probably want to modify the sugar quantities and use a tablespoon or so instead.

How is this quick?  Essentially, because it is, and easy to boot.

You simply mix all the dry ingredients, mix all the wet ingredients in a separate bowl, and rougly stir the wet into the dry until a lumpy batter forms (overmixing = bad, lazy stirring = good!), then scrape the thick batter into a greased and floured loaf tin, sort-of level the top, and bake at 175C for 50-60 minutes (how long this bakes will depend on what you put in it – wet things such as frozen berries make it bake longer), until a toothpick or bamboo skewer comes out clean.  Then you let it cool on the rack for about 20 min in the form, run a knife around it and dump it out onto the rack for another 10 minutes.  Best thing?  You don’t even have to wait for it to be completely cool to cut it!

The results are well and beyond worth the minimal effort – this breakfast sweet bread is moist, flavorful, not too sweet, and the sharpness of berries cuts through the warmth and spiciness of cinnamon.  The result is so heavenly aromatic , that it is literally damned irresistible with a cup of coffee, and with or without a bit of butter and honey on it.  I say irresistible, because I tried pretty hard to resist having any alongside T, and failed.  And I do have a pretty high resistance to sweets.

In fact, if you want to take photos of it, you should not do like I did, and figure “I’ll photograph it tomorrow”, because by the time you realize there are photos to be taken, you may just have nothing left to photograph.  Or like me, find one last little slice off the end crust, with huge blueberry-explosion holes left over, and have to take pictures of it… or bake again.

My quick bread recipe is based with a few modifications on this one (which is also very good), but obviously due to an allergic boyfriend, I have adjusted it to remove egg whites.  In fact, I imagine this would work without any eggs, but with additional 60ml of sourmilk (buttermilk or yogurt).  This batter is very forgiving, so feel free to experiment!

What you need:

• Loaf pan, something to mix with, and 2 bowls.

• 5dl plain all-purpose flour.
• 1.2dl sugar
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp fine salt
• 1 tsp finely ground cinnamon
• 2-2.5dl frozen berries of your choice (blueberries and raspberries for me)
• 2 egg yolks (substitute additional 60ml yogurt or filmjölk for eggless, and omit the 1 tablespoon of water in initial batter mix)
• 2.5dl filmjölk or buttermilk or non-strained (regular) plain yogurt
• 1 tbsp water (+1-3 tablespoons more to adjust consistency of batter – filmjölk is thicker than buttermilk, so may not be needed if using buttermilk)
• 60ml vegetable oil or 60g butter (melted on gentle heat and cooled a little)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Method:

• Preheat your oven to 175C and grease and flour a standard loaf tin.
• Melt butter if using.
• Mix all the dry ingredients+berries in larger bowl.
• Whisk all the liquid ingredients (including 1 tablespoon of the water) in another bowl to combine, adding melted butter last.
• Pour the liquid ingredients into the flour mix, and mix with a wooden spoon or spatula till just combined.  Add water by tablespoonful only if batter is too thick and does not incorporate all the flour.  Resulting batter will be very thick.
• Scrape batter out with a spatula into the loaf pan and smooth the top a little.
• Bake in preheated oven for about an hour (start checking at 50 minutes), rotating once about 30 minutes into the baking time.
• Take out, cool on a rack for 20 min, get out of loaf tin and cool another 10 minutes.

Curl up on sofa, make sure your toes are warm, and eat, looking at the snow outside.

Autumn Saturday in Stockholm: Spice Shop and Haymarket

I am not sure I’ve mentioned this, but autumn is probably my favorite season.

I am also aware of the fact that I say that I love a lot of things – to eat, to do, and different weather, and… the reason for that is probably just me: I love a lot of things and I don’t feel the need to pick necessarily.  I really do love different seasons for different reasons, too, but autumn is a little more special, perhaps because of my fascination with harvest, and the fact that there are so many beautiful colors around that aren’t there the rest of the year.  Sweden is truly spectacular in the autumn, and while the leaves have barely started to show streaks of gold here and there, there is already plenty of gold and orange and purple and red to go around.

Wild chanterelles, blueberries, and ...

The crimson pile in the background is the wild lingonberries, and the foreground is bilberries (wild blueberries), and obviously the gold of autumn – chanterelle mushrooms.

But, our first port of call in the city wasn’t the market, though it beckoned as we passed it by on the way – it was the old Swedish spice shop I’ve mentioned yesterday, Essencefabriken.  The place is nestled in a cellar of an old building a few blocks away from the noise of the market, near a lovely old church and its tiny park, and it’s really easy to miss unless you are looking for it – which we were.

If you are looking for it, especially from the opposite side of the street, it’s rather evident – and it is even better inside than the facade promises.

Now, I may be biased, but in my opinion, no supermarket spice lineup can beat this.  They shouldn’t even try.  In addition to standard food spices and a few (ok, many) proprietary spice mixes, the place sells various liquor-infusion spice sachets, rose- and assorted herb and flower waters, and flavors.  It was rather difficult not to overspend, but in the end we went home with some of their Cajun spice mix, a packet of traditional Swedish bread spices for tomorrow’s batch of sourdough bread, some rose pepper, and a 1dl bottle of natural rosewater – the latter to make facial toner, and perhaps if there is any left over, to be used in ice cream and sweets.  We’ll see.

Cinnamon on antique scales

They also have both, real (Ceylon) cinnamon and cassia cinnamon, so anyone in the Stockholm area who wants to see the difference and buy the real thing, this is your place for it.  Important note is that they told me they only sell cassia ground, so if you want your own ground Ceylon cinnamon, you may have to shop elsewhere or buy and grind the sticks at home.  Personally, I plan to buy a stack of bark sticks for Christmas drinks, and now I know where the real ones are to be found.  I will definitely be back.

The next part of our trip was the Haymarket, which on Saturday afternoon is characterised by desperate sellers trying to sell what they have as fast as they can before market-closing time.  The result is that they nearly haggle for you rather than for themselves – the longer you stand near them and look unsure, the better the price for what you were sort-of staring at.

See? Desperate!

I was (as ever) interested in chanterelles.  Chanterelle mushrooms are probably my favorite wild mushrooms overall.  Yes, porcini have a better scent, but they are either too mushy if fresh, or a bit too stringy if rehydrated, whereas chanterelles are not far off in terms of scent and flavor, but they have an amazing texture and can be fried in butter and eaten just so, without anything more than a piece of crusty bread to go with them.

Om nom nom nom!

That, and they are just downright gorgeous to look at.

So, having found the prettiest display of said chanterelles, I spent a few minutes staring at them critically, and we walked away with a 1.5kg bag of mushrooms at about 60% of listed price and a bonus box of blueberries which we happily ate while we wandered through the underground butchery and food market halls.

The results of this shopping trip were a load of prepared and frozen chanterelle mushroom freezer bags for the winter, a gorgeous silky chanterelle-and-cream soup with sherry eaten with sourdough toast and wild boar salami, and a small string with the prettiest mushrooms drying in my kitchen.

All in all, a fantastic Saturday market outing, which culminated in a visit to a bookstore and a huge mug of coffee before heading home, followed by making the aforementioned soup, and a long evening talk with Niklas and Tobias over coffee, almonds and Bénédictine – it’s finally gotten cool enough to drink it!

Now, do you agree that autumn in Stockholm is amazing?  I hope so!  I certainly do, if I did and do say so myself!

P.S.  Yes I’ll post the mushroom soup recipe soon.  As soon as I manage to make a batch of it and photograph it before it all disappears… it has that tendency, never any leftovers!

P.P.S.  I’ll also post about how sourdough bread with Swedish bread spice mix turns out.  I’ve refreshed the starter and it should be ready to start the dough tomorrow.  We’ll see in a few days!

Infused Alcohol – For Whatever You Celebrate

It is early autumn, the days are getting ever so slightly chillier, and the light tends to fall a little aslant. I can feel the change of season in the air, and to me in terms of my kitchen, it means two things: I want to bake (an urge that I tend to resist except when have guests), and I know it is time to make infused alcohol if it should be ready by midwinter, whatever your flavour of celebration may be that season.

My relationship with alcohol can best be described as a loving long-distance relationship of sorts.  I love it, love drinking the really good stuff, and I also get intoxicated from the tiniest amounts, so I drink it rarely and in small quantities.  In the words of my friends, I am the most lightweight drinker any of them have ever met.  On the up side, that also means I am sober within an hour or two of drinking, so (if it is an occasion on which I would actually drink at all), I can get tipsy again and again repeatedly.

I think alcohol is a good thing in the quantity I consume it, but in a very non-hypocritical way, I can also honestly say I drink about half a bottle of wine and a couple of shots of hard liquor (typically brandy in my coffee) per month.  I imagine people can be just fine drinking more than I (and also stay on their feet better than I’d manage), but I am not here to lecture anyone on how much they should drink.  If you are drinking too much, you probably know it anyway, and I strongly believe in the fact that the only person whom you can change in this life, is your very own self.

But, I digress, as I was going to talk about infusion, and not about sobriety (or lack thereof).  So, it is usually for the winter festivities, that I prepare a variety of those (to be drunk chilled, or used in sweet-making and desserts, or whichever way you like it).

Infusing alcohol is easy.  What you need is:

• A glass preserving jar, 1-1.5L in volume, one of those with a metal lever lock and food-grade rubber seal.
• A 750ml bottle of alcohol you wish to infuse (plain vodka, gin, and white rum are the typical favourites).
• Whatever you plan to infuse the alcohol with (fruit, herbs, whole spices, etc.)
• Sugar (if using, not all recipes call for it)
• Boiling water on two separate occasions (to sterilize the jar and muslin)
• Muslin cloth and a funnel.
• A friend you can trust.
• Refrigerator, and a whole lot of patience

The basic instruction is:

1. Wash and dry your fruit (if using to infuse).  If you plan to use it later and freeze it in advance, wash and dry it before freezing.
2. Free up a spot in the corner of your fridge that you can easily reach on a daily basis that the jar would fit into.
3. Wash the jar and rinse thoroughly (this is primarily for you strange British people who don’t rinse the washing up liquid off your clean dishes… RINSE IT OFF, else the result will taste of soap!).
4. Sterilize the jar by pouring a bit of boiling water in it (use a dish towel to hold it), and swirling it about, then pouring out.
5. Place infusion materials into jar as per recipe (berries, fruit, spices and sugar).
6. Pour the entire bottle of alcohol on top.  Reclose the empty bottle, do not wash it, and keep it for later refilling.
7. Seal jar.
8. Swirl gently and place into the prepared spot in fridge.

Now, here is where the patience becomes imperative.  The use of the refrigerator is twofold:  One, it keeps the alcohol cold, which means it is less likely to evaporate.  Two, if you are like most people, you open your fridge at least once a day.  What you must do for the next 2-3 months, is take the jar out once a day, admire it, pet it, swirl it a bit gently, admire some more, DO NOT OPEN IT, and place it back in the fridge.  Not opening is important to both, prevent contamination of alcohol with water condensation on inside of cold jar, and to resist temptation to stick fingers in and try it.  It won’t be ready for at least 8 weeks.

Once 2-3 months have passed, or when you just can’t wait any longer (but you must remember that if you open too soon, it won’t be as nice!), take out your trusted friend, muslin cloth, funnel, empty bottle, and the much-anticipated jar.

1. Drape the muslin cloth over the funnel (letting it drop into it obviously), and pour some boiling water over it over the sink.
2. Open the empty bottle and place the funnel into it.  It will cool quickly, and we also want that.
3. Let the trusted friend hold the funnel and bottle so that it does not tip over and ruin all that hard work.
4. Carefully filter the alcohol through the funnel back into its waiting bottle, and close.
5. The fruit in the funnel (depending on which ones you’ve used) can make fantastic boozy cake topping (if they were strawberries or elderberries or blueberries for example!), or tossed out.  Or, if they are spices, they can be wrapped in said muslin and hung up as air freshner (like a pomander without an orange) for a while.

I tend to keep the resulting infusion in the fridge, but I think it can quite easily be stored outside of it once filtered.  Not that it is very likely to survive long enough for storage to become too much of a problem, anyway… :)

A couple of my favourite ideas for infusion materials (but feel free to come up with your own, experimenting is fun, and you know what you like better than anyone else does):

• Quince Rum:  white rum, 1 large quince fruit (sliced), 2-4 whole cloves, 2 tablespoons demerara cane sugar.
• Yule Vodka:  plain vodka (I like Absolut, but that’s my I-love-Sweden habit speaking, and any decent vodka will do), 1 cup blueberries (you want the true wild ones, aka bilberries), fresh or frozen, 1 stick cinnamon (for the love of little green apples and the booze you are making, make sure it’s real Ceylon cinnamon!), 2-4 whole cloves, 1-2 allspice grains, 1-2 tablespoons of white sugar.
• Elderberry vodka:  plain vodka as per above, 1-2 cups of ripe elderberries (de-stemmed), 2 heaping tablespoons white sugar, 1 curl of lemon or orange peel (make sure to wash the citrus with soap and water to remove shellac resin which is used to spray citrus, unless you manage to buy unwaxed citrus).

Enjoy!

Cinnamon and Cassia: The Unpublicized Story

We all know cinnamon—the familiar sweet and spicy smell, associated, at least for the Northerners, with the winter holidays and all the lovely pastry confections we so love to eat. Or well, at least I do, but that’s not saying much, seeing how my view on food is best expressed as a paraphrase of the old proverb: all foods are good except the bad ones.

This is a story about one of those latter ones.

Until a few years ago, I have lived in blissful ignorance of the fact that there is more than one kind of ‘cinnamon’, and that all of those kinds are (more or less) legally marketed labelled as “Cinnamon”. The rude awakening happened several years ago in Stockholm, on a winter day when I opened the jar of vodka I’d been infusing for 3 months in preparation for the Yule celebrations. The infusion was done with all the best (or so I thought at the time) ingredients – real wild blueberries picked that year, a bit of sugar, a few clove buds, and – incidentally – a stick of cinnamon I’d bought at a local supermarket in a jar so labelled. The reason the awakening was, as I said, rude, is the fact that the vodka, which should have had a lovely fruity and spicy flavour, was unexpectedly bitter for no discernable reason. Well, all the other flavour was still there, but so was a strong, hot bitterness, which resembled the flavour of cinnamon. Discouraged, I resolved to use the jar of undrinkable alcohol in desserts and mixed drinks (for which it was still suited), and thank the gods of booze for the fact that I also had a jar of infused rum, which had contained no cinnamon. The question still nagged at me though– why did it go bitter?

The answer was offered to me, if I remember correctly, by Inger Lagerman – an editor of a food and nutrition magazine in Stockholm. Upon hearing my complaint, she pointed out that what is labelled “cinnamon” in stores may or may not be real cinnamon, and if it turned something bitter, chances are that it was not.  At the time, I had filed the datum mentally, but gave it no further thought, as stick cinnamon is not something I use on a regular basis.

Years later, I was researching something in relation to spice oils, and came across an article explaining the differences between cinnamon (aka Ceylon cinnamon or Cinnamomum verum) and what is commonly sold as such, namely the bark of a plant named cassia, or Cinnamomum aromaticum, Chinese cinnamon.  The article confirmed what Inger had mentioned in regards to the cinnamon that I had used having been, in fact, cassia–which I recognized visually, since the two differ significantly in appearance unless ground (at which point they become virtually indistinguishable to the naked eye).  The more worrying thing I noted, was the fact that cassia, unlike Ceylon cinnamon, contains fairly high levels of the compound coumarin–an aromatic also found in tonka bean and some other spices–and one which has been recently banned in several European countries due to its toxicity.

So far so good.  I noted to myself that if I am buying cinnamon, to make sure what it is that I am buying and to not make the mistake again, and forgot about it for another few years, until my mother’s visit to UK to see me last summer.  During that visit, we talked about food (obviously), healthy eating, and other random things, and she mentioned offhandedly that she has found that “cinnamon pills” help her lose weight by reducing appetite.  That rang a few bells, and made me slightly suspicious, as I have never heard of normal cinnamon having that effect–and so I looked into the issue, and sure enough, it is the coumarin itself which has been shown to have appetite-suppressing effects.

I, of course, immediately informed my mother of the fact and told her that a chance of losing some weight is just not worth the risk of poisoning herself (to say the least), and she tossed the pills.  The worrying thing, however, is that since cassia is widely sold as both, spice and apparently a food supplement (at least in the States), and since in its use as the latter, it apparently is given in doses high enough to suppress appetite, it is clear that the natural presence of coumarin is not regulated enough–or else that people are not even aware of the fact that more than one species gets commonly called “cinnamon” and that while Ceylon cinnamon has negligible coumarin content, the other varieties are far less harmless (and, incidentally, more bitter).

In short, I am not entirely sure whether I have any sensible advice on the matter beyond checking which cinnamon you are buying (if in stick form, Ceylon cinnamon is the fine papery one, and cassia looks like chunks of rough bark), or if it is ground, to inquire with the retailer about the species name of the tree (they should be able to provide that).  Cassia tends to be slightly cheaper than Ceylon cinnamon, but as I have mentioned in the previous entry, some things are just not worth the money for the compromise of one’s health–or flavour of food, as the ruined bottle of infused vodka that Christmas in Stockholm would unhappily testify.