IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK....
....a lot like Christmas now....
Admittedly, I love Christmas. I love making and/or finding presents for people, I love baking and cooking good food, I love the decorations and all the light brighting up a dark and cold winter month, I love having days off... I just love it.
This weekend me and my sister had our annual "Christmas cookie baking Sunday". Serious shit, I promise. And such a nice tradition. Saturday was spent with my sister and her fiancé, and we had so much fun. Yummy food, quilts and Mamma Mia - how can that fail? It can't. Sunday was The Big Baking Day. We made doughnuts (or the Norwegian equal, anyway), gingerbreads, marzipan candy, chocolate truffles and.. so much more. I just don't have any English names for them... (Kransekake-kubber? Serinakaker?)
We've developed a strange sense of humour concerning those gingerbreads... We HAVE to make naught pigs and well-equipped men and women, or else it's not Christmas... Hahah. My grandmother certainly didn't start this tradition, but she giggles every year. Of course this is not stuff we serve visitors...
Last year I got a recipe for some insanely yummy Chocolate truffles. And they're so easy to make. Two ingredients, 30 minutes work - and YUMMY! Here is the recipe:
250 gram quality chocolate, dark
70-100 gram butter (quality butter, no margarine)
Chop the chocolate into smaller pieces. Heat chocolate and butter in a metal bowl/container which is placed over a pot of boiling water. Mix well!
Let it cool. It sometimes feels like it will never happen - but it always does. It should be very firm, but not stiff, so you can form small "chunks" on paper or a plate. Let them cool off in the fridge for app. 10 minutes. Form them to round, nice "globes", keep them as they are, or roll them in whatever flavour you'd like to add: coffee, lemon peel, chocolate, chopped nuts, sesame seeds, coconut "mass"...
Top left: Coconut "mass", top right: Cake frosting decorations (Tutti frutti), bottom left: Chopped almonds, bottom right: Coffee
(sorry for my crappy English food translations... But try the truffles. They're so good!)