Hello 2015!

Merry (super belated) Christmas and Happy New Year!

The husband and I spent Christmas at home in Vancouver and every trip home is jam packed so I haven't been checking in on here very much. Going home is always so great. Getting to spend time with my sisters and parents, hanging out with all of our friends, and going to our favorite places and discovering new places in the city. Coming back to Copenhagen is always a little bittersweet.

2015 is off to a good start though! I just got back to work today and as some of you may know, I started an internship in August but as of January 1st, I started a one-year, full-time position as international coordinator and personal assistant. It has taken a long time to get here and I'm so happy to finally start my career! 

Besides that, the husband and I have already got some trips planned for the year so there is a lot I'm looking forward to this year. We're going to London for a few days next month. If you have any favorite places or suggestions as to what we have to do there, let me know!

I hope 2015 has been off to a great start for you! It's a new year and a new start!

Vaniljekranse

Right before Christmas I made some Danish Christmas cookies including these vanilla wreaths, or vaniljekranse in Danish, because the fiance and I were given the responsibility of making some cookies for one of the family Christmas lunches that we went to this week. I haven't eaten too many of these vanilla cookies before this so I had no idea how they should taste or what their texture should be like. Thankfully, the fiance's relatives seemed to really like them! Phew! 

Making these vaniljekranse took quite a bit of arm power. Normally Danes make the cookie dough, refrigerate it, and then force the dough through a kødhakker or meat mincer with a star shaped piece. It sounds weird when I write it out like that, but that's what they do! Because we don't have a meat mincer, I had to pipe out the cookie dough with a star shaped piping tip. I'm not going to lie, it wasn't easy. The dough is pretty firm so it took a bit of power (and a few split piping bags!) to pipe out all of the dough. The cookies were buttery and full of vanilla flavor and a great treat during the holidays! Christmas is coming to an end but keep these in mind for next year! 

Vaniljekranse (adapted from Copenhagen Cakes)

Makes about 80 cookies

500g all purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

375g butter softened (I used 250g unsalted butter and 125g salted butter)

1 large egg

250g sugar (I used 125g homemade vanilla scented sugar and 125g regular white sugar)

1 vanilla bean split and scraped

1 tbsp vanilla extract

125g almond flour 

Sift together the flour and baking powder. Slowly combine the softened butter into the flour with the help of a mixer. 

In another bowl and with a mixer, beat the egg, sugar, vanilla bean and vanilla extract until it is light and fluffy. 

Slowly add the dough into the wet egg mixture and mix until everything is combined. I found it easiest to start this process by working the dough with my hands first before switching to my mixer. Finally, fold in the almond flour.

Cover the cookie dough with some cling film and let it sit on the kitchen counter for at least 1 hour so that the vanilla flavor can really work its way into the dough and so that the dough will be easier to work with later.

Preheat oven to 175C or 350F. Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper. 

Prepare your piping bag and piping tip and fill the bag 1/3 to 1/2 way with cookie dough. It is easier to work with small amounts here. Slowly and carefully pipe out long lines of dough on your baking sheet. Cut piped dough to desired length (mine were about 8 to 10 cm long) and form it into a circle or wreath shape. 

Bake in the preheated oven for about 8 minutes. They are ready when their bottoms are a light golden brown. Remove from the baking sheet and let them cool on a cooling rack.

Store in an airtight container and nibble away!

PS. This will be my last "gluten" recipe for awhile. My plan for the new year (well actually starting now) is to go gluten free! (Sort of impossible to go gluten free during a Danish Christmas...) I'll still be sharing treats on here, but the ingredients might be a little different. More on that in a day or two!

Merry Christmas + God Jul

I might be a little late to say Merry Christmas, but it's still Christmas day at home and we're celebrating here today still so Merry Christmas and God Jul! I hope you are having a wonderful time celebrating this holiday season with your family and friends!

Snebolde + Snowballs

Nope. Not snowballs made out of snow. Danish snowballs! Little round marzipan confections covered in chocolate. Honestly, I am not a huge fan of marzipan. I can eat a few little marzipan chocolates over the holidays but that's about it. I don't know what it is about marzipan that I don't like. The strong almond flavor? The grainy texture it has? I think it is mainly a mix of those two things. But then I was at Strangas the other week to pick up some cakes and other sweets and Strangas threw in a pack of their marzipan for me. I made snowballs/snebolde last year and I wasn't really planning on making them again this year, but then I got Strangas' marzipan so I made snebolde again this last week!

I don't know if it is because I just love everything from Strangas, or if their marzipan is actually different. It has a much, much, much smoother texture than the regular Danish brands of marzipan that you can get at the grocery store and I find the almond taste to be a bit subtler. I'm not saying I love marzipan, but I have been able to eat a few more snebolde these past few days.

I like this snebolde recipe from Chocolat because it combines marzipan and nougat. Her recipe calls for a lower ratio of nougat to marzipan but since I'm not the biggest marzipan fan and we had a lot of nougat to use up, I decided to go for a higher nougat to marzipan ratio. But it's all up to you and what you prefer!

Snebolde (adapted from Chocolat)
Makes about 20 to 25 snebolde (depending on the size you make them)

200g marzipan
100g nougat (soft nougat, almost like a praline filling)
200g white chocolate
zest from one organic lemon or clementine
some edible gold flakes or sprinkles to decorate with

Divide your nougat into 20 or so small pieces and roll them into circles.

Combine the lemon or clementine zest with the marzipan in a bowl before rolling the marzipan out over some baking paper. If the marzipan is really sticky, sprinkling some icing sugar/powdered sugar over it will help it not stick to the rolling pin. You want the marzipan to be about 1/2 cm in thickness. Divide the marzipan into 20 small squares.

Place a piece of nougat into the center of each marzipan square. Fold the marzipan around the nougat and roll again to get a nice round shape. When you have completed this, place the sweets in the fridge for a few minutes while you prepare the chocolate.

Melt the white chocolate in a double broiler (water bath) and temper it. When the chocolate is ready, take the marzipan treats out of the fridge and dip them in the white chocolate. Place them on a baking sheet and place some gold flakes or sprinkles on top before placing them back in the fridge to cool and harden the chocolate coating.

Store the snebolde in a airtight box in the fridge. They should keep for about a week.

There are two more days until Christmas here and three for those of you celebrating on the 25th so you still have time to make these! And if you are living in Copenhagen, I would definitely recommend trying Strangas' marzipan. (You can still buy his marzipan at his pop-up location in Magasin at Kongens Nytorv.)

Have a lovely Sunday!

Risotto Rice Pudding With Brown Sugar and Vanilla

During Christmas, the Scandinavians like to eat risengrød, or rice porridge. And then on Christmas Eve, they turn risengrød into ris a la mand. I actually haven't made risengrød or ris a la mand. Once a year or so we'll buy a bowl of warm risengrød while we visit Tivoli at Christmas and sometimes we'll buy pre-made ris a la mande as a dessert and eat the homemade one we get on Christmas Eve. I like risengrød and ris a la mande, I just have never wanted to make it. But for some strange reason, I've really enjoyed making this risotto rice pudding. It is more work making this rice pudding because of all the stirring you have to do but I just love it. I love making risottos and the whole risotto making process. Plus there is brown sugar, cinnamon, and a whole vanilla bean in this rice pudding making everything tasty and delicious!

Risotto Rice Pudding with Brown Sugar and Vanilla (adapted from Joy the Baker)
Makes 4 servings

2 tbsp butter
1 cup arborio rice, or other risotto rice
31/2 to 4 cups milk
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped or 1 tbsp vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, over low heat, scald the 4 cups of milk. Bring the milk to just under boiling. Turn off the heat and let it rest.

In a large pot, melt the butter over a medium low heat. Add the rice and stir it in the butter to coat. Ladle in just enough milk to cover the rice. Stir over a medium low heat and the rice will begin to absorb the milk. When the milk has been absorbed, ladle in just enough milk to cover again. Continue to stir and repeat until almost all of the milk has been used up. As you add the last bit of milk, also incorporate the brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the vanilla. Stir well to combine.

Stir and add milk until the rice is tender and still has some bite to it. You can control how loose or how thick you want the rice pudding to be by adding a bit more milk to the pudding when it is ready or cooking it longer so that more milk is absorbed.

Top the pudding with some fresh berries and enjoy!

Rice pudding can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for a few days. This can be enjoyed warm or cold. To reheat, place it in a small saucepan with a splash of milk and mix over low heat until the milk is incorporated into the rice pudding.

Our Tree

This past Saturday started out with the fiance and I going to buy a tree at the University of Copenhagen's Life Sciences campus in Frederiksberg. We chose to buy a tree at the University because they sold organic and regular fir and spruce trees and the profits that students made from tree sales would go towards supporting their study trips. You can find more information about De Skovbrugsstuderendes Juletræssalg on their facebook page.

This is the first time I've had a real Christmas tree so it was fun going out to pick our tree. We wanted a small tree and the fiance found the one that we brought home. We took our tree home and decorated it right away with the clay ornaments I made last month along with a few ornaments from last year, and some that we bought from Holmegaard. I'm really enjoying the tree in our living room and I can't believe that Christmas is just a little over a week away!

Have you put your tree up or bought your tree yet?

Our Living Room

We got a Christmas tree today and while our living room was looking nice and tidy, I took a few photos of our place. This is where we spend the most time when we are home and I think it is my favorite room in our apartment. I mean, why else would it be called the living room? I don't really know what my home decor/interior style was before moving to Copenhagen. I was living at home and then when I was living in Sweden, I lived mostly in student apartments or places I had sublet from other people. I've really enjoyed having this blank canvas of an apartment to work with!

I think the living room will continue to change in the next year or two. A lot of the furniture, like the couch, the swivel chairs, and the coffee table are from the fiance's parents and we will eventually replace them. We are couch hunting and we've thought about getting a coffee table from Hay but I think we will just take our time and see what we like and what fits in here. My favorite things in this room are our customized Ikea shelves, the fireplace, our strand of lights, and our framed prints. Its been fun seeing our ideas for this room come to life, and for things to actually work out as well!

So yeah! This our living room with a few Christmas decorations added to it. It's the most decorated room in our place right now but at the same time it isn't so in your face. I think I decorated much more last year at our previous apartment. And this is my first real Christmas tree! We've always had a fake one at home so it was fun going out to buy our tree this morning. I'll write more about where we got it in a day or two. For now, have a great Saturday!

Our Advent Calendar

The fiance and I traded gifts on the four Sunday's leading up to Christmas last year but this year we're sharing gifts on the twenty four days leading up to Christmas. The fiance prepared 12 or so things and I prepared the other half. A third of the gifts are edible items, a third are things, and a third of them are activities and all of them are meant to be shared and enjoyed by the both of us.

We've kept the calendar pretty simple again this year. We put all of our gifts into paper bags that we bought at Notre Dame and sealed it with some advent calendar stickers I picked up from Søstrene Grene (although I can't really recommend them as their sticking power is lacking). And now our advent gifts are all sitting on top of our "bar" shelf in the dining room waiting for their turn.

It's so cozy when the fiance and I open a gift each night with our advent candle burning in the background. Do you celebrate advent and how do you celebrate it? I think it is so lovely and it really builds up the anticipation for Christmas.

Clay Ornaments

I made some clay ornaments that doubled as birthday favors for my birthday brunch as well as christmas decorations for my friends who celebrated with me. This was a really simple DIY/craft that you can do in under an hour. You can paint them, use a sharpie or something to draw or write on them, or you can form them into different shapes with your hands. Go crazy and experiment and try jazzing them up! I liked the light white color so I left mine really simple. To go with the holiday theme I used a dala horse, moose, star, and heart cookie cutters. I borrowed a set of doily stamps from a sweet friend and used that for some texture and pattern and I also stamped all of my friends' names onto the ornaments as well with a tiny alphabet stamp set I received from my sister.

What you will need is: air dry clay (I got mine at Panduro), some cookie cutters, and different stamps or things to stamp the clay with to give it some pattern and texture

Roll out the clay to your desired thickness. Stamp the clay with different designs and patterns before cutting the clay with your cookie cutters. Carefully remove the clay from the cookie cutter and poke a hole around the center of the ornament with something sharp and round (a straw or a skewer would work). Place clay ornaments on some baking paper and let it dry. It takes about 2 to 3 days for the ornaments to fully dry but check with the brand of your clay and how thick your ornaments are. To finish, place some string or ribbon through the holes in your ornaments and that's it! 

Now that my birthday has come and gone, we can really start bringing Christmas into the apartment!

I Couldn't Help Myself

I started decorating for Christmas pretty early last year and it was totally my intention to at least wait until the end of November or after my birthday on December 1st to start pulling out the Christmas decorations.

But then I went to Søstrene Grene last Thursday and we dropped by Magasin on Sunday afternoon and of course the stores are filling up with lots of Christmas goodies now! I bought some miniature Christmas trees at Søstrene Grene and they are now sitting in the window with my scented candle from Rituals. I think they're pretty subtle so they don't scream Christmas...right?!

I have also been keeping my eye out for a nice advent or calendar candle. They sell tons of them at the grocery stores but I like a really simple candle. There are some in red, or some with stars and different patterns on them but I just wanted a simple white one with nice clean numbers. I really like the one they sell at Granit and was going to wait to get one when I go to Lund later on this month but then we saw this candle from Broste Copenhagen at Magasin. I like the handwritten look of the numbers and it is white and simple, exactly what I was looking for.

We are also working on our advent gifts although that is not complete yet. Last year we traded little gifts on the four Sundays leading up to Christmas but this year we are doing all twenty four days. So once we finish that up I'll put up some pictures of how we've wrapped them and how we're displaying them at home.

To add to the wintery feeling we turned on the fireplace this weekend! The warmth that comes from a fireplace is just so lovely. It definitely makes me want to stay in rather than face the cold windy streets of Copenhagen! As long as the winters are here, they can be really cozy!

Our Christmas

After three days of food, family, and traditions, Christmas has come to an end. We started the celebrations on the 24th with going to a service at the boyfriend's family's local church and then driving into the countryside to have dinner at his aunt and uncle's house. We had what I think most other Danish families had for their Christmas dinner that night - duck, caramelized potatoes, red cabbage, and risalamande for dessert. Singing and dancing around the Christmas tree is also a tradition here so we sang a few carols and walked around the lit up tree before everyone opened their presents.

The 25th and 26th of December is called First Christmas Day and Second Christmas Day and we spent those two days at Christmas lunches with the boyfriend's dad's side of the family, and then his mom's side of the family. The lunches are an all day affair and we ate and drank from the early afternoon until dinnertime. We had a great time at both lunches and it is always nice to see the boyfriend's cousins, aunts, and uncles and get to know them a bit better as we don't see most of them very often.

This has been my second Christmas in Denmark and I must say that I quite like them as there are more traditions and rituals here in terms of what is eaten every year, singing around the tree, and meeting with relatives on specific days. This Christmas season has all been really lovely and as I don't know where I'll be living after the summer, we'll see where we'll be spending Christmas in 2013!

*All the photos are from the boyfriend's mom, T.

Dear You,

We are celebrating Christmas here in Copenhagen today so I just wanted to say...

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends and that you have a great time celebrating this lovely holiday!

Med Kærlig Hilsen,

Karen

Christmas Cozy

A cozy Saturday afternoon with friends, gløgg, and sweets.

Christmas is celebrated on the 24th here so there's less than 2 days til Christmas for us! We're just running a few more errands tomorrow before settling in for a lot of eating and celebrating early next week! Happy (almost Christmas) Weekend!

This Year's Gift Wrap Style

I love wrapping gifts. l o v e it. It's so much fun for me. As I mentioned awhile back, I got a few rolls of wrapping paper from Bungalow during their flea market sale at the end of September and I finally got to use them. The boyfriend and I joined up with his brother to purchase gifts for their parents so we bought a few things for them from their wish list. The boyfriend and I also bought each other two gifts and we're still working on finding the last part of his brother's gift.

Last year, I wrapped and decorated each gift separately but this year, I went for the stacked look. So we piled the two or sometimes three gifts for each person on top of each other and held everything together with two strands of white paper ribbon and one strand of turquoise twine. To top it off, we used either a brown paper tag or a Bungalow heart gift tag depending on the wrapping paper used on the top gift. I also placed two white feathers through the knot on the bow and a sparkly little apple decoration, these were just some craft items I had lying around and thought it would add a different texture and a little bit of sparkle to the gifts.

Here are some of my gift wrapping essentials:

Scissors
Wrapping paper (I love the simple white or tan/brown kraft paper look)
Tissue paper (use if the gift can be seen through the wrapping paper)
Ribbon (I like to use multiple strands and mix different types)
Tape (preferably washi/mt tape!)
Gift tags
Extra little decorations (feathers, buttons, paper flowers, etc.)

Do you like wrapping and decorating gifts? What sort of materials do you like to use? If you have some  gift wrapping ideas or tips, send them my way! Happy gifting this Christmas season!

Advent Sunday's

Advent was never a really big deal for us in my family. We maybe had a chocolate calendar every now and then but that was about it. Last year, the boyfriend's mom bought us presents to open on the four Sunday's leading up to Christmas day. The boyfriend and I also had the calendar candles where we would burn off a little bit each day until Christmas. Since I made the advent wreath this year, we decided to not get a calendar candle, although now I'm wishing we hadn't skipped it!

Rather than preparing something for the 24 days leading up to Christmas, we decided to do something special for the advent Sunday's. The boyfriend and I get to open little presents from each other the four Sunday's. As we are trading little gifts, I thought making a advent calendar gift bag would be practical as it would store the gifts we have prepared. This advent calendar bag is ridiculously easy. I just bought a large paper gift bag and used white craft paint to paint the numbers on. I wanted the numbers to get bigger closer to Christmas day so I gradually increased the size of the numbers with each row. And there you have it! My 5 minute advent calendar! We're also watching a Christmas movie every Sunday night until Christmas. We started with Elf this past Sunday and we're open to suggestions for other holiday movies! 

The first present I got from the boyfriend this week were some gold scissors that I've been wanting from Hay for a very long time now. I like weird things, I know! But I love the scissors and am looking forward to using it! 

Do you celebrate advent? I would love to hear what some of your Christmas traditions are! 

Christmas Crafting: The After's

As promised, here are photos of the finished christmas decor pieces I made the other Sunday. I love the advent wreath and the little heart wreath. Although I'm not huge on glitter, the shimmery hyacinth bulbs are really sweet. Also, the smell of pine in the apartment is amazing!

How is your week going? Mine started off with my friend M here but now that she has left, I've been starting to feel a little under the weather. I've been drinking lots of lemon, ginger & honey and some good ol' neocitran. There's lots going on later this week with my birthday party on Friday and my actual birthday and the boyfriend's work Christmas party on Saturday so I have to feel better real quick! Hope you are feeling better than me at the moment!