Risalamande

Risalamande is a very traditional Danish Christmas Desert, where you have the leftover rice pudding and mix it with sugar, vanilla, whipped cream and chopped almonds. 
With this dessert there is a game that we always play in Denmark. You have to find the one whole almond which is hidden in the bowl, and if you find it, you get to get the almond present, which is typically a marzipan pig or some kind of chocolate.

Ingredients:
about 6 cups Leftover rice pudding 
25 g peeled chopped almonds
1 1/2 dl heavy whipping cream
3 tbsp sugar
Vanilla sugar

One whole almond
Cherry sauce

Directions:
Peel and chop (guide to peeling almonds) almonds in a food processor. Whip cream with sugar and vanilla. Mix into the rice pudding and hide the whole almond. Serve with cherry sauce.

Happy hunting!

Christmas Eve Dinner

This year I wanted to cook dinner for my host family on Christmas Eve, and they loved the traditional Danish dinner i made, even though some of the ingredients were kind of hard to get!

Pork Roast / Flæskesteg

Ingredients:
Pork roast w/ the skin (we had to buy the skin separate) 
Salt and pepper
beyleafs

Directions:
Place roast on a baking tray and cut the skin. Rub with salt and pepper and put bay leafs in between the cracklings. Bake in oven at 350 degrees F for about 3 hours. Make sure the cracklings are completely crispy. You may need to remove them and bake then at 450 degrees F until they are completely crisp.

Browned Potatoes / Brunede Kartofler

Ingredients:
1 can small potatoes
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter

Directions:
Melt sugar and butter on a pan, and broil potatoes in the caramel mixture until golden brown.

Red Cabbage / Rødkål

Ingredients: 
1 red cabbage head
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp honey

Directions:
Cut the cabbage in strips and boil in a pot with apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, and honey for about 45 minutes. 

Baked Apples w/ Lingonberry Jam

Ingredients:
4 apples
Lingonberry Jam (from IKEA)

Directions:
Peel the apples and remove the core and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees F. Fill up the hole from the core with jam. 

 Serve the roast, browned potatoes, cabbage, and apples with boiled potatoes and gravy.

Little Christmas Eve

In Denmark we celebrate christmas on the 24th, and we always get this really delicious dessert called Risalamande. In order to make this dessert you need some rice pudding leftovers, so we traditionally always get rice pudding on the 23rd. 


Rice Pudding / Risengrød

Ingredients: 1 1/4 cup water
1 cup rice (short or medium grain) grødris
4 1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla

Topping

Butter
Cinnamon
Sugar

Directions:
Place water and rice in a medium cooking pot, cover with a lid and simmer for 2 minutes. Add milk, salt and vanilla sugar and simmer over low heat for 40-45 minutes. Stir often to make sure the milk does not burn, especially the last 30 minutes. Place pudding in the oven at 200 degrees F for about an hour till it's at the desired consistency. 

Mix sugar and cinnamon together according to your taste. Serve the Risengrød warm, sprinkled with sugar/cinnamon mixture and place a dollop of butter in the center, letting the butter melt.

Marzipan Chocolates

So in Denmark we have this traditional treat called Konfekt. It's basically just marzipan that you prepare in any way you would like with different nuts, chocolate, dried fruit, or just different colors and shapes. Anything you would like!
This year my host sister, Bridgette and her friend, helped make some different figures with different colored marzipan. I made different kinds of marzipan dipped in chocolate with nuts and other stuff.

Almond squares

Ingredients:

Marzipan cutted in squares

Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Almonds

Directions:

Start with boiling the almonds. Put in a pot with boiling water, and boil for about 5 mins till the skin is wrinkling. Cool down in cold water and peel the almonds.

Melt chocolate in microwave and dip the marzipan in the chocolate and put an almond on the top. Freeze in fridge until the chocolate is set, and store in fridge.

Cereal chocolates

Ingredients: Any kind of flakes that you would like. Bran-flakes, Corn-flakes etc.
Semi-sweet chocolate chips
Raisins or cranberries

Directions: Melt the chocolate in microwave and mix all ingredients together, and fill in small paper moulds or silicone moulds as here. Freeze in fridge until chocolate is set, and store in fridge.

Pebbernødder

At christmas time we have like a million different kind of traditional cookies and treats in Denmark, and these tiny cookies are definitely some of my favorites. We have made them every year since I can remember, so this year I wanted to make them for my host family here in Utah. I got some quality help form my good friend Nakai!
To be honest we have never really had a traditional family recipe as many probably do, and every year they tend to turn out really hard and not very good, but this year I found a really amazing recipe, and now I've already shared it with my whole family, and thought I would share it with you guys too!

Ingredients:
80 g butter
225 g sugar
1 egg
1 dl heavy cream
250 g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp pebber
orange zest (optional)

Directions:
Combine all the wet ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl combine all the dry ingredients and combine. 
Roll out into long "sausages" and cut in slices about 1/2 inch long (1 cm) and place on a cooking sheet. Bake in oven for 12-20 minutes at 350 degrees F.