Food/Recipes
Celebrating Midsommar includes special food, too.
Many thanks to SWEA (Swedish Women’s Educational Association) for the following insights and recipes.
What most people do for lunch is eat pickled herring in many varieties with boiled potatoes and schnapps. Rather than providing recipes, it’s probably best to buy them at IKEA or Scandinavian Specialties.
For dinner, the most common thing to do is BBQ. I have added a Salmon recipe as an alternative.
As for dessert, here are two recipes. However, the most common thing to have is just fresh strawberries and whipped cream.
Summer Salmon (serves 4)
Ingredients
2 lbs petite potatoes
4 oz sugar snaps
1 large carrot
1 small red onion
1 lemon
1.2 lbs salmon fillet, no skin
Olive oil and canola oil
Salt
Pepper
Dressing
1 tbls Dijon mustard
2 tbls honey
1 tbls kapris (capers)
1 tbls olive oil
Juice from 1 lemon
¾ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
Instructions
Turn on the oven 480F. Cut the potatoes in halves and put in a bowl. Mix with 1 tbls olive oil, ¼ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper.
Put the potatoes on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake in oven for 25 minutes.
Clean the sugar snaps. Peel the carrots. Then continue to peel long strips of the carrot. Boil the vegetables for 1-2 minutes and then rinse in ice cold water.
Clean the onion and cut in ¼ inch thick rings.
Mix the dressing.
Cut the salmon in cubes. Cut the lemon in ¼ inch slices. Dry them both with some paper towels.
Heat up the frying pan with 1 tsp canola oil. Brown the lemon until they have a nice color. 1-2 min. Take them up and then start to brown the salmon. About 5 min. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add the carrots and sugar snaps the last minute.
Mix the potatoes, beans, carrots and parsley on a big platter. Place the salmon over it and then garnish with the lemon slices and red onion. Top it off with the dressing.
Enjoy!
Meringue-Sviss or Dessert for a King
Ingredients
Vanilla Ice-cream Whipped cream Chocolate-sauce Sliced bananas Meringues
Scoop up the ice-cream and place it on a serving dish. Slice the bananas and sprinkle them over the ice-cream. Place the meringues all over the bananas and ice-cream. Whip the cream and pour it so it covers the ice-cream, bananas and meringues. Then pour some chocolate-sauce on top of it all (not to cover it, just as a decoration).
Meringues
Ingredients
4 egg-whites
1 cup sugar
a few drops distilled white vinegar
Heat oven 200F. Whip up the egg-whites with the vinegar essence and 1/2 cup sugar so it becomes really stiff. You should be able to hold the bowl upside down. Add the rest of the sugar and stir it gently. Divide the mixture up into lumps on a baking-sheet. Use a parchment-paper under too. Bake them in the middle of the oven for approximately 45 minutes or until they get light and let go of the paper.
Swedish Meringue Cake (Pinocchio Cake)
Cake Layer:
100 g butter, softened
1½ dl sugar
5 egg yolks
½ dl milk
2½ dl flour
2 tsps baking powder
Meringue:
5 egg whites
2¼ dl sugar
50 g slivered almonds
Filling:
5 dl heavy cream
Fresh berries or bananas
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add one egg yolk at a time while continuously whisking. Add the milk and stir. Mix flour and baking powder and stir in until batter is smooth.
Spread the batter onto a well-greased piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, about 12×16 inches.
In a clean bowl and clean beaters, beat egg whites and only 1¼ cups of sugar until soft peaks form. Add the remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.
Spread meringue on top of the cake batter and sprinkle with slivered almonds.
Bake for about 30 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack.
Slice the cake in half into two even pieces.
Whip the cream and mix in the fruit of your choice. Spread the cream over one of the cake layers. Then top with the second cake layer, meringue side up.
Oven: 350 F (175 C) (1 cup = 2,4dl)
Many thanks also to Skandia members, Harry Khamis and Pat Pi, for sharing more favorite recipes along with "how to" videos.
Princess Tårta Easy Way (Harry Khamis)
Yield: 6 - 8 servings
Ingredients:
One 16-ounce frozen pound cake, defrosted to room temperature
Two 7-oz packages of Marzipan dough
Ingredients: Vanilla Pastry Cream
1 cup whole milk
4 tablespoons sugar
Pinch of salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 egg yolks
1½ tablespoons cornstarch
½ tablespoon butter
Ingredients: Whipped Cream
1 cup heavy whipping cream
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Ingredients: Jam/Fruit
1 cup berries of your choice
½ cup jam of your choice
Zest of one lemon
Juice of ½ lemon
Directions: Vanilla Pastry Cream
In a medium saucepan set over medium heat, warm 1 cup milk, 2 tablespoons sugar, pinch of salt, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until barely steaming, stirring occasionally.
In a separate bowl whisk together 2 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1½ tablespoons cornstarch. Add the warmed milk mixture in a slow steady stream while whisking constantly. Once fully mixed, return mixture to the saucepan and set over medium high heat. Stir constantly until mixture is thickened, about 2 – 4 minutes. Reduce heat and cook for 1 additional minute. Remove from heat and add ½ tablespoon butter and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Stir.
Remove any cooked egg bits or lumps, then chill completely in the refrigerator. The vanilla pastry cream can be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.
Directions: Whipping Cream
With an electric mixer, beat 1 cup heavy whipping cream until it starts to thicken.
Add 3 tablespoons powdered sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla and beat to stiff peaks.
Directions: Jam/Fruit
Mix ½ cup jam with 1 cup berries. (Any jam flavor/fruit desired may be used.) Optionally, include the zest of one lemon and the juice of ½ lemon. (The jam-berry proportions can be adjusted to your tastes; I like berries so I include twice as much berries as jam. Also, I recommend the lemon zest/juice because it adds a citric component and cuts the sweetness of the jam mixture – the cake, especially the marzipan topping, is quite sweet enough.)
Directions: Assemble The Cake
Remove the pound cake from its pan and line the pan with plastic wrap, leaving plenty of overhang.
Slice the domed mound off the top of the pound cake and set aside (I make mini-tortes with this part of the cake, see below*), then slice the remaining cake horizontally into 3 equal layers.
Place one layer of cake in the bottom of the lined pan and press to slightly flatten.
Cover with the jam/fruit mixture, leaving a ½-inch border around the edge.
Top with the vanilla pastry cream. If the vanilla pastry cream is too thick to spread, add a little whipped cream to loosen it up.
Top with another cake layer.
Pile about half of the whipped cream on top.
Place the last cake layer on top carefully pressing it down around the whipped cream.
Add the remaining whipped cream on top. Cover the entire cake with the plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes (up to overnight).
Directions: Marzipan Topping
Poke a hole in one of the marzipan logs and insert some food coloring (any color can be added; the most common colors seen in Swedish bakeries are green and pink). Use your hands to knead the marzipan into a ball so that the color is uniform; use powdered sugar to keep it from sticking to your hands. Sprinkle a clean work surface with powdered sugar. Roll the marzipan out into a large rectangular sheet (15” by 9”) about ⅛ inch thick. Be careful you don’t roll it too thin or it could tear. If it sticks, add more powdered sugar.
Grasping the plastic wrap, remove the cake from the pound cake container and place it on a platter. Roll the cake onto its long side, gather the plastic wrap along the edge, roll the cake back to the upright position (without plastic wrap underneath), then remove the plastic wrap.
Carefully roll the marzipan onto the rolling pin (use more powdered sugar to prevent it from sticking), then unroll it over the chilled cake.
Use your hands to smooth the marzipan over the cake. Trim the edges of the marzipan at the base of the cake with a knife and set the trimmings aside. To cover up any marzipan imperfections around the base, pipe some whipped cream around it or wrap the excess marzipan around it.
(Optional) To make a rose for the top, tint some of the marzipan trimmings with red gel food coloring and knead with your hands until the color is even. Roll into 5 marble-sized balls, then squash them flat with your thumb (or press them between waxed paper to flatten them). Roll one disk (petal) up, then wrap the remaining petals around it, flaring them out slightly as you get to the last few. Pinch the bottoms together and then pinch off any excess. Tint more of the trimmings green, then roll out and cut into leaves. Stick the leaves to the rose and press gently on top of the cake.
Smaklig måltid!
(“Tasty meal time”)
Harry's full recipe can be printed by opening the Word document below in a new window.
PRINCESS TÅRTA EASY WAY.docxIn Celebration of Swedish Pancakes (Patricia Lindquist Pi)
The Story: Growing Up with Swedish Pancakes
Swedish pancakes—I have eaten them all my life. But maybe they weren’t Swedish pancakes. I do not remember my Swedish grandmother (from my dad’s side of the family) making them. My mother made them. Her mother was Danish, so maybe I should say I have eaten Danish pancakes all my life.
Mostly Mom would make these “Scandinavian” pancakes on a Saturday morning when there was no hurry for us kids to catch the school bus, or she would fry them after the family returned home from church on Sunday mornings. They were always a treat. The only problem was that Mom made small Swedish pancakes. She could fit four at a time on her old, heavy round griddle, and later in her square electric frying pan. This was the optimal way for her to keep up with the impatient appetites of a hungry family of five.
The biggest treat was being at my Danish grandmother’s house and eating her pancakes. She made pancakes that covered the entire bottom of her frying pan. As children, the preferred way my siblings and I ate them was to butter them, sprinkle them with sugar, roll them up, then pick them up and eat them like one does a hot dog. So perhaps you can understand why it was definitely not as exciting to roll up Mom’s little pancakes. No matter who made them, however, the pancakes were always delicious! Even our dog and cat hung around the kitchen waiting for handouts when they smelled Swedish pancakes frying.
Fast forward to my own years of frying Swedish pancakes for my children. I did not follow my mother’s way of making them small. I made them big, although I would usually stockpile some pancakes before calling everyone to the table. Like my mother, I used reduced-fat milk in the batter, fried them in shortening and sometimes made them for dinner. My kids buttered them, sprinkled them with sugar, rolled them up and ate them like hot dogs, just like their mother taught them to do!
Fast forward again to my empty nest years. Now I splurge by using whole milk in the batter and by frying the pancakes in butter. I make them anytime I feel like it. Swedish pancakes are easy and fast to stir up. I always have the necessary six common ingredients on hand, and there are almost always leftovers which are just as delicious. Over the years, of course, I have expanded my personal selection of toppings to suit my particular preference of the day. I decide between maple syrup or jam, or lingonberries or strawberries topped with whipped cream. Sometimes I do still just sprinkle them with sugar. Nowadays when I am lucky enough to have my far-flung children and grandchildren visit, they always request my Swedish pancakes before they travel back home. Even as young picky eaters they gobbled up their mormor’s pancakes.
Swedish Pancakes Nitty Gritty
There is no shortage of Swedish pancake recipes on the internet. Everyone seems to have their favorite. There is nothing wrong with that. It really is difficult to stir up a batch of Swedish pancakes that doesn’t taste good! Some people add sugar to the batter and some do not. Some people add vanilla flavoring and/or melted butter to the batter. Also the amount of eggs, milk and flour can vary from recipe to recipe, as can the amount of salt. I use a bit less salt than previously since I now fry my pancakes in salted butter. You should increase or decrease the amount of salt, sugar, vanilla and butter to suit your own tastes.
Regarding the number of eggs, my mother’s recipe called for five eggs. Maybe she figured one egg for each member in the family. She said to use three eggs if you halve the recipe. I discovered that proportionately more egg in the batter seems to make the flipping easier. My Danish grandmother used an extra egg in her batter also, so I have upped the quantity of eggs in my mother’s original recipe to six.
Swedish pancake recipes usually say to mix all the ingredients with a mixer or blend in a blender. I just use a wire whisk because it doesn’t need to be assembled and disassembled, and it is easy to wash by hand. (I am one of those people who avoids sticking metal items in the dishwasher other than everyday silverware.) In the past when I used a mixer my batter always seemed to retain some small lumps. My method of mixing with the whisk, which is described in detail below, results in lump-free batter. You can of course use any method of mixing that you prefer!
The Recipe
Momma’s Swedish Pancake Recipe (Doris Lindquist)
6 eggs, beaten
4 cups milk
2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 - 1 teaspoon salt
Mix* all together and fry on hot griddle [in shortening or butter]
This will serve 4 to 6 people.
* Lump-free batter using a wire whisk:
Start by whisking the eggs, then add half the flour and whisk until smooth.
Stir in a fourth of the milk, add the rest of the flour and whisk until smooth.
Add the rest of the ingredients. Whisk until smooth.
Additional Notes
The Batter: I believe that letting the batter sit for a bit (30 to 60 minutes) makes the pancakes easier to flip, but waiting is not necessary. I have also let the batter sit overnight in the refrigerator. This delay seems to cause the pancakes to be more fragile when flipping. They still taste great!
The Pan: If you make Swedish pancakes often you probably have a favorite pan for frying them in. I have taken my favorite pan (with sloping sides and non-stick coating) along on beach vacations when I knew I was going to be making pancakes for breakfast!
The Temperature: You will need to experiment with the hotness of the pan, but probably it will be about the same as what you use when frying regular pancakes. I use a setting between medium and medium hot. Sometimes the first pancake doesn’t flip really well because I am too impatient to let the pan heat up. It still tastes great!
The Method:
Melt 1 to 2 teaspoons of butter in the hot pan, spreading it around in the pan with your pancake turner. It should melt fast and sizzle, and it will want to turn brown, which is okay to a point. With practice you will begin to get the feel of just how hot your frying pan should be by how the butter behaves.
Ladle or pour enough batter into the pan so that when you lift the pan off the burner and swirl it gently around, tipping the pan as you do so, the batter covers the bottom of the pan. Keep gently tipping and swirling to even out the batter until the batter stops flowing. Set the pan back on the burner. When the surface of the pancake no longer looks shiny wet, peek under the edges to see if the pancake has browned a bit and looks ready to turn.
Get up your courage and quickly shove the pancake turner under the pancake. Lift it completely off the pan, high enough so that when you quickly flip the pancake over it will go back into the pan without folding over on itself. Use the pancake turner to help straighten out the pancake if necessary. (Do this quickly, too!)
The second side of the pancake seems to take less time to brown, so don’t run away from the stove after you flipped the pancake! With a bit of practice you will figure out just how much batter to use for each pancake so that there is enough to swirl around and cover the bottom of the pan, but not so much that the pancake gets too thick.
When the second side is delicately browned, roll it up using the pancake turner and lift it out of the pan. If you are not so particular about presentation, you can fold the pancake into quarters instead, then lift it out.
Keep pancakes covered in a warm oven if you want to fry all of them before you serve them. Eat them any way you like, with any topping or no topping!
Conclusion: I have never eaten a Swedish pancake that I did not like. The pancakes that flop when I flip them still taste great. Leftover pancakes taste great. Pancakes fried the next day from leftover batter taste great. I have had Swedish pancakes made with gluten-free flour and almond milk that taste great. Don’t be afraid to experiment and tweak a recipe.
Smaklig måltid!
Pat's story and recipe can be printed by opening the Word document below in a new window.
In Celebration of Swedish Pancakes, MSF 2021.docxQ U I C K L I N K S
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