Gardner Kim - Norwegian Cakes and Cookies

Copyright 2012 by Sverre Stre

Originally published as Det ste norske 2009 Cappelen Damm, Norway

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61608-556-8

Printed in China

I have called what I work with the new Norwegian bakery. That is because I am committed to making traditional Norwegian cakes and desserts, but with a new and original twist. This applies for example to desserts like veiled farm girls, compotes, and rice pudding, as well as classic baked goods like Kvfjord (Worlds Best) cake, lefses (Norwegian griddle cakes), oatmeal macaroons, and sveler (Norwegian pancakes). These well-known and beloved recipes are favorites on many a Norwegian dinner table, but even though the original recipes are fantastic, I quite like the idea of bringing something new to them. For example, I do not avoid using both vanilla and saffron when I think these exotic flavors lift the classics yet another notch. At the same time, I am very committed to allowing the Norwegian flavor to come through. I also like to make use of modern techniques and often break a cake or dessert recipe down into its individual parts so as to put it together again in a new way. For example, waffles with blueberries and sour cream are transformed into sour cream and blueberry mousse sandwiches. This is how you get a delicious dessert with a completely new texture, but with the same beautiful, traditional flavors.

As a pastry chef, and especially as a member of the Norwegian National Culinary Team, I have managed to be part of a movement in recent years to promote Norwegian and Nordic raw materials. In the international culinary world, Norwegian raw materials have a high status. This especially applies to lamb, wild game, crayfish, and king crab. These raw materials have developed fantastic flavor and quality because of our harsh climate and our peculiar geographical relationship. If we look at the sweet kitchenthe borderline between bakery and dessertwe also have a large selection of good Norwegian raw materials. For example, fruit and berriesagain, you can look at the harsh climate of Norway as beneficial. We cannot cultivate large quantities of them, but we get fruit and berries with exceptionally good flavors and qualities. Long, light summers with relatively low temperatures make it so that Norwegian fruit and berries take a long time to ripen, something that gives the flavors the opportunity to develop favorably over a much longer time than in warmer regions. When I, together with the Norwegian National Culinary Team, won the Culinary Olympics in 2008, we had Norwegian raw materials as the theme, and we let the Norwegian raw materials shine through in the desserts and in the chocolates we made. We used cloudberries, wild raspberries, rosehips, apples, and even porcini mushrooms in the chocolates, and they were a really big hit with the judges.

Other especially good Norwegian raw materials that I want to highlight in this book are our dairy products, which are also entirely world-class. When the Norwegian National Culinary Team travels around in the world and competes, we always have cream and butter from Norway with us. When it comes to butter, we use both dairy butter and Kviteseid butter. We also make great use of quark, sour cream, cream cheese, crme frache, and dense milk. In Norway, we also have some exciting ingredients that are less traditional. Examples of these are sea buckthorn and birch juice. These are good, but perhaps little known, raw materials that I explore in terms of potential and possibility in the new Norwegian bakery.

In my bakery, we use the raw materials of the seasons. We look forward to the rhubarb arriving in the spring, to the berry season of summer with strawberries and raspberries, and to the autumn when there is an abundance of locally produced fruit like apples and plums. We use all we can of fresh fruit and berries, as well as preserves and canned goods, so that we can serve canned plums, strawberry jelly, and jam throughout the winter. This gives us a great variety of goods to choose from in the course of a year, and the customers know what they can look forward to throughout the seasons.

It is my wish to preserve the pure and simple in the Norwegian raw materials while I innovate and surprise with new flavors and methods at the same time. It is about knowledge and creativity and other ways to use our fantastic raw materials, and most of all it is about entirely new and delicious taste experiences. Enjoy Norwegian Cakes and Cookies!

Sverre Stre

www.sverresaetre.no

Fruit

Crunchy, good apples, mild pears, sweet morellos We dont have very many types of fruit in Norway, but those we do have are world-class. Our apples, plums, and morellos are in a class of their own when it comes to flavor. It is the long, light summer days and the relatively low temperature that makes the fruit ripen slowly here and develop a lot of extra flavor and sweetness. Unfortunately, the whole of our vast tract of land is not ideal for cultivating fruit, but parts of eastern and western Norway have proven to be perfect when it comes to climate and soil.

In Norway, we have preserved fruit with jamming, juicing, and canning since the old days. This is how you could use the fruit in food preparation beyond the fall and winter. Today, preserving has disappeared from the home for the most part and is used mostly by big industry, which seldom takes into account whether the raw materials are finished ripening before theyre preserved. Moreover, so much sugar is poured on that they dont play a part. In my bakery, in terms of both health and nutrition, as well as taste, we have dusted off the good old art of refinement and can as much fruit as we can enjoy through the dark winter. If you treat the raw materials well and follow the recipe, you get canned goods of excellent quality. You should also know that if you wish to use the fruit whole, canning is actually a better storage method than freezing.

You probably do not immediately associate carrots and potatoes with baked goods, but I actually use a good deal of both of them in my bakery. Carrots and potatoes fit very well in cakes and desserts because they are mild in flavor and add a lot of moistness.