Napkin Folding Origami Crane

New Years Eve is near and many of us enjoy doing something special to celebrate it. If you are one of those who will cook a delicious three course dinner for many guests or will just make a simple dinner for two there is always a reason enough to do a nice table setting. The classical types of napkin origami for the table setting are the "Standing Fan"  you have on the plate and maybe a traditional "Lily Goblet" you put in the glasses but I wanted to make something slightly different and decided to fold the Crane. The Crane is a classic origami model but perhaps not as much a model for table settings as an iconic symbol of peace connected to the sentence "fold a thousand cranes and you are granted a wish" and the symbol of peace in memory of the Japanese girl Sadako Sasaki who was one of the innocent victims of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima.

New Years Eve is the last exciting day of the year and we all think of it as the door to a new beginning, a chance to change and it lights up dreams for the upcoming year. Decorate your evening with the symbol of peace and make the night even more special.

Happy New Year to all of you!

 

Double Caramel Cookies

Happy 4th Advent! Today we light the fourth candle and counting down to the big holiday!
Christmas means good things to me and one good thing I really craving for during this time of year is caramel cookies. I remember this type of cookie from my grandmother on my fathers side who baked them around Christmas. Unfortunately I can't find the original recipe that she used but I made the conclusion that she probably used a shortcrust pastry and a classic caramel cream. So I took a chance and I think I nailed it! I almost always search in my "Sju sorters kakor" recipe book to (translated "Seven cakes and cookies" - a classic Swedish home baking book). Here you can find the Swedish version at Adlibris online book store. I also found on Adlibris homepage the English version Here
I used the shortcrust pastry ingredients from "Chess-cookies" from an earlier post :)

 

Double Caramel Cookies (approximately 70 cookies)

Shortcrust pastry
1 deciliter sugar
200 grams butter/margarine
4 1/2 - 5 deciliter flour
2 teaspoon vanilla powder

Caramel cream
2 1/2 deciliter cream
1 deciliter sugar
1/2 deciliter syrup
50 grams butter/magarine
1 teaspoon cocoa

Put the oven to 175 Celcius if you have a convection oven and 200 Celcius if you use an ordinary oven.
Mix all the ingredients for the shortcrust pastry and work fast with your hands and fingers to make a pastry that hold together but is not sticky.
Divide the pastry into four parts and roll each part into a roll with a diameter of 2 cm.
Lay the rolls on a plate and let them get cool in the refrigerator while you prepare the oven plates and cover them with baking paper.
Cut each roll in about 0,8 cm slices and lay them on the baking paper. The cookies will not flow out so much when you bake them so you can position them with a 2 cm distance. 
Bake the cookies in the middle of the oven for about 8 minutes, but since all ovens are different the time can differ but I would say that you should not wait longer than 10 minutes.

Now to the caramel cream. Mix all the ingredients in a heavy saucepan (strain the cocoa in a sieve to avoid lumps) and let the mixture reach the boiling temperature.
Lower the temperature and let the mixture simmer for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do the "caramel-test" by let a drop of caramel fall into a glass of cold water - if the caramel drop gets hard and doesn't dissolve in the water the caramel is ready.

Let the caramel cool down and then use a snall spoon to spread little caramel on the downside of a cookie. Then put an other cookie on top and push the cookies together so the caramel squeezes out to the sides. 

Tip: When the cookies are cooled down and ready, restore them in the fridge. When it is time to serve, just put them out in room temperature for 10-15 minutes and they are ready to eat.


Happy baking!

Gingerbread House

For some years now I have made my own gingerbread house from scratch and it has become a little Chrismas-tradition for me. I just sit down and start drawing on some ideas and when I am satisfied with one idea I start to make the paper templates for it. In the following pictures you can see how my templates looked like and I have noted the real measurements for them on the papers too.
I made several styles this year but I kept coming back to the idea of a house with wrong proportions and oblique angles.
Here in Sweden you cna buy ready made gingerbread dough and I always buy. If you have the opportunity I recommend you to buy the dough because it is quite time consuming but if you want to you can always make it yourself. Just be aware that the dough needs to rest for a day in the refrigerator before you start making your house.

When all your house parts are baked and you have let them cool so they are hard, it is time to put them all together. For this I melted ordinary white sugar in a frying pan. Be careful with this sugar because it gets very hot very fast! When the sugar has melted you can put the frying pan on a trivet while you dip the house parts into the sugar and quickly put the parts together. The sugar solidifies quickly on the houseparts so work fast. The sugar will get cooled down in the frying pan while you work but don't worry, you can always put the frying pan back on the stove burner and the sugar will melt agian. When you are finished with your house you can boil water and gently stirr it into the cooled sugar, put it on the stove burner and the sugar will dissolve in the water after a while, remember to stirr well.

If you think it is a bit scary with this hot sugar you can just skip it and put all parts together with the icing instead. Here is the recipe for the icing I made:

Icing 

4 deciliter icing sugar

1 egg white

1 tablespoon juice from lemon

Mix the ingredients with a electric beater until it gets stiff.

Put the icing in a piping bag or do your own piping bag by using a plastic bag and after filling it with icing you cut a small hole in one corner.

Christmas Origami Moon and Angel

This week I will show you two tutorials how you fold a moon and an angel to decorate your Christmas tree with! For the moon I tried using both aluminium foil and ordinary paper you use for your printer, and I think it is better to use ordinary paper or baking paper (like the one I used for the angel, see tutorial) if you would like a more transparent and graceful moon. Foil is very sensitive and as you can see on my moon in foil it has many wrinkles. Personally I like it best without all those wrinkles but maybe that is the appearance you are looking for! The angel is an abstract symbol more than a full detailed figure, perfect for you who likes the simple and clean look. On the back of the angel there is a pocket just beween the wings, which you can use to put the angel in the top of your Christmas tree :)
I found these origami models in a book called "Origami - konsten att vika papper", or in English "The Origami Bible", by Ashley Woods. Click on the titles to get to one Swedish and one English webshop.

Happy folding everyone!

How to make an angel
You need a paper in size A4 (= 210×297 mm) ordinary printing paper or transparent paper such as baking paper.
(You can click on the pictures to make them larger)

How to make a moon
You need a paper in size 150×150 mm ordinary printing paper, aluminium foil or transparent paper such as baking paper.
(You can click on the pictures to make them larger)