Here’s what we will need for the chocolate balls:

• 7 tbs butter (½ cup is 8 tbs)
• ½ cup sugar
• 3 tbs cocoa powder
• 3 tbs cold, strong coffee
• 1 1/3 cup oats
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• shredded coconut for garnish

Mix together butter, sugar, cocoa powder, oats and vanilla. Add the cold coffee. Sprinkle coconut shreds on a plate and roll out balls of the chocolate batter onto it. If the batter is too runny you can stick it in the fridge for a few minutes to let the butter harden again.

After you have rolled all the balls, let stand in the fridge for about an hour and serve :)

The recipes for the basic meringues and the espresso zabaglione are the same, so I will only tell you what you need extra.

For the meringues you will need about 1.5oz of dark chocolate (around 54%). Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and let cool down, but not stiffen. Just so it doesn’t burn your fingers, stir it down carefully in the meringue batter. Make small cookie shapes and bake at 300F for about 10-15 minutes.If you did it right they will rise a tiny bit and be fluffy on the inside. If you did it wrong, like I did, they will be flat, crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Still good though :)

And for the zabaglione we are trading the Grand Marnier for 1 cup hot espresso. So whisk up the egg yolks and sugar in a double boiler and when thickened and ready just add the hot espresso slowly and whisk it to a smooth liquid and serve in espresso cups.

Delicious!

It requires a bit of work but all in all this shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.

Here’s what we need:

• 4-5 apples
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup gluten free flour (you can use regular flour too, same amount!)
• 2 oz of butter

Chop up the apples and put them in a greased up pan. Peeled apples are preferable. Mix the flour and the sugar together and pour the mix evenly over the apples. Cut up the butter in really thin leaves and cover the whole pan with almost no space in between the butter leaves. You can mix the butter into the sugar/flour mix before you pour it over the apples, but it’s not fun trying to mix 2 oz of butter into a cup mixture.

Put into the oven at 375F for about 25 minutes, until the top of the pie is golden brown and the butter and sugars has mixed together so there is no more floury parts. If after 25 minutes there still is, just add a tiny bit of butter on top of the floury areas.

When baked it will look crumbly and be a bit crunchy, sweet and fruity. Serve with vanilla custard. I used Marsan-sauce, a Swedish style vanilla custard that you can find at IKEA. Hey, you can even serve it with Zabaglione, it’s a custard too!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

The blend:

• 2 egg whites
• ½ cup of sugar

Make sure your eggs are room temperature, or leave them out of the fridge for about 30 minutes. This will allow them to fluff more than refrigerated eggs. Crack the eggs and separate the white from the yolks in two separate bowls. We will use the yolks later in the second Valentine’s Weekend recipe.

In the bowl with the two egg whites, start stirring and pour in the sugar. Stir constantly for about 6-10 minutes (or longer, depending on the temperature of your eggs). The batter should be white and shiny and you should be able to turn the bowl upside down. But you don’t want it to have hard peaks. Hard peaks as in when you lift up your whisk the little tops that form stands solid.

Now pour the batter into cupcake tins and bake in the over for about 45 minutes at 300F. After about 30 minutes check in on them to make sure they haven’t burned.

The top of the meringue will be hard and crunchy while the inside is soft and spongy. You can tap the top gently with a fork or whatever tool you chose to use to see how the crust is doing while cooking.

Let them cool and serve :)

Although I measure everything in metric so might be a little bit complicated anyway. First off melt about 200g of butter (that’s 26g less than 2 quarts) when all melted pour over 2dl of sugar and mix until smooth. In another bowl mix about half a liter of flour (I used oat flour and it wasn’t too bad but I prefer wheat flour. But hey, it’s supposed to be gluten free >_<) and a teaspoon of vanilla sugar, I actually find it hard to find that in America. There were plenty of pure vanilla extract browsing the isles. Oh, well. That works too ^^

Mix the two bowls together and bat around until it looks like cookie dough. Too liquidy? Add more flour!

When batter real smooth and ready to be managed by hand pick it all up and roll it to a big sausage. Cut it in centimetre thick slices and roll to balls. Or bigger if you want :P

I made half the batter plain and half of it with raisins and cinnamon, an interesting mix. Worth a try, although the raisins might explode :D

When all ready just put them in the oven on 175 degrees Celsius (approx. 347 degrees Fahrenheit) and let cook for 20 minutes in the MIDDLE of the oven. Too high or too low will burn them.

Good luck, and enjoy the image of my perfect cookies!

P.S. Yes, the recipe would be the same if using regular wheat flour instead of gluten free flour ^^

Starting out: This dough was crazy to make. I made things a bit out of order and it messed me up a little bit. Start with boiling about 2 cups of milk, as soon as brought to a boil take it off the burner and set aside until luke warm (you don’t want the milk to be so hot it kills the yeast) while the milk is cooling down, mix the yeast in finger hot (its a Swedish saying, around 37-45 degrees Celsius) water, about half a cup of water. Crack four eggs into a big bowl (the primary mixing bowl) and add one cup of sugar. Also melt half a cup of butter.

The mix: Mix the eggs and sugar until smooth and yellow. Add the milk. The yeast and about 2 cups of bread flour. Mix until batter is smooth. Add another 3 cups of flour and beat really well. The dough should be really smooth and almost glossy. Add the melted butter, mix it in well and add the rest of the flour. Mix around until once again smooth, glossy and not sticky.

The 1st rise: Put the dough on a floured surface and put the bowl on top of it for about 15 minutes for a small rise. While doing so, slightly grease another bowl.

Kneading: After letting it rise for 15 minutes take off the bowl and start kneading it. Knead it until you feel its done yourself. I kneaded my dough for about 5-10 minutes.

The 2nd rise: Drop down the dough into the lightly greased bowl and put a towel over the bowl and let rise for about one hour. The dough will rise to the double or more ^^

Beat it: After one hour of rising, beat it down again really well and cover up for a third rise.

The making: After risen to almost double again take dough out on floured surface and split into 3. Split each slice into another 3. You should have 9 little balls of dough now. Roll them out to foot long little rolls and braid them. Or you could roll 1/3 out and spread butter, vanilla and cinnamon on it. Slice longways and roll up to little buns. When done with the braids and/or buns put them on (what I prefer) wax paper on a long pan.

The last rise: Let rise for 20 minutes under the towels. When risen, crack an egg and brush the top and sprinkle with some sugar.

Baking it: Put in the middle of the oven on 375-400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for approximately 25-30 minutes. Make sure you didn’t get any sugar on the wax paper, it will melt and burn the bottom of your bread -_-

Overall this took me about 4 hours and made everyone smile. I wont say that this is as easy as it sounds but its definitely not hard. Takes alot of time and patience though, and cleaning :P