Waiting time

Ten minutes later its still not ready and all "raw" in the middle. Ive now given it 15 more minutes in the oven but I still cant smell it. This kind of worries me, How can it possibly taste when it doesnt smell? Probably not much. All I can do is to give it a try.

The flavours of the cake are very timid and mild. At first hand, not even noticable. The cake is a big dissapointment. During the second bite I start to taste something. A microtouch of sweetness. And with that came more. However it required a deep amount of concentration to taste its full body of flavours, or lack of them, some sweetness here, a slight hint of fig. Figtouched topnotes meets earthlike bottoms. The syrup has made the corners and the back of the cake quite fudgy, almost like butterscotch. This is the main reason why the cake is edible. Actually its quite nice, in a shy kind of way.

Limited Cake

Its late, I want to eat. I woke up around 1 pm, so it feels like its maximum 11ish. Meaning, feels like having supper. A limited supply of ingredients at hand. I make bacon with eggs. Milk with chocolate. The very last drops of milk. Its not enough, apparently I want more. I type "cake with eggs without milk" in the top right g:window. Reminiscing the delicious chocolatecake ma amie P made for her hyperallergic son. I dont have pure cacao though. Only this fairtrade ready-to-mix-with-milk thing.

The top searchresult with recipes is a forum for allergic people. Chocolatecake . The ingredients of it matches my very scanty supply. I switch wheatflour for rye one and due to the absense of pure cacao I add golden syrup, some lingonberry jam and also some crunchy müsli to it.

The cake is in the oven right now. The recipe said up to 1 h of cooking, but since I took only half of everything Im guessing maybe also half that time. Thats in ten minutes.

Patterns WITHIN and WITHOUT?

We all have patterns in our lifes that rule our acting, our being our life. Some stay forever, some come back and some of them we can change - but first we need to be aware of them. Like the geometrical symbols found in a suburbian tunnel seemed to have been there forever, without me even noticing them. And the pink-orange pattern on the "oldsubway" walls just came back to catch my eye.

Traditions...

My take on traditions has been trough out my life to break them. I tend to always salute and honour everything that want to change them. Like I am some sort of anti-authority anarchist. I just hate being told what to do, at least by some outer force - like society. Pros and cons with that I guess. However I do create traditions on my own with my family and friends. The easteregg painting being one of them, this is how the eggs of 2011 turned out.

Beautiful Berlin and other STUFF like Im back!

Haven't written anything for ages, dunno why really, I guess I've been caught up in STUFF. The word of the day. STUFF. Says it all. I was stuffed.

Anyhow, I felt a sudden urge to get back to basic. To share delights again. To write.

I forgot myself and what was important I got lost in unhealthy loveaffairs and post-election depression.

dont know really where to start, so I just start here.

And now some environmental awareness

While browsing through the digital version of Dazed and Confused I came across an american artist named C. Finley who's working on a project involving the streets, or more correct the trash, of New York. With the Wallpaper Dumpster project Finley creates awareness on something we normally dont want to see, the dumpster, which, in Finley's world, is decorated with the most beautiful wallpaper she could find. In this modern age people just consume and consume, just throwing away the waste without considering the consequences. Finley wants us to rethink our consumerism and the way we treat the waste. As most enlightened people of today know the mother earth is in serious danger of becoming over-heated and over-polluted. We all need to react now. Similar activism can also be spotted on the streets of Stockholm, this cute little fellow we found at Tjärhovsgatan.

Photos via: Dazeddigital.com and the Goldsmith

MAH-JONG. When Sweden was cool

Once upon a time three young women, Helena Henschen, Veronica Nygren and Stina Torsson started a fashioncompany. The year was 1966 and quickly people realised they created more than just clothes. The women were equally interested in politics as they were talented designers.

Mah-Jong made woven fabrics in vivid colours with graphic swirling patterns. There motto was that the garments should last longer than just over the season. They were against the fashion-industry's over consumption attitude, instead they wanted to create new collections every year that could be mixed and matched with the old lines. They criticized and pointed out the link between the fashion industry and the poverty of the third world. They constantly reacted against injustice around the world, making people aware of the problems. For instance they protested against the US bombings of Vietnam by switching their own ads in the subway replacing them with pictures of the war.

Long live the revolution!

Suzuki Takayuki

How beautiful aren't these creations? All made by Japanese fashion designer Suzuki Takayuki. His clothes are almost like pieces if art, refined into the smallest detail. They are dramatic at the sime time as peaceful. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Suzuki started his career as a designer of theatrecostumes?

Shin Tanaka

The Japanese graffiti-artist and designer Shin Tanaka is now on display at Östasiatiska museet in Stockholm. He is known to use the old traditional techniques of origami and mix it with modern street influences. The result is great! He makes small creatures, paper toys and sneakers. He first started to create the papersneakers as a student and didnt have the money to buy the sneakers he wanted. Unfortunately I dont have any photos of the papersneakers but check out his great page http://shin.co.nr/ it is truely inspiring!

Christian Zuzunaga - Pixilating the city

The London-based, Barcelona-born graphic and print designer Christian Zuzunaga expresses himself primarily using printed textiles. He means that textiles always been used as mediums to identify, differentiate and destignate where we come from.

His main inspiration is the city. He is looking at the city as a metaphor, or a force that pulls us towards it. Architecture and the structural ideas of cities like Barcelona, London, New York and Shanghai are his main inspiration in his work.

Photos via: www.apartmenttherapy.com, www.design-klub.com

Pepparkakor Part 2 - The baking of the cakes

The dough so as the bowl were still intact the next day. These things, like letting the dough rest over night is just the things that gets me going when it comes to baking. The more complicated the recipe is the more pepped up I get. Well the pepparkakor recipe is not complicated at all, its just the rest over night part people are too lazy for. Therefor premaid pepparkaks-dough is sold everywhere.

I couldnt resist to eat a bit of the raw dough as always. This one as well as raw sponge cake are truely my favourites. As a child, me and my friends often made sponge cake without baking it, just to eat the mixture. Without baking soda offcourse.

The dough was delicious and Im happy I added the bitter orange. Use a rolling pin to bake them out, as thin as you like. Add more flour to it, so it wont stick to the table. Bake them in 200 c for 3-5 minutes. Decorate as you like. This is how we did it.

Pepparkakor - the baking of the dough

Pepparkakor (Gingerbread biscuits) the most swedish and christmaslike of all cookies, is a challenge for me. I spent years of baking Baklava, Biscotti, Cupcakes, Ayurveda-style cookies and fabulous looking cakes, but never Pepparkakor. To be honest Im quite scared, since I know I can never live up to the pepparkakor of my mothers. But hey I will give it a try. My way.

First of all, I was very careful when choosing recipe. There are hundreds out there. The one I chose is from one of my mothers old cookbooks. Its from the eighties and sure to be the pepparkakor I grew up with. Second of all, be careful when choosing the spices. I went to the beautiful Essensfabriken at Wallingatan in Stockholm. The shop itself is a delight. It looks like something from the 19th century and all the spices TASTE for real.

There are many variations of which spices to include but I chose: cinnamon,
grinded ginger, grinded clove, and grinded peel from Seville orange. Mix the ingredients with water, sugar and syrup in a pan, stir it until boiling. Let boil for a minute or two, remove from heat add butter (always butter, never margarine, f*ck the calories)and let it melt in to the brown "sauce". Mix a bit of baking soda with flour and add it to the rest of the ingredients (the "sauce"). Make a proper dough and let it get really cold over night.

Tonight is freezing, my dough is chilling out on the balcony and I hope it will be allright tomorrow without accidents like the glassbowl the dough rests in has exploded or something.

Baby Jesus on its way

Beauty - Surrounds us

These photos makes me happy since they remind me that beauty is found everywhere, nothing is stopping creativity and the importance of adding some color to your everyday life.

Japanese Nail Art - More is more?

Technically advanced nailart has been extremely popular in Japan since the mid nineties. More or less all women do something with their nails, some a bit to the extreme. Fake nails for 3 year olds are sold at department stores and every year a nailart festival is held in Osaka. The popularity is now spreading and Japanese nailart-salons is opening all over the US. So when is it coming here? Or does it clash too much with the Swedish less is more motto?

My question is What do all these girls wearing those nail DO all day? When I had mine very short UV-gel nails i could barely use my cellphone.

The always creative Japanese technology industry have however come up with many ideas solving problems like this. They have for instance developed a can opener especially made for people with extensions as well as there are golf gloves that have space for the nail extensions to come out in the front.

Photos via japanvisitor.blogspot.com, friendfeed.com,defyingmainstream.com/.