fikonrutor

Woh...woh!  No need to swear!  Unless you just watched the Atlanta Falcons lose the Super Bowl like I just did.  No, Fikonrutor is not a bad word but are fig squares in Swedish and is found on page 38-39 in the Fika The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break cookbook.  It seems easy enough or is it?  Read ahead to see what else besides the Super Bowl has me grimacing!

This recipe appears like a perfectly delightful bar type of cookie.  Looks are deceiving.  The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of fig preserves.  I didn't even try very hard to to look for anything remotely fig preserved because I knew outside of squeezing it out of a bag of Fig Newtons I wasn't going to find it.  I had first thought of using a pie filling instead but would I use raisin or mince meat?  Luckily I re-read the recipe description and it said Fikonrutor is traditionally made with raspberry jam so when we were at Walmart Saturday I bought a jar of raspberry jam as well as a jar of strawberry because I've looked ahead to the thumbprint cookies that come after this recipe.  I'm planning a bit ahead.

Sunday (today) after church and lunch I got busy making up the dough.  1/2 cup ground almonds, 1 1/2 cups flour, 2/3 cups cane sugar (used the last of mine up), 6 ounces butter and 1 egg.  I mixed it by hand as instructed but it wasn't coming together very well in spite of my mushing and mushing together of the ingredients...so I added about a tablespoon of water and Voila!  It came together lickedy split and I rolled it into a log, put it in a Tupperware container and threw it in the fridge.  The recipe said for at least and hour or more.

During that time Hubby and I decided to go out and enjoy the day.  At first we thought maybe we'd go for a walk but once in the car we saw the oil maintenance light come on the dash which meant to change the oil.  For the record before this I had told Hubby I didn't want to go out because I didn't want to spend money.  Off to the Great Canadian Oil Change we went.  The oil change took less than 20 minutes and cost $71.  Then we thought we'd go for coffee and hit up one of our favourite Tim Hortons locations right in downtown Saskatoon.  We both had cafe mocha's and carrot muffins. I paid with a gift card.  Funny to do this when my intention was to bake something at home to have with coffee!  On our return trip home we thought we better fill with gas so this little excursion cost us $110.  Ugh!  See!  Should have stayed home!

Innocent dough.

Back at home I re-read the fikonrutor directions...roll 3/4 of the dough in a rectangle then top with the jam and use the remaining dough to make a lattice pattern.  Easy for someone who is not rolling pin challenged like myself!  I cannot roll out a rectangle to save my life!  The base went fine but remember this dough was chilled and by working with it was warming up.  Cutting the lattice was easy but separating the pieces to lay on top was very difficult.  I did what I could to make it work all the while becoming extremely frustrated.

In retrospect, while I was making the lattice I should probably have put the baking tray back in the fridge to make certain the butter remained hard.  I did not and I suspect this is the first part of perhaps why this "adventure" when awry.  

The instructions said to preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and as I've mentioned in previous blog posts my oven is about 25 degrees too warm so I set my oven on 375.  I probably should have put it on the described 400 this time.  *shrugs*  

One of these is not quite like the other 🙈

 Okay, so the baking tray went into the oven and I started to tidy up my mess from the counter and took out the chicken pot pie which was going into the oven next for our supper when I heard a 'booiiiiing' come from the depths of the stove.  Cringing I opened the oven door to see my cookie sheet which has never before warped...twisted and warped.  What the heck?!  Wait! It gets better.  Now the one end of the cookie sheet is raised off the wire rack in the oven and all the dough and raspberries are slowly seeping towards the other end. 😱😱😱 I grabbed another dish and tried to weigh down the raised end but to no avail.

Fikonrutor!

At this point I check my recipe instructions one more time "Bake for about 10 minutes."  ABOUT?  about??  It doesn't tell me what it should look like when cooked or how the edges should be nor any definitive time limits.  Yes, I should have kept it in the oven longer even if I have a history of over doing the recipes.  I'd rather have almost burnt over raw....which is what I ended up with.

FIKONRUTOR!!

Yet, last weeks cookie had similar instructions about cooling so with a slight crumb of hope I continued on.  I cut it into squares like it said which is when it became apparent that most of the squares hadn't cooked at all and everything seemed very slippery, oily and buttery.  I did let everything cool and was able to separate some squares which had cooked and they did taste good. (Yes, I still sampled.)  I debated what to do and I left them cooling and resting on the counter for some time....

....then I gave up.  Instead of the 35 squares I was supposed to end up with I got maybe 15.

This recipe SHOULD have been very very easy squeezy.  If I were ever to attempt it again which I probably won't because I put a red dot on the page (which basically means run for your life) I would just squish all the dough into a 9 X 13 baking dish and put the jam on top and not mess around with the rolling of the dough or the lattice top.  I would definitely bake it at 400 and I would definitely need to bake it longer than 10 minutes...probably closer to 20 considering this experience.

I did give one to Hubby to taste test and he said "ah - hmmmm nommm"

I'm learning that when you try the recipes in this book you have to read between the lines and go more on instinct and baking skill than exactly what the instructions are telling you.  Also I haven't found a big benefit to using the cane sugar and I think when I try the next recipe I'll just go with regular sugar.   It doesn't hurt to have a back up treat to have on hand when your baking is a disaster.  Thank goodness for afternoon excursions!

Thank goodness this is a thing!  KitKat to the rescue!