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!

 

Orange Almond Slices

Apelsinsnittar.  

Say that three times fast.  Actually, I don't think I could even say it once.  You'd almost think these cookies had apples in them, but it's quite the opposite as they are composed mostly of almonds with orange and ginger for additional flavours.

Earlier when I looked at the recipe to make sure I had all the ingredients I noticed that again I was being forced to separate the eggs.  Why do I do this to myself?  This time though the white is not beaten nor folded into anything else so I thought I'd be fine and reminded myself to really pay attention and make sure I got every step.

The basis for the cookie is somewhat like a shortbread.  The recipe can be found on another blog ( Fike Cookbook Review ) which also gives a review of the Fika cookbook.  I went googling this time to find out what apelsinsnittar are supposed to look like.  I know what mine look like but what are they actually supposed to be?  This is the only downside to this cookbook because it has illustrations and I've found I'm not sure if what I've made is actually what it's supposed to be.  Hubby says I should concern myself with flavour and not looks.  That doesn't sound very Fika to me.  The only exception to the missing picture ordeal has been the vettebullar and that's because I had a pretty firm grasp on what a cinnamon bun is.  *smile* 

The dough itself was easy to make.  No issues there.  Once done I popped it into the fridge just as I would Mom's sugar cookie recipe.  The next step was to turn on the oven and as I've mentioned previously my oven is hotter than most so to be extra careful this time I used the thermometer to properly set the stove.  Everything I make tends to be over cooked.  Ugh.  Next up is the filling.

Duhn.  Duhn.  Duhn.

Hopefully Mom doesn't see this & want her processor back!

In my Mothers food processor...you see I borrowed it approximately 20 years ago and never gave it back...You process the blanched almonds, cane sugar, and almond extract "until it comes together" BUT "it could be smooth or it could be sticky depending on the almonds."  Oh thanks!  Because that's clear.  *eyeroll*  I ran the processor until Hubby came to inquire as to what the racket was and still it didn't seem like it was "coming together".  So I did it some more until it kind of seemed like it might have at least formed an alliance.  I added the egg white and orange zest and it smelled pretty good and when I stuck my finger in it I'll admit it tasted pretty good too.

Rolling the dough was easy and I did it between two sheets of plastic wrap as it advised.  My biggest weakness as I've come to discover is rolling things into shapes.  Each quarter of dough was supposed to be in a rectangle of a certain size.  Mine ended up being more ovular, if that's a word.  Also the 'logs' I was supposed to construct varied in length.  Good thing I wasn't building something important here.

On the centre of each oval a scoop of almond paste was portioned out.  Wait.  Almond paste?  Is that what that was supposed to be in the food processor?  Okay, isn't almond paste the white stuff that goes on the top of Christmas fruitcakes?  THAT is not what this looks like at all.  But I forage ahead.

Logs made and into the oven they go.

They smelled good.

😕Not very log shaped 🙈

So then they got put on the kitchen cupboard until they were cooled enough to glaze with the orange juice and icing sugar.  I used an actual glass juicer from my hall china cabinet.  It reminded me of being a kid and squeezing oranges for breakfast on the weekends.  Each log was supposed to be cut into 12 cookies but I just cut them into what I thought were a good cookie size.  I'm pretty sure I didn't get 48 like the cookbooks says, but meh, who cares right?  I'm on an adventure of baking here and not everything is going to go as it should.  We found that out last week!  On inspection the 'almond paste' filling wasn't enough or baked into the cookie.  Yet when I googled images to compare they seem kind of alright.  Also mine are almost a lady finger size while other images were more of a fig newton size.  My bad.

The moment of truth.  I give one to Hubby.  He tells me they are over done. (shakes fist at oven)  But over all they are good yet not really a favourite.  He notices they are very buttery or perhaps oily and he doesn't care for that.  It's mysterious because I weighed the butter to make sure I had the right amount.  As a back up taster, I gave one to our basement suite renter aka Renter Person and he liked it however I could see that he may have just been polite.  One doesn't criticize free food right?   My own assessment was that the flavour was nice and if I had company pop by I would probably bring these out for coffee.  For all the fuss with the filling though, I'd in all honesty find something more convenient to have on hand.

My version of Apelsinsnittar.