Cardamon cake with a couple of twists

This is a variation of a traditional Swedish cardamon cake, to which I have added some more flavours, and the option of more nutrition as well. It has a child-friendly texture (=just normal cake texture, and with extra sugar on top!) but provides some tastebud excitement for the more adventurous eaters.

200 g butter (melted)
2 eggs
3 dl sugar
3 dl milk
8 dl flour
2.5 teaspoons baking powder
0.5 teaspoons baking soda (sometimes called bicarbonate of soda)

2 tablespoons grated coconut 

2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1 pinch bourbon vanilla powder
grated zest of one lemon

Melt butter and let cool. Turn oven to 180 degrees C.
Grease a cake tin with butter and 'flour' it with grated coconut.
Whisk eggs and sugar until white and fluffy (high speed) in the main mixing bowl.
Combine all dry ingredients in a separate mixing bowl.
Alternate adding some of the flour mix and some of the milk into the main mixing bowl to keep the batter at a workable texture (medium speed).
Add the butter and mix until just combined (low speed or with spatula by hand).

Lemonzest, vanilla and coconut about to be mixed in with the flour.

Pour batter into baking tin. Before going into the oven, sprinkle with grated coconut and pearl sugar (also called nib sugar or hail sugar).

As for the timing, just test with a tooth-pick or an uncooked spaghetti. Stick it in a few places where the cake is at its thickest. If it comes out dry, the cake is done! Count on somewhere between 35 - 50 minutes depending the shape and size of your tin. (Or make muffins - it's faster!)

Family's favourite fried rice

There is one meal that our whole family really, really likes - mamma's fried rice. That's because it can be varied in such a way that it fits the little picky eaters as well as their slightly adventurous parents. The picture below is a testament to the beauty of this dish: everyone eating calmly, finishing all the food (obviously not all the veggies, but what else is new...). 

The basic recipe is as simple as it is delicious, and I do want to stress that it originates from a Thai cookbook (that I bought in desperation after having spent five weeks while breast-feeding and eating my way through the menu of an excellent tiny restaurant by a remote beach, not knowing how I would survive when leaving the place).

Ingredients for the basic fried rice for 3-5 people; quantities approximate: 
4 cups (ca 1 litre) cooked rice (so less if un-cooked!)
4 chicken filets cut into small, longish strips
2 - 3 eggs
1 teaspoon of sugar
3-4 tablespoons of soy sauce
2-3 tablespoons of ketchup
vegetable oil (I use olive oil because that's what I always have in hand, but clearly a soy, canola or other neutral vegetable oil would be more authentic)

Shallots, spring onion and lime

Garnishes
The core garnishes are lime wedges, chili-infused fish sauce, fresh coriander and shallots.
Other vegetables that go well with this dish are cucumber, iceberg lettuce, spring onion, and green beans. (My addition of asparagus is not authentically Thai, but really tasty.)


How to do it
Prepare in advance: 

• Infuse fish sauce with chili, fresh or dried. I always keep a jar of this in the fridge, it lasts for months. 
• Marinate the chicken pieces in half of the soy sauce for a couple of hours before cooking. 
• Boil the rice, possibly even a day or two in advance or use leftover rice, as it becomes less of a sticky mess than using freshly cooked, warm rice.

Chili-infused fish sauce, with a touch of lemongrass. More for the looks than the taste, as it gets pretty hectic tastewise among the fermented fish and chili flavours....

Frying it up:
Pour some oil into the wok (or large, deep frying pan), crack and whisk the eggs together in a separate bowl and pour them into the oil, stir until scrambled. Remove from wok. Fry the chicken bits. When they are cooked through, add the rest of the soy sauce, the sugar and ketchup. Stir through, then add all the rice, start mixing it all together, and add the fried eggs at the end. Serve with a selection of garnishes and you are done!

I love these really small and skinny Asian asparagus; they are the size of the ones you would normally buy canned in Europe. 

Favourite shopping

One of the perks of living in Asia is the shopping. And I don't mean the clothes - I mean the kitchen accessories. I am an avid lover of all thing stainless and melamine, and anything you can put stuff in, or put in stuff. Or just use for baking and cooking.

On my casual stroll home form the pool this morning - yes, I am a part-time house-wife in her early forties with a duty to keep fit, especially considering the hours spent in the kitchen - I saw in the corner of my eye a shop I had never seen before. Outside were piles of buckets, bathroom carpets, brooms, towels and lots of different large tupperware. The latter is always a good sign. I went in, and paradise unfolded. It had it all - both the do-it-yourself stuff that is needed around the house like rope, tape, hammers, lightbulbs, paint and other more hardcore paraphernalia. But it also had my favourite metal and plastic, to fill my all too small kitchen cupboards and eventually moving boxes, but I did not care, as the kitchen devil had me.

Two cake tins, of two different sizes of course, are always useful. Then there were the melamine spoons; I know some people fear using melamine in the kitchen after the food security scare in China a few years ago, but it's not like I am going to grind it into powder and put it in the kids' milk. So that was a must have, especially since the old IKEA plastic spoons have more or less disintegrated after a decade of use. The potato press is new, but according to all the cooking experts I watch of Youtube nowadays it's a must. I used to like lumpy mashed potato, but clearly I was wrong. May also come in handy to mash healthy, secret ingredients to put in the kids' food. (More on that later if I get any good ideas.) The best thing of all are the baking trays - I had to buy two of them. In my mindbogglingly small oven, one has to maximise the size and number of one's baking trays, and these bad boys did the trick!