Rice pudding, Scandinavia’s favorite Christmas dessert.

Sprinkle stardust on your rice pudding and serve Scandinavia’s favorite Christmas dessert.

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Rice pudding is an old Scandinavian dessert dating back to the latter part of the 19th century in Denmark. Scandinavia has always had a love affair with porridge, so the leap was not very big from porridge to dessert. Rice pudding is made in Norway, Sweden and Denmark for Christmas. The dessert consists of rice porridge mixed with vanilla and whipped cream and served with a red sauce. Adding whipped cream makes the rice pudding very creamy. All three countries put a whole almond in the rice pudding, and the one who finds it receives a gift, often a pig made of marzipan.

When it comes to the sauce, the three Nordic countries choose their separate roads. Norwegians are quite down to earth and serve a red sauce based on berry juice thickened with potato flour. Swedes often serve their pudding with oranges and candied peel. The Danes elevate the dessert to a meal to remember. They embrace a sauce made of cherries called kirsebærsovs.

The easiest way to make the cherry sauce is to use a glass of preserved cherries. I always preserve cherries in the autumn in a flavoured syrup made with cinnamon stick and lemon peel. On Christmas Eve the only thing I have to do is thicken it with maizenna and add lemon juice to balance the sweetness. This way you are making slow fast food that has had several months to develop its wonderful flavour. But if you have no preserved cherries in your pantry, you can always use frozen cherries (as I have done in the recipe below).

Rice pudding is leftover food. At our house we eat rice porridge on the day before Christmas Eve. The next day the porridge is transformed into the most delicious dessert. This desserts gets even better the next day, so go ahead and make porridge the day before.

Rice pudding is called ris a la mande in Denmark, ris a la Malta in Sweden and riskrem in Norway.

Rice pudding (makes 6–7)

1 portion of creamy rice porridge (you find the recipe here)
300 ml heavy cream
1 tbsp sugar

1. Make the rice porridge. Place in a bowl. Allow to cool rapidly in cold water.
2. Remove the vanilla pod. Whip the cream with the sugar and add the porridge. Mix well. Place in the refrigerator (for some hours or until the next day).

Red cherry sauce

300 g / 11 oz cherries (frozen is fine)
75 g / 3 oz sugar
250 ml water
1 stick cinnamon
1 star anise
a little squeeze of lemon or orange juice
1–2 tbsp corn starch (maizena)

1. Add cherries, sugar, water and the spices to a pan. Bring to boil for about 30 minutes on low heat. I like to keep the berries whole, hence I pick them out after 15 minutes.
2. Adjust the taste with some lemon- or orange juice. Thicken the sauce with maizena while the sauce is still boiling. Add the maizena (gradually to control the thickness) while you are stirring.
3. Add the cherries to the sauce and allow to cool. The sauce is even better the day after. Remove the star anise before you serve it.

Stardust (almond brittle/croquant)

75 g / 3 oz sugar
125 g / 4 oz chopped almonds

1. Put a piece of parchment paper on a big chopping board. Heat a frying pan on medium heat.
2. Place the sugar in the pan and shake the pan to distribute the sugar evenly. The sugar will after a while start to melt into caramel. Do not stir the sugar. Be patient. Watch out, as the caramel easily burns. You might experience that the sugar melts faster in some areas, if so, shake the pan to move the sugar about.
3. When the sugar has turned into mediumbrown caramel, add the chopped almonds. Remove the pan from the heat and place the brittle on the parchment paper.
4. Finely chop the brittle and keep in a jar. It can be stored for several months.

Serve the rice pudding with almond brittle on top and the cherry sauce on the side.

More dishes for Christmas?

Creamy rice porridge
Heavenly fruit salad with clementines
Nordic cinnamon cookies
Traditional Norwegian Christmas and gingerbread nuts
English fruitcake

The post Danish rice pudding appeared first on Nordic Diner.

Cinnamon biscuits (Berits brune pinner).

In my handwritten book from 1991 where I kept my best baking and dessert recipes, I have written down my mother’s recipe for cinnamon biscuits.

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In Norway they are called Berits brune pinner (Berits’ brown sticks). Their delicious flavour is due to brown sugar, dark syrup and a generous amount of cinnamon. What would baking be without cinnamon? What is an American pie without cinnamon? What would a cinnamon roll taste like without cinnamon? What would Norwegian rice porridge be without cinnamon?

Cinnamon is probably the most cherished of all spices. Cinnamon biscuits are one of the easiest Norwegian Christmas biscuits. There is no rolling-pin or cookie cutters involved. So make the biscuits and sit down with a little glass of mulled wine or do something quaint like writing a letter to someone you love or take them with you and visit someone who is lonely at Christmas.

Cinnamon cookies all dressed up for Christmas with powdered sugar and cranberries.

Christmas cinnamon biscuits (makes 2 trays):

This recipe is also suitable gluten-free. Just substitute the flour. Also, I substitute 25 % of the brown sugar with palm sugar because it is low glycemic and has a nice caramel flavour.

200 g / 7 oz softened butter
150 g / 5 oz dark brown sugar
50 g / 1,7 oz organic palm sugar
1 tbsp golden syrup
1 egg and 1 egg yolk (free-range)
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
about 300 g / 10 oz flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

To decorate:
1 egg white
1 big handful of finely chopped almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
2. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the syrup and stir.
3. Add the egg and the egg yolk and stir well.
4. Sift together the flour, bicarbonate of soda and cinnamon and blend. Knead until it comes together as a dough.
5. Divide the dough into four parts. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into sausages thick as a woman’s finger. Lift each finger onto the baking tray and press it down with a knife.
6. Glaze the dough with generous amounts of egg white. This will also ensure that the almonds stick to the dough. Scatter the almonds on top.
7. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until golden-brown. While still hot, cut them into sticks. Traditionally they should be cut diagonally.

More Nordic dishes for Christmas?

Heavenly fruit salad with clementines
Mulled wine with honey and orange
Rice pudding with berry sauce and stardust
Black pudding with sirup
Wild autumn stew with chanterelles

The post Christmas cinnamon biscuits appeared first on Nordic Diner.

Fruit salad with clementines, oranges, apples, walnuts and cranberries.

I love Christmas, and I welcome it by making a bittersweet and heavenly fruit salad with clementines.

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The scent of clementines is Christmas to me

My mother always put clementine peel on the stove filling our home with our own incense. Clementines were a staple in our fruit basket at this time of the year and at Christmas tree parties (juletrefest), where the kids always received paper cones with clementines and candy.

In Norway a common dessert is a fruit salad called heavenly stew (himmelsk lapskaus). This dessert, with its small pieces of fruit, raisins and nuts, is the sweet counterpart to lapskaus – a traditional Norwegian stew consisting of diced vegetables and meat.

I make the fruit salad with apples, walnuts and the flavours and colours I associate with Christmas: clementines, oranges and cranberries.

Instead of plain syrup I use the juice from the citrus and reduces it into a syrup with a beautiful yellow colour. In order to make the syrup you need to segment the oranges. The syrup is flavoured with the bitterness of the orange zest and the tart sweetness of the cranberries. If you want to make the fruit salad more luxurious, it is never a failure to add half a vanilla bean.

Altogether the fruit salad challenges your senses – it is tart, sweet and bitter. Just like childhood.

Fruit salad is often called himmelsk lapskaus (heavenly stew) in Norwegian.

Heavenly fruit salad with clementines (makes 3-4)

3 organic oranges
3 big apples
4 clementines
juice of 1/4 lime
2 tbsp sugar
½ vanilla bean (optional)
a handful dried cranberries
a handful walnuts

1. If you have a zester, make zest of two of the oranges. If not, peel one of the oranges (making sure you avoid the pit) and slice the peel thinly. Bring the zest to boil in a little water, and drain. Repeat three times. This process reduces the bitterness of the zest.

2. Segment the oranges, leaving the juice in a little pan and the segments in a bowl. The process of segmenting is more closely described in another post.

3. Squeeze the juice of one of the clementines and add to the pan with the orange juice. Peel the other clementines and cut big segments into two (like a butterfly).

4. Bring to boil the citrus juice (lime, clementine and oranges), zest and sugar. Add the seeds of the vanilla bean (optional). Boil until thickened into a thin sirup, about 10 minutes.

5. While the citrus syrup is boiling, peel and cut the apples into thin wedges. Place in the bowl with the citrus fruit.

6. When the syrup is done, add the cranberries and allow to cool.

7. Place the fruit on a plate (or serve in small jam jars) and add the syrup and walnuts. In Norway it seems like most people serve the salad with whipped cream or custard, but I think the best choice is vanilla ice cream.

More Nordic dishes?

Creamy rice porridge Suzette
Nordic apple trifle
Piece of cupcake

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