A Scandinavian Family Reunion Tea
People who live in Denmark, Finland, Norway or Sweden, where summers are short, celebrate the warm weather with extra gratitude. (We have even observed Swedes sunbathing when the temperature climbs to 60 degrees!) Summer strawberries and other red berries are central to the northern European summer dessert table, and the traditional savory foods of the Danish smorgasbord are making a planet wide comeback. The smorgasbord, essentially a Scandinavian buffet, became internationally famous when it was introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. It remains popular in all of the Scandinavian countries, including Iceland, and in Scandinavian American and Canadian families. Now, Nordic food is having a world wide renaissance with an emphasis on the classic elements of Scandinavian cooking: dark rye bread, smoked fish, excellent cheeses and delicious buttery pastries. Fortunately, many of these items are readily available at a good deli or grocery store. And the smorgasbord, with its intriguing variety of individual snacks, lends itself seamlessly to the format of Afternoon Tea. We invite you to celebrate summer with your family, Scandinavian or not, with our Scandinavian Family Reunion Tea.
Menu
Beverages:
Hot English Breakfast Tea
Mineral Water
Schnapps
Danish Beer
Strawberry Lemonade
Savories:
Cheese Platter with Crispy Rye Crackers, Sliced Apples and Lingonberries (Include Scandinavian Cheeses such as Danish Blue and Havarti, Norwegian Jarlsberg, and Finnish Aura.)
Open Faced Sandwiches on Buttered Dark Rye Bread:
Fillings may include: Chopped Boiled Eggs with Capers and Smoked Salmon with Dill
Cold Cuts and Sausages with Mustard Sauce
Pickled Herring
Boiled Egg Halves with Gravlax
Summer Vegetable Platter with Sour Cream and Dill Dip
Sweets:
Assortment of Scandinavian Cookies Including:
Sandbakkelser (Swedish Sand Tarts)
Cardamom Cookies
Danish Butter Cookies
Swedish Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Sauce
Platter of Fresh Strawberries with Sour Cream and Brown Sugar for Dipping
Finnish Tiger Cake (Tiikerikkakku)
Norwegian Kransekake (Almond Ring Cake)
Recipes Included:
Sour Cream Dill Dip
This easy dip for fresh vegetables will come to life if you use fresh dill rather than dried. You will need 1 (8-ounce) carton of sour cream and 1 bunch of fresh dill. Wash the dill and dry it on paper towels. Chop the dill into small pieces and combine it with the sour cream in a small bowl or glass container with a lid. Start with 2-3 tablespoons of dill, taste the dip, and add more dill if you prefer a more intense flavor. Cover and store in the refrigerator until ready to use.
Finnish Tiger Cake (Tiikerikkakku)
This lovely orange and chocolate marbled pound cake is designed to resemble a tiger’s stripes. Rose did not see any tigers when she visited Finland, and we are not sure how the Finns became intrigued with tiger themed cakes. However, the end result is a glorious creation that can be served as a simple unadorned Bundt cake, or you can guild the tiger lily, so to speak, and add alternating ribbons of chocolate and orange icing on top, simulating more tiger’s stripes.
This cake is not difficult to make, but the batter cannot be whipped up in 10 minutes, as some on line recipes suggest. One simply needs to be patient and attentive to each step in the process. Admittedly, Rose is not quick in the kitchen, but it took her 50 minutes of preparation time just to get this cake into the oven. Your beautiful Tiger Cake will be worth all your effort.
Swedish Strawberry Cake (Jordgubbstarta)
This beautiful white cake covered with ripe red strawberries is the queen of Swedish summer pastries. It is usually served covered with sweetened whipped cream and filled with custard. However, the idea of a whipped-cream-covered cake sitting on a buffet table for several hours in the middle of August makes us a little nervous, and no one wants to poison our loved ones at a family reunion. We suggest using a very reliable cream cheese icing that will be far more stable than whipped cream at room temperature. Also, you can save time by using a boxed cake mix, but make sure to buy the ripest and reddest strawberries you can find. You will need 8 cups of fresh strawberries to make this gorgeous creation. If you have a cake pedestal, use it, and place the strawberry sauce nearby in a cut crystal bowl if you have one with an attractive ladle, so your guests can pour the bright red sauce over slices of pristine white cake. Recipes for All-Purpose White Cake and Dark Chocolate Frosting are included.
Norwegian Almond Ring Cake (Kransekake)
This architectural delight is the quintessential Norwegian festival cake. It is the center of attention at weddings, anniversaries, baptismal celebrations and the Christmas table. It is made of almond macaroon rings of decreasing size stacked into a tower and often topped with a fresh rose, marzipan flowers or a small paper Norwegian flag. This imposing pastry screams, “Party time!” in a polite Norwegian accent, of course. However, opinions differ on the particulars of how to create this masterpiece, and getting the rings to come out exactly the right size and shape for proper stacking can be tricky. Most Norwegian home bakers have a set of ring molds in descending sizes into which the macaroon pastry can be piped using a wide-tipped pastry bag. If you do not wish to invest in a set of Kransekake molds, just draw a set of 18 circles on parchment paper, each ¼ inch smaller than the previous, starting with a 10-inch ring and ending with a 2-inch ring, and use these as your pattern for piping the batter. If you are also serving the Swedish Strawberry Cake for your Scandinavian Family Reunion Tea, you can place these two beauties side by side with the Strawberry Sauce between them. You can also serve the Kransekake with home made custard from a cut glass bowl. See the procedure for making custard in the Christmas Trifle recipe from our Christmas Tea menu.
Scandinavian Cookie Assortment
The key ingredient in Scandinavian cookies is good quality butter. All three of the recipes we offer here will produce simple but delicate and delicious little butter cookies. Buy the best butter you can find, and under no circumstances substitute margarine or shortening. Also, the dough for the Danish Butter and Cardamom Cookies will need to be rolled into cylinders and refrigerated before you slice and bake the cookies, so manage your time accordingly. If you want to make all of these cookies in a single day, we suggest you start with the Danish Butter Cookies, which call for cold butter. Meanwhile, the butter for the Sand Tarts and the Cardamom Cookies can come to room temperature. Next, make the dough for the Cardamom Cookies and refrigerate it, along with the Danish Butter Cookie Dough, while you whip up the Sand Tarts, which do not require refrigeration. All of these cookies can be mixed fairly quickly in a food processor, though you can also use a mixing bowl and an electric mixer. You do not need to clean the food processor between making the Danish Butter Cookies and the Cardamom cookies, but you might want to clean your equipment before starting the Sand Tarts so none of the cardamom flavor finds its way into the tarts.
Scandinavian Cookie Assortment
The key ingredient in Scandinavian cookies is good quality butter. All three of the recipes we offer here will produce simple but delicate and delicious little butter cookies. Buy the best butter you can find, and under no circumstances substitute margarine or shortening. Also, the dough for the Danish Butter and Cardamom Cookies will need to be rolled into cylinders and refrigerated before you slice and bake the cookies, so manage your time accordingly. If you want to make all of these cookies in a single day, we suggest you start with the Danish Butter Cookies, which call for cold butter. Meanwhile, the butter for the Sand Tarts and the Cardamom Cookies can come to room temperature. Next, make the dough for the Cardamom Cookies and refrigerate it, along with the Danish Butter Cookie Dough, while you whip up the Sand Tarts, which do not require refrigeration. All of these cookies can be mixed fairly quickly in a food processor, though you can also use a mixing bowl and an electric mixer. You do not need to clean the food processor between making the Danish Butter Cookies and the Cardamom cookies, but you might want to clean your equipment before starting the Sand Tarts so none of the cardamom flavor finds its way into the tarts.
Danish Butter Cookies
This recipe will produce a large number of cookies—about 175—and we predict that they will disappear very quickly. Truthfully, you can buy good Danish Butter Cookies in the round tin boxes, but we think these are even better. Half of your Danish Butter Cookies will be decorated on the edges with sugar crystals and half will be plain, a little something for everyone. If you cannot bake these cookies within a few days of your family gathering, you can make them in advance and freeze them in airtight containers. The Cardamom Cookies and the Sand Tarts also freeze well.
Cardamom Cookies
Cardamom is a popular spice in the Scandinavian countries. A member of the ginger family, cardamom adds a unique tangy yet sweet flavor to a variety of yeast breads and other Nordic pastries. You can decorate some of these little round cookies with colored sugar sprinkles if you wish. Our recipe just calls for a pinch of plain white sugar on top.
Sand Tarts (Sandbakkelser)
Like so many other Scandinavian foods, Sand Tarts are meant to provide visual delight as well as exquisite texture and flavor. If you want to make the prettiest Sand Tarts possible, you can invest in a set of Sandbakkels tins, little individual molds that are sold in cooking stores. The result will be charmingly fluted flower shaped cookies. Alternatively, you can take the simple approach and just roll little balls of dough with your hands, put them on parchment lined cookie sheets and make a little indentation with your thumb in the middle of each cookie.
These cookies are called tarts because the little dent in the middle can be filled with any number of tasty fillings, including jam, berries, single almonds or even Nutella. However, these little gems do not need to be filled with anything, as they are perfect on their own.
The word “sand” in this dessert is a bit more mysterious. According to Gourmet’s Best Desserts, “The name for this classic American cookie is derived from the cinnamon sugar topping that gives it its ‘sandy’ appearance.” You will note that our Swedish recipe does not call for a cinnamon topping. In her monumental masterpiece, Just Desserts, Anita Borghese tells us: “A grainy, ‘sandy’ texture gives these cookies their name. They are also called Sables (‘sand’ in French.)” It seems that this little Swedish beauty has become an international star.
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