Hi everyone! Welcome to another blog post and another edition of our “Recipes For You” series. This one is geared towards our advanced bakers out there or just those home bakers that love a challenge! These have been some of our most difficult recipes to develop, as they require skills and experience in the kitchen. If you think these recipes might be too difficult for you, you can check out our other blog posts in this series: “Recipes For You: Beginner Bakers” and “Recipes For You: Intermediate Bakers.” If not, carry on reading and we hope one of these recipes catches your eye!
1. Cookies: Napoleonshatte
These adorable cookies are called “Napoleon hats” because they are shaped to look like a hat that Napoleon might have worn! They are also so delicious and one of our favorite cookies. With a yummy and buttery shortcrust pastry encasing a marzipan filling and the whole cookie then dipped in chocolate, the balance of rich, sweet, and flavorful is just perfect. They are challenging to make because you have to make sure the pastry is cool enough for the hats to keep their shape in the oven. Otherwise, you may end up with shapeless (but luckily still delicious!) blobs instead of hats. You can find the recipe for these Napoleon hat cookies here.
2. Cakes: Lagkage
Our lagkage (birthday layer cake) recipe is one of our most cherished recipes on this blog, as it comes from our oldemor (great-grandmother). She made a lot of these cakes during her time as a mother of 8 children. The cake is lovely and soft because it’s made with potato starch instead of regular flour. The filling is our kagecreme (pastry cream) recipe and raspberry jam, and it’s the perfect balance of tart and sweet.
This cake is challenging because it’s time-consuming. You have to make it the night before you want to serve it, as it needs to sit and set before you can serve it. Otherwise, the filling could run out and the cake also won’t have the correct texture. This is an absolute staple in our home for birthdays and every single one of our guests who have tried it absolutely love it! Here is the link to the recipe.
3. Bread: Sourdough Rugbrød
Anyone who has been on the baking/cooking internet in the past couple of years has seen that sourdough has become a huge trend. Of course, it’s always been popular in the baking realm, but because of the pandemic, people have had way more time to practice their sourdough-baking skills! It’s definitely challenging, as a basic loaf of sourdough bread is time-consuming to make and requires you to develop your own starter ahead of time. However, once you get it up and running, you can use it in a multitude of recipes, including various loaves of bread, pastries, and even pizza dough!
Our sourdough rugbrød recipe makes a wonderful loaf of Danish rye bread using sourdough starter. We also have a version that uses yeast, but would recommend the sourdough version if you have experience working with sourdough starter. The recipe is here!
4. Pastries: Wienerbrød (Tebirkes and Spandauer)
Undoubtedly our most challenging pastry recipe, and possibly Skandibaking recipe is general, is our wienerbrød. These pastries are what you would think of when someone says “Danish pastries.” They are made with a laminated yeast dough and lots of butter, which gives you an end result that is super flaky and buttery! Tebirkes are filled with a marzipan filling and topped with poppy seeds, while spandauer are also filled with marzipan but topped with kagecreme (pastry cream) or jam. They are challenging because the laminated dough can be quite difficult to work with. Most importantly, you should make sure that they proof for long enough until very jiggly, or else all the butter will leak out in the oven! Check out the recipes here: tebirkes and spandauer.
5. Dinner: Tarteletter
In terms of dinner recipes, most of our recipes are not particularly challenging for the average cook/baker. However, tarteletter are probably a reasonable addition to this blog post, as they are time-consuming and fragile to work with. To make them look exactly right, you also need to buy the correct molds (which are linked in our recipe). These are such a great dinner idea, though, because the tart shells and the filling are the perfect combination! Crispy and crunchy shells filled with a creamy chicken and asparagus filling – what could be better? Check out the recipe here at this link.
Thanks for reading this far! We hope you found a recipe that you would like to try out. Leave us a review or a comment down below 🙂
