My Danish Christmas Advent Calendar – 17 December (Konfekt – homemade sweets)

Welcome back to My Danish Christmas Advent Calendar!  Join me every day in opening a new door.  Once again, I’ve got a host of goodies to share with you – traditional Danish Christmas recipes, traditions, songs, games, decorations, crafts and landscapes…  So sit back, relax and enjoy!

17 DECEMBER

I went a bit mad at the weekend when I was at the supermarket.  Not only is our house bursting with enough nibbles, sild (herring) and julebrygto sink a small Armada, behold this little lot!

These are just some of the ingredients we’ll be using tonight to make lots and lots of yummy Danish konfekt – small, homemade sweets.  Let’s see, we’ve got copious amounts of marcipan…

…and Danish nougat (a very soft brown fudge, not to be confused with French white nougat or Spanish túrron)…

…and some dried fruits (we like to use dates, apricots and crystallised ginger).

And plenty of chocolate – less is not more when you’re making konfekt! 😉 You’ll typically see konfekt served at Christmas, as party food or at the end of a meal instead of dessert.  Here’s what we’ll normally munch on when watching the day’s installment of the children’s tv Christmas calendar…

Need a few ideas to get you started?  Take some marcipan,  a large bar of chocolate and whatever else you have on hand: dried apricots, dates, Smarties or M+Ms, tiny marshmallows, coconut, icing sugar, edible gold, food colouring and tiny paper cases…  Roll out the marcipan and cut into shapes.  Or take a date and ‘stuff’ it with marcipan, then dip in chocolate.  Or cut up some apricots, and put a piece inside a ball of marcipan and roll in icing sugar, coconut or chopped nuts.  Soak some raisins in cognac for a couple of days, then spoon into tiny cases and cover with chocolate.  Anything goes!

Enlist the help of some little elves.  Though keep your eye on them because they eat rather copious amounts of marcipan etc while they work…

If you want to be more creative, just ‘google’ pictures of konfekt. You can do nougat-filled-yule-logs, coconut balls, boozy flavoured marcipan etc, etc, etc…  (If you’re a Danish marcipan freak like me, then you must try making a fabulous Danish cake – Mazarinkage.  My recipe for that is right here.)  But this is our family-favourite-five-minute-konfekt.  The hardest part?  Waiting it for the chocolate to dry! ;)

Velbekomme!  And don’t forget to check back here tomorrow when we open the next door!

Diane :)

15 Minute Chocolate Goodies (Konfekt)

Here’s a 15 minute food craft to make with kids 🙂

Break up a bar of chocolate (or two or three…) into small pieces and melt slowly over a gentle heat. We have a little pot which sits over a tealight and it’s ideal for this job…

While the choc is melting, get your dipping ingredients ready. We used dried apricots and dried figs which DS10 won at the After School Bingo Evening last week – click herefor an account of ‘one of the best days’ of his life 😉 DD8 cut the figs and apricots in half, as they were rather big.

Or how about some dates, which you can fill with a little piece of marcipan?

Once that lovely, lovely choc is melted, get dipping!

DD8 dipped some Danish ‘pebernødder‘ (small, crunch, spicy, Christmas biscuits) too. Mmm!

Put the dipped pieces on to some greaseproof paper and leave them to dry. If you can resist them, that is. We also made a few Top Hats: marshmallows, dab of chocolate, M+M on the top.

Once they’re dry, all that’s left to do is a) lick the bowl, b) arrange the goodies on a platter, and c) get ready to wow your Christmas guests ;D

Bon appétit and hope you have a simply super Saturday! 🙂

Coconut ice (Skotsk Konfekt)

DD8 took a basket of homemade goodies to school last week and a few people have asked me for the recipe for Coconut Ice. So here it is…in Danish! Velbekomme!

[If you’re too chicken to read the recipe in Danish, the original recipe post is here!]

COCONUT ICE – SKOTSK KONFEKT

 

Ingredienser:

  • 340g kokosmel (cirka 2 pakker)
  • 340g flormelis
  • en dåse (på 340g) ‘condensed milk‘ (fås i invandrer butikker til ca. 20 kr)

Hæld ‘mælken’ i en stor skål.

Tilsæt 340g flormelis og rør rundt til flormelissen er opløst.

Så tilsætter man 340g kokosmel – lidt ad gangen – og begynder at røre rundt… Dejen bliver meget sej til sidst, så det tager lidt tid. Men måske er der én med stor muskler, der kan hjælpe? 😀

Hvis I har lyst, kan dejen tilsættes lidt frugtfarve. Vi delte dejen i to lige store dele og kom grøn farve i den ene.

Dejen spredes ud på et stykke bagepapir. Bruge bagsiden af en ske, til at glatte ud.

Så kom vi den hvide dej oveni.

I kan brug bagsiden af skeen til at gøre kanten lidt mere pæn….

Og nu skal den bare stå den næste dag. Den skal nemlig tørre lidt ud, før man kan skære den i skiver. Men det er helt sikkert ventetiden værd!

Velbekomme! 😀