Desserts & Sweets

Black Bean Brownies

by Sophia & Michael

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In all honesty, we were kind of like… really? when first hearing about black bean baked goods. Don’t get us wrong (I doubt you would by now), we LOVE beans and lentils. They’re the best. But we also love our baked goods. Cakes, cookies, buns… you know, the whole spectrum. And around here, we tend to lean towards the attitude of “if you’re going to bake buns, bake buns. Not a ‘health-ified’ bun that no one will really enjoy anyway”. I think you get my point. But we also happen to know that from a sports nutrition point of view, having an evening snack with a touch of protein is beneficial. And one simply can’t have too much of all the good stuff in legumes. Enter black bean-based baked goods.

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Granola Bars

by Sophia & Michael

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Making your own energy bars is a MUST if you’re on a tight budget. Store-bought ones are expensive, and making your own is as easy as it is cheap. We started making our own in 2016, when we had decided we were going to quit our jobs and move to Sweden. We were looking to save up as much money as we possibly could, and our little apartment quickly turned into a DIY studio as a result of that. Granola, yogurt, packed lunches… we had a whole operation going on.

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Saffron Caramel Popcorn

by Sophia & Michael

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Mike pointed something out to me the other day – something fairly obvious but, you know, nothing I had really given much thought before. Popcorn is just a whole grain popped to deliciousness. Ha! In search for less refined and processed products, and maybe especially in the snacks department, popcorn is… a whole food. Pure and simple. It’s brilliant! It’s also one of our favorite snacks in front of a movie. And now, finally, we have them here in a Christmas edition (which might not qualify for a particularly healthy snack, but what can you do?). I love caramel flavor. Always has, always will. Salted caramel ice cream is my go-to during the warmer half of the year, and as I kid, I’d go for caramel sauce over chocolate sauce any day. Yes, it can be overly sweet. But boy, it’s good. And one of the good things about making your own caramel-flavored food items is that you can sweeten it to your liking. You get all the same flavors but just a little less of that tongue-rolling sweetness shock.

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Gingersnap Energy Balls

by Sophia & Michael

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Wherever you look, you see pictures of and recipes for bliss balls, energy balls, raw balls, raw bites etc. etc. There are so many names for (sort of) the same thing I feel utterly lost in what to use. In fact, there’s a quite lovely saying in Swedish that goes “Kärt barn har många namn”, which unfortunately lacks an English counterpart. However, it could be translated along the lines of “a highly loved child will have many different names”. It means that loving parents often have many nicknames for their beloved children, so whenever the expression is used, it’s supposed to show that there are various labels for the same (popular and well liked) thing. Given the first sentence, I think you know where I’m getting with this. There are many names for the energy-packed, naturally sweetened balls we see a lot of – and I’m not sure I know a) what I prefer calling them and b) if there’s any sort of difference between the names. Regardless, here’s another snack ball (oh boy, another name) – flavored in the spirit of Christmas and almost dangerously delicious.

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Saffron Buns

by Sophia & Michael

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There’s no other pastry, baked good or sweet treat that feels as quintessentially Swedish Christmas as the traditional saffron bun – at least in our opinion. They’re not only really pretty, with their golden yellow color and characteristic shape, but they’re delicious too. As in, you can eat at least a few in one sitting. Growing up here means every beginning of December, you bake a round of these at home. That’s just a fact. There will most likely be Christmas music playing in the background. There will most likely be dough eating to the point of bellies hurting. And it’ll be glorious. I LOVED the saffron bun baking day when I was little. I still do. SO much.

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Vegan Lemon Cheesecake

by Sophia & Michael

I’ve never been a huge fan of classic cheesecake, to be honest. If we hadn’t already moved away from NYC, they sure would have kicked me out by now, headfirst. You know how a lot of things (read: sweet treats) fall into that category of perfectly acceptable in dire times but nothing you would waste stomach space on if given other alternatives? A distinction as important as any, if you’d ask my beloved mother a.k.a. our indisputable expert on all things sweet. Anyway, cheesecake falls into that category for me. But this one, everyone. This one has somehow sailed to the very top of my list of favorite desserts. It gracefully balances that precious line between sweetness and tartness, its consistency is nothing short of velvety AND it has a rather generous amount of nutrients packed into the mix. There’s no wobbliness, there’s no getting overly stuffed. There’s really just plenty of enjoyment, from the simple how-to all the way to licking the last bits off your spoon.

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Pumpkin Bundt Cake

by Sophia & Michael
Pumpkin

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Ah, pumpkin season! It always sneaks up on you – one day you’re sitting in a reclined chair, soaking up the last few rays of sun as the leaves are slowly starting to turn yellow, and then boom – temperatures drop to right around freezing, trees stand naked all around and dinners have quickly transformed from cooling salads and grill nights to hearty bowls of stews and soups. Somewhere in there, berry crumbles and ice creams are waving goodbye and retreating back, only to be giving way for apple pies and… pumpkin everything. To be honest though, we’re no pumpkin pie fans. I think the consistency is our problem – yes, it can be smooth and decadent and not too wobbly at all, but we just… don’t like it all that much. This sure isn’t the time to present such opinions, I understand that. But hear me out, will you? 

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Spiced Pear Cake

by Sophia & Michael

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Sometimes Michael disappears into the kitchen without telling me what he’s up to. I hear cabinet doors open and close, I hear bowls being taken out – and I know immediately that something yummy is coming up. See, he’s got a sweet tooth, this one. And a bread tooth, if that’s even a thing. Point is, Michael is behind most things baked in this household, and it’s quite lovely. This one particular afternoon, we’d been pear picking at a neighbor’s house and M mentioned he’d want to bake something with some of our haul. Sure, I said, and continued working on whatever I was doing. It didn’t take many minutes before he was happily whisking and sifting and slicing away, all the while I could just sit back and wait for the wonderful smells to hit – and boy, they did. There’s just something about those cinnamon and allspice flavored baked goods, wouldn’t you say? They fill up the house like nothing else, and warm you up inside out even before you’ve had a bite.

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Fresh Mint Ice Cream

by Sophia & Michael

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Michael loves mint ice cream very, very much. He does prefer it with a generous amount of chocolate chips, but won’t be too picky as long as the mint flavor is distinct enough. For #localthirty, he wanted to give fresh mint ice cream a shot, using only local dairy, eggs and sugar in addition to our homegrown mint. The result came out quite amazing. The mint flavor strikes the perfect balance between dominating and subtle, and the consistency… ah, the consistency. While probably not similar at all, it reminds me of one of the best ice cream experiences I’ve ever had – I was about five years old and we were vacationing in Helsingør, Denmark, where there’s an ice cream shop called Brostræde. Now, whether they still serve these or not I don’t know, but I will never forget my little five-year-old self balancing a waffle cone half my body length, filled with not only several scoops worth of the creamiest of ice cream but also a generous dollop of whipped cream, a spoonful of strawberry jam and – I hope you’re sitting down – a chocolate covered cream/marshmallow ball on top (think something close to Mallomars). I mean, how could this not go down in history as one of the best days ever? My brother and I still talk about it. Anyway – back to this ice cream, and this consistency. It’s fabulous.

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Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

by Sophia & Michael

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Now, counting these muffins towards your ‘five servings of vegetables a day’ would be a stretch, even though they do come with a generous amount of zucchini in them. Calling them a quite nutrient dense choice for your sweet treat though, would not. However, just to be clear: we’re not the ones to turn down dessert or say no to an extra scoop of ice cream. Heck, those are often necessary to keep our energy intake on pair with our output! But just as much as we dig decadent cookies, we like to have some heartier snacks on hand. These are heavy on the whole grain rye flour (we sometimes go 100 % rye and it’s just as good) and light on the sweetener, and work as the perfect mid-afternoon pick-me-up, or as a packed treat when out and about. The fact that we get to sneak in some zucchini is a great bonus, since our kitchen sees piles and piles worth of it these last days of summer. And yes, tomorrow is the start of the #localthirty and #närodladseptember challenge so please, call us out for munching on chocolate (a very non-local item, unfortunately) tonight. We just couldn’t help ourselves. So unless you’ve chosen chocolate as one of your cheat items… this recipe is off limits – unless you change it up and make a local version of it, which we would love to hear about! In fact, we’ll most likely try to do that too. Anyway, we hope to see many of you joining the initiative to the best of your ability, and look forward to seeing what you’ll be sharing along the way. We promise to keep you posted as far as what lands on our plates, that’s for sure. Happy local month of September, everyone! Oh and… when zucchini is no longer in season, then we choose carrots. You should too.

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