Nilsson has two versions of glögg in the book, this one and a non-alcoholic version. The alcoholic version looks a lot like sangria, with sliced lemon and orange in it – if you can ignore the cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom. It has a delayed-gratification thing going for it as well, as it sits for at least a week before you warm it up and serve. I’ll return here with an update once I’ve actually sipped it. I know, this should be a wintery holiday kind of drink … but in this time of COVID-19, airport rules apply, if I want glögg in summer, by golly…

This recipe comes from Gudrun Einarsdottir who helped me out with a lot of the Icelandic content for this book. It was originally her grandmother’s.

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No other book on Nordic baking is as comprehensive and informative. Nilsson travelled extensively throughout the Nordic region - Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden - collecting recipes and documenting the landscape. The 100 photographs in the book have been shot by Nilsson - now an established photographer, following his successful exhibitions in the US. Make the topping by mixing the golden syrup and 1⁄2 tablespoon water together in a bowl. In a sepa- rate bowl, mix the sugar with the cardamom. Step 6 There are as many conflicting ideas on how to eat this cake as there are recipes for it," he writes. "Some like it warm with ice cream, some like it at room temperature with nothing, and I like it as my wife will tell you to eat it: cold from the refrigerator with whipped cream on the side." This sounded more interesting than your average apple cake (well, I was sold at “cardamom”, frankly). There was no photo in the book against which to judge my effort, and to be honest I had no end of trouble with this one in my high-elevation kitchen. I found the batter to be very stiff and dry, and the first two attempts, despite some elevation adjustment, did the classic “let’s rise too fast and then collapse in the middle” thing. The third try finally came out more like I think it should. Sliced almonds on top are optional, but a nice touch, and I went a bit further and sprinkled granulated sugar on top once out of the oven. Rúgbrauð means rye bread, hverabrauð refers specifically to bread baked next to hot springs and brumari, ‘thunder bread’, refers to the effects from eating any bread containing a lot of dietary fibres.

Shape the dough into two logs a bit shorter than the width of your baking sheet. Place the logs on the prepared baking sheets and bake for about 15 minutes or until golden. The logs will spread out considerably during the cooking. A second issue is the way the index works. It's a bit of a mess. I had a hard time finding the Swedish recipes by name, the way things are organized. For example, if you go to the bread section, you won't find Honokaka, but you will find a generic English title of "soft wheat and rye cakes." Not helpful! So much here to discuss. This recipe intrigued me because it said I needed a liter of “brewer’s wort”, which apparently is readily available in Sweden. After scouting around online and enlisting the help of my friend and beer-brewer Tom, I bought a pound of dry malt extract (concentrated brewer’s wort) for a traditional dark beer. The recipe said it made four loaves, so I mixed up just a half liter of wort and started the dough…only to decide that the proportions in the recipe seemingly had some errors, as that half liter of liquid was supposed to suffice for 1.25 kg of flour (about 2.75 lbs). Uh, no way. And the yeast amount seemed to be far too little – only 1.25 tsp of instant. So too much flour, can deal with that, but what about the yeast? Certainly there was no yeast in my wort. I wound up halving the flour, doubling the yeast, and hoping the spice amounts were ok as is, and came up with a pretty acceptable pair of loaves, although I think they should have been a touch sweeter. Take #2

Normally with cook books, you dive straight to the index to see what to bake first, but with this book, it's essential that you read ALL of the introductory chapters. These include; I must have made these chokladbollar a thousand times when growing up, as I am sure many Swedes and other Nordics have. Some people like their chocolate balls rolled in pearl sugar; I prefer coconut flakes. If you want a coffee flavour, then add a tablespoon of instant coffee powder to this recipe.

I was scouting around for something to do with some leftover marzipan (besides just eat it outright) and eggs, and found this one bookmarked in the book but not yet tried. (And then discovered it had been 8 months since I last tried something new in this book. That is undoubtedly a result of spending a lot of time the last year plus with MasterClass.) Anyway, this cake is heavenly, and not just because it is called a Lemon Moon. Moist, buttery, and very lemony. I’ll admit I broke the cardinal “make it the way the recipe says the first time” rule, poking some holes in the finished cake and drizzling limoncello in it before glazing. Definitely a keeper. Update 12/10/2020: I made this again to nail down the changes…I used over 800g of flour (over 6.75 cups), a mix of all-purpose and bread flour (just because I had some). The dough worked up to a much nicer consistency. I divided the dough into three rounds instead of two, but still had to bake for 65 minutes to get a good internal temperature (Nilsson suggests generally up to about 205F for a bread such as this, mine were a bit over that). The finished product was nice and springy, and just done. I found some other recipes online, one used as much flour as I did, or more; one was mostly consistent with Nilsson’s; both had baking times of 40-45 minutes (one at 375F vs. 350F). What can I say, at that timing those loaves aren’t baked through in my kitchen. One of these days I’ll try one of the internet recipes to see how it turns out. In the meantime, this one as locally modified is pretty tasty! Danish Almond Tart Leavened with Yeast Interestingly, Andrea Geary of America’s Cooks Illustrated magazine tells me that she discovered that: “like cinnamon, cardamom has anti-fungal qualities that slow fermentation”, and suggests that the dough is so copiously spiced that one can up the yeast content to improve the rise without spoiling the flavour. And she’s right: this is one dough that can take it.Knowing which of the grains has the least amount of gluten and why they won't give you nice fluffy light cakes, will go a long way when it comes to substituting flours when your store cupboard is bare. All ovens are different.