Christmas Toffee with Chocolate and Orange

Last night we were invited to an impromptu glögg and Christmas baking party! It's been snowing like crazy and my feet are ankle deep in huge drifts of snow no matter where we walk, thankfully I have my Grandmother's hardcore winter shoes (and what a difference those make in the winter. Thank you Grandmama). With all of the snow it feels soooo Christmas-ey, so it was perfect timing, the weekend before Christmas, to hang out with dear friends and bake.
We made pepparkakor and some of the best candy I've ever tasted: chocolate orange toffee. And it's easy. So easy. With so much butter. Easy and Butter? That's a great combination right?
If you need a last minute Christmas gift you should make some of these toffees while listening to your favorite Christmas album and sliding around the floor in your thick, winter socks.

Chocolate Orange Toffee
100 grams of butter
2 dl of cream
1 dl of light colored baking syrup (Americans- corn syrup works)
3 dl of sugar
3 tbsp of honey
1 vanilla bean
1/2 dl of cocoa powder
1 zest of an orange or clementine

Bring the butter, cream, syrup, sugar, honey, and vanilla bean to a boil (for the vanilla bean you can just cut it in half and throw it the pot). Stir continuously and bring the heat down once it reaches a boil. You need to mixture to thicken and it should take about 30 minutes. Keep stirring! Have a bowl of cold water near you and once the mixture starts to thicken put a drop of it in the cold water. If you can form a semi-hard ball it's good to go. The mixture should be dark, toffee color.
Remove the mixture from the heat and pour in the cocoa powder and clementine zest. Mix thoroughly with a fork. Then pour the mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and set it outside or in the fridge so it can chill and firm.
Once firm, cut into medium-small squares and eat. Or your can cut out small strips of parchment paper and roll the toffees in them.
Last night I ate about 15 of these. They're addicting. And have Vitamin-C.

Roasted Sunchoke Mash

If you look at the photo above and exit this page, I understand. It's not very appetizing. But it's what food baked in a casserole dish, mashed together, usually looks like. So I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
So what is it? It's a roasted sunchoke, twice baked potato, onion, and garlic mash. It is winter comfort food.
I had a very bad experiences with sunchokes once. It was a few summers ago and we were eating at a fancy restaurant with a snooty waiter. Ew. And the only vegetarian item on the menu was a sunchoke puree with something (I can't remember what!) underneath. So I ordered it. And the puree came out half ice cold and half lukewarm. I asked the waiter about it and he was like, "it's supposed to be that way."
What? Since when did restaurants serve a food that was half ice cold and half warm? Like I get it if it was hamburger (warm patty, cold lettuce, etc) or a pasta salad (warm-ish pasta with cold avocado)
But not a puree. I asked the waiter to rewarm it, please. He wasn't too happy. And I decidedly hated sunchokes.
So how did I come into possession of a bag of sunchokes? They were cheap at the store.
I did a lot of research on sunchokes last night. Just their name is disturbing. They are also called jerusalem artichokes or in Swedish "jordärtskocka." In my research I couldn't find anything terribly wrong with them: i.e. nothing about people choking. However, supposedly some people can't handle the carbohydrates in them and they can cause terrible stomach pains, but the majority of people have no problems. Dinner in our household is always an adventurous risk!
Last night was the Great Sunchoke Experiment and it was successful. They're good you guys! Especially served at the same temperature throughout. They're kind of nutty and earthy.

Winter Mash: Roasted Sunchokes, Potatoes, Onions, and Garlic
4-5 sunchokes
3 medium sized potatoes*
1 large yellow onion
4-6 garlic cloves
Olive oil to drizzle
Salt and Pepper
Oregano
Parmesan cheese for grating
Fresh spinach

Preheat your oven to 200c. Wash and peel the sunchokes. Slice into medium-thin discs (as you would with potato gratin). Wash and peel your potatoes, slice into medium-thin discs like the sunchokes. Chop your onion into long, thin slices. Remove the papery skin from the garlic cloves and chop each clove in half. Throw everything into an oven proof baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and oregano. Mix together. Bake for about 30-40 minutes until all can be pierced with a fork.
When out of the oven, grate a fine sprinkling of parmesan cheese over the mash. Serve in a bowl on a fresh bed of spinach.
It's good!

Notes:
* We had three potatoes that were already baked sitting our fridge so I used those instead of starting with raw potatoes. I put them into the mash about halfway through the baking times for twice-baked potatoes a la Central Market.

First Advent

I've never celebrated Advent. But they celebrate like crazy here in Sweden. Most of the windows have their Christmas lights now, most streets have decorations, all of the bakeries are serving lussekatter. I woke up on Sunday and opened Facebook to discover that all of my Swedish friends had Advent candles lit in their photos.
We didn't have any Advent candles.
I turned to G, "Why are you depriving me of Advent?"
"What?"
"You're Swedish, you celebrate Advent, but why don't we have any Advent candles?"
I was terribly upset. G had to leave the house to meet up with a friend but came home later that afternoon not only covered in snow but with Advent candles and the fixings for our first Advent fika. I am no longer deprived and feel throughly Christmas-Swedish.

Here you can see some typical Christmas fika foods. Pepparkakor, lucia buns, and glögg. I'm not the biggest fan of pepparkakor but I like to dip them in my glögg. They are also really good with blue cheese.
Hopefully this year I'll make some lucia buns and some gingerbread cookies. And my own glögg. But we still have to put up our tree and all of the other decorations.
You guys, it's less than a month until Christmas. How did that happen?