I did not intend to stay away from the blog for this long. Unfortunately I have been fighting a bad case of pneumonia since the middle of March. I am only now recovering after weeks on different antibiotics in the hospital.
It hit me completely by surprise. I was feeling a bit dizzy one day and suddenly had a 39C fever and couldn't stop coughing long enough to catch my breath. I was taken to the hospital the same day. The xray didn't show anything then but two days later my trachea felt like it was on fire and I was coughing bloody mucus. CRP was around 240 (normal is below 8), and surely, the xray then showed my whole left lung was out.

I've been home for about just over two weeks. Starting to feel like a real person now.
It does not help that it is still freezing cold and it's snowing outside!

I did not touch the camera for two months. I was a wreck. Until now.

Despite everything and the limited time space I was determined to pull off another smörgåstårta for this years Easter.
It is a bit smaller than the previous ones. A slender rectangular one.

Two tortes from the cake fair at the regional training centre. Salted caramel and mocha charlotte on the left and red velvet with buttercream (and lots of it!) on the right and top left. The caramel cake became slightly disengaged after cutting into it.

I believe it's fourth time for us to purchase a cake from the event. There was a reporter from TV3 with camera crew and my little niece was caught on TV.
My favourite cake through the years was probably the pistachio orange torte from 2015 but this years salted caramel charlotte was super as well.

BBQ pork rib and cowberry smörgåstårta


16 slices of toast

300g bbq rib meat, off the bone
100ml mayonnaise
5 tbsp broth or meat cooking juices

200g tomatoes
1 tbsp red onion marmalade
150g cowberry relish/jelly
150g cream cheese
100ml mayonnaise
100g herb butter
salt, pepper

Garnish
200g cream cheese
150g herb butter
12 ham rolls
12 cheese rolls
6 cherry tomatoes
fresh cowberries or cranberries


As always, start by making the fillings.
To make the meat filling, place the rib meat, mayonnaise and broth into a food processor and process it all to a homogeneous paste. Taste to check the seasoning, flavour depends on how well the ribs were seasoned.

To make the cowberry and tomato filling, blitz tomatoes with red onion marmalade, cowberry relish and mayonnaise. Cream butter and mix it with cream cheese. Then stir

Divide the toast into piles of four slices and trim off all the crusts. Place four slices of toast in a row on a platter, one after another. Spread with a good amount of meat filling and top with another layer of toast. Now spread these with the tomato filling.
Continue to stack and spread until you run out of toast. Pile any remainder of the fillings on top and smooth it out, spreading on the sides as well.
You should have four layers of toast with interchanging layers of fillings.

Take the butter and cream cheese meant for garnishing. Cream the butter. Mix it with cream cheese and spread over the sides of the cake in a thin layer. It is to prevent it from drying.
Keep the rest of the butter mixture for garnishing, but keeping it in the fridge might make it too stiff. Garage might be a good alternative if there is no pantry.

Cover the cake with cling film and pop it in the fridge. Store overnight.

Before serving, use a pastry bag to neatly pipe the butter mixture onto the cake. Arrange ham and cheese rolls on top. I did cut them in half diagonally. Add quarters of cherry tomatoes and fresh berries. Our local shop didn't have fresh cowberries that day but they had strawberries which I then sliced and arranged on top.