Have you delighted your friends with your homemade Swedish cinnamon buns, ginger snaps or rye bread? And they are now wondering what good recipe books on Scandinavian baking can they lay their hands on? Ones where this European region’s baking’s well-being is celebrated with cakes made with real butter? Ones where entire festivals are dedicated to the thrill of making one’s own bread, Christmas biscuits or cardamom buns?
Well autumn is the perfect season to rise to the occasion of taking your friendships to the next level by giving these baking enthusiastic friends a cookbook on Nordic baking as a surprise gift.
From time honoured staples to new fangled twists to a homage to the organic; from a bake for the everyday to those for every special occasions, Your Living City’s shortlist of Scandinavian baking books allows you to pick the cookbook that fits your friend’s baking passions to the T:
- Cookbook: Scandilicious Baking
Author: Signe Johansen
Cutting her teeth training as a chef stagier at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen and at Leith’s School of Food & Wine, along with working stages at Rick Stein‘s Seafood restaurant in Padstow, Racine and Ottolenghias, Norwegian Signe Johansen’s Scandilicious recipes are a mouth-watering selection of traditional and modern baked treats: from cinnamon buns, festive almond kringle wreath and flappenjacken to moreish muesli bread, truly flavorsome pumpkin, cheese and sage muffins, to-die-for redcurrant mazarin tart and upside-down blueberry cake – all absolutely perfect for summer entertaining.
- Cookbook: Nordic Bakery Cookbook
Authors: Miisa Mink & Marianna Wahlsten
Reflecting the wholesome and comforting style of Scandinavian baking with its emphasis on fresh seasonal produce and healthier ingredients, such as rye flour, oats and barley, Miisa Mink and Marianna Wahlsten’s recipes allow you to fill your home with the irresistible smell of freshly baked bread, pastries, desserts and cookies, whatever the season.
Besides open rye-bread sandwiches, oat cakes with raspberries and blueberries, and not-too-sweet but perfectly spiced cinnamon buns, their rustic but modern menu includes rye bread, quick crisp breads, as well as both light and hearty savoury pastries like egg-rice parcels and smoked fish quiches; plus pages and pages on desserts and cookies – all guaranteed to please through the seasons.
- Cookbook: Scandinavian Baking: Sweet and Savory Cakes and Bakes, for Bright Days and Cozy Nights
Author: Trine Hahnemann
With five cookbooks in her native Danish and three in English under her culinary belt, Trine Hahnemann’s recipes conjure up kitchen windows steamed up by delicious Danish pastries, crusty dense breads and creamy layer cakes baking in ovens during frosty Nordic evenings.
Abounding with every kind of Danish pastry you could ever wish for, of cookies for every occasion, of mouthwatering layer cakes, coffee cakes and cream buns, plus snippets of baking history, along with spectacularly beautiful sandwiches for Midsummer and Christmas also featuring between the two main sections on cakes and breads; Hahnemann’s cookbook is the ultimate compendium on authentic Scandinavian baking with modern twists.
- Cookbook: The Great Scandinavian Baking Book
Author: Beatrice A. Ojakangas
Having written more than a dozen cookbooks, including “Great Whole Grain Breads” and “The Finnish Cookbook”, Beatrice Ojakangas calls on her own Scandinavian heritage and wide-ranging knowledge of baking to produce the definitive cookbook for this rich cultural heritage of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.
Recipes for savoury and authentic morsels that are the heart of a Scandinavian home abound: scrumptious pies, delicate pastries, millions of cookies, and of course, savoury breads; all written to stress ease of preparation even for novice bakers.
As you make the filled Danish pastries, Christmas buttermilk rye bread and a few dozen pepparkakor, you are inducted into the Scandinavian traditions too; like the sweet breads for serving with morning, afternoon and evening coffee; the trays upon trays of cookies for just the holidays or for the everyday; and the savoury meat-and-vegetable pies guaranteed to warm your heart and fill your stomach.
- Cookbook: ScandiKitchen: Fika and Hygge: Comforting cakes and bakes from Scandinavia with love
Author: Brontë Aurell
With her “The ScandiKitchen”* a runaway success, London-based Dane Brontë Aurell’s new book features over 60 recipes from all over Scandinavia – from indulgent cream confections to homely and comforting fruit cakes and traditional breads, sweet buns, and pastries; all centered around the Swedish love for fika and the Danish fondness for the Norwegian-originated hygge – a sublime state of nothing-else-matters coziness when you are with loved ones round a log fire, a good movie, a cup of something warm and a sweet treat.
With chapters divided into Biscuits and Cookies, Tray and No Bakes, Everyday Fika, Little Fancy Cakes, Celebration Cakes, and Bread and Batters; this beautifully illustrated authentic guide celebrates Scandinavian baking as evocative of cozy days shared with friends, slowing down and taking the time to enjoy simple homemade wholesome pleasures, and of special Scandia winter celebrations centered around their baking traditions.
- Cookbook: Scandinavian Classic Baking
Author: Pat Sinclair
From coffee breads and cakes to cookies and tarts, this gorgeous cookbook offers 43 classic Scandinavian eye-catching palate-pleasing recipes, along with photographs, history, musings and stories – perfect as an heirloom for your daughter or son to pass down along the generations; hinting of memories of grandma’s warm kitchen scented with cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and orange peel, and the aromas of sweet yeast breads, hearty and wholesome rye breads, Swedish Lucia buns, mini princess cakes, traditional and venturesome Danish aebleskiver, Norwegian fattigmann, sandbakkels, berry- studded tarts and nutty pastries.
Offering these memorable flavours of authentic Scandinavian cuisine gorgeously photographed and beautifully accompanied by baking tips and tricks, with where to find the equipment for specialty bakes, the cookbook becomes perfectly accessible to bakers of all levels to experience.
- Cookbook: Swedish Cookies, Tarts and Pies
Author: Jan Hedh
Known throughout Sweden as a beloved Master baker and confectioner, Jan Hedh has been baking cookies, cakes, tarts and pies for 45 years – a lifetime of refining the art of baking to produce the 277 sumptuously flawless recipes in “Swedish Cookies, Tarts and Pies”; including classic Swedish desserts like almond puff pastry, coconut macaroons, petit fours and traditional Christmas cookies; as well as a full array of muffins, fruit tarts, and cakes; along with all the flavours glazing the Nordic dessert palate – from marzipan to candied citrus to rich chocolate.
Baking these beloved indulgences will surely warm your heart from autumn to summer!
- Cookbook: Swedish Breads and Pastries
Author: Jan Hedh
Believing we should enjoy freshly baked bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner too, Jan Hedh offers vivid full-color photographs of step-by-step methods in kneading, rolling, braiding, cutting and baking dough into a variety of shapes and styles; making “Swedish Breads and Pastries“ the ultimate guide to making delicious aromatic dinner rolls and puddings to baguettes, waffles and pastries that no chef, event coordinator or home baker will want to be without.
- Cookbook: Artisan Breads: Practical Recipes and Detailed Instructions for Baking the World’s Finest Loaves
Author: Jan Hedh
In this beautifully photographed book, Jan Hedh also teaches us the basics for baking his favorite recipes of delicious artisan breads right in our own ovens; from daily loaves for sandwiches to delectable sweet breads for special occasions from the world over; including Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Arabia and of course Sweden.
With master tips on how to knead dough, the type of flour to use and the correct baking time and oven temperature to making bread with maximum taste and aroma for say garlic baguettes, sunflower seed bread, raisin and hazelnut loaf, pita bread, pumpernickel, almond potato bread and asparagus bread with parmesan cheese and walnuts; this book is a must-have for all those who love to bake Nordic delights and beyond.
- Cookbook: Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry
Author: Hanne Risgaard
Hanne Risgaard offers recipes with the Nordic approach to unique bread and pastry making that feels worlds away from most conventional baking books. At Skærtoft, her renowned Danish organic farm and family-owned mill on Als, an idyllic island in the southeast of Denmark; there is a belief in organic, small-scale-produced whole grains, traditional stone-ground milling techniques, use of wild fermented sourdough and organic yeast, along with attention to terroir.
With Copenhagen’s celebrated “World’s Best Restaurant” NOMA using Skærtoft Mølle’s high-quality, nutrient-rich grain products, Risgaard’s “Home Baked” upholds the Nordic principles of using the best regional produce and the chef’s creativity, as well as a sound awareness of the ways nature works.
Her cookbook thus includes baking with yeast; sourdoughs; baking pies, cakes, cookies and crackers without a raising agent; using wheat, spelt, barley and rye grains to make breads with unique ingredients like foraged herbs and greens; along with practical information on the concepts and processes behind creating delicious Scandinavian breads and on concise growing and cultivating the grains themselves.
Information and photo credits: Google Books & Amazon
Feature Photo credit: Lars Ranek, as extracted from Trina Hahnemann’s “The Scandinavian Cookbook”
