I have re-activated the guestbook, hoping that Wordpress will protect it against spam. Just to keep a bit of history, I copied (manually!) all the entries from the old guestbook, it’s a good thing that not too many people visit this site!

The new guestbook is nothing but a specialized Wordpress page, as described in this useful blog post.

Now go ahead and sign! 

You can argue all you want about who’s got the best cuisine in the world, but a culture that has come up with something as delicious as creme brulee has a strong claim to the title. It’s not even difficult, at least according to this recipe I’m using (from an unknown source).

For 4 persons:

2 dl cream
1 and 1/2 dl milk
1 vanilla bean
5 egg yolks
3/4 dl sugar
1/2 dl cane (brown) sugar

Cut the vanilla bean in half across its length and remove the seeds. Mix the milk and cream and bring to boil with the vanilla bean, set aside to cool down. Remove the bean, let it dry and store, you can use it several times (thankfully, given how much they cost)

Beat the yolks with the (white) sugar and mix them with the milk and cream. Pour the mixture in 4 small bowls, cover them with aluminum foil and set on a deep baking tray. Fill the tray with water so that the water level is more or less at the level of the cream in the bowls (hopefully you have checked before covering with the foil :P)  Heat the oven to 150 C, put in the tray and leave it there for 45 minutes (this is the time in the original recipe - it usually takes me a bit longer, perhaps it depends on the oven. Just see when the cream has become firm), take it out and leave it to cool down.

Sprinkle the brown sugar on top and caramelize it either by leaving it for a few minutes under the oven grill, or using the appropriate tool (see video below). If you use the grill watch out, it’s easy to burn the sugar.

Enjoy! Oh, and the glasses aren’t really necessary…

Midsummer, or Juhannus as it is called around here, has come and gone and with it the longest day of the year. This is the view on the backyard that the Balecam showed at 1am, as you can see it was still pretty bright.

Although most finns go out of town during this holiday, I stayed in Helsinki to tidy up the house in preparation for my parents’ visit next week.