December 24, 2007

One Confused Canadian

One of the ways that Canadians differentiate ourselves from Americans is our use of the metric system. But after living in Europe for a couple of months I've realized how much we still depend on the Imperial system. For example, even though we use Celsius for weather temperature, ovens use Fahrenheit. So when I used the oven here in Sweden for the first time I was scratching my head over how anything could bake properly if the dial only went up to 250°... it hit me later on that it was in Celsius, durrr! When I go grocery shopping all the prices are by kilos instead of pounds, and when people talk about their flat sizes in square metres, their heights in centimetres and weight in kilos I feel completely lost because I have no frame of reference those measurements. Even for shoes, girls talk about their 15cm heels. It feels like a whole different world out here, haha.

A friend gave me a great recipe for Mjuk Pepparkaka (soft gingerbread), but since it came from a Swedish recipe book the measurements use decilitres instead of cups. I bought measuring cups here (in metric of course) so now if I want to use my own recipes from home I'll need to convert everything to dL.

Anyway I tried out the recipe with Sandra and Fernanda and although it was a bit dense instead of fluffy (probably from over mixing) it tasted fabulous. The lingonberry inside added a really nice surprise to the gingerbread taste.

Mjuk Pepparkaka

100 g butter
2 dL sugar
2 eggs
1.5 dL sour creak
1.5 spoons gingerbread spice
1 tsp baking soda
3 dL flour
1 dL lingonberry jam

1. Preheat oven 175° C
2. Combine butter, sugar and eggs in one bowl.
3. Combine spice, flour and bicorbanate in seperate bowl.
4. Mix dry ingredients into the egg mixture and add in sour cream.
5. Mix in lingonberry jam.
7. Pour batter into a greased pan and bake 40-45 minutes.

Posted by mich at December 24, 2007 12:06 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?