Healthier Cinnamon Rolls

I have been craving cinnamon rolls for a long time now, and my first assumption is that it must have something to do with the cold weather we’ve been having here in Oslo. When it’s cold outside – get warm inside, and what is warmer and more “cozy” than fresh, fluffy cinnamon rolls?

Cinnamon Rolls

1 cup milk (LETT or low fat milk 1%)

6 tbs margarine

6 tbs sugar

8g dry yeast

3 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 large egg (or two small)

1/4 tsp salt

2/3 cup brown sugar

Cinnamon

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1. In a small saucepan, heat up milk, 3 tbs margarine and 1 tbs of the sugar on low temperature until the margarine has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Once the mixture is luke-warm, add the dry yeast and stir until it dissolves.

2. In a seperate large mixing bowl, put the remaining 5 tbs of sugar in with the 3 3/4 cup of flour and add the salt. Crack in the egg(s) but don’t mix it yet.

3. Pour the milk-mixture into the bowl of flour and mix with a wooden spoon. The trick now is finding the right amount of flour. For my sake the dough was too sticky at this point, so I kneaded a little more and more flour into the dough until it didn’t stick to the counter but DON’T PUT TOO MUCH FLOUR IN! It should stick just barely, but not to the point where you have to peel pieces off the counter.

4. Put the dough back into the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and a towel and let rise for approx. 35min or until doubled in size.

5. Roll out the dough to the shape of a square, about 1 cm thick (0.4"inches). Melt the leftover 3 tbs of butter and pour it over the dough, spreading it evenly all over. Then spread the brown sugar and desired amount of cinnamon evenly across the dough.

6. Roll the dough tightly into a sausage, then cut into desired slices (about 4-5 cm or 1.5-2inches). Place them on a baking sheet and cover. Let rise for 35 minutes in a warm place. Preheat oven at 175*C (350*F).

7. Uncover and bake rolls for approx. 20 minutes or until golden. Remember to let them cool before digging in!

8. Now to the healthy part; take one and put the rest in the freezer!

This recipe is inspired by THIS recipe on Cooking Light, however I ended up doing some of my own twists (which is the recipe I wrote above). If my recipe is anything like the one on Cooking Light these cinnamon rolls are only 234cal, and their recipe included frosting so they might even be less without the frosting (I didn’t make frosting)!

Enjoy!

A Riverwalk by Candlelight

Yesterday was the 13th annual riverwalk by candelight, hosted by the city of Oslo. This riverwalk started as a celebration of the new millenium in 2000, and has become one of the most popular events in Oslo. They estimated approx. 50 000 people went on the riverwalk last night. Candles, entertainment and great weather made this an experience I’ll never forget.

Oslo, 19/09/2013

Buffalo Chicken Eggrolls with Ranch Dip

Time for a seriously simple, yet damned delicious recipe. I used certain ingredients that might be hard for one or the other person to get hold of. First of all, a type of cheese that we were recommended by one of the shopowners of a foreign store here in Oslo. It’s called piknik ciftlik peyniri and it’s so yummy. I’m a cheese-a-holic, always have been and always will be. Second, I had these with ranch dip. Ranch is not a hard ingredient for Americans to find, but much harder for Norwegians. My best advice would be to find a recipe for ranch at foodgawker.com.

 

 

 

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Buffalo Chicken Eggrolls

2-3 medium sized chicken breast

3-4tbsp hot sauce (more if you like it spicy)

1 tsp liquid smoke

1 cup piknik cheese (or similar crumbly cheese)

2-3 scallions

Wonton wrappers

1. Cut the chicken into preferably small cubes. Put in a frying pan with a little vegetable oil and fry until the chicken is cooked through. Add the hot sauce and the liquid smoke and stir so you coat all of the chicken.

2. Chop scallions into thin slices and crumb the cheese so these are prepared to be placed on the wonton wrappers. Then place a little chicken, a little cheese and a few slices of scallions on the wrappers and roll into an eggroll. I made an absolutely fantastic description in paint as to how I wrapped mine.

Wow I hope that helped. I had to try out a few wrapping methods before I figured this one out. Worked though, just remember to tuck it tightly.

3. Place the eggrolls on a baking sheet, brush each with some vegetable oil and stick the platter in a preheated oven at 200C (392F). Bake for approx. 10-15min or until lightly golden brown.

Wham bam, thank you m’am. Delicious, crispy eggrolls filled with spicy buffalo chicken. Serve with ranch dip and celery to balance out the spicy flavor of the hot sauce!

Butternut squash soup with chili & crème fraîche

So fall is synonymous with soups for me, and I know I’m not the only one who loves a warm bowl of soup when the crisp fall air nips at the skin. So I’ve been looking at soups on pinterest and found one that me and my honey tried a little over a week ago. The recipe is from BBC Good Food, so all credit to them. You can find the recipe here, or just keep reading below the picture.

Butternut squash soup with chili & crème fraîche

1 butternut squash (approx. 1 kg)

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp butter

2 onions, diced

1 garlic clove (I used 2), thinly sliced

1 mild red chilies, deseeded and finely chopped

8,5dl hot vegetable stock

4 tbsp crème fraîche

Cut the butternut squash into large cubes and let them roast in the oven with half of the olive oil. Roast for approx. 30 minutes or until they are golden and soft. We had to leave them in almost 45min in order to get them soft enough. Remember to turn them at least once while they’re roasting.

Melt the butter and remaining olive oil in a large saucepan and add the garlic, onion and 3/4 of the chilies. Be careful, the chilies can make you cry when they’re cooking.. Put a lid on and let this cook on low heat until the onions are soft (approx. 15-20min).

Once the squash is soft enough, put it in the pan along with the crème fraîche and veggie stock. At this point, try as much as possible to use a stick blender and mix everything together into a soup. There is a lot of liquid, so in order to get a silky smooth soup you can pour the soup through a strainer and then try to purée the leftover chunky parts. Put everything back together and then the soup is ready!

Serve with a swirve of crème fraîche, a dash of pepper and the leftover chili! A spicy soup that’ll warm your tummy as well as your tastebuds!

Final days of summer

Oslo 25/08/2013

TABIBITO

In order to celebrate me and my boyfriend’s 3 year anniversary today, we decided to check out an asian restaurant called Tabibito in the Oslo city center. Definitely worth the visit. The restaurant had a nice and clean but warm atmosphere with burning candles and dimmed lights. Our coats were taken at the door (we’re students, we don’t eat at places where they usually do this…), and we were shown to a small table in the middle of the restaurant. Because of our occasion, we decided to try a five course dinner they had put together and a four glass wine menu to go with it. WOW is all we can say. The food was delicious.

For starters we had sichuan spring rolls and crispy wontons, followed by three different main courses: seafood wok with scampi, scallops, mussels and “seafood balls(?)”, chicken gong bao and fried pork coated with sesame seeds in a spicy sweet and sour sauce. Finally, for dessert, we got tapioca in a creamy coconut milk soup filled with fruit and coconut sorbet. Yes, it really was as exciting as it sounds. Everything tasted great, with tons of flavor! And as if the food wasn’t good enough, the service was excellent. Our waterglasses were never below half empty, we were checked on multiple times by our waitress and she gave us detailed descriptions of what we were served. Definitely a 5 star rating from us!
Have a wonderful week!
Sarah

Long time, no see

I haven’t blogged since September 25th. In the time since then I haven’t been able to think of anything to blog about. I’ve contemplated shutting down my blog, change my angles, shut it down again, start blogging every day, blogging just once a week. I guess we all have those times when we just don’t want to blog, we don’t know what to blog about. I sometimes wish I had something exciting to blog about, like fashion or great recipes. Posts about all the places I’m travelling or about great causes I’m working for. That I took more pictures and shared my “photography”. That this would be the blog people went to for where to travel, where to go when out on the town in Oslo, or how to cook awesome food. However, I have no fashion sense, I rarely follow recipes while making food. I’m a student, so there is no time or money for travelling, I suck about going out on the town and when I do I never bring my camera so all that “photography” is never taken.

We’ve been seeing others lately…

I think to myself: what can I blog about? There is school, but being a student doesn’t have much more excitement than books, lectures and coffee addiction. I have my work (which I have neglected to tell anyone who reads my blog that I’ve gotten) at Lindex which is fun, but again limited as to what I can write about. The new clothing we get? Cool customers I meet? Maybe.. Then there is the living-with-your-boyfriend-for-the-first-time experience which would be fun to write about, but then I think that maybe the simple things that make us laugh are kind of weird and not completely understandable to others…

Then there is those deep thoughts. They’re easy to share, but also so easy to change. I notice myself writing that I want to do this and that, then the next moment I’m writing that I want to do that and this. I’m a month away from 20, I’m going to change my mind a lot in the next years. Maybe it’s ok though? Maybe my blog should simply be a place to air my thoughts, write it out and figure out if it makes sense or not. It’s not like I’m good at writing down my thoughts. I have a diary I’ve had since 2004, and I barely write 2-3 posts a year in that. But I like blogging. It might not be my deepest thoughts and secrets, it might not make any sense, I might write posts as rarely as snow falls in Texas and that are in no way exciting to anyone else but my boyfriend (who better be happy about the fact that I actually finally blogged). But it’s my blog, it makes me happy to write about things in my life and that is probably the only reason I always keep coming back to it.
I love you blog, thanks for being here no matter how long it takes for me to come back.
Sarah

College kid

Hello again dear blogger (and non-blogger) friends! I’ve now been a University student for little over a week, and I’m lovin’ it! I’ve met so many great people, made some awesome friends and I’ve gotten a little insight as to what I can expect this fall semester.  I’ve been to two lectures already, one today which I found to be very interesting!

Partly because I had smiling coffee, but also because this class takes on social sciences, models of humans and society, scientific explanations and methodology about modern social situations.. it’s basically a study about society and how it is created, controlled and built up.
What studies have you had/do you want to have that are the most interesting to you?

A NEW START NEEDS A NEW DO

This coming Monday is my first day at the University of Oslo. I’m insanely excited, yet somewhat terrified. This will be the first time I’ve ever started at a new school without knowing anybody before the first day. It’s a great opportunity and I’m sure I’ll have lots of fun though. In my mind this new school with no ties to the past is the perfect chance for a new beginning. So to really get the new beginning feel, I got my hair cut and colored yesterday to be the new “Oslo”-Sarah. This is what it looked like before….

And then this much hair later:

And a box of coloring, I feel like a brand new girl!

Have a great weekend!

A SINGLE MOMENT

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya that took the life of 77 innocent people. I was in Trondheim when this happen, happily spending a few days there as a vacation with my boyfriend. I didn’t really know any of the victims or survivors, so my life went on as normal; barely affected. It might sound heartless, but there are so many horrible things that happen in the world and life usually has to move on. This year however, on this day, I went downtown Oslo with my camera to get a look as to how this day affected people.
It was powerful.
People left roses everywhere. Every time I watched a young child walk up to the growing pile of roses, leaving a small, single rose; I felt like each rose stuck out even more. Each rose was a thought, a memory, a feeling. All these people took a single moment from their busy lives to leave their mark on how this day affected them. Being there alone, I noticed more of these moments than I usually would; and I wanted to share them here with those interested in the power of moments.



















Have a beautiful day…