Finnish summer 2014

I wonder if Finland has summer when one day you can wear shorts and another day you wrap yourself like autumn. But when it comes to sunshines, it is really beautiful, I don't even want to go to sleep but enjoy Finnish summer.

Ice-cream @ Karl Fazer café

It was the day that we went to many places, many words to tell. So I break them into 3 small entries which presents for 3 main places we had been.

Last Saturday, I had the unprepared meeting with my friends which I thought it was cancelled because of the bad weather. Early morning, I went outside to shop alone, and then my friend called me and said the weather might get better. So we decided to meet each other.

First of all, we came to see a friend of friend, a Vietnamese girl from Tokyo who came to visit Finland. We met, took her around and showed her Helsinki for a while. Her boyfriend, the untypical Finnish, as he said doesn’t know much about Helsinki and suggested us to go for a coffee, so we took them to Fazer Café in the city centre. It is the main shop among the Fazer Café chains. Fazer, one of the biggest food corporations in Finland, is famous for its quality. The store sells chocolates, cakes, coffee, etc. and some products which you can buy as a gift.



I’m attracted by the beautiful cakes lying behind the glass window. I went to look around and took a lot of pictures. They are so inspiring! Unfortunately I didn’t bring my DSLR camera with me, the little Nikon didn’t take good pictures in unnatural light. I’m joking, it’s because of my bad photography skill :).



Inside the café. Modern and classic!

We bought ice-cream; I took the Fazer-kori which has 3 scoops. It combines between the 3 different kinds of flavours. You can choose any flavour you want. I chose mango, raspberry and pistachios.



Left is the random shot; right is my ice-cream. Lovely colour combination: light green, blood red and orange yellow.

I love mango in many forms, either in fruit, juice or ice-cream. The mango ice-cream looks so good, both texture and colour but I don’t know why it doesn’t taste like mango, ma friend also said like that. Raspberry ice-cream tastes like sorbet. I think pistachios ice-cream is good; it well presents its flavour. The green of pistachios i.c. is so light that it almost can’t be recognized, it looks nicer outside. I still think that it should be a little greener, just a little! The price 5.9 Euros, it’s cheap. Wonder why they don't have the bigger ice-cream cone :)

My friend also took a gorgeous ice-cream but I forgot to ask about the name and price, just remember it tastes better! Even on that day we only eat ice-cream but Fazer is where the product quality can be trusted!

Karl Fazer café

Kluuvikatu 3,
00100 Helsinki, Finland
020 7296702

http://www.fazer.com/Products--Services/Restaurants/

This is my very old post I found about 3 years ago!

My favourite creme brulee

        

Make about 5 ramekins

Ingrdients

2,5 cups cream
1/3 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
1 vanilla bean

Direction

1. Splitting the vanilla bean, scrap out the seeds and place all in cream.
2.  Simmer the cream over the low heat to allow the vanilla flavor mix with the cream.
3. Whisk egg yolks and sugar untill well blended (blanching by stirring, whisk lightly not forceful so that it will not create many air bubbles).
4. Add 1/3 cream mixture to egg yolks mixture, stir constantly. Add the rest, thoroughly stir them. Gently, don't add air to the custard.
5. Strain the custard through the sieve.
6. Pour to the ramekins (about 3/4)
7. Place the ramekins into baking pan. Add hot water about halfway the ramekins.
For those who doesn't have a torch like me, I bake like this:
8. Bake in waterbath in 30 minutes at 175 C (2 sides), and 10 at 100 C( bottom side up)

You can watch more how to make from this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_16ZZtTH_Y