Summer treats

Summer is the time of sugar and spice and everything nice. I like to treat myself or family and friends with sweet creations, preferably served on beautiful plates like these old Arabia saucers. On midsummer Sunday me and my "long-lost relative" Anna went fishing and afterwards, not catching any fish, made special pancake from Åland. (Åland is an island that belongs to Finland and is very Swedish.) Anna shared the pancake recipe she learned while working there and I´m sure she won´t mind me sharing it here aswell...  

Tea time with Åland´s pancake, whipped cream, black currants and my very own rhubarb-apple jam

Tarja´s Pancake from Åland

1 l milk
1,5 dl semolina (mannasuurimo)
1 tsp salt

Make a porridge out of this by cooking semolina in milk for about 10 minutes. Add salt. When it´s ready mix with...

half a tbsp salt
1 tbsp ground cardamon
1 egg
50 g butter

Bake in 175 degrees for about an hour. Afterwards let it cool for 10 minutes.

Pretty pink

This is what was left of the Beetroot cake I made while visiting my folks. For the lack of muscovado sugar my cake looks quite pale. This was a big success though so I truly recommend! Pumpkin seeds turned out to work really nice and fresh lemon in the icing just dots the i... I´ve been wanting to make a cake out of beetroot for long time because the one I had at Earth Café was just great. This would surely be awesome with cream cheese topping, too.

I´ve already done quite many summery things apart from summery baking. I´ve done horse riding, cayaking, fishing, music festival, hitchhiking, flower picking, swimming in the sea, outdoor bouldering (climbing) and so on and so forth. I still want to sleep outside in a tent.

Make the most of the summer! Peace and love. xx

Night on the rocks

By working nights I´ve lost my sense of time. There are no weekdays, no weekends, no bedtimes, no nothing. It´s as if I was living in some kind of a time vacuum. There´s no end to a day. I can stay up untill three in the morning and see the break of dawn - and then climb up to my bed with a book.

I´m one of those people who you might see when you go to the toilet in the middle of the night and take a look outside and you see someone walking in the deserted street. What´s best, I get to see the best time of the day: the moment just before people start getting up and going to work. When the sun is already making its way up, seagulls are screaming, air is fresh after a chilly night and it´s silent like just before a storm. It´s feels unreal but at the same time really comforting in a way; there´s an order in the world.

Warm-up sketch. It´s always warm-up when I do something crappy.

Last night I kept myself up because I´ll work nights again in the weekend. I guess I´ve always been really settled in the way everyone spends their day but now I´ve been obliged to change my routines time-wise. I wanted to go out and paint landscapes. It was 11 in the night. So I went as it doesn´t get dark here in the North anyway.

I managed to paint a couple of impressions on the sunset before I got too cold. But it was indeed marvellous to sit there on a rock as if having the beach all to myself. I felt a bit like a criminal, stealing that moment and painting it without anyone knowing. I should do that more often...

Don´t mind the blurry windmill...