Tag: christmas

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

Posted on by Sara Walker

It is indeed starting to look a lot like Christmas. And with it sometimes comes visitors from near, or far, and potentially a bunch of children that are expecting treats. You may be wringing your hands wondering what to serve them without having them overindulge in too much sugar, or going insane yourself whilst spending hours in the kitchen. No worries – we have found an easy to bake cake, which uses honey instead of sugar and judging from the comments people are loving it. So no worries – the kids won’t be having tantrums about the cake at least…

This gingerbread cake is also perfect for grown-ups – take a break from the Christmas craziness and settle down with cup of tea, or coffee. If you have a coffee shop it’s also the perfect Christmas cake to serve with the coffee.

So let that pre-Christmas stress go away – mix these ingredients together, put on the coffee machine and sit down to inhale the aroma of fresh roasted coffee beans and gingerbread cake. Could there be anything more heavenly?

(If you are running low on ideas for Christmas gift ideas and starting to go crazy because that as well, we also recommend you check out our shop, get yourself a big bag of the best fresh roasted coffee beans and then divide it into small little handmade bags to give away together with a beautiful coffee cup. Naturally we aren’t marketing our services or anything like that. Not at all, but if you want to buy coffee online you know where now…)

This Apple Upside Down Ginger Cake comes from The Sour Path is the Sweetest

Topping

*1/4 cup unsalted pasture butter or ghee (someone used oil with good result, but baked it for 40 mins rather than 30-35)

*1/4 cup honey

*1 Tbsp coconut aminos (not essential)

*2 large apples, peeled, wedged and thinly sliced

Gingerbread Cake

*1/4 cup unsalted pasture butter or ghee

*1/2 cup honey

*4 pastured eggs, room temperature

*2 Tbsp coconut aminos, room temperature (not essential)

*1 1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

*2 cups blanched almond flour

*3/4 tsp baking soda

*1/4 tsp cloves

*2 tsp cinnamon

*2 Tbsp ginger

Directions

For topping: melt butter and honey. Add coconut aminos, stir. Pour mixture into an 8″ by 8″ square baking pan. Arrange sliced apples over butter/ honey mixture and set aside.

For cake: Warm the butter and the honey until just melted. Add room temperature eggs and other wet ingredients and mix. Combine dry ingredients together in a separate bowl, Add the dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well.  Pour over the apples. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate.

Think sweet thoughts 🙂

apple ging2

Christmas Drinks

Posted on by Sara Walker

Christmas is coming up and we’ll…drink to that. Of course, when we drink we’d love if it includes coffee. Fresh roasted coffee beans that are freshly ground to be precise. We may even roast the green coffee beans ourselves to get the perfect blend.

As it’s usually cold around Christmas time a little bit of liquor with the coffee helps to keep you warm. Find below a nice Christmas drink to keep you warm and happy. And remember, whatever you do: use fresh roasted beans of a good quality. It’s the best you can do to ensure the drink turns out nice. And of course: freshly whipped cream. Not the stuff that comes out of a can – after all you want a traditional Christmas!

We found this recipe at Recipe Hub

Ingredients:

4 oz strong coffee
1 1/2 oz amaretto liqueur
1 1/2 oz coffee liqueur
1 oz butterscotch schnapps
1 oz creme de cocoa
fresh whipped cream
grated chocolate, for garnish

Directions:

Combine strong coffee and liqueurs in a glass. Stir to combine and top with fresh whipped cream. Garnish with grated chocolate.

Serve warm or over ice.

 

‘Tis the Season

Posted on by Sara Walker

‘Tis the season…to drink coffee. Naturally. It’s always the season to drink coffee. However, in Christmas time you can add some extra spice to those fresh roasted coffee beans of yours. You can do so by adding traditional Christmas spice into your regular blend, like cinnamon and nutmeg for example. You can also try candy cane lattes, or why not eggnog lattes?

Below we have listed some recipes we found. Of course you need to buy coffee online from us and then it’s just to get started. And if you really can’t buy from us then we recommend truly fresh roasted coffee beans that you grind at home. The fresher the better. You can even buy green coffee beans and roast them yourself.

Eggnog Latte – recipe from Mother Nature Network

Prep time: 5 minutes, Cook time: 1 minute
Ingredients
• 1/3 cup 2% milk
• 2/3 cup eggnog
• 1 shot (1.5 ounces) brewed espresso
• Nutmeg (optional)
Directions
1. Pour milk and eggnog into a steaming pitcher and heat to between 145-165 degrees F, using the steaming wand.
2. Brew the shot of espresso, then add to mug.
3. Pour the steamed milk and eggnog into the mug, using a spoon to hold back the foam. Spoon foam over the top. Sprinkle ground nutmeg (or grind fresh nutmeg yourself) on top of the foam. Serves one.

Candy Cane Latte

1 cup almond milk or regular organic milk
1/2 cup brewed coffee or 1 shot espresso
2 tbsp crushed peppermint candy canes + extra for decoration

Whipped cream (optional

Mix the coffee with the candy cane, then add the steamed milk (if you can’t steam it at home, whip it whilst heating it to get it frothy. Almond milk, however, does not really froth). Potentially add some sweetened whipped cream. Sprinkle some crushed candy cane on top and serve with a candy cane to the side.

Who doesn't want to wake up to a yummy peppermint latte on Christmas morning??

Homemade Chocolate Coffee Swizzle Sticks

Posted on by Sara Walker

These chocolate swizzle sticks are really easy to make, and are a great craft project for
children if you supervise them while they’re melting the chocolate. When stirred into a cup of hot coffee made from freshly-ground coffee beans, the swizzle sticks will gradually dissolve to give a rich, chocolaty taste. They’re a great Christmas gift for a coffee lover, and also ideal for dinner party favours or place settings.

You’ll need:

Star-shaped chocolate lollipop mould
Lollipop sticks
2 x 100g bars of good quality dark chocolate
Edible gold lustre (optional)
Two different colours of cellophane, for example gold and clear
Ribbon

What to do:

Before you start, make sure everything you need to use is clean and dry, as melted
chocolate splits on contact with water.

Break the chocolate into small pieces and put it in a microwave-proof bowl. Melt the
chocolate slowly in the microwave in twenty-second bursts, stirring the chocolate between
each burst. Don’t rush this stage, as it’s easy to burn the chocolate and ruin it.

When the chocolate’s fully melted, stir it for one to two minutes until it looks shiny. This will
help stop it separating when it’s poured into the mould.

Place a lollipop stick in each mould, then carefully spoon the chocolate in. Smooth it off with the back of a spoon, and place the mould in the fridge until the chocolate is set.

Turn the lollipops out onto a clean, dry surface, and carefully brush each star with edible
gold dust.Cut two squares of cellophane, and wrap them round the star, tying them round the lollipop stick with ribbon. Store the swizzle sticks in a cool, dry place alongside your coffee beans until it’s time to use them – don’t keep them in the fridge, as this may cause the chocolate to bloom and look unattractive.

To use the sticks as place settings, write each person’s name on a luggage label and tie it
just below the star with ribbon.

Coffee In Lapland

Posted on by Sara Walker

Finland is often perceived as being one of the more mysterious Scandinavian countries. What happens in Finland? What’s Finland known for? And why visit such a cold part of the world?

Apart from Lordi winning the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006, the Northern Lights and having lots of lakes, Finland is also home to Lapland, Father Christmas and many keen coffee drinkers. Finnish people have been said to love coffee more than any other nation, according to the site www.uta.fi, with the average person consuming three to four cups a day.

It might not seem like a country of coffee consumers but we’d like to think it makes sense, especially in the north where the sun doesn’t rise during the winter months.

As you already know, coffee beans keep us alert; they wake us up and a steaming hot brew can be the perfect antidote to a cold dark day. Finnish winters can often be tough – especially for tourists who aren’t used to minus 20 temperatures. It’s also significantly darker because the sun doesn’t rise which means many people who aren’t used to living in semi darkness can sometimes feel tired, disorientated or even depressed.

Coffee beans and a big bar of Fazer chocolate (the chocolate popular throughout Finland) would therefore seem like the ideal choice. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see people sat outside in the snow next to small fires overlooking frozen lakes despite temperatures being well below minus 10.

Over here, we’ll have our summer picnics, but we probably wouldn’t think about venturing outside to have a picnic in the snow. In Finland, however, it wouldn’t be unusual to spot people enjoying what can only be described as winter picnics with sausages cooked on open fires, hot flasks filled with steaming, freshly brewed coffee and traditional Finnish snacks.

So, why visit Finland? Apart from coffee beans, you can also visit Father Christmas at Finland’s Christmas Village in Rovaniemi (Lapland’s gateway town), immerse yourself in Finland’s sauna culture and marvel over some of the most spectacular countryside in the world.

Coffee At Christmas

Posted on by Sara Walker

We’ve all got our opinions as to why we celebrate Christmas, what we like about the festival and what Christmas means to us – the birth of Jesus, presents, togetherness…

If you like and celebrate December 25, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a time when people are generally warmer, kinder and more pleasant to each other. For example, you’re probably more likely to give to a homeless person on Christmas Eve than at any other time of the year or be more generous to strangers – providing you haven’t left your Christmas Shopping to the last minute and you’re now in a frantic hurry!

But, did you know that coffee also plays a part in the tradition of bringing people together too? In the 19th century, roasting coffee beans at Christmas was a traditional family activity that was supposed to bring the whole family together. For many families today, drinking coffee at Christmas is still seen as an important Christmas tradition.

Hot mugs of coffee can also help people to feel more connected according to some psychologists. A study was conducted with hot and iced coffee to determine whether participants would feel warmer and more connected to people when they had a hot cup of coffee in their hands.

Approximately 40 participants took part in the study; they were then shown a series of photographs of people who they had to rate according to how warm they felt each person was.

The results show that the people who were given hot mugs of coffee wrote more positive things about the pictures of people they had to identify, as opposed to the participants who were given iced coffee. Similar experiments show that holding hot objects can make us more generous and trusting towards other people.

So, if things start to get a bit too prickly this Christmas – you know what to do – just make everyone a hot mug coffee and sit by a fire.