Midnight trampoline sunset

Saturday night after work Eirin and I took the ferry over to Tau. It's such a luxury to be able to finish work and still have several hours of sunlight left. In fact it never gets totally dark here in summer. Love it! Mallin and Eirin are experts at bringing back childhood fun, so we made chicken tacos, jumped on the trampoline, got cramps from laughing so hard and talked about all the excitement of our plans for next year. The photos are not edited. The colours of Saturday nights sunset were frick'n insane dude. Right out the window from Mallin's kitchen! 

Carrot cupcakes unintentionally flooded with maple cream cheese deliciousness (intentionally delicious)

I was at a café today and they had the most amazing looking carrot cupcakes. I wanted one.

But I am a cheap ass. I was not willing to spend half an hours wage on a little cupcake. So I rode my aunts bike through the rain home, with my second hand jacket and my bag which I have had since I was 15 (I'm totally a cheap ass) and made my own kick ass carrot cupcakes.

I searched my favourite recipe sites for a recipe and found this one from Smitten Kitchen. I added and subtracted a little. I used left over carrots which I bought from my favourite little farmer man, who has a stall on Stavanger's main square. He has the best, cheap, fresh, quality vegetables, never smiles but is still totally adorable. The cupcakes were really really good. The icing was too runny, I added too much maple syrup and didn't have enough icing sugar left. I bad. Slightly more tricky to devour, but totally worth devouring. And much more satisfying than those expensive café cupcakes.

Carrot Cake with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes 24 cupcakes

2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups canola oil
4 large eggs
3 cups grated peeled carrots
1 cups coarsely chopped hazelnuts
24 squares of quality dark chocolate

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Line 24 cupcake molds with papers, or butter and flour them.
Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger in medium bowl to blend. Whisk sugar and oil in large bowl until well blended. Whisk in eggs 1 at a time. Add flour mixture and stir until blended. Stir in carrots, hazelnuts. Put a dark chocolate square in the bottom of each cupcake liner. Divide batter among cupcake moulds, filling 3/4 of each.

Bake cupcakes 14 to 18 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of one comes out clean. Let cool in pans for five minutes or so, then transfer cakes to a cooling rack. Let cool completely before icing them.

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

2 packages cream cheese, softened
120 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
A small handful of grated carrot

In a stand mixer beat all the ingredients on medium until fluffy. Chill the frosting for 10 to 20 minutes, until it has set up enough to spread smoothly.

Preikestolen, the pulpit rock

Above lysefjorden outside of Stavanger lies an insane rock formation known as preikestolen. It's a rock plattform that juts out from the side of the fjord and drops straight down 604 metres. It attracts thousands of tourists each year, and last week Mallin, Eirin and I were some of them.

Eirin and I met up in Stavanger and picked up some hiking essentails such as chocolate and a shrek pez dispenser. We then took a 40 minute ferry over to Tau, where Mallin picked us up and we drove up the the preikestolen hytte. In the car I received a present from Mallin's Mum, a tshirt which says " You can not get to the pulpit rock without visiting us" referring to the district they live in. Sweetest lady!

The weather was not totally ideal, quite foggy and a bit of rain. Then my thermos of hot chocolate leaked through my bag, and my tuna sandwhich was soggy. But no amount of soggy sandwich could take away from the fact that was totally amazing, an idyllic two hour walk through forrest, over rocks and mud with Eirin and Mallin cracking hilarious jokes and telling funny stories the whole way up. Mallin even convinced Eirin that there was a swimming pool at the top which sold icecream and hot dogs. Lol Eirin! When we got to the top we dangled our legs over the edge, pretended to base jump, and ate pez from Eirin's shrek dispenser. Afterwards we went back to Mallin's house and ate the most delicious homemade pizza. Awesome day.

The left side of B310

This is were I have lived the past year. Along with Andrea, my awesome room mate, who happened to come from the same town as my great grandfather (Asker) and have an insanely cool collection of amazing shoes.

B310 is where I learnt to knit, woke up to an amazing view every morning, ate Tim Tams that Alex T sent me, stored my secret stash of chai, did my norwegian homework and put into use the pink donna cover my grandma gave me.

I had to try not to wake Andrea up, as I almost always went to bed earlier and got up earlier, store the bottle of Poslish vodka Alex gave to me inside a dress and cope with a shelf which kept falling down.

B310 was also home to:
1) our pet plant Alberto, who managed to stay alive despite our neglect and many holidays from school, 2) my sheep jaw which I kept from my aunty Åse's sheep head party and 3) a a small bag of Guatemalan worry people which my mum sent me for my 21st birthday.

I miss B310.

Flowers and Food

pumpkin and pinenut salad

magnolia bakery cupcakes

strawberries and cream

Tik tok biscuits

Fargerike stavanger sommer blomster og mat som de minner meg av/jeg har lyst på nå.

Colourful Stavanger summer flowers and food they remind me of/ I would love to eat right now.

Q: Excuse me what time is it? A: ITS PARTY TIME

Last week I took a semi spontaneous trip to Oslo. I had thought about it, but I didn't book a flight before the night before. The aim was to catch up with Sigrunn, Ane, Tone, Nico and other folkehøgskole friends for the last time before I return to Aust-raaalia. Aim was completed. We ate pizza, drank beer, watched 13 years olds try to breakdance on the opera house roof, found bow ties in about 50 colours at the most awesome second hand shop, sipped café mochas, found my grandmas china in a hip antique shop, enjoyed the Norwegian midnight sun from Oslo's living room and ate eggs for breakfast. Party time indeed.

Drinking da mocha.

Rooftop romance.

An Oslo seagull.

Sweet tram driver.

Partytime.

Tone enjoys a juice in Oslos living room.

Sigrunn attractive as ever.

Blue skys behind the clouds.

Wouldn't want to meet hardcore Ane in a dark laneway.

Street Stavanger

Red wine at Stavanger's famous café Sting.

Finally a bit of sun and colour in the garden.

Audun and Johan waltz to the saxaphone man.

Electricity cables; they are important.

Kristin's Birthday Rhubarb Jam

Happy Birthday my dear cousin Kristin! This jam is for you, on your birthday. It's made with ingredients I found at home. Home grown rhubarb from aunty Åse's garden, left over ruby grapefruit from breakfast and a lemon I found in the fruit bowl. It turned out amazing, seriously delicious, I even licked the pot. Hope you had a great birthday, I am very lucky to have such an awesome cousin like you!

1.5kg rhubarb
1 kg sugar
20 g jam stabiliser
Juice and rind of a half lemon
Juice and rind of a half grapefruit
2 ts vanilla sugar

Mix the sugar and the jam stabiliser together.
Cut up the rhubarb into 2cm chunks, place in a large pot, medium heat along with the sugar.
Melt the sugar, then turn up the heat. Bring to the boil.
Add lemon, grapefruit and vanilla.

To sterilize jars: Wash jam jars in soapy hot water, then place in oven to dry completely.
Fill the jars while both the jam and the jars are still hot. As the jars cool the top of the jar will pop down.
Keeps in the pantry for 6 months. But you'll eat it before then, it's too good.

Things I didn't do at Folkehøgskole

Not spending much time stressing out

In the 9 months I went to Folkehøgskole I never...

1. Ate breakfast alone
2. Took out the rubbish bins/ mowed the lawn/ washed any windows
3. Answered a land line phone
4. Walked more than 50m to visit my friends
5. Spent more than 1hr in a sad mood
6. Stressed out. At all.
7. Swam at the beach
8. Wrote an essay
9. Curled my hair
10. Got out of bed before 8am
11. Went to bed before 11pm
12. Drunk wine out of a wine glass
13. Locked a front door. Actually had no use for any key and definitely not a key ring
14. Fried an egg
15. Sprang rundt i graset naskje og dansa

Next up... A list of all the awesome things I DID do! 

Homegrown and made Rhubarb Pie

Yum. Homemade rhubarb pie. Even better with homegrown rhubarb and homemade pastry. I used this (click here) easy pastry recipe, and cooked up the rhubarb with sugar on the stove until tender. Then I mixed the rhubarb with some of my grandma's homemade blackberry jam, spread it in the pastry shell, and made a crumble topping. Highlight of the day for sure.

Grandma and her garden

My aunt and I had a weekend trip to visit my grandma. She is soon to be 90 and is still very passionate about her garden. We spent most of our shopping trip picking out new plants and she is much more tanned than due to all her time spent tending her flowers. On Sunday I even made rhubarb pie with her home grown/made blackberry jam and home grown rhubarb. What a luxury!

Street Stavanger: midnight edition

Long Norwegian summer nights. Suddenly walking alone in a cemetery alone at midnight: not that scary.