Oat Lace Cookies and Rasberry Twists

Ridiculous, but I'm giving The Nordic Bakery a couple of more chances to redeem itself and prevent me from depositing it bitterly at the local charity shop. That would probably be the kind thing to do, because I'm sure it would sell quickly, and when the unfortunate who buys it cracks it open at home they will, I know, be very happy with following one word reviews I have penciled in next to some choice recipes 'pointless', 'stupid' and 'bad'.
The boyfriend, incidentally, is very vocal about how unfair it is to judge a recipe after only one attempt, but since the things I have made from this book so far were all both time consuming and spectacular failures, I have no desire to try again. I was only following directions, after all, and if the recipes are designed to keep you away from the secrets of Nordic baking (which most seem to be) no technique of mine will fix the problem.
So much bitterness for such a small book, maybe I'm having problems at home? You'd think that I would know about it.
I made the Oat Lace Cookies and Raspberry Twists and then later a loaf of bread, which meant keeping the oven on for most of the day, which warmed up my house enough to turn the heating off, which made me feel very frugal and practical.

The oat cookies use an obscene amount of butter, most of which melts away during baking, leaving you with a very delicate and fragile (and in my case a little burnt) disk that crumbles and melts in your mouth and feels light and airy despite being loaded with nuts, chocolate, raising and oats.

The Raspberry Twists use an even more incredible, immense amount of butter, which doesn't melt away during baking, imagine shortbread with veins of jam that have burnt into a tasty, chewy caramel and you've got it.
The recipe instructs you to prepare the dough and chill in fridge for at least an hour, but since my kitchen was so warm by then, the dough began to melt and sag while I was rolling it. That's the reason my cookies have mysterious veins instead of neat spirals of jam. I will make these again, and next time will try the recipe's suggested variation of using marmalade instead of jam, which sounds a little bit more delicious and grown up to me.
My brother and stepmother arrived just as I was taking these out of the oven and I managed to persuade them to take half of them home with them, which is a good thing because I wouldn't feel safe in the house with so many sweets.

The final thing I made, since the oven was already warmed up, was this sour cream bread, which exceeded all my expectations and persuaded me to order the book it came from.
Nordic Bakery lives to fight another day.

Rye Bread

Remember the difficulty I had with the Nordic Bakery cook book? I happened to be in the neighborhood on Saturday and popped into the cafe. The coffees are nice, the cakes look pristine (I had just had lunch and want hungry) but the book is challenging. Not challenging as in hard, but challenging as in there is nothing extraordinarily tempting about the recipes, probably because I am very aware that they will not live up to my expectations.

Is that harsh? Fair enough, does this look like a loaf of bread? I don't think so.
I followed the Nordic Bakery's recipe for rye bread to the letter. Through the fussy step of fermenting the yeast the night before, using almost a kilo of rye flour and spending almost 5 hours coddling it. The yield is supposed to be three loaves of bread, if I had tampered with the recipe I would have accepted that this thick leathery pancake with a gummy glue filling is my fault, but I resisted temptation. Incidentally why give a recipe for three loaves, why not one? Under what circumstances would you need to bake this in bulk, like maybe if you wanted to open up your own bakery? Is that the lesson of this failure, that I should buy my bread in the future because the I'll never find out the secret of making it?
There is something aggressively hateful about a recipe that fails on such a grand scale. I have a rye bread recipe that works every time, I didn't need to use all my flour up on this.
I just read some reviews of the book and they are all predictably gushing, so maybe I am just an idiot, but even an idiot occasionally manages not to screw up, right? Normally I would get rid of a book I have no further interest in cooking from, but this was a gift I'd specifically asked for so I'll suffer on for a while longer. Until the next disaster.

Parsnip and Sesame Flatbreads and Classic Cinnamon Buns

I'm going on a totally-serious-this-time-not-even-allowed-to-have-gin diet this year, as in, the most boring New Year's resolution ever. So really want to get some of the more delicious looking projects out of the way.
One of the books I got for Christmas was The Nordic Bakery. I don't remember why I put this on my Amazon wishlist, I actually went to this place once, but all we had was coffee. I was shopping with a girl from work and she wasn't hungry so I didn't try any of the cakes. Here's a study that proves that what a woman eats is influenced by what other women around her are eating (men don't have as much impact). I always wanted to come back but I forgot what street it was on.
Anyway, we had some parsnips left over from Christmas so I made parsnip and sesame flatbreads. Not the most indulgent thing, but we had all the ingredients. You grate and boil the parsnip, mix into a dough and bake.
I baked these for about 20 minutes longer than the book said but the still had a raw taste and texture. The moisture in the parsnip makes them cook slowly and the final product is just not my thing. Parsnip and sesame is actually a nice combination, but I wouldn't make these again.
The next day I tried the classic cinnamon bins from the cover. The image is actually a little deceptive, it's so beautifully layered that I initially assumed this was like a puff pastry Danish kind of thing, but it's more like a bread roll with some veins of sugar cinnamon. I was a little underwhelmed, but I think these are best the next day, slices in half, toasted, with a little brie. The most interesting thing about these is the cardamon mixed into the dough, but overall I'm not sure they're worth the calories.