Scandilicious Baking from Signe Johansen

I had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of Signe Johansen's latest book having really enjoyed some of the recipes in her earlier book the Secrets of Scandinavian Cooking-Scandilicious

The Baking book is worth getting for the bread recipes alone which cover a broad range of styles and textures from delicate vanilla bread to light rye loaves, muesli bread, cardamom buns, danish pastries and crunchy seeded flat breads.

The first recipe I tried was the Sticky Ginger Spice Cake which is a gorgeously dark and spicy loaf that no doubt should have been left to mature a little but was never given the chance. Today I made the Vanilla bread and as it came out of the oven if you had closed your eyes the warm and buttery vanilla aroma could have had you believing you had just stepped into a French patisserie. It was that good.

The bread is flavoured with both vanilla extract and the seeds of a vanilla pod. I glazed the top of my loaf with egg yolk as I had one left over but it did make it colour up a little too quickly when baking. It would be better to stick with the milk glaze in the recipe.

So here is the loaf cut, after I had allowed it just enough time to cool because I was impatient to try it. It has a beautiful soft crumb, enticing aroma and I think I will be baking this loaf quite regularly for weekend breakfasts.

For more information about Signe Johansen you can go to the Scandilicious website and some recipes from the book have been posted here on the Daily Mail website.

Other Scandinavian baking books I have in my collection are :
Nordic Bakery Cookbook by Miisa Mink.
Great-Scandinavian Baking-Book by Beatrice Ojakangas.
Patisserie of Scandinavia by J Audrey Ellison (out of print).

If you are looking for specialist Scandinavian baking ingredients have a look at scandikitchen, they write a great newsletter and the cafe sounds perfect, and also try the german deli.