Danish Desserts! (Sans-danishes edition)

This past week I got the chance to try some yummy desserts here in Denmark! I’ve concluded desserts are the best because they taste wonderful no matter what country you’re in. At the same time, they’re still uniquely cultural to a location AKA something I won’t find at home. (Yes, this is how I justify eating so many desserts.)

To kick off the week, my host mom and I attended a social function for other DIS host families in the area. We went to Cafe Stella for coffee and cake provided by DIS. Cafe Stella is located in one of the oldest sections of Copenhagen that survived after the Copenhagen Fire of 1728. Streets in this area are much more windy and narrow, and now function as mainly pedestrian walkways. My host mom Lise informed me that the Cafe’s street is where horse manure and citizen’s feces were formerly thrown, but it’s now one of the hip parts of the city with great restaurants and nice apartments. Crazy! At Cafe Stella I tried two desserts: dream cake and cream cheese brownie. Dream cake has a coconut and brown sugar topping that goes well with whipped cream. A Danish woman I met at Cafe Stella told me her friend said she decided to stay and live in Denmark because of dream cake. It’s that good, people.
My cream cheese brownie. Delicious.

Dream Cake! Photo courtesy of Google Images.

Later in the week, some friends and I went to Lagkagehuset- a popular chain bakery here that I’ve already visited twice. There, I tried a treat called flødeboller, which translates to English as snowballs. Flødeboller have a rich marshmallow-cream filling and chocolate covering.

Lauren and I’s flødebollers! Coconut on the left, caramel on the right.

Trying all of these Danish desserts made me miss traditional American confections a bit so I thought it would be fun to test out some cookie recipes for my host family. This resulted in a lot of improvisation since Danes don’t traditionally bake cookies. I didn’t have any measuring utensils, chocolate chips, or microwave (to soften butter)! Luckily I had my host family to help read me the Danish food labels. After some guesswork, I managed to bake oatmeal and chocolate chip recipes. As you can see, the chocolate chip cookies don’t look as aesthetically pleasing… However, when my host brother Marius (age 4) arrived home from daycare today he said, “Liza, these are the best cookies EVER!” It was super sweet to hear that he and his sister Emmy enjoyed them so much. I consider my mission accomplished!