Have you ever baked outside of the American-style? How about Norwegian? I am not sure I’ve ever had, let alone baked, any Norwegian treats so I was very much intrigued when I received a copy of Nowegian Cakes and Cookies by Sverre Saetre, published by Skyhorse publishing.

Don’t let the title fool you though, this is not just limited to cakes and cookies, but also tarts, jam, soup, pudding, cream puffs, etc. Some ingredients listed could not be located at my grocery store (such as lychees, lingonberries, oxalis leaves), but most of the recipes in this book used everyday ingredients to make a range of baked goods founded in Norwegian tradition. And although diving into a slightly different realm of baking may be daunting at first, most of these recipes seem fairly easy to make.

The first recipe that caught my eye was the caramelized apple cakes. Unfortunately my results didn’t much look like what was pictured in the cookbook, and I cannot figure out what went wrong. I even tried using two different pan-cavity sizes (the recipe specified what size but I just wanted to try another). Thankfully despite appearance malfunctions they were delicious.

 I also made the blueberry chocolates which resulted in me falling in love with the milk chocolate and blueberry flavor combination. However, the blueberry chocolate mixture never truly hardened which made dipping it into more chocolate to coat a little difficult, but the flavor did not fall victim! In fact, I enjoyed the softer center of these chocolates.

Even though the two recipes I have tried thus far didn’t come out quite right, they were still very enjoyable to eat and I have several other bookmarked to try – I think the veiled strawberry girls are next.

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Norwegian Cakes and Cookies from Skyhorse Publishing. Thoughts and opinions are my own.