Estate Coffee

Estate Coffee is for the coffee lovers first and foremost. They sell their own brand of truly delicious coffee, to stay or to go. Those of the non-coffee-persuasion are not neglected, there is Kusmi tea and Valrhona chocolate drinks. This tiny shop and cafe even offers a small selection of excellent bread rolls, pastries, cake and sandwiches.
Take a cup of brew with you for a stroll along Søerne (the lakes) - or sit and linger over a slice of 'Death by Chocolate' cake (Valrhona of course), it's a challenge to get through!

1 Gammel Kongevej, 1610 København V

Open: Mon-Fri 7:30-21, Sat+Sun 10-21

Krak map

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All good things to those who wait

What a busy month!

I had a lovely visit from Sweden (photos from Madklubben will be added soon), had a very interesting guided tour of Christiansborg (home to the Danish parliament), had a birthday party (yay!), attended other people's birthday parties (yay!) and a PhD-party for which I was asked to make chocolates (double yay!), baked a coffee cake that nearly earned me a canonisation, and enjoyed a very entertaining opera and an even more entertaining ballet. To mention a few things. And now I think it's time to bring this blog up to date.

Let me just start by saying that the ballet 'Et Folkesagn' (A Folk Tale) is absolutely brilliant. I am not really a ballet girl, but I had so much fun! There are no more show dates for 2011, but if you happen to be visiting Copenhagen between 19 January and 28 February of 2012 make sure to get tickets for the reproduction!!! (Tip: get ground floor seats and not too far back.)
The set design is stunning with lace-like detailed paper cuts, the costumes are genius (especially the inhabitants of the underworld; trolls, elven girls and every kind of strange creature you can imagine), and I was particularly impressed with the troll-mistaken-for-human girl who threw temper tantrums, bit her servants and danced like she was on fire. Fan-bloody-tastic.

Secondly, should you find your way to Malmö (just across the bridge in Sweden), do visit the Turning Torso skyscraper. Stunning. Of course I forgot my camera at home, so I only have some crummy cell phone shots.

Lastly, if you want to earn some easy points with coffee lovers, here's the recipe for an excellent coffee cake. I used muscovado sugar and espresso, and I substituted 50 g of flour for 50 g of cocoa. It turned out very well indeed.

And it's finally, undeniably SPRING. 17 degrees this past Sunday, there's no going back now. The Tivoli Gardens open tomorrow. Brace yourself for pictures of everything green and growing that I pass on my way! And a much needed blog update.

Weekends - gotta love them

We decided to start our weekend early. It was freezing (for a change) on Friday, so we wrapped ourselves up in plenty of wool before driving up to Jægersborg Dyrehave for a walk. When we arrived at the Raadvad gate it was already dusk and the icy wind was blowing in from the nearby coastline. (Okay, it's Denmark, the coastline is always near by.) It would just have to be a short walk, we decided, and at a brisk pace.

It was worth it. The forest rangers had spread out winter feed along the road, and some hundred deer were in the middle of dinner when we interrupted them. The red deer are so big they don't much care about a couple of curious two-legged observers, but the fallow deer moved away and the little sika deer of course sprinted off (only to stop 15 metres away and wait for us to leave).

We drove home and thawed out with some hot lasagna.

On Saturday we went out for brunch at Toldboden restaurant. Wauw. We thought the menu looked good on paper, but it was so much better in real life. And expansive, to say the least! Hot dishes on the counter included traditional Danish liver paté, tiny fish cakes, sausages, spare ribs, vegetable pie and French toast with homemade syrup. The juice bar offered 3 different kinds of juice, I don't even know how many kinds of tea and coffee they had - I just ordered my much needed caffè latte and explored the rest of the brunch menu.

4 different kinds of bread, 6 types of cake and pastries, 5 kinds of homemade jam and apple butter. 7 organic Danish cheeses, 4 types of salad (one of which was seafood), and of course yoghurt with muesli and more of that homemade apple syrup that was also offered for the French toast. If this reads like "The Twelve Days of Christmas" to you, you're not far off. I felt like humming "and a partridge in a pear tree" to myself as we helped ourselves to a little bit of everything. I'm sure I forgot something. It was all delicious.

Toldboden is climate friendly and uses local produce - no need to import ham from Parma and syrup from Canada when you can get something just as delicious right here. I say again: Wauw. We will be coming back.

After that strenuous ordeal we walked through the city to Kongens Have. The park is charming even when there's not a single leaf on the trees. We found our way to Latinerkvarteret and a second-hand record shop, then to Vesterbro and a tea salon that sells great homeroasted coffee beans.

Oh, and what do you know, then we were right next to a Paradis ice cream shop and we just had room for a little free ice cream. Again: Wauw. We had actually forgotten how amazing their ice cream is. The mint-lime sorbet is a new favourite, it was an explosion of taste. Good thing the ice cream season is now kicked off!

I love weekends.