Hello lovelies, what a summer! I think nobody will complain about rain anymore. We enjoy the sun and take every chance to eat outside. Therefore I’m happy to present to you our garden picnic with 3 delicious spreads and a great Swiss bread idea in cooperation with Swiss Bread* today.
You don’t really have to get away in order to escape from the everyday life – have a picnic right outside your front or back door. Take a few blankets, a box as a table, flowers and cushions and you have easily created a beautiful picnic spot. My girls and I love it, they diligently helped with decorations, we spent some quality time together and everyone is looking forward to the picnic.
Of course good food is a must when having a picnic :-). This time I planned something special. We had bread skewers with 3 different spreads. Let me surprise you!
BREAD
We are huge bread fansin our family. I have to admit I can hardly imagine a life without bread. There is nothing better in the world than the smell of fresh baked bread, the sound of crispy crust or the first bite into a warm piece of bread. As a child I was lucky that my mother laid great emphasis on good bread. We often drove quite far to buy good grain, which she ground fresh and baked the most delicious and wholesome bread.
One thing that’s important to me today: Ingredients of excellent quality. And so I’m very delighted about the cooperation with Swiss Bread. This association communicates on behalf of grain farmers, flour manufacturers and bakers about their daily commitment to our Swiss bread.
Bread is a very important basic food and goes along perfectly with a well-balanced nutrition. Carbs in particular are very important for our active girls in growth and I like to offer them with healthy whole grain bread. As with everything consuming bread depends on good quality. We mostly use whole grain in order to benefit from the important fibers of the grain.
Many different grain types are being cultivated in Switzerland. Some of my favorites are spelt and rye. I mainly use those two types for baking bread, but I also discovered emmer wheat recently.
I usually bake our own bread but every now and then we buy a stone-baked breador a ciabatta bread. It’s important to make sure that you really buy Swiss bread. Unfortunately this is not always the case when you buy bread in a Swiss supermarket – which I think is a pity. If you can’t find the info on the packet, directly ask the staff.
You can find more information about the important work of Swiss Bread here on their website.
Ok and now on to the delicious recipes and the bread skewersthat we enjoyed at our picnic. I made some sweet and also some savory skewers. They are perfect to go and everyone can create them the way they like.
We had these 3 spreads: blackberry chia jam, apricot almond cream cheese and a colorful vegetable cream cheese along with different fruits and vegetable that we also put on the skewers.
Here are the recipes:
Blackberry chia jam
Ingredients:
250 gr (1 ¾ cups) blackberries
2 Tbsp lemon juice
3 Tbsp maple sirup
1 tsp vanilla extract or pulp of 1 vanilla bean
2-2 1/2 Tbsp chia seeds
Method:
Put the blackberries, lemon juice, maple sirup and vanilla extract into a pot and simmer for 5-10 minutes. Mash the berries with a fork. Let it cool off and add the chia seeds. Let it thicken for approx. 10 minutes and add some more chia seeds if necessary, until you achieve the desired consistency. Pour the jam into a glass and store it in the fridge.
I love jam with chia seeds – so easy, fresh and hardly any sugar, and the taste is heavenly. Obviously this jam/spread doesn’t last as long as preserved jam, approx. 1 week if refrigerated, but in our house it’s usually gone before then. And then I like to make another fresh version with a different fruit, whatever I have available at the time.
The second spread is also a sweet one with one of my favorite summer fruits: apricots. A delicious cream cheese with roasted almonds and the sweet combination of fresh and dried apricots – so yummy.
Apricot almond cream cheese
Ingredients:
1 ripe apricot
50 gr (1/3 cup) dried apricots
50 gr (1/3 cup) almonds
150 gr (5.5 oz.) cream cheese (vegan)
2 Tbsp coconut yogurt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp maple sirup
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Method:
Shortly roast the almonds in an oil-free pan, let them cool off and then roughly chop them. Stone the fresh apricot and slice the dried ones. Put all ingredients into a mixer/food processor and mix until it becomes a homogenous mass that can still contain some pieces.
This apricot almond cream cheese tastes so yummy with bread in combination with fresh fruits but also with blackberry jam. The sweetness of the dried apricots is enough for this spread, but if you like you can add some more maple syrup to it.
The last recipe is a savory spread, full of fresh vegetables and cress, which we all like a lot, especially on crispy bread.
Vegetable cream cheese
Ingredients:
1 carrot
1 small cucumber (or 1/2 a large one)
4-5 small radish
2 Tbsp fresh cress
1 spring onion
150 gr (5.5 oz.) cream cheese (vegan)
2 Tbsp mayonnaise (vegan)
1 tsp lemon juice
additional fresh herbs of your choice
Salt
Pepper
Method:
Wash and finely chop the vegetables. Remove the cucumber seeds (so it doesn’t turn out to watery). Put all ingredients into a mixer/food processor and mix until it becomes a homogenous mass that can still contain some pieces.
This spread tastes fresh and delicious, just simply add your favorite herbs to it if you like. But also without the herbs it’s tasty and goes along well with bread, fresh cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes.
I had a ciabatta bread with Swiss flour (from Migros) and baked a sourdough bread with spelt and rye and used them for the bread skewers. The easiest way to make them is to cut off 2 slices bread, coat them with your spreads, stack them, cut them in cubes and then skewer them rotationally with fruits and vegetables of your choice.
The skewers were a big hit for the girls and even daddy Frei came home right on time for the picnic and almost ate all of the vegetable spread!
Do you like bread as much as we do? Then you have to try these spreads and skewers. I’m sure your whole family will like them, too. And do you bake your own bread or do you prefer to buy it? Make sure you get the information where your bread is produced. Just like with other ingredients you should keep an eye on the regional and quality focus.
Enjoy your summer picnic and as usual I’m looking forward to seeing your pictures!
Love, Verena
*The blogpost is a collaboration with Swiss bread - the recipes and opinion are my own.
This post is also available in: deutsch