Rhubarb-Strawberry Lattice Pie

...but didn't you say you didn't like rhubarb? you may ask. Yes, I did, and yes, I'm quite prepared to eat my words as well, for I have come around to this most enthusiastic of our homegrown goods (the gooseberries are just barely ripe, and the birds got most of the redcurrants). It's still going strong in the garden, although of course the stalks aren't quite as tender as in, say, June. Never mind, though, as this pie spends a whopping hour and a half in the oven - just the thing to go for in the middle of a heat wave! Whoops.

I can't believe I haven't blogged about it here, but the summer's foremost dessert has been a fabulous crumble with rhubarb and strawberries (I've adapted it somewhat - throw some oatmeal and nuts in the crumble, reduce the sugar in the fruit mix and use more rhubarb than strawberries) that for some reason just refuses to photograph. I hope I'll still have time for a last attempt, but we're fast running out of strawberry season, too, so it may have to wait until next year. Wonderful on its own, divine with vanilla custard or ice cream.

But back to this rhubarb dessert. With over a hundred reviews at epicurious (most of them debating the cooking time - I did reduce mine a bit because the lattice was starting to turn unattractive, but really I think the long stay in the oven gives this a rounded, jammy taste that I for one adored) I was fairly certain there couldn't be much wrong with it. I made my own crust because shortening is not something I'm familiar with, have access to, or am in favor of, and I don't know if things'd be different with the original, but I have to say I prefer pre-baked crusts. But that's really the only thing I'd change, and I'm usually known for my nitpicky habits!

Rhubarb-Strawberry Lattice Pie
adapted from Bon Appétit, April 1997

500 ml (2 cups) cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp sugar
¾ tsp salt
175 g (6 oz) butter
100 ml (7 tbsp) ice water

750 ml (3 cups) chopped rhubarb
1 l (4 cups) strawberries
100 ml (7 tbsp) soft brown sugar
100 ml (7 tbsp) sugar
50 ml (about 3 tbsp) potato flour
½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

lightly whipped egg for glaze

Cut the butter into small cubes and pop in the freezer for 15 minutes. Mix together the dry ingredients for the crust, cut in the butter (I do this by pulsing it in a food processor) and add enough of the water (start with about 75 ml/5 tbsp) to make the dough gather in small clumps. Tip out on a piece of clingfilm and press together to form a cohesive dough. Divide the dough in two, one piece slightly smaller than the other, form into flat disks and wrap in clingfilm. Refrigerate overnight (or at least an hour).

Hull and halve/quarter the strawberries and mix together fruits, sugars, cinnamon, salt & potato flour in a large bowl.

Roll out the larger piece of dough on a floured surface and transfer to a buttered, floured pie form. Pour in the filling. Roll out the smaller piece of dough and cut into strip. Arrange the strips in a slanted lattice pattern and press the ends against the bottom crust to seal. Brush the lattice top with eggwash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 200°C (400°F) for 20 minutes, reduce the heat to 175°C (350°F) and bake for another hour. Let cool completely before serving.

Recipe after the jump!

Goo Cake

kladdkaka

Look, I'm just translating the name literally here! Kladdkaka is, as I see it, the Swedish version of a brownie, but generally it's baked in a thinner layer, and also left deliciously sticky. Not a fancy dessert by any means, but very easy and popular. The only tricky part is getting it out of the oven at the right time - too long and it's just your average boring cake, too short and, well, it's still a batter. (That said, the batter is, um, extremely edible. Or so I hear.) You want the edges of the cake to be quite firm, but a large area in the middle should still be well wobbly, as it'll firm up as it cools.


This time I went with the zest of an orange for extra flavor, but like with brownies, there's really no end to how you can spice it up - nuts, liquor, flavorings like peppermint or coffee, you name it. (Another favorite of mine is a few tablespoons of cognac and about a cup of toasted nuts.)

Goo Cake

300 ml (1¼ cup) sugar
150 ml (5 fl oz) all-purpose flour
2 tsp vanilla sugar
½ tsp salt
75 ml (5 tbsp) cocoa powder
finely grated zest of one organic orange
150 g (generous 5 oz) butter or baking margarine, melted
2 eggs

Mix together the dry ingredients and orange rind. Stir in the butter and then the eggs one at a time, just until it's evenly mixed. Pour into a buttered, floured pan and bake at 175°C (350°F)for about 20-25 minutes. Let cool and serve with whipped cream or ice cream and maybe some fruit or berries (raspberries are especially good).

Recipe after the jump!

Women's Week Bilberry Pie

mustikkapiirakka / blåbärspaj

We're in the middle of Women's Week, (naistenviikko / fruntimmersveckan), which is what we call July 18th to 24th, when a lot of ladies with popular names celebrate their name day (including me, if only for my middle name). Scandinavians tend to acknowledge name days, usually with baked goods of some sort, and for my family (I share my middle name with my mom and grandmother) the tradition is to bake a bilberry pie from bilberries picked on our summer island - if there are any, which is the subject of much fretting during the preceding weeks.


Not this year though, as I got the first pie baked almost two weeks ago. This is, in fact, the third one I've had since - the summer's been both warm and rainy so far, so it's an excellent year for bilberries. I think English speakers could probably debate the pieness of this particular dish; it might be more of an, erm, double-sided... crisp? To be honest, the crumbles, cobblers, slumps and grunts kind of blur together for me. Anyway, the dough is incredibly simple, just the kind of thing to throw together in a poorly equipped cabin (although for gas ovens, heat it to 250°C and then turn down to 225), and while it might not be the neatest of desserts to eat, it's very very good. Especially with a bit of cream.


The recipe is my mother's, and I think she got it from her mother, although it's not My Grandmother's Bilberry Pie which uses a different kind of dough. (Actually, I think the original uses only flour, whereas I went for part rolled oats for more texture.) If you can't get hold of bilberries, blueberries would probably work, although they're a bit bland in comparison.

Bilberry Pie
75 g (2½ oz) cold butter
200 ml (7 fl oz) flour
100 ml (3½ fl oz) rolled oats
50 ml (generous 3 tbsp) soft brown sugar (fariinisokeri / farinsocker)

500 ml / 2 cups bilberries
1½ tbsp sugar
½ tbsp potato flour

Mix together the dry ingredients for the pie crust. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. With your fingertips, press half of this "dough" into the bottom of a 10-inch pan (don't bother with getting crust on the edges).

Mix together bilberries, sugar and potato flour and spread onto the pie. Crumble the rest of the flour mixture on top and bake at 225°C (~450°F) for about 25 minutes, until the topping goes light brown and the filling beneath it is bubbly. Let cool for a while, but it is extremely good when still a bit warm.

Recipe after the jump!

Rhubarb & White Chocolate Tart

Here comes a sad confession: I don't generally like rhubarb that much. It's not that it tastes bad to me or anything, but it feels like for a lot of people the start of rhubarb season is just as avidly awaited as the asparagus one. (My spring/summer list goes like so: asparagus, new potatoes, peas, raspberries. Yes, that means I don't really care about strawberries either. Or at least, I never want to make anything with strawberries. Eating them raw, that's fine.)

It's not really my style to blog in the vein of "well, I, hated it, but..." so you may already have surmised that this rhubarb pie, laced with whiskey and mellowed by white chocolate (who knew white chocolate could have a function?), was... very nice. Good, even. I suspect partly because it was made with home-grown rhubarb - incidentally, I wish my favorite plants worked on the principle of "pick some to make it grow more" - and partly that I have some sort of mental defect by which stuff automatically tastes better with a lattice crust, especially if I've made it myself. What? It's fun! (Although looking at the picture below for extended periods of time makes me kind of dizzy.)


The recipe comes from Bon Appétit, and since I didn't change a thing (although next time I'll probably halve the amount of chocolate), I'll just link you to it instead of transcribing. Do serve it warm like the recipe says - the leftovers were OK at room temperature, but the warm one was divine.

Recipe after the jump!

Breakfast Rolls

It's been a while since I posted about bread. It's not that I've stopped baking, but mostly I've been doing repeats of stuff that's already appeared here. This, then, is a roll recipe I found over on Anne's Food. I played around with it a bit, replacing 150 g of the plain flour with whole grain and increasing the size of the rolls themselves so I got 16 instead of 24, but really it's the same recipe. And like Anne said, I should think it's pretty much foolproof.

Recipe after the jump!

Reilusti epäonnistunut kakku & upea sitruunajäde (Failed Fair Trade Cake + Lemon Ice Cream)

Tästä chilisuklaakakusta piti tulla rahkalan ruokahaastepostaus, mutta innostuin muokkailemaan sikavarmaa reseptiä liian monella reilulla tuotteella ja kakun koostumus on niin mureneva ettei sitä oikein voi suositella. (Epäilisin syypääksi suklaata, koska se oli ainoa aines jota alkuperäiskakussa ei ollut.) Kakunloput odottelevat nyt keittiönpöydällä kuivumista, sillä muruille keksin jo muuta käyttöä. Pitää vain toivoa että ehdin siitäkin rustata postia ennen perjantai-iltaa... Itse maussa ei siis ole vikaa, ja alempana annan myös sen alkuperäisreseptin joka on pari-kolme kertaa onnistuneesti tullut tehtyä.

Sen sijaan kyytipojaksi väsätty sitruunajäätelö, joka on ennemmin luomu kuin reilu (vaikkei sitäkään ihan täysin), oli ihan tajuttoman onnistunut väkerrys, varsinkin sitruunoja joskus poikasena sellaisenaan mutustaneelle ruokailijalle...

In English: This cake was going to be my entry for this month's Finnish food challenge, the theme of which was fair trade products. However, it's kind of... crumbly. As in, very. I think the chocolate is to blame, because I've made this cake minus the chocolate more than once and always had great success - chili and chocolate is just one of those perfect combinations. But now I have cake crumbs drying out all over the kitchen counter, because I have a Fabulous Idea - I'm just not sure I'll have the tie to implement it before the deadline on Friday.

The lemon ice cream I winged to go with turned out fabulous though. You'll find the recipes for both after the cut - just leave off the chocolate to get the foolproof recipe.

Chilisuklaakakku
2 dl jogurttia
120 g voita, sulatettuna
(100 g tummaa reilun kaupan suklaata) - tämän jättäisin pois
2,5 dl (reilun kaupan) ruokosokeria - urtekramin sitä hienointa
2 dl jauhoja
6 rkl (reilun kaupan) kaakaojauhetta
2 tl chilijauhetta
1 tl kanelia
½ tl ruokasoodaa
1 (luomu)kananmuna
100 ml hasselpähkinöitä paahdettuina ja hienonnettuina

Sulata suklaa voisulassa jos ehdottomasti haluat toistaa omat mokani. Sekoita voisula ja jogurtti. Vatkaa kananmuna kevyesti ja sekoita jogurttiin.

Sekoita keskenaan kuivat ainekset: jauhot, sokeri, kaakaojauhe, kaneli, chili ja sooda. Sekoita jogurttiseoes varovasti jauhoihin; kääntele joukkoon hasselpähkinärouhe.

Kaada irtoreunaiseen kakkuvuokaan ja paista 175ssä asteessa noin 30 min.

Sitruunajäätelö

3 (luomu)kananmunankeltuaista
2 dl (luomu)vispikermaa
1 dl kevytmaitoa (voi korvata kermalla)
90 g sokeria
2 pienehköä luomusitruunaa

Raasta sitruunoista kuori ja sekoita kerman ja maidon kanssa kattilassa. Kuumenna melkein-kiehuvaksi, ota liedeltä, ja anna seistä parisenkymmentä minuuttia.

Vatkaa sokeri ja keltuaiset vaaleaksi vaahdoksi. Kaada kermaseos hitaasti munasokerin joukkoon (vatkaten!). Kaada seos takaisin kattilaan ja kuumenna keskilämmöllä, koko ajan sekoittaen, kunnes seos sakenee, kymmenisen minuuttia. (Itse teen tätä aika korkealla lämmöllä eikä ongelmia ole ollut, mutta kukin tehköön niin varovaisesti kuin viitsii.) Anna jäähtyä huonenlämpöiseksi ja pistä jääkaappiin vähintään tunniksi.

Purista sitruunoista mehu ja sekoita se jäätelöseokseen. Jäädytä jäätelökoneen ohjeiden mukaan.

Chili Chocolate Cake
200 ml yogurt
120 g butter, melted
(100 g dark fair trade chocolate) - I'd skip this
250 ml (fair trade) sugar
200 ml flour
6 tbsp (fair trade) cocoa powder
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp baking soda
1 (organic) egg
100 ml hazelnuts, toasted and finely chopped

Melt the chocolate in the melted butter if you must, but as I said, I suspect this to be the bad guy texture-wise. Mix butter and yogurt; lightly whip the egg and mix that in too.

Sift together the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, chili and baking soda. Fold the yogurt mixture into the dry ingredients and finally blend in the chopped hazelnuts.

Pour into a cake tin with removable sides and bake at 175°C for about half an hour. Cool before serving.

Lemon Ice Cream

3 (organic) egg yolks
200 ml (organic) whipping cream
100 ml milk (or cream)
90 g sugar
2 smallish organic lemons

Zest the lemons and mix with the cream and milk. Bring to an almost-boil and take off the stove. Let stand for about twenty minutes.

Whip the sugar and egg yolks white and fluffy. Slowly pour the cream into the whipped eggs (while whipping to prevent the scrambled egg thing). Return the mixture to the stove and heat on medium-high while stirring continuously until the custard thickens, about ten minutes. Let cool to room temperature and refrigerate for an hour.

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and mix into the custard, freeze according to the instructions of your ice cream maker.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

Apologies for the lack of updates lately - the Quark team has been feeling a bit under the weather, from writer to co-cook to computer. Not quite in a curl up and die way, more on the lines of putter around listlessly, emptying freezer of various casseroles instead of cooking; discover a wonderful new brand of caramel-flavored mints and rave about it for days. (Or, in the case of the computer, take fifty-three seconds to switch between one window and the next; develop love affair with hourglass cursor; make crunchy noises at random intervals.)

I do have a salad from last week to post about later if the pictures turned out even halfway decent, but meanwhile, here are some lemon poppyseed muffins I made last night. They're based on Elise's recipe, but since I only had super-thick Turkish yogurt I added some lemon juice to thin it out as well as decreasing the sugar and using partly white poppy seeds (for the prosaic reason that I ran out of regular ones). They were fabulous fifteen minutes after coming out of the oven, and pretty damn good for breakfast today.


This type of muffin is another one of my late-teen US discoveries. I remember the best ones being somehow crunchier than this; next time I think I'll add some rolled oats or something to change the texture a bit. And I could do with even less sugar for a breakfast treat - morning is the only time of day when I don't have a sweet tooth.

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
makes 12 largish muffins or about 15 regular ones

700 ml (3 cups) all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
3 tbsp poppy seeds (I used about half black, half white)
zest of one lemon

130 g (about 4½ oz) lightly salted butter, softened
200 ml (scant 7 fl oz) sugar
2 eggs
300 ml (10 fl oz) thick yogurt (or a bit more regular yogurt, drained)
50 ml (about 3 tbsp) lemon juice

200 ml (scant 7 fl oz) icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Mix together flour, baking powder, soda and poppy seeds in a large bowl.

In another bowl, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until well incorporated. Blend in the lemon zest.

In a third bowl (sorry! use a measuring cup or something), mix together lemon juice and yogurt.

Add the dry ingredients and yogurt to the egg-butter fluff in alternating batches, stirring until just barely dissolved. Spoon into a muffin tin and bake at 200°C (390°F) for 20-25 minutes.

Stir together icing sugar and lemon and brush over the still-warm muffins. Eat warm.

Recipe after the jump!

Hamburger Buns

We kicked off the grilling season last weekend with these extremely conventional hamburgers. In truth, it could have happened a lot earlier, weather-wise, but the barbecue, which had wintered on the balcony, had mysteriously acquired a layer of greeny-gray mold, and it took some girding of loins, etc, before it could be tackled. (Please tell us how to avoid this fate next year, as it will then be my turn to clean it!)

Anyway, the point of this isn't the grilled patties (since I'm not the designated griller in this household), or even the rest of the fillings. (Look, it was the first hamburger of the season. Nasty processed cheddar-like substance is totally required. I think there's a law somewhere.)


The point is, I love these hamburger buns. It's slightly embarrassing, because it's basically just... white bread. Very unhealthy white bread. That goes stale in, like, twelve hours. Still. They taste right, and not like the plastic-textured ones you buy ready made.

Hamburger Buns
based on Jorden runt på 80 degar by Annica Triberg

for 6-8 buns

25 g (scant 1 oz) butter
250 ml (&1 cup) milk
25 g (scant 1 oz) fresh yeast
½ tsp salt
½ tbsp sugar
600-700 ml (2½-3 cups) all-purpose flour

1 egg
sesame seeds

Melt the butter in a pan, add the mil and heat until lukewarm. Crumble in the yeast and stir until dissolved. Add salt, sugar, and most of the flour and knead until you have a smooth dough. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

Punch down the dough and roll it out to a thickness of about 1cm (scant ½inch). Cut out rounds about 10 cm in diameter and transfer to a cookie sheet. Cover and let rise about half an hour.

Whip the egg lightly and brush the buns with it. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake at 225°C (440°F) for about 10-12 minutes. Cool on racks.

Recipe after the jump!

Sweet Easter: Paskha, Kulich, Mämmi & Mignon

Pasha, kulitsa & mämmi / pasha, kulitsa & memma

Easter is one of the seasons when you really feel the Russian influence on Finnish food traditions: mämmi, a truly strange-looking (and tasting, it has to be said) malted rye pudding, is our own, but paskha and kulich are both of Russian Orthodox origin.


My aunt supposedly tried to make mämmi herself once (read more about making it at Axis of Ævil) and never repeated the experience, and quite frankly, I'm not that wild about it (nor do I have enough people to serve it to to make it worthwhile), but paskha, a creamy, eggy, buttery, Lent-busting quark concoction is easy to make as well as yummy, and so it gets made every year. I've used a fine sieve to drain it in previous years, but this year I am in charge of THE paskha and got to use my aunt's wooden mould, decorated with Orthodox crosses.

Almost every recipe available would have you contaminate this fabulously tangy-creamy dish with either raisins, candied lemon peel, crushed almonds or a combination of the above. I'm going to flout public opinion here and state that they are wrong. And not just because I hate raisins.


We usually have our paskha spread on top of slices of plaited sweet pulla bread, but this year I was inspired to try out the saffron-scented round kulich instead. I'm borrowing the form from Marianna* but deviating a bit from her great-grandmother's recipe in favor of a firmer, more conventional dough, mostly because I didn't have the time to do otherwise.


To cap this post off (I'm heading out to our cottage in just a few minutes and won't be back until Monday, so happy Easter!), here is a Mignon - the quintessential Finnish chocolate egg. It looks just like a regular egg, you may think, and that's because it is - Fazer has sold these nougat chocolate-filled egg shells since 1896.

Hyvää pääsiäistä / glad påsk!



*whose Nordic Recipe Archive I really can't recommend enough - her recipes aren't necessarily exactly like the ones I use, but they always seem right. Besides, she agrees with me on the evil of crunchy bits in paskha. So there.

Paskha
600 g quark (look for tvorog in East-European specialty shops or make your own)
150 g sugar (I used about 50 g from my vanilla bean repository and the rest normal caster sugar)
200 g butter, softened
3 egg yolks
200 ml thick cream

Drain the quark in cheesecloth or a coffee filter overnight. If you're using a wooden mould, soak it overnight.

Whip the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, still beating. Mix in the quark and, you guessed it, beat some more. You want everything to be smooth and airy.

In a separate bowl, whip the cream until it's thick and heavy. Fold it into the buttery quark mixture (no more beating!).

Line your mould (or strainer, sieve) with a single layer of dampened cheesecloth and spoon in the paskha batter. Fold the edges of the cheesecloth over the paskha, top with a plate or two for weight, and place in a bowl (to catch the drippings). Refrigerate for about 24 hours, then unmould and serve spread over slices of kulich or other sweet bread.

Kulich

25 g yeast
200 ml milk
pinch of saffron
1 egg
100 ml sugar
about 425 g all-purpose flour
100 g ground almonds
125 g softened butter
almonds for decoration
1 egg for eggwash

Heat the milk until it's lukewarm and dissolve the yeast and saffron in it. Mix in eggs and sugar, then ground almonds and finally about 375 g of the flour. Stir with a fork until everything is evenly mixed, then add the softened butter. Work in the rest of the flour, kneading until you have a soft, springy dough.

Let rise in a covered bowl for about half an hour, then shape into a flat disc about the size of your cake mould. Line the sides of said mould with buttered parchment paper that comes a fair bit over the edges of the mould (but not so high it won't fit in the oven *cough*), transfer dough to it. Cover with a towel and let rise for another half-hour.

Decorate with whole almonds, brush with the lightly whipped egg (er, I totally forgot), and bake at 200°C for about 30-35 minutes. Cool on a rack, then keep wrapped in foil, cutting slices to serve with paskha.

Recipe after the jump!

Bagels

I came to bagels comparatively late in life, in my late teens, the first time I visited the US. And then I went to the US several times in the span of a few years, but now it's been more than five years since the last trip and all that time I've been deprived of bagels. Because they aren't widely available here and I didn't crave them enough to go a-hunting.

Having been burned by my one and only bread book's naan and tortilla recipes, I sort of assumed the bagels would be similarly disappointing - that there are certain kinds of region-specific recipes that you just can't reproduce, even with a native's grandmother's super secret recipe.


And maybe it's just that my memory isn't quite what it was, but these are some fine bagels right here. They look right, except for the part where I can't bother to stretch the rings out far enough to make a proper hole in the finished product. (The hole is my least favorite part of the bagel anyway. It makes filling them a lot fussier than it need be.) I think the egg wash makes them too dark, but that's the only way the seeds and stuff will stay on when you eat it. But mostly, they just taste exactly right, chewy and slightly-sweet-but-not-really.

Bagels
from Jorden runt på 80 degar by Annica Triberg*

800-900 ml (3.3-3.8 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
15 g (½ oz) fresh yeast
250 ml (1 cup) water, lukewarm
2 + 1 tbsp light syrup
2 tbsp melted butter or vegetable oil
1 egg + 1 white
sesame or poppyseeds for decoration

Mix 800 ml of the flour and the salt in a large bowl.

Dissolve the yeast in the barely warm water, then mix in oil, the whole egg and 2 tbsp of the syrup. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and work together. Once it's all smoothly mixed, let the dough rest for five minutes, then knead (adding more flour as needed) for ten minutes.

Rinse and oil the bowl from earlier, put the dough in and turn it around once so all surfaces are greased, then cover with clingfilm and let rise for an hour and a half.

Tip out onto a work surface and knead a few times, then divide dough into 12 pieces (will make fairly small bagels). Form each piece into a round bun, then press your finger through the middle and stretch out a largeish hole in the middle (will shrink like crazy as the bagels rise, so if you want a proper hole, make it HUGE at this stage). Let rise on a slightly floured surface, covered with a kitchen towel, for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200°C/400°F and bring a large pan of water, with the remaining tbsp of syrup and a dash of salt mixed in, to the boil.

Boil the bagels, a few at a time for about a minute, turning them halfway through, then drain and brush with the egg white and sprinkle with topping of choice. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown. Cool on racks.

These are out of this world fresh from the oven, but I haven't quite figured out how to get them that way for breakfast. The best version so far is putting the boiled but un-garnished bagels in the fridge overnight (certainly this is better than refrigerating the pre-boiled ones, because those have tended to rise too much and then deflate), but the crust dries up and doesn't become as typically chewy and bagel-ish that way. Luckily, they're still very good the morning after, especially if you toast them first.

*highly recommended, despite the naan and tortilla mishaps. Of what I've made, the Estonian rye bread (which is just like Finnish rye bread), hamburger buns, and feta-garlic bread are firm favorites.

Recipe after the jump!

Leftover Tuesday #3: Carroty Karelian Pasties

(Porkkanakarjalanpiirakat/karelska piroger med morot)

Leftover Tuesdays is one of my favorite food blog events, mostly because I get to see other bloggers being way more inventive than I am. You see, normally I have no problem with leftovers staying just the way they are - I can quite happily eat chicken korma three nights in a row without doing anything to spiff it up. So making something new from an already-prepared dish is something of a challenge - it's not how I'm used to thinking about things.


And this time, strictly speaking I'm probably cheating. I made carrot casserole last week, deliberately leaving part of the carrot puree-rice mix to make Karelian pasties from later. Karelian pasties are very ubiquitous Finnish mini-tarts, I guess - you can get decent ones in any grocery store, anywhere. They're eaten for breakfast or as a snack, either plain or topped with sandwich-fillings or, as tradition dictates, eggy butter. The crust is basically rye flour and water, the filling rice porridge or pureed root veggies (potato being the most common), or a mixture of the two.


The pleated construction of these looks very fussy, I know, but I've never found it the least bit difficult (and I only made Karelian pasties for the first time last summer). The trick is to keep both the pasty dough and the filling fairly dry - I cook the hell out of my rice porridge for this, until it's mostly solid. I usually make a whole bunch of them all at once and freeze most of them raw, to be popped into the oven when needed, but that's not to say they make a convenient fast snack - once the pasties come out of the oven, they need to be brushed with milky butter and then kept in a cloth-covered bowl for a while to soften the crust.

Karelian Pasties

Rice filling
250 ml (1 cup) water
250 ml (1 cup)rice (the kind you'd use for rice pudding)
1000 ml (4 cups) milk
1 tsp salt

Bring the water to a boil, add the (rinsed) rice, let simmer until the water's absorbed. Add the milk, crank up the heat until it's back to simmering, then lower the heat to an absolute minimum and let simmer, mostly covered, until the milk's absorbed and you have a thick goopy porridge. Season with the salt and let cool.

Optionally, boil some root veg, puree it, and mix with the rice. Or use up leftover mashed potatoes. (Do people ever actually have leftover mashed potatoes? I find it to be one of those dishes where I could mash four pounds of potatoes for four people and still have an empty bowl at the end of the meal. Maybe we just like our mash...)

The filling-to-dough ratio seems to depend more on the phases of the moon, stars, and Finnish cross-country world cup placements than any actual grams and milliliters. Since the dough is just flour and water, I usually make another batch of it if I run out before all the filling's gone and then just throw away the leftovers.

Pasty dough
250 ml (1 cup) rye flour
100 ml (3 fl oz) water
1 tsp salt
butter and milk, a few tbsp each

Mix the flour, salt and water. It should become a pretty dry dough - the amount you'll need depends a lot on how coarse your flour is. I had some very fine rye flour (ruissihti/rågsikt) this time, but I actually prefer the normal coarseness, even though you can't roll it out as thinly. (In fact, I rolled mine so thin this time that the pleated edges kind of scorched before the filling had set. Don't do that. The pictures I'm linking to instead of showing here are from last summer; those pasties were perfect.) Either way, it shouldn't feel moist when you squeeze it between your fingers. Once you've worked it into a cohesive, dry dough, roll it out as a log and cut into twelve pieces.

Roll out the pieces, one by one, to thin ovals. (I'm told a pasta maker comes in handy, but haven't tried it myself.) You'll want to make sure the pasty doesn't stick to your work surface, or to the rolling pin, so make sure both of those are floured, and keep moving the dough around while you're rolling it. It's a bit annoying to have spent time rolling out the perfect crust only to realize it's stuck to the table. Not that I'd know about such things, obviously.

Once you have your thin oval pastry shell, fill it with a good dollop of filling, spread it out to about an inch (probably a bit less) of the edges, and fold up the edges in soft pleats like so. Personally I like filling mine one by one before rolling out the next piece, but you could stack the rolled-out shells under a towel or something so they don't dry out.

Anyway, once you have all your pasties filled and pleated, heat your oven to as hot as it will go and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the filling looks dry and has taken on some color.

Brush the shells with a mixture of milk and melted butter (about half-and-half) and stack the pasties in a bowl (with kitchen towels or something between layers) and cover with a tea towel. This is so the shells will soften.

Eat as is, or as an open-faced sandwich, or with egg butter, which is about equal amounts softened butter (or margarine, even reduced-fat) and chopped hard-boiled eggs with (optionally) some chives mixed in.

Recipe after the jump!

Inkiväärikuorrutetut porkkanamuffinit (Ginger-Frosted Carrot Cupcakes)

This is my entry for the Finnish food blog challenge for March, hence the bilingual post. There's a full recipe in English after the jump as usual.

Lakkarahka vaihtaa nyt hetkeksi kieltä tai ainakin tilapäisesti kaksikielistyy maaliskuun ruokahaasteen kunniaksi. Suolaisia porkkanaruokia kävi mielessä yksi jos toinenkin haastetta miettiessäni - porkkanalaatikkoa en ole itse koskaan tehnyt, ja porkkanaiset karjalanpiirakatkin houkuttelevat (lisäys: itse asiassa laatikko ja piirakat tulikin jo tehtyä) - mutta sitten iski niin armoton porkkanakakkuhimo ettei sitä oikein voinut vastustaa.


Kutsun näitä nyt muffineiksi kun ei sopivampaa sanaa tule mieleen, mutta oikeastihan nämä ovat päivänselvästi cupcake-ejä - kakkuja minikoossa ja vielä kuorrutettujakin. Periaatteessa taikinan voisi paistaa parissa pyöreässä kakkupohjassa ja tehdä kuorrutuksesta sitten oikein kerroskakku (ehkä appelsinimarmeladilla höystettynä?), mutta itse olen kovasti ihastunut näihin annoskokoisiin leivoksiin. Ne kun ovat järjestään niiiiiin söpöjä. Maunkin puolesta olen näihin aikalailla tykästynyt; ne ovat yllättävän kevyttä kamaa (sekä rakenteeltaan että rasvasisällöltään) ja juuri sopivan mausteisia.


And now for the English version:

When thinking about the food challenge, the topic of which was carrots, I touched upon several savory ideas like traditional carrot casserole, which I've never made, or Karelian pasties with carrot filling - and I'm fairly certain both of those will get made sooner or later (ETA: sooner, as it happens. Read about the casserole here and the pasties here.) - but then I was struck by a craving for carrot cake, and that was pretty much that.


I love these cupcakes - for one thing, they're amazingly light (in texture, and fairly light in terms of calories as well) with just the right degree of sweetness and spicyness. I think the batter would work just as well as a whole cake, but cupcakes are cuter, and also you feel less like a pig eating three cupcakes than devouring an eighth of a cake. Not that I'd know about such things, but anyway.



Inkiväärikuorrutetut porkkanamuffinit
24 keskikokoista muffinia
500 g porkkanaa
2,5 dl kookoshiutaleita
2,5 dl saksan- tai pekaanipähkinöitä rouhittuina
2 dl fariini- tai tummaa muscovadosokeria
5 dl vehnäjauhoja
2 tl kanelia
1 tl jauhettua inkivääriä
1 tl suolaa
¼ tl kutakin muskottia, neilikaa ja maustepippuria
2 tl ruokasoodaa
1 tl leivinjauhetta
3 kananmunaa
2,5 dl sokeria
1,5 dl ruokaöljyä
1 pieni (227g) purkki ananasmurskaa valutettuna

Pilko puolet porkkanoista hienoiksi kuutioiksi ja keitä pikkutilkassa vettä oikein pehmeiksi. Survo sauvasekoittimella muusiksi, anna jäähtyä. Raasta loput porkkanoista suht pieneksi silpuksi (ei sillä raastinraudan isoimmalla puolella).

Paahda ensin pähkinät ja sitten kookoshiutaleet kauniin kullanruskeiksi - varsinkin kookoksen kanssa saa olla tarkkana ettei se kärtsää. Anna jäähtyä.

Sekoita keskenään jauhot, pähkinä, kookos, mausteet, leivinjauhe ja ruokasooda sekä fariinisokeri. Vatkaa munat ja sokeri kuohkeiksi, sekoita joukkoon öljy, porkkanat ja ananasmurska. "Kääntele" märät ainekset kuiviin. Paista 200:ssa asteessa 15-20 min.

Kuorrutuksen kanssa minulla oli senverran ongelmia että annan vaan sinnepäin-ohjeen; ilmeisesti syntipukkina oli light-philadelphia josta ei meinannut saada järkevää laisinkaan. Mutta jotakuinkin näistä lähtökohdista aloitettiin:

300g Philadelphia-juustoa
4 rkl voita huoneenlämmössä
1 rkl rouhittua inkivääriä
tajuton määrä tomusokeria (yli 500g)

Sekoitetaan tomusokeria lisäten kunnes kulhossa on kuorrutkseen soveltuvaa, aika kiinteää mönjää. :P Käytännössä kannattaa vatkata voi pieneen Philadelphiamäärään, sitten lisätä loput juustosta ja inkivääri, ja lopuksi tomusokeria pari desiä kerralla. Jos *kröhöm* tomusokeri loppuu kesken ja menee hermo, voi sitä koittaa kiinteyttää yön yli jääkaapissa.

Koristele muffinit kuorrutuksella. Itse lisäsin vielä lopuksi reunoille paahdettua kookosta ja pähkinää, mutta suoraan sanottuna se nyt oli vaan turhaa fiineilyä. Itse asiassa nämä menettelevät ihan hyvin ilman kuorrutustakin, ja paljaina ne voikin hyvin pakastaa. (Sulatus ensin jääkaapissa ja sitten hetki uunissa, ainakaan omilla mikronkäyttökyvyilläni ei niistä syötäväksi kelpaavia saa.)

Ginger-Frosted Carrot Cupcakes
makes 24 medium-sized cupcakes
500 g (1 pound) carrots
250 ml (8½ fl oz) dried coconut
250 ml (8½ fl oz) walnuts or pecans, chopped
200 ml (6¾ fl oz) brown sugar
500 ml (17 fl oz) all-purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp dried ginger
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp each nutmeg, cloves and allspice
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
250 ml (8½ fl oz) caster sugar
150 ml (5 fl oz) vegetable oil
1 227 g (8 oz) can crushed pineapple, drained

Chop half of the carrots finelly and boil in a bit of water until very soft. Grate the rest of the carrots finely.

Toast the nuts and coconut flakes in a pan until golden and fragrant (I'm a wuss and did them separately, because I was afraid of burning the coconut); set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, mix flour, nuts, coconut, baking powder and baking soda, spices and the brown sugar. Whip caster sugar and eggs in another bowl until light and fluffy; add the vegetable oil, pineapple and carrots and mix well. Fold the wet ingredients into the dry and spoon the batter into muffin tins. Bake at 200°C (400°F) for 15-20 minutes, cool on racks.

I had huge problems with the frosting, so I don't really want to give out the recipe (is there something about light cream cheese that makes it extra-runny?). For the consistency I wanted I would have needed a metric tonne of icing sugar, but as it was, I kind of gave up just when it was starting to get borderline-sweet but still remained a bit runny. The fresh ginger gives it a terrific bite, but I don't want it to drown in the sweetness!

Anyway, the formula I went by was pretty much like so:
300 g (1/3 lb) cream cheese
4 tbsp softened butter
1 tbsp grated ginger
lots and lots and lots of icing sugar. More than 500g/1 lb.

Er, you mix them together. Duh. I decorated with some more toasted chopped nuts and coconut, mostly to hide the runniness of the icing.

Recipe after the jump!

Rolls with Crunchy Bits and Rosemary

I spotted these fabulous-looking rolls (buns? whatever) in the Swedish food blog Ett öppet fönster and knew I had to try them - I love throwing seeds and stuff in bread doughs, and the preparation method for this is somewhat unusual: you take the crunchy bits - flax- and sunflower seeds, coarse rye flour and wheat bran - and douse them in boiling water, let the thing stand for an hour, and then add the flour, yeast &c.

I didn't have all the stuff called for and didn't feel like further overcrowding my flour pantry, so I did some substitutions, and also had a few sprigs of rosemary threatening to wilt, so there are some differences between this and the original. I'm sure both are equally fabulous, though, and you can vary the seeds and brans according to what you have on hand (sesame pumpkin, anyone?).



Rolls with Crunchy Bits and Rosemary
adapted from Ett öppet fönster, makes 24 rolls

150 ml (5 fl oz) whole wheat flour
100 ml (scant ½ cup) oat bran
100 ml (scant ½ cup) linseed (also known as flaxseed)
100 ml (scant ½ cup) sunflower seeds
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp salt
400 ml (about 1¾ cup) boiling water

50 g (1¾ oz)fresh yeast
350 ml (1½ cup) lukewarm water
100 ml (scant ½ cup) honey
1 tbsp finely chopped rosemary
1300-1500 (5½-6 cups) ml bread flour

Mix the first seven ingredients in a very large bowl. Cover with clingfilm and let stand for an hour.

Dissolve the yeast in the water and add to the seed porridge (which is totally meant to look disgusting at this point) together with the honey, rosemary and most of the flour. Knead until you have a soft, springy dough (adding more flour as necessary), about ten minutes by hand.

Cover with a floured kitchen towel and let rise for three hours. (Note: this is a huge, gigantic dough. It makes a lot of buns. When I make it again, I'll probably halve the recipe. I mention this because I had to leave my dough to rise on the table - I didn't have a bowl large enough to hold it.)

Gently deflate the dough and knead it a few times. Cut into 24 pieces and form into rolls. Let rise on a baking sheet until doubled, 30-45 minutes, then bake at 200°C (400°F) for about 15 minutes.

I had mine with some cream cheese and garden cress - the first thing I've managed to grow from scratch since I got my Boss Cat five years ago. Whee!

Recipe after the jump!

Beer, Thyme & Cheese Spelt Bread

95% of you probably aren't aware, but Right Now, at This Very Moment (or at least until a very few moments ago, when I started writing this), the Nordic Ski World Championships are underway in Sapporo. What this has to do with a food blog? Well, it serves, at least partway (the other part being "yours truly is INSANE"), to explain how I got to getting a start on today's bread at 2.30 AM. You see, that's when they jumped the ski jumping part of the Nordic Combined. Ahem. (No, really. In some circles, this makes sense.)

I needed to use up a half-empty bag of spelt flour (to make room for more flours), but of course what really caught my eye was the cheese part. Who doesn't love cheese? The recipe called for gruyère, which I didn't have, so I made do with the somewhat milder cheddar.


Like a lot of my creations, this isn't, you know, perfect look-wise. I mean, the cheddar on top kind of looks like some sort of weird fossilized slugs or something, and also the jellyroll-type construction split in the oven, so you can see its cheesy, thyme-studded innards spilling out. But, mmm... cheesy innards! It was meant to go with a soup for lunch, but the first bread kind of disappeared while we were watching the ski jumping small hill competition. In fact, I'm not sure I have any room for lunch. But if I do, there's another bread for us to gobble up with it.



Beer, Thyme & Cheese Bread
from Glorian ruoka & viini

200 ml (6¾ fl oz) beer
100 ml (3.3 fl oz) water
20 g (¾ oz) fresh yeast
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
50 ml (1¾ fl oz, or 3 tbsp + 1 tsp) melted butter or canola oil
400 ml (13½ fl oz) wholemeal spelt flour
200-300 ml (7-10 fl oz) all-purpose flour
~200 ml (scant 1 cup) oat bran

filling
50 g (scant 2 oz) finely grated cheese (I used cheddarn)
3 tbsp chopped fresh thyme

topping
some more beer
30 g (1 oz) finely grated cheese

Dissolve the yeast in the water and beer. Blend in sugar, salt and melted butter. Work in the flours and oat bran a bit at a time and knead until you have a springy dough.

Let rise for about an hour at room temperature or for several hours in the fridge. Tip the dough onto a floured work surface and divide in two. Knead a few times to get rid of air bubbles.

Roll each dough-half to a rectangle of 35*20 cm (14x8 inches). Sprinkle with thyme and grated cheese. Roll up to a tight log and form the log into a pretzel-like knot.

Transfer the breads to a floured baking sheet and let rise, covered, for 30 minutes. Brush the breads with beer and sprinkle on some more cheese.

Heat the oven to 250°C (480°F) and mist with cold water just before putting in the breads. Lower heat to 225°C (440°F). Bake for 25 minutes, misting with more water a few times during baking.

Recipe after the jump!

Chorizo Muffins

I feel like I've been cannibalizing my favorite Finnish food mag, Glorian ruoka & viini, in this blog. The reason for this is that I've started to go through my hyoooge piles of cut-out recipes to transfer them to my computer where I can keep them organized, and, well, a lot of them are from Gloria, as the recipes tend to be inventive but not too fussy.

Such as this Chorizo Muffin.

Yes, muffin. By the time I got around to taking pictures, there was just one left, which was a bit of a pity, as one really expects muffins to come in quantities larger than one. A seasoned reader may also notice I had some other problems while photographing this, too:


(Anyone know how to edit out cat tails from food porn? How about cat heads? This wasn't intended to be a weekend cat blogging post!)


My favorite muffin is actually lemon poppyseed, but I haven't had one in years. Although now that I've started thinking about it this will probably need to be rectified like tomorrow. (Or maybe tonight. Lemon is good for a sore throat, right?) I'll probably find a fabulous new recipe from the roundup for the first-ever Muffin Monday, hosted by Elena.

Chorizo Muffins
adapted from Glorian ruoka & viini

makes 12 (can be halved, if you feel like halving an egg, which I did):
200 g chorizo, finely diced
3 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp garam masala
½: tsp ground paprika
3 eggs
200 ml yogurt (the recipe calls for a cultured milk product called kermaviili - kesella in Sweden, but I don't think it exists in the US. I think you could use lowfat sour cream.)
50 ml olive oil
300 ml cornmeal
150 ml bread flour
2½ tsp baking powder
pumpkin seeds for decoration

If your chorizo is of the raw kind, saute it in a bit of oil. Season with parsley, garam masala, salt and paprika.

Whip the eggs, [cultured milk produce of choice] and olive oil in a mixing bowl. Mix flours and baking powder and sift into the egg mixture, fold to combine. Fold in the chorizo.

Spoon into muffin tins and sprinkle with pumpkin seeds. Bake at 200° C for 15 minutes. Serve warm.

Recipe after the jump!

In Defense of Kneaded Bread

So here's a radical opinion: the no-knead bread that's seemingly swept the culinary world by storm this fall/winter is not actually a great favorite of mine. Partly it's an unfair prejudice (my first try left me with a stupidly ruined cast-iron pan) and partly I'm just a big old philistine who doesn't really care about crispy crusts and the open crumb The Ones In The Know seem to value over everything else. I like small-crumbed sandwich bread. I like it with lots of crunchy bits. I like it straight out of the oven, with (gasp) reduced-fat margarine, and I like it toasted the same way. I like it even when it's not the least bit airy. Hell, I like the dense Finnish rye breads, where heavy is the whole point.

I'm not saying the no-knead isn't pretty good - it's perfectly acceptable as artisan breads go. And it's certainly very pretty. Mostly, I just didn't find it any less fussy than regular kneaded bread. Besides, kneading is a lot of fun.

Possibly this is just a quirk of chance or whatever, but I've never made bread that didn't, when coming out of the oven, fill me with happiness. Bread that didn't look very nice, yes. Bread that didn't rise as much as it should, sure. Bread that spread more than it rose, most definitely. But they were still good.


Just like this Honey-Butter French Bread from epicurious that I stumbled upon this week. It's not exactly perfect - I kind of hate how the crust looks - but still making-you-overeat yummy. Normally I like working with fresh yeast (I love love love the texture and the smell and everything about it), but I didn't have the energy to think about conversions, never mind walking over to the shops (the freezing -19°C weather didn't help) to get some. Hence the slavish following of a recipe that had a lot of rave reviews. (Does anyone else have problems cooking from books these days? I tend to go all "but how will I know if it's any goooood?" a lot.)


This is a very very white bread - not something I'd go for usually, even if it IS good. But I had some leftover soup and the recipe called for it to be served with white bread, and I have something in the works for Sunday lunch that requires white bread, and mostly I just wanted to bake something to heat the apartment a bit (SO COLD). And for all of those things, this was a very good choice. (Now if only I hadn't devoured half a loaf in one sitting. Ugh.)

Recipe after the jump!

Pea Soup Day (with Shrove Buns)

People in warmer climes have their carnivals, but in Finland the onset of Lent is celebrated with tobogganing followed by slow-cooked pea soup and Shrove buns (laskiaispulla/fastlagsbulle in Finland, semla in Sweden).

Pea soup landed here during the 12th-century Crusades when the Swedish crusaders would fortify themselves for the Friday fast by filling up on this hearty dish on Thursday, which is how pea soup became a traditional Thursday meal in both Finland and Sweden (later on followed by a dessert of oven-baked pancake). Naturally this was the first soup I thought of when reading about A Veggie Venture's Soup challenge.


The best pea soups are cooked in giant 100+-portion batches, and so my version is far, far larger than what I expected six lunchers to eat, especially knowing what was for dessert. (With two pounds of dried peas I really expected to have a week's worth of leftovers, but a lot of seconds were had. So, maybe three days' worth, then.) The soup is fairly predictable and gets its deep flavor from being cooked with a bit of smoked pork shank, but the buns...


I've already talked about our sweet buns at some length. Shrovetide buns are plain "pulla" buns with a filling of ground almonds and whipped cream (there is some controversy between righteous almond-proponents and blasphemers who prefer to corrupt the creamy Shrovetide experience with jam, which I won't go into beyond saying that I AM RIGHT). You can eat them as is, but the REAL way to go is to serve them on a deep plate with steaming hot milk. The bun soaks up amazing amounts of milk and becomes a warm, mushy mess, the whipped cream retains a bit of cool distinction before melting in your mouth, and the almond filling is the crowning glory, tangy and creamy and intensely almond-y.



Pea Soup



1 kg (2 pounds) dried green peas (in Sweden they use yellow peas, so I'm sure you'd be OK with either)
5 l (1¼ gallons) water
1 kg (2 pounds) smoked pork shank (ask your butcher to cut it in two)
2 large onions
2 tsp dried marjoram
black pepper
hot mustard to taste
salt (depending on how salty your meat was)

Rinse the peas and soak them overnight in plenty of water. Transfer (with the soaking water) to a large pot and bring to a boil. Peel the onions and cut them into chunks. Add the rest of the water and the pork, onions and marjoram and let simmer on a low heat for about two to three hours, until the peas go all mushy and start clouding and thickening the water.

Either I screwed up with the water or the recipe calls for way too much of it - this is supposed to be very thick and goopy. I wound up having to separate solids from the liquid for a while and reduce the latter by a good half or so, which was a bit of a pain. Next time I'll be conservative with the water and just add more as the peas soak it up.


Remove the pork shank from the pot and scrape the meat from the bone. Shred the meat into small pieces and place back in the pot. Season with hot mustard and pepper (and salt, if needed) to taste.


This is at its best made the day before and slowly reheated. It's served piping hot, with everyone adding more hot mustard and, in our family, garnishing with a dollop of smetana (sour cream).

Shrove Buns

makes 12 smallish buns, recipe from HBL 28/2/2006


for the buns:
50 g (1¾ oz) fresh yeast
200 ml (6¾ fl oz) milk
100 g (3½ oz) butter
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 egg
450 g (1 pound) flour

+ 1 egg, lightly whipped

for the filling:
about 4-5 tbsp half-and-half
1-2 tbsp melted butter
grated peel from ½ a lemon
250 g (9 oz) almond paste
1-2 drops bitter almond

whipped cream

to serve:
plenty of hot milk

To make the buns: in a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in a few tbsp of milk. Melt the butter and pour in the rest of the milk. When the milk-butter mixture is lukewarm, add it to the yeast along with the cardamom, sugar, and egg. Mix in half the flour and work to a smooth, goopy dough. Let rest for a minute or two, then work in the rest of the flour in batches, kneading (or working with the dough hook in a mixer) until you have a shiny, springy dough. (You probably won't need all the flour - this is supposed to be a fairly loose dough.) Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise until doubled, about 40-60 minutes.


Gently press down the dough, kneading a few times, and cut into twelve pieces. Form each piece into a smooth, round bun (this is the part that gives me hives) and let rise for another 20 minutes or so on a baking sheet. Brush with lightly whipped egg and bake at 225°C for about 15 minutes. Cool on racks.


Once the buns are cooled, cut off about a third of the top and scrape off a bit of the bottom part. Take the scraped-out filling and mix it with the almond paste (easier if you've shredded it), lemon peel, bitter almond and enough butter and cream to form a soft paste.


Fill the bottom parts with almond mixture and pipe some whipped cream around the edges of the bun. Top with the caps you cut off earlier and dust with icing sugar.


Can be eaten as such or in a deep bowl with almost-boiling milk poured on top.

Recipe after the jump!