Rhubarb tart -- raparperi-torttu

This year I decided that the rhubarb plant that I put in the ground (bare root) about 5 years ago was big enough to pick a few stems.  I found this recipe in a new cookbook that I bought a couple of weeks ago, Nordic Bakery Cookbook by Miisa Mink.  It is a cookbook from a bakery in London and the author is Finnish.  Gorgeous photos in the book!

Here is a photo of my little rhubarb plant.  I wish I had put more in the ground back when I planted this!
I barely got enough rhubarb to make the tart.

Remember that when you are cooking with rhubarb, only the stems are edible, the leaves are actually poisonous.

Here are the ingredients I used for the tart base, which is almost like a cross between a cookie and a pie crust.

1 1/3 cup flour (3 dl)
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 1/2 tablespoons softened butter
1/2 cup sugar (1 dl)
1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C).

First, mix the flour and baking powder together.  Then I used my fingers to mix the softened butter into the flour until it made pea-sized lumps.  You could also use a pastry blender, but I like to use very clean hands.  Mix this very well, working the butter into the flour.  When the butter melts as you bake it, this leaves the crust light and flaky.  This is the same method used to make American biscuits.

In the next photo, you can see the texture of the pea-sized lumps.  Next, I mixed in the egg yolk and sugar.  It made a very crumbly dough.

I pressed the dough into a tart pan with a removable bottom.  If you don't have one of these, you could just put it in a pie pan and press the dough partially up the sides.

For the filling, mix10 oz (280 grams) rhubarb (I doubt I had that much!) with 2 tablespoons brown sugar.  Spread this in the tart pan.

Next, for the topping, combine 3 tablespoons softened butter with 1/3 cup sugar (3/4 dl) and 1/2 cup rolled oats (1 dl).  Sprinkle this evenly over the top.

Bake at 400 F (200 C) for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

This was a wonderful dessert, the tartness of the rhubarb is a perfect with the sweetness of the brown sugar.  The only one in the family who didn't enjoy it was my 7 year old son--he just couldn't get past the fact that there were green bits in his dessert!

Next time I make this, I may give my poor little rhubarb plant a break and try substituting wild blueberries, raspberries, or even granny smith apples.  It would be delicious with any kind of tart fruit.  My daughter even suggested that it would also be terrific with no fruit at all.

It would be even better with a little whipped cream on top!

Funnel cakes for May day--Tippaleipä

The first of May, or vappu as it is called in Finnish, is a huge celebration.  The entire country celebrates with street festivals.  The most traditional food for this celebration is funnel cakes, and these are enjoyed with sima, a lemon-flavored mead.  I'm making these a few days early as a surprise for the kids when they come home from school--that way I'll have the photos to post this so you can make them for May 1, too!

I based my recipe on the one in the Finnish Cookbook by Beatrice Ojakangas.  I doubled the recipe because yeast batter keeps well in the refrigerator and you can always make waffles out of the extra for breakfast tomorrow!  For the funnel cakes, you need:

4 eggs
2 cups of warm milk
1 tablespoon sugar
1 package dry yeast (2.25 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups flour

Oil for frying

First, warm the milk but don't get it too hot or it will kill the yeast.  Break the eggs in a very large bowl and stir them to break the yolks.  Stir in the warm milk, sugar and yeast.  Add the salt and about half of the flour.  Stir this well--I didn't bother using the stand mixer for this because the batter is much easier to mix than a bread dough.  Then I stirred in the rest of the flour, and continued to stir until it was fully combined.  Next, the recipe said to let it stand in a warm place for about an hour.  Since I have several hours before the kids come home, I just left it on the counter so it would rise more slowly.  After it doubled, I put it in the refrigerator to wait for the school bus to come.  Watch the dough carefully, if it rises too much, you may need to stir it to knock it back down.  Look at how much the batter rose before the kids started coming home!

Instead of using a funnel, I used a gallon-sized plastic baggie, and put some batter in it.  I snipped the corner (be careful--the hole doesn't have to be very big!) and used that to squeeze the batter into the hot oil.

To fry the batter, heat oil in a heavy skillet until it sizzles when a small drop of water is dripped in it.  I used canola oil in an old cast iron skillet.  Never leave oil unattended while you are frying!

Squeeze in the dough, it will brown almost instantly.  Flip it with a fork, and let the other side brown also.

When both sides are brown, use the fork to take out the pastry and set it on a plate covered with a few layers of paper towels to drain.  I always use plain white paper towels for this.  Sprinkle on some powdered sugar and eat immediately!  I wish the Sima was finished to drink with these...

Other ideas for Blini dough--overnight waffles and sweet pancake toppings

We had an extra batch of blini dough from this recipe, so we decided to put jam on some of them, along with a small dollop of sour cream.  They were delicious as a small, sweet pancake.

I decided that the blinni batter was a lot like a recipe that I have for overnight waffles, so I put the extra dough in the refrigerator, tightly covered, for the night.  Note that you can only do this with a yeast batter.  If the batter contained baking powder it would be flat the next day.

The next morning it was nice and bubbly, and the kids were delighted to have fresh waffles for breakfast on a school day!  Here is what the batter looked like after a night in the refrigerator:

I preheated the waffle iron and spread batter thinly and evenly in it before closing the lid.  It was so easy.  I think next time we make blinis, I might make extra batter again just for breakfast!

The Hedgehog Birthday Cake (siili kakku)

This is my youngest's birthday cake, he loves hedgehogs of all types, in the past we have made hedgehog cakes, cupcakes, piñatas, jack-o-lanterns, and even a pinewood derby car.  I had planned to make a cake decorated with strawberries and cream, but he was home sick today and I didn't get a chance to go shopping for fresh fruit.

For the cake base, I used a Finnish recipe from Parhaat Leivonaiset.  The ingredients were:

5 eggs

1 cup sugar (2 1/2 dl)

2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or vanilla

1/2 cup flour (1.25 dl)

1/2 cup potato or corn starch (1.25 dl)

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Preheat the oven to 300 F (150 C).

First, I whipped the eggs and sugar until frothy with my stand mixer, they looked like this:

In another bowl, I mixed the dry ingredients.  I bought vanilla sugar this weekend at Ikea, so I mixed it with the dry ingredients.  If you use liquid vanilla, mix it with the eggs.

Carefully fold the dry mixture into the egg mixture.

To make a hedgehog shape, I greased and floured a large oven-safe Pyrex mixing bowl and filled it with the batter.

I baked the cake on the bottom rack of the oven for about 50 minutes.

The recipe I used baked the cake in two cake pans, at 350 F (175 C) for 30 minutes.  I lowered the temperature and lengthened the time so that I could get the cake done in the middle.  We've had a lot of practice baking in this bowl to make Barbie cakes for my daughter!

The middle sank in a bit right at the end of baking, but not enough to hurt.    

To get the cake out, I ran a knife around the edge and inverted it on a rack. 

After it cooled a bit, I sliced it in two layers in order to put in a bit of strawberry jelly (hedgehog blood?).  I drizzled the juice from a can of pineapple on both halves first to moisten the cake.

It was easy to push the bottom layer into a hedgehog head shape as I put the cake back together.

Melted chocolate was a good hedgehog-looking coating for the cake.

We had a huge bag of thin pretzels, it didn't take long to put in the spikes while the chocolate was still warm.  The plate got a bit messy from the melted chocolate, so I added a border of marzipan candy fruit.  The eyes are sugar babies (caramel candy) and the nose is half of a Dajm toffee candy.  

Next time I need to coat a cake with chocolate, I think I will try to keep the cake on a rack and let the extra chocolate drip off before putting it on the serving platter.  But wouldn't all this fruit make a great snack for Hedgie?

Cinnamon buns--Kaneli pulla (korvapuustit)

Yesterday I made Finnish cinnamon buns, they are very good with coffee.  They are not as sweet and gooey as their American counterparts, and they have a light cardamon flavor.

These are the ingredients to make 40 buns:

2 packets yeast (4 1/2 teaspoons if you buy in bulk like I do!)
150 grams butter (10 1/2 Tablespoons)
5 dl milk (2 cups)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cardamon
1 egg
about 1 1/2 liter flour  (about 6 cups)

for the filling:
75 g butter (1/2 cup)
1 dl sugar (1/2 cup)
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Topping:
1/2 of a beaten egg to brush on before baking
pearl sugar


First, I melted the butter and put it into my stand mixer bowl.  Then I heated the milk in the microwave until it was lukewarm.  Then I sprinkled the yeast on top.  The salt, sugar, cardamon and egg were also mixed in well.

Next, the flour was added a little at a time.  This is what the dough looked like after I had added 3 cups of flour, mixing after each addition:

After 4 cups of flour and scraped down the edge of the bowl with a spatula, it looked like this:

At 5 cups, it looked like this:

The dough pulled away from the sides at 5 1/2 cups, I let it knead in the machine a little longer, but didn't add any more flour.  The dough has an incredible feeling, it is warm and soft, don't add too much flour or it will get too stiff and won't rise as well.

I moved the dough to a lightly greased, non-metal bowl to rise.  Never leave the dough to rise in a metal bowl, it just doesn't work as well.  A sprinkle of flour on top, and I covered it and put it in a warm place.  I used my warming drawer on the proof setting, but it also works well to turn the oven on as low as possible, let it heat up, then turn it off and put the bowl of dough in.  Or find a heating register in a place where it won't be disturbed.  At our house, it would be difficult to find somewhere it would be safe!

It was supposed to rise for about 40 minutes, but we were busy rewiring the internet cable in our house, and it rose a little longer!  Look how big it got:

I punched it down, it was still warm and soft, very relaxing to work with.

After dumping the rest of the flour (1/2 cup) onto the clean counter, I cut the dough in half and rolled each half out into a large rectangle, about 14x28 inches (or 20x40 cm).

To make the filling, I melted the butter and added the sugar and cinnamon.  If the butter had been well-softened, I wouldn't have melted it, but I forgot to lay it out earlier.  It doesn't seem to matter much if you melt the butter, but if it is too hard, the filling won't spread well.

After spreading the filling on the rectangles, I rolled them up along the long side (making a long, thin roll).

There are different options cutting them, the first I did was what is called korvapuustit in Finnish.  Cut the rolled dough on an angle, making every other angle the opposite direction:

Half of the buns will be right-side up, and the other half will need to be turned over so that the narrow edge is at the top.  Take a knife and smash in the top like this:

Each bun should look like this:

Another shape can be made by cutting the dough straight, then cutting two slits in the dough which don't go all the way through.

Open the attached pieces slightly, and lay them on their side, and you get kind of a bear claw shape like this:

You can also just cut the dough straight and lay the pieces on their sides.  I used a very sharp serrated steak knife to cut, it worked well.

Move all of the buns to a cookie sheet that has been prepared with parchment (or you could grease it).  Cover them again and let them rise about 20-30 minutes until they double in size.  This dough rises so well, I'm not sure that it took even 20 minutes!

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit (250 Cesius).

Brush the buns with beaten egg and sprinkle with pearl sugar.  Bake for about 8-10 minutes, watch them carefully!  Theoretically, they should cool under a clean dishcloth.  I don't think my family has ever let these get completely cool, they are incredible straight from the oven!

But if you are able to make a few extra, these keep for about 3-4 days.  Or make extra and freeze them to have on hand when guests come for coffee, as is very popular in Finland.  My kids have already learned that "coffee" in Finland means that there will be plenty of good treats to eat!

Finnish Cardamon Ribbon Cookies--Kardemummaviipaleet

These are probably the world's simplest cookies, great when you have kids that need a quick snack.  The recipe comes from Parhaat Leivonnaiset.  If you don't care for cardamom, vanilla could very easily be substituted.

The ingredients are:

175 g softened butter (12 Tablespoons)
2 1/2 dl sugar (1 cup)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons cardamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 dl all-purpose flour (2 1/2 cups)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit).

Beat the butter, sugar and 1 1/2 of the eggs (save a little beaten egg to brush on the top before baking).  Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Then add the dry ingredients and mix well.  The dough was rather dry when I made it.

Make the dough into 6 finger-width ropes.  Place these on a greased cookie sheet, or use parchment like I did instead of greasing.  Flatten the ropes with your fingers.

Brush with the reserved egg, and sprinkle pearl sugar on top.  These are also fun if you use sprinkles or colored sugar for holidays.  Before Christmas, I made them with chocolate dough and sprinkled with broken peppermint candies, you can find that post here.

Bake for about 10 minutes, mine would have been better if I hadn't let them bake quite so long!  As soon as you take them out, cut them at an angle to separate the cookies.

Oven Pancake with barley flour--Ohra Pannukakku

This morning, I tried a different oven pancake recipe for the first time.  I found it on a Finnish flour company website, Myllyn Paras.  This recipe uses barley flour in the batter.

I followed the recipe as I found it:

1 liter milk (4 cups)
4 eggs
3 dl all-purpose flour (1 1/4 cups)
2 dl barley flour (2/3 + 1/4 cup)
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cardamon
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit).

First, I beat the eggs and then added the milk.  Then I beat in both types of flour.  I was a little concerned at this point that it might not be enough eggs for this volume of milk.  I continued with the recipe, but I wonder if the flour company had a typo in their recipe.

Next I added the sugar, cardamon and salt.  Cardamon is commonly used in baked goods in Finland.  You can buy the whole pods, remove the green husks, and grind the seeds with a mortar and pestle.  This is really a lot of work, but gives the best flavor.  Cardamon is also available ground in a jar, this is generally not as strong and you should use about 25 percent more than with fresh ground.

The recipe also calls for vanilla sugar.  I don't have any in the pantry right now,  I substituted 1 teaspoon extract.  Vanilla sugar is a little hard to find, but is available on Amazon, at Ikea, and at some specialty grocery stores.

Prepare a jelly roll pan by lining it with parchment and buttering the parchment.  The parchment I used was slightly small for the pan.  Next time I will be much more careful that the paper covers the entire pan--this batter really sticks!

The pancake baked for about twenty minutes at 400 F.

We ate the pancake with strawberry jam and some wonderful frozen peaches and blueberries from last summer.  We enjoyed the pancake, but it really needed extra eggs.  We like barley flour in general, and I would like to try this again following the instructions that I previously posted here but substituting 1/2 cup barley flour for 1/4 cup of the all-purpose flour.  That would change the list of ingredients to this:

3 cups milk
9 eggs
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup barley flour
1 tsp salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
and I would put in either 1 teaspoon cardamon or one teaspoon of vanilla, but not both.

I'll keep you updated when I try the pancake again with my own list of ingredients.