Graham Rolls, grahamsämpylät

Today I'm writing about some graham rolls that I made for dinner, day before yesterday.  This post should have been published yesterday, but mother nature got in the way.  We had 60 F temperature outside, and our two feet of snow on the ground began melting rapidly.  In this area, it is common for water to drain into a pit in the basement, where sump pumps eject it.  We have a sump pump and a second battery operated one in the same pit.  Small pieces of gravel got in both of them yesterday, clogging them, and in just a short while, the basement was covered in water.  I've spent most of the time since cleaning it up!

I really wanted to bake rye bread, the kind that has to sit overnight, but didn't have any rye flour in the cupboard, but while looking I found graham flour.  Graham flour is a wheat flour, where the germ and bran are coarsely ground separately from the rest.  It has a much different texture than regular whole wheat flour.  I based my recipe on one from a Finnish cooking site that I found here.

First, I heated 2 cups of water for one minute in the microwave.  You want to use warm water so that the dough rises better, but never use hot water in a yeast dough, it will kill the yeast and the bread won't rise at all.

Add 2 packets of yeast, or about 4 1/2 teaspoons of yeast to the water.  To this, add 2 1/2 cups of graham flour, 2 teaspoons of salt, and 7 tablespoons of melted butter.  I used a stand mixer with a dough hook to mix this well.

Next, add white flour until the dough pulls away from the sides, probably between 2 1/2 and 3 cups, depending on conditions in the kitchen.  Add the flour slowly so that you can stop when the dough forms into a ball.

Next, the dough has to rise.  Dough doesn't rise well in a metal bowl, metal conducts heat too well.  I moved the dough to a composite bowl, glass, plastic, or wood also work well.  The bowl was lightly greased first, and I sprinkled flour (maybe a bit much in this photo!) on top so the dough wouldn't stick to the towel covering it.  I put the dough in a warming drawer on "proof setting."  It also works well to put it by a heating vent (but not when you have dogs like ours!) or turn the oven on as low as possible for a few minutes, then turn it off and put the dough in to rise with the door shut.  The dough should double in size in about an hour.

After the dough rises, take it out and punch it down, then cut it in equal portions.  This time I made the dough into small rolls by cutting it in half, then cutting that piece in half again, and repeating this until I had 32 pieces.

To make a smooth top on each roll, I flattened each piece, then pinched the edges to the back, leaving the top very smooth.

This shows the bottom of the roll.  When I turned it over, the piece was very smooth.

I covered the rolls with a cloth and let them rise for about 20 more minutes.

Then I brushed them with milk and baked them at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes.  They were delicious with butter or as small sandwiches with ham, salami and tomato.  There is nothing better than fresh bread!

Jelly rolls for Valentine's day--Kääretortut

What better way to celebrate Valentine's day than with husband's favorite dessert, jelly rolls.  They are so easy and delicious, it was a perfect day to compare recipes and pull the best features from each.  

These are very popular in my husband's family, and so quick to make.  

While the ingredients in the recipes that I have from Finland and from the U.S. are very similar, the preparation is different, and this has a huge effect on the final product.  The Finnish cookbooks and internet recipes that I have seen beat whole eggs until they are creamy.  The Better Homes and Garden (BHG) recipe separates the yolks from the whites and beats each separately.  The texture and the ease of rolling up the cake are MUCH better with the BHG recipe!

Cooking yesterday was a bit of a disaster...I was pressed for time because of the kids' valentine parties and generally driving them around from the places they were to the places they needed to be next.  I decided to make two recipes, one from Parhaat Leivonnaiset, my all-time favorite Finnish baking book, and the other from Better Homes and Gardens.  I've made both of these before, but never on the same day.

In real life, I made the Finnish recipe first, but here I'll show you the BHG first, because it was really much better and easier to handle.  You can find the full, official recipe here.  Usually I take the metric recipe measurements and change them to cups, today I'll reverse that.

Cake #1

First, I separated 4 eggs, let them rest for 30 minutes, then beat them until soft peaks formed.  Then I added 1/3 cup (3/4 dl) of sugar and continued beating until stiff peaks formed.  The recipe said to beat the yolks first, but even the slightest bit of yolk gets into the whites, they won't beat as well.  I didn't want to do so much dish washing, so I reversed the order.  I moved the whites to another bowl, they looked like this:

Next, I beat the yolks with a half cup of sugar (about 1 1/4 dl) and a 1/4 teaspoon vanilla until they were creamy looking, then folded them into the egg whites (carefully).

I mixed 1/2 cup (about 1 1/4 dl) of flour with a teaspoon of baking powder in a separate bowl, then folded this carefully into the egg mixture, without stirring more than necessary.

I lined a jelly roll pan with parchment paper, then sprayed the paper with cooking spray (or you could grease it a bit with butter or oil).  The parchment paper really helps with baking jelly rolls, and I like to go the extra step of putting a bit of oil on the paper, it really helps the cake release easily.  Bake the cake at 375 F (about 200 C) for about 12 minutes until the cake springs back when touched.  

Next, I sprinkled the top of the cake with powdered sugar and laid a clean towel over it.  I rolled up the cake around the towel, and let it cool for a while.  If you want to fill the cake with whipped cream or ice cream, let it cool thoroughly.  I filled it with black currant jam, so it didn't have to be completely cool.

This is how the cake looked when I unrolled it.  I loosened the parchment paper carefully and completely, then spread black currant jam over the whole cake.  It was easy to roll back up because it had been cooled in a rolled shape.

Cake #2

For the second cake, I used the Finnish recipe, which called for beating 3 whole eggs with sugar until they were creamy.  The amount of sugar in this recipe is interesting, 2 deciliters, which works out to .85 of a cup.  Almost exactly 1/2 plus 1/3 cup, just like in the American recipe.  When the eggs and the sugar were beaten, they looked like this:

I mixed 2 deciliters of flour (1/2 plus 1/3 cup flour) with 2 teaspoons of baking powder (more flour and more baking powder than the BHG recipe) in a separate bowl and then folded them into the egg mixture.  At this point I was supposed to add 1/2 dl milk (about 1/4 cup), but I forgot and poured it out onto the parchment paper, prepared like for the first cake.

I baked it in the bottom of the oven, which was preheated to 500 F (250 Celsius).  This cake only needed about 5 minutes to bake.

This is how the cake looked as it came out...slightly dry and heavy, probably from the omitted milk!  I went ahead and rolled this cake like the BHG one, and filled it with seedless raspberry preserves.

There was nothing to do but to start over.  I followed all the steps again, this time adding the milk as I folded in the flour.  This is what the resulting cake looked like:

It required just a little more baking, but was still a little soft and was difficult to roll.  I filled this cake with strawberry preserves.

Here is a direct comparison of the two Finnish cakes, the one without the milk is on the left.  The one on the right with the milk was much fluffier.

One final photo shows all the cakes side-by-side. The middle one is the BHG recipe, and the left is the one that didn't get any milk.

I was really lucky to have so many willing taste-testers for this little science experiment!  We had not only family, but good friends and neighbors tasting.  The vote was unanimous, the BHG cake won, but everyone thought it should have the strawberry jam filling next time.

My first try making a jelly roll, about a decade and a half ago (!), was with the Finnish recipe, and I was unable to get it to turn out right.  I didn't have a stand mixer, and didn't get the eggs whipped enough.  Then I tried the BHG recipe and had no problem with it, even though I was not an experienced baker at that point. 

It would be great to hear thoughts from both my Finnish and American readers on this, which recipe do you prefer?

Thursday dinner--pea soup and oven pancakes! Hernekeitto

Last night we had pea soup for dinner.  The entire country in Finland eats pea soup for lunch on Thursdays, followed by oven pancake with strawberry jam for dessert.  My husband claims that the strawberry jam is the reward for enduring the pea soup!  Every cafeteria in the country serves the same meal.

I need to start this blog with a little family background, my husband hates soup.  Except American chili, which some people wouldn't even refer to as soup.  Especially pea soup.  The kids love soup of all kinds.  So I didn't tell my husband about the special surprise I was making for dinner...and I made sure to make his favorite kind of bread to eat with ham, in case he couldn't eat the soup at all.  You can find that recipe here.

Now a little recipe background.  Usually when I make pea soup, I wash the split peas, pour them in the slow cooker, add a ham bone and maybe some chopped onion, add about eight cups of water, and let it simmer on low heat all day.  The soup in Finland is usually made in about the same way (usually on the stovetop instead of in the slow cooker), sometimes with chunks of carrots or other root vegetables.  Easy and delicious.  But my husband hates it.

Today, I tried Beatrice Ojakangas' recipe (from The Finnish Cookbook), she calls it hernerakkaa.  I can't find any references to this soup in Finnish (using Google Finland), the only references I find to it are her own recipe and the Moosewood cookbook. It is possible that this is an American Finnish recipe.  I would love comments about this dish and its authenticity.  No matter whether it is authentic, this recipe was easy and delicious, and I will be making it again soon!

I started with a 16 oz bag of green split peas, this is about 2 cups.  I washed them to remove any hulls or dirt.

The recipe calls for soaking them overnight, I didn't think ahead, so these only got to soak for about three hours.  Then I boiled them in 12 cups of water for about an hour.  Pay closer attention to the boiling than I did--I ended up with water boiling over everywhere!  I added back about the volume of water that boiled out.  Next time, I might use my slow cooker for this part, and cook them on high for about 3-4 hours.

After the peas are soft, I put them in the blender in batches, and blended until they were smooth.  The recipe says that you can also use a wire strainer to push the peas through to make a smooth mixture.  Don't overfill the blender with the hot soup or it will leak out while processing.  I only filled it about half-way full and did three batches.  I carefully took the lid off for this photo, but make sure and use a lid!

Next, melt three tablespoons of butter in the pot.  (I didn't bother cleaning it, it didn't seem to matter).  Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour to make a smooth mixture.  Pour the peas back in, and cook over medium heat stirring constantly for about 10 minutes.

Next, the recipe says to add spicy mustard, salt and pepper to taste.  I didn't have spicy mustard, and the mustard available in the U.S. is not the same as Finnish spicy mustard, so I decided to substitute Colman's mustard powder.  It was really good, but next time, I think I will mix the mustard powder with the thickening flour and add it at that point.  The mustard powder clumped when added to the hot soup.  

I didn't measure the salt as I added it, but it took quite a bit.I also added quite a bit of fresh ground black pepper.

Just before serving, the recipe calls for adding 1 cup of whipped whipping cream.  I just couldn't do it, it just seemed like too much fat to me.  Instead, I added 1 cup skim milk to the soup, and put 1/2 cup whipping cream on top.  We stirred it up just before serving, the kids liked the way the whipped cream floated on top even after stirring.  Wouldn't it be fun to make flower patterns in the cream like they sometimes do on Lattes?!

The biggest surprise of the evening came when my husband tried the soup, he actually ate a second bowl!  He wondered where "all the little chunks" went, and wanted to know the recipe.  Everyone agreed that it was delicious.  And the fresh baked bread that we ate with it was excellent, too.

Don't forget the special dessert to go with the pea soup, the oven pancake recipe can be found here.  These ripe California strawberries were such a rare find in the middle of such a cold week!

The easiest bread ever! Unleavened Barley bread--Ohrarieska

I tried a new recipe for bread to go with dinner tonight, and it was fabulous!  My husband loves rieska, the unleavened flat bread popular in Scandinavia, but until now I have always used a different recipe that made a thick dough that had to be rolled out.  Lots of work, lots of cleanup.  This recipe from the Finnish Cookbook by Beatrice Ojakangas is wonderful, all you have to do is stir the batter in a bowl and pour it in a cake pan.  Less than five minutes of active work, and the flavor and texture were incredible.  I'll be making this again all the time.



First, mix together one cup milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon sugar and 1 cup barley flour.  When this is mixed smooth, it will be about the consistency of pancake batter. Stir in 1 tablespoon of melted butter.  I doubled all of the ingredients and made two loaves.

I prepared 9 inch cake pans by spraying them with cooking spray that contains flour, you can also butter and flour the pans.  Don't use regular cooking spray that doesn't contain flour, the loaves will stick!

I found barley flour at the local grocery.  Health food stores would probably have it, too.

It is also available on Amazon:

The recipe says to bake at 450 F for 35 minutes.  I was in a hurry and didn't realize that I had set the oven to 350 F instead!  I think 450 F may be too hot, they cooked beautifully in the bottom of the oven at 350 F.

I flipped them out on a plate to serve.  The recipe says to serve them hot, so I was very careful to time them so that they would come out at exactly the time everyone should arrive.  So of course my husband and oldest were half an hour late and we ate them cold!  But they were still so delicious.  The recipe recommends eating them with butter.  We ate them with ham, gouda cheese, tomato slices, and cucumber slices that had a little sweetened rice wine vinegar on them.

Enjoy!

The Butterscotch Cream cake--Kinuskikakku

Cakes in Finland are incredible.  None of the super-sweet icing made of questionable ingredients like in the U.S., Finnish bakers use real cream and fruit to decorate their delicious cakes.  My kids made this cake with a little help.  It has homemade butterscotch topping, crushed pineapple filling, and fresh whipped cream.

Finnish cakes start with a rather dry cake.  There is no fat in the cake base, except for the egg yolks.  The dry cake base is baked in one pan and then sliced horizontally to make layers.  Each layer is then moistened with fruit juice before a fruit or cream filling is added.  This creates a much different texture than in cakes from the U.S.  I've sometimes baked the layers in separate pans, but it really moistens best if the cake is baked as one piece and then cut.

The cake we made is a combination of several recipes from both cookbooks and the internet.  We started by mixing the dry cake base ingredients:  2/3 cup flour, 2/3 cup potato or corn starch, and 1 Tablespoon of baking powder.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (175 C) and prepare a large cake pan, either by buttering and flouring it, or we like to use Crisco spray with flour.  Don't use regular cooking spray, or the cake will stick.

Beat 3 eggs and 1 1/3 cups of sugar until they are light yellow and frothy, like this:

Next, fold in the dry ingredients:

Put the mixture into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes in the bottom half of the oven.

After the cake cools, cut it in half.  On the cut side of the top half of the cake, we put the juice drained off of a can of crushed pineapple.  On the bottom half, we drizzled about 1/3 cup of orange juice.

We put 1 cup of heavy cream in a saucepan, and added 1/3 cup packed brown sugar and 1/3 cup sugar.  Let this come to a boil over medium heat and cook to soft ball stage (about 235 F if you are using a thermometer, otherwise put a drop in a glass of water and see if it makes a ball).  Stir constantly!!

 We poured the butterscotch over the cake and let it harden a bit before the kids decorated it with fresh whipped cream (sweetened with just a bit of powdered sugar) and LOTS of fresh strawberries.

The whole family agreed that this was the best cake we had ever eaten!