Tunnel of Fudge

« The cake. The icon. The Tunnel of Fudge. »

Nordic Ware is celebrating their 60th anniversary this year. Nordic Ware is perhaps best known for the tube pan called a Bundt® pan. Forty years ago, Ella Rita Helfrich submitted a recipe to the Pillsbury Bake Off Contest that used a Bundt® and mysteriously formed a soft fudge core inside a chocolate cake. The cake won and launched not only the Bundt® pan into the mainstream, but helped to create an icon of hospitality for the next decade. I can't think of a single party or social event in the 70s that didn't include a Bundt® cake of some sort or another. Cake mixes were all the rage and with the Bundt® pan, anyone could turn out a pretty cake in an hour with little effort.

I suppose that the advent of gourmet food, a.k.a. Nouvelle Cuisine, in the 80s caused the cakes fall from grace as America discovered pine nuts and blackened anything. Even now, with all the prancing TV celebrity chefs who seem to appeal mostly to those who don't cook, the cakes are seen as too simple, too pedestrian, too 70s that even a chocolate wine port sauce couldn't sex up enough. Food snobs killed the Bundt® cake. It was an unjust execution.

Food fads come and go, but classics like the Bundt® pan are always around for those who tire of silly trends and return to the tried and true. For the 60th anniversary, Nordic Ware has created a special anniversary edition of the Bundt® that is a little bit larger than the ones presently made and, best of all, it also features a set of handles, that were inexplicably removed years ago. It's a pity that H. David Dalquist, the man who, with his wife, created the Nordic Ware company and the famous pan, died early last year and will miss the celebration. The Washington Post featured an article, Let Them Eat Cake, that is a wistful epitaph of the creator of the cake pan that no kitchen should be without. I know it's just a cake pan, but no other tube pan is quite the same as the classic Bundt®. It's an icon. It's a cake. It's a memory of a time when the cake was the safest option on a buffet table filled with cheese balls and jell-o.

To celebrate, I thought I'd make the infamous "Tunnel of Fudge" cake that was so incredibly popular when the cake mix for it was introduced. I originally tried it in my Nordic Ware 'cathedral' Bundt® pan a month or two ago, but my impatience turned the cake into a chocolate volcano spewing molten goo as Jarkko and I tried to stent the flow surging forth from the fractured cake. I tried it again in a regular tube pan with a bit more patience with much more success. Impatience is not a virtue.

The tunnel of fudgy goo in the center of the cake is a wonder of baking chemistry as a large part of the butter, sugar and cocoa are driven inwards by the heat of the pan. It's a very dense, slightly dry around the edges, and very chocolaty cake that is best enjoyed with a large glass of milk. Happy 60th birthday Nordic Ware! Forty-five million Bundt® pans are out there, lurking in the dark reaches of kitchens around the world, waiting for their owners to remember the joys of simple, lovely Bundt® cakes.

Tunnel of Fudge Cake

Serves: 16
Prep Time: 35 min (Ready in 4 hr 30 min )
Source: Pillsbury

Cake:

• 1 3/4 cups or 4.2dl sugar
• 3,5 sticks or 400g margarine or butter, softened
• 6 eggs
• 2 cups or 4.75dl powdered sugar
• 2 1/4 cups or 5.5dl all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup or 1.75dl unsweetened cocoa
• 2 cups or 4.75dl chopped walnuts (NOT optional)

Glaze:

• 3/4 cup or 1.75dl powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup or 3/4dl unsweetened cocoa
• 4 to 6 teaspoons milk

1. Heat oven to 350F/190C. Grease and flour 12-cup/28dl Bundt® pan or 10-inch/25cm tube pan. In large bowl, combine sugar and margarine; beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually add 2 cups powdered sugar; blend well. By hand, stir in flour and remaining cake ingredients until well blended. Spoon batter into greased and floured pan; spread evenly.
2. Bake at 350F/190C. for 45 to 50 minutes or until top is set and edges are beginning to pull away from sides of pan. (Since this cake has a soft filling, an ordinary doneness test cannot be used. Accurate oven temperature and baking times are essential.) Cool upright in pan on wire rack 1 1/2 hours. Invert onto serving plate; cool at least 2 hours.
3. In small bowl, combine all glaze ingredients, adding enough milk for desired drizzling consistency. Spoon over top of cake, allowing some to run down sides. Store tightly covered.

permalink Ω 10 March 2006, Helsinki

Hungarian Butter Horns

« Triangles of rich dough filled with an airy, nutty meringue. Hungarian butter horns are delicious, lightly sweet and nutty cookies. »

I didn't really do much of anything exciting over Christmas out in what is now suburban wasteland that once was mostly farmland when I was young, but I did bake a few things since it beat confronting the full extent of the SUV nation and it wouldn't be Christmas without plates of cookies. My mother wanted to make the toxic 'peanut butter balls' (creamy peanut butter, confectioner's sugar and crisp rice formed into balled then covered in sweet milk chocolate) that everyone but me seems to love so I thought I'd make something to offset the sugar payload.

Mom had the recipe for a cookie that one of the neighbours, a retired librarian, would always bring to block parties where I would snatch more than was perhaps polite from the plate. I'd even send other kids over to get me a few more when I knew I had been busted on taking more than my share. :) God, remember block parties? These days Mrs. Anderson, the hostess for our annual block party, would die at the thought of having 50 people and their kids over to swim in her pool and party until the wee hours with altogether too much food and drink due to liability with the pool and, well, the world is no longer the nice place it used to be where you could do such things with casual affection. At least the cookie recipe remains.

Mrs. Daniel, the retired librarian, had the coolest gadget in her kitchen; a double-door convection oven. Even as a kid I thought it was fun to watch the cookies bake and puff up almost like magic. I still like to stare in the window and watch things bake as I'm easily entertained. I tried to track down the provenance of this recipe since it is very likely not hungarian. In the two cookbooks I found the recipe in, one told a story about a dying grandmother dictating the recipe from her deathbed for posterity which was highly dubious in spite of the touching personal detail. The other cookbook was the 1950s edition of Betty Crocker's classic red cookbook. The classic recipe could very possibly be related to a hungarian pastry called kifli as the dough and the filling are very similar.

I tried a couple different variations to see if I could improve on the cookie since, while tasty, they aren't the most beautiful cookies on the plate as the meringue puffs up and spreads out of the cookie and then deflates a bit when it has cooled. I tried piping a bit onto each wedge and then rolling the dough up which did keep the meringue from spreading but it didn't taste as good without it being spread between all the layers of dough. I tried both with and without an eggwash and, again, the original recipe without the wash looked better. I dissolved the yeast in a small amount of water before kneading it in and, well, it didn't seem to make a difference at all. Of the three nuts, walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans, that I tried I found the hazelnuts were the best with the sour dough and the sweet meringue.

One thing that does make a noticeable difference in the cookies is how cold the dough is when you work it and subsequently pop it in the oven. Don't start to work with the dough until it's firm and if you have a tray of cookies ready to go into the oven but have to go do something for a few minutes, put them into the fridge. Keep it cold and keep it moving. It makes a lot of cookies with very few ingredients.

Hungarian Butter Horns

Makes: about 64 cookies
Time: about 90 minutes
Source: Mrs. Daniels, retired librarian, who used to live down the street from my parents.

Dough:

• 1 cake (17g) fresh yeast
• 4 cups or 9,5 dl sifted flour
• 2 1/2 sticks or 283g butter, cold and cut into small pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 egg yolks, well beaten
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl sour cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling:

• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl finely chopped nuts
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the dough: Sift flour with salt. Add crumbled yeast and mix well. Cut in butter. Add beaten yolks, sour cream and vanilla. Mix until blended, use hands if necessary. Wrap in baking paper and chill until filling is ready.

For the filling: Whip egg whites, vanilla, cinnamon and sugar to soft, firm peaks. Fold in nuts and cinnamon.

Brush pastry board with a 50-50 mixture of powdered and granulated sugars. Divide dough into 8 parts. Chill unused dough. Roll each part into a 9-inch/23cm circle, an easy trick to trim the dough is to use an inverted pie pan over the dough and use the pastry wheel to cut around it. Spread dough with a thin layer of filling, leaving a small border around the edge and a small circle in the center empty, and cut circle into 8 pie shaped wedges using a pizza cutter or pastry wheel. Roll wide edge of each wedge toward center and place rolled cookie on baking sheet lined with baking paper.

Bake in preheated 400F/205C oven for about 7 minutes if using convection or 15-18 minutes in a conventional oven. Cool on rack and dust with confectioners' sugar or cinnamon sugar. You can also decorate with simple confectioners' sugar frosting if you want to add more sweetness.

permalink Ω 17 January 2006, Helsinki

Ring Toss

« A tower of almond rings popular in parts of Scandinavia for weddings, New Year's and other celebrations. »

I somehow managed to survive two weeks in flyover country, home to the world's largest strip mall. During the mad shopping frenzy the week before Christmas I had some time to bake as I was a bit afraid to venture out into the wilderness of SUVs and rabid shoppers. I had ordered a bunch of stuff from the Baker's Catalogue and had it shipped to my mother's house that in retrospect, given that the stores looked like locusts had stripped them clean, was a wise idea.

One of the things I ordered was a set of kransekake forms. Kransekake is a rather impressive looking cake formed from rings of almond paste cookie that has been baked, cemented together with royal icing and decorated with marzipan or flags and candies. It's a cake that looks a lot like a Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack toy only without the bright colours. I've never seen it in Finland, but the rest of the Nordic countries seem to enjoy it for weddings, New Year's and other high holidays. The cake is about 7 inches/18 cm wide at the base and stands almost 12 inches/29 cm tall. I figured that if I could find almond paste in the grocery that I'd make it for a nice centerpiece for Christmas dinner. My brother-in-law suggested that I make something "ethnic" and, given that nobody but the Danes and the Norwegians have any idea of what this thing is, it fit that request rather well. :) I think my family liked it, but the cake requires an army of almond lovers to eat the whole thing.

The grocery had lots of marzipan but the space where almond paste should have been was empty so my sister and I had to track down a clerk who made a valiant effort to find the missing shipment of almond paste. The difference between almond paste and marzipan is found only in the ratio of almonds to sugar, the paste having a higher percentage of almonds than the marzipan. My sister was ready to give up after 10 minutes, but I was too close to go home disappointed. :) Twenty minutes and 15 aisles later, I had two tubes of almond paste. I was really surprised that not only did they have almond paste and marzipan but that they had to go find the new shipment. Almonds, as far as I can remember, were never much of a popular baking item in the US. Walnuts and pecans are the most commonly used nuts in baking so perhaps Martha Stewart has been featuring almond paste in a few recipes lately or something. Go Martha.

I used the recipe on the side of box that the kransekake forms came in, but there seem to be two different varieties of dough that is used to make the cake; the Scandinavian variety that uses only almonds, confectioners' sugar and egg whites and the American variety that also includes butter and flour. I made the latter as it was the recipe on the box and I didn't have a decent mixer handy to make what would likely be a more difficult to handle dough as it would be more stiff without the butter and flour. It was surprisingly simple to make, even with the handicap of not having a pastry bag and having to use an antique cookie press that only occasionally pressed the dough through the hole when I squeezed the trigger.

Once home, I thought that I would try to make the cake the Scandinavian way by using only the ground almonds, confectioner's sugar and egg whites just for the sake of comparison and this is where the exercise got interesting. Odense, a manufacturer of marzipan, almond paste and even a pre-made kransekake dough, also has a brief history of the kransekake in Danish. What I couldn't puzzle out on my own, the Nordic perl guys translated for me, but basically it says the cake is a Danish creation. What is curious is how the cake changes form in Sweden and Finland. Instead of using rings, which can also be used to make confections in the form of cornucopias, baskets, bowls filled with custard and cakes topped with whipped cream and strawberries, the krokan is a freeform tower of the same ingredients that is cemented together with caramelised sugar and features praline almonds surrounding the base. I'm not sure how or why the cake changed from the ringed pillar/cornucopia as there's very little information about the cake to be found in any language, but I'd be intrigued to know how and when the transformation came about. I'd almost guarantee that there's bound to be the usual "Swedes have to be different" explanation in there somewhere. :) I did find an entertaining article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Assembly Required, where a reporter gets a lot more entertainment out of this cake than even I did. :)

Surprisingly, the ground almonds are not so easily found in Helsinki in quantities larger than 80g (In the US, King Arthur sells almond flour in 1 pound bags for about $7). I asked the resident Norwegian at my office if he knew if he knew where I could find a better supply and he told me how his ex-wife used to make him grate the individual almonds one at a time just to make his miserable life even moreso. It's a torture device and it's a cake. :) Some of the Finnish krokaani recipes use warmed marzipan with a small amount of added sugar and egg whites which sounds unreliable, since it would be a bit too easy to wind up cooking the egg whites, as well as being more work than necessary. Both of the recipes I tried worked well and I can't really say which of them I thought tasted better. The traditional recipe is a bit harder to work with since it dries and stiffens quickly, especially on days with low humidity. It also requires a cookie press since it is simply too stiff to use a pastry bag. Rolling ropes of dough out with your hands is an option but it's a lot of work and if you don't roll them evenly you'll get a really irregular browning which won't look as nice. Watch over the rings as they bake as once they start to brown, they go from light brown to dark brown in a blink of an eye.

Buy a set of the rings, make a kransekake and maybe this can be the beginning of the next Scandinavian food craze as there hasn't been much from this part of the world since ABBA, Swedish meatballs and fondue parties faded from the limelight. I had a vision of making the rings out of something like baked spam and then covering the tower with chunks of cheese and such on toothpicks as a salute to the 1970s fixation with foods on toothpicks. The ringed bowl of goo might be fun to experiment with as well. :)

Kransekake / Kransekage / Krokaani / Krokan - Butter cookie style

Makes: one 18-ring kransekake
Time: about 1 hour for cake rings and about 25 minutes to assemble
Source: Kransekake form box

Rings:

• 4 sticks or 450g butter, softened
• 1 cup or 225g almond paste, grated
• 2 cups or 4.75 dl sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 4 egg yolks
• 5 cups or 11.75 dl sifted flour

Preheat oven to 350F/175C. Grease forms well with butter.

Cream together butter, grated almond paste, sugar and extract until smooth. Beat yolks in well. After sifting, measure flour and add gradually, mixing until smooth.

Put dough into cookie press or pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch (1.25cm) tip and pipe onto greased ring forms. Bake for 15 minutes or until very lightly browned. Do not remove from rings until cold.

OR

Kransekake / Kransekage / Krokaani / Krokan - Traditional Scandinavian style

Makes: 1 18-ring kransekake
Time: about 1 hour for rings and 25 minutes for assembly
Source: King Arthur/Baker's Catalogue

Rings:

• 1 pound or 455g almond flour, plain or toasted
• 1 pound or 455g confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup or 0,60 dl all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bitter almond oil or 2 teaspoons almond extract **(I didn't use this - seems excessive)
• 3-4 egg whites

In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the almond flour, sugar, all-purpose flour, and almond oil or extract. Add 3 egg whites and mix on slow speed for several minutes. Continue mixing, adding part of the fourth egg white as needed, until a firm, cohesive (but not dry) dough is formed. Gather the dough into a ball, and cover it with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out as you prepare the molds.

Grease the molds lightly with butter. Dust your work surface with confectioners' sugar. Grease your hands with oil. Break off pieces of dough and roll them into long 'ropes', about 1/2 inch in diameter. Fit the ropes into the greased molds, pinching the ends firmly together. You can also place dough into a cookie press fitted with a 1/2-inch (1.25cm) hole and pipe onto greased ring forms. The dough is a bit too stiff to use with a pastry bag.

Place the filled molds on a baking sheet and bake the rings in a preheated 400F/200C oven for 10 to 12 minutes, until they're very lightly browned. Let the rings cool for several minutes before removing them from the molds. Cool them completely on wire racks.

Icing:

• 1 1/2 cups or 3,5 dl sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 egg white

For icing: Whip egg white until foamy. Add sugar and beat until stiff. Add more sugar if not stiff enough. Put in pastry tube fitted with small round tip.

Assembly:

Arrange disks with baked rings in order from the largest to the smallest next to a plate or pedestal you intend to assemble the cake on. Starting with the outermost ring on the largest disk, pipe a small amount of icing onto the top of the ring (the bottom being the smooth side that baked inside the disk. The bottom should always the top surface with assembling the cake.) and place, icing side down, onto the plate. Pipe a zig-zag ribbon of icing onto the ring and place the outermost ring on the next disk on top, being careful to keep the ring centered. Pipe a zig-zag ribbon of icing on top of the ring and repeat until all 18 rings have been attached to the cake. Decorate with small Norwegian flags, marzipan fruit, tiny wrapped presents or foil wrapped candy affixed with toothpicks. You can also assemble the cake around a wine bottle.

permalink Ω 9 January 2006, Helsinki

When life hands you lemons...

« Mmmm...fresh lemon bars. »

I'm procrastinating on packing my suitcase by putting a few things up before I leave. It is a very effective ploy. :)

Last week I heard that new hardware to replace the current headache at work was going to be ordered, so I asked my boss what sort of baked treat he would like in return for the good news and he suggested something with lemon. I immediately thought of lemon bars and found that CI had two different recipes, one with 4 eggs and one with 9 eggs, both with the same amount of lemon juice. I figured I'd give the one with fewer eggs a try and they were incredibly good. So good, in fact, that one of the guys at work had four of them. :) My only complaint is that the filling is very liquid when you pour it into the warm crust and you have to make sure the paper and the crust are flush to the edges of the pan or else it seeps underneath where you don't want it to be. The 9-egg version of the recipe calls for thickening it in a double boiler before pouring it into the warm crust and that might be something to try with the 4-egg recipe but sealing the crust seems to work well enough without the extra work and cholesterol.

It's a nice change of pace to have something with a tangy citrus flavour in the dead of winter. It might be interesting, too, to substitute tyrni/buckthorn berry juice for the lemon juice and add a bit more sugar.

Perfect Lemon Bars

Time: about 15 minutes prep + 80 minutes cooling and baking time
Makes: about two dozen 1 1/2- to 2-inch squares
Source: CI

Crust:

• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25 dl unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 2/3 cup or 1,5 dl confectioners' sugar plus extra to decorate finished bars
• 4 tablespoons cornstarch 
• 3/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 1 1/2 sticks or 170g unsalted butter, at very cool room temperature

Lemon Filling:

• 4 large eggs beaten lightly
• 1 1/3 cups or 3,25 dl granulated sugar 
• 3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest from 2 large lemons
• 2/3 cup or 1,5 dl lemon juice from 3 to 4 large lemons, strained
• 1/3 cup or 3/4 dl whole milk 
• 1/8 teaspoon table salt 

1. For the crust: Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350F/190C. Lightly butter a 13x9-inch/33x22-cm baking dish and line with one sheet parchment or wax paper. Dot paper with butter, then lay second sheet crosswise over it. Make sure that the paper sticks well to the pan.
2. Mix flour, confectioners’ sugar, cornstarch, and salt in medium bowl. Grate butter on large holes of box grater into flour mixture. Toss butter pieces to coat. Rub pieces between your fingers or stir with mixer for a minute, until flour turns pale yellow and coarse. Sprinkle mixture into lined pan and press firmly with fingers into even, 1/4-inch layer over entire pan bottom and about 1/2-inch up sides. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, then bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. While the crust cools, take a spoon and push the edges up to the edge of the pan to keep the filling from seeping underneath.
3. For the filling: Meanwhile, whisk eggs, sugar, and flour in medium bowl, then stir in lemon juice, zest, milk, and salt to blend well.
4. To finish the bars: Reduce oven temperature to 325F/160C. Stir filling mixture and pour into warm crust (Note: crust must be warm). Bake for about 20 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack; cool to near room temperature, at least 30 minutes. Transfer to cutting board, fold paper down, and cut into serving-size bars, wiping knife or pizza cutter clean between cuts, as necessary. Sift confectioners’ sugar over bars, if desired.

permalink Ω 13 December 2005, Helsinki

Beet Red

« Brownies with an unusual ingredient; beets. »

Beets have always been an icon of Russia and Eastern Europe. Perhaps it is their blazing red colour associated with Communism or the vast quantities of borscht we imagine them eating at every meal. Borscht, borscht, borscht, it's the Russian Chef! I will admit that no day passes at the office lunchroom without beets in one form or another on the menu so maybe the stereotype isn't without good reason. You don't have to like beets to live here, but it certainly helps. :)

While leafing through a few older issues of Ruoka & Viini, I noticed a picture of a chocolate dessert that looked like something I'd want to eat. When I read the caption, I had to read it a few times before I believed what I was reading: Beet Brownies. I thought, oh god, beets are invading dessert now too, and then I smiled thinking that these are so damned weird, I just gotta make some and spring them on my unsuspecting colleagues.

I had never imagined beets might be used in baking even though nobody finds the thought of carrot cake strange or unusual. Both are root vegetables so why is it odd for beets to be used in a brownie recipe? I went hunting for the provenance of the recipe and didn't find much at all, save some certainty that it is surprisingly not from Finland, Russia or Eastern Europe. One interesting shred I found from James Beard was related to the utterly, utterly disgusting red velvet cake fad of late, where enormous amounts of red food dye are added to a chocolate cake, that mentioned maybe the original red velvet cake used beets to get the bright red hue.

The Scarlet Batter. Although everyone in our office could immediately picture this cake (chocolate, bright red crumb, white frosting), its lineage was surprisingly hard to trace. Few of the usual sources even mention it. (Beard, however, does give a recipe in American Cookery, which calls for red food coloring and cocoa.) Webster's New World Dictionary of Culinary Arts describes it as a four-layer American Christmas cake. That didn't sound right to us, so we dug deeper. An amateur culinary historian friend of ours suggested the cake was originally made from beets and cocoa at a time when chocolate was dear. Cocoa, incidentally, accounts for the cake's velvety texture. Several other sources describe red velvet cake as a traditional Southern specialty. We next called Jennifer Appel, who serves a delicious version at Magnolia Bakery in New York City's Greenwich Village. People think it's southern, she told us, but it actually originated in the 1950s in the heart of Manhattan -- at Oscar's at the Waldorf -- and from there traveled South. Joe Verde, the current chef at Oscar's, confirmed the story, but says when he researched the cake's history in the Waldorf archives a few years ago, he couldn't find a single mention of it. "Still, for some reason it's attributed to us, so we take credit for it," he laughed. The cake's popularity faded in the '70s when red dye No. 2 was linked to cancer. Today, Oscar's serves an updated version, which is made from bittersweet chocolate ganache and is dusted with cranberry powder.

The red velvet cake is all over the map, but there is very, very little mention of brownies to be found. I find the suggestion that the beets were used during times when chocolate was scarce somewhat dubious, but it would explain how the mention of beets used in cakes is so scarce after about 1940.

Beets are like catsup where, once outside the containment field of the bottle or skin, you begin to find bits of red everywhere. Use small beets as the big ones are tough and take forever to cook. Presumably you could use non-pickled canned whole beets, but the colour won't be as good.

These brownies disappear fast and few would guess the mystery ingredient is beets. It's yet undecided if they are better with whipped cream or the cream cheese frosting so it just depends on which taste appeals to you more as both are quite tasty. There's great fun to be had serving these and surprising people stuffing their mouths that they're eating beets. :)

Beet or Ruby Brownies

Serves: 8-12
Time: about 1 hour including bake time
Source: Ruoka & Viini

• about 2-4 small beets or 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup of beet puree
• 100g or 3.5 oz baking/semi-sweet chocolate
• 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1-2 teaspoons cocoa
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or vanilla extract
• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup ground nuts

1. Butter and dust with cocoa a 23cm/8-9 inch round cake pan. Heat oven to 175C/350F.
2. Boil beets with skins until soft. Peel and puree with a hand blender or grate finely and mash. You should have about 1,5 dl of beet puree.
3. Melt chocolate and allow to cool.
4. Mix flour, baking powder, salt and vanilla sugar together and set aside.
5. Cream butter and sugar together and add eggs one at a time until the mixture is smooth. Add chocolate, beet puree, and flour mixture individually, mixing well. Fold in nuts.
6. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes.
7. Serve when cooled with whipped cream or ice cream or ice with cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 8 ounces or 225g cream cheese , softened but still cool
• 5 tablespoons or 70g unsalted butter softened, but still cool
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups or 3dl confectioners' sugar (4 1/2 oz/ 127g)

When cake is cool, mix cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla at medium high speed in clean bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment ( or in large bowl using handheld mixer) until well combined, about 30 seconds, scraping down bowl with rubber spatula as needed. Add confectioners’ sugar and mix until very fluffy, about 1 minute.

permalink Ω 10 December 2005, Helsinki

Christmas Prunes

« Joulutortut / Finnish Christmas Star Pastries »

Prunes; they evoke the image of geriatrics in need of a bit of digestive regularity rather than Christmas cheer, at least on my side of the Atlantic since the California plum growers cemented the connection between prunes and constipation forever in the minds of Americans (52k pdf). The first time I heard of these cookies I wondered if they were some sort of cruel joke played on the young by the Finnish gerontacracy. Since they are traditionally served after the main Christmas meal on the Eve with coffee, it might not be such a leap to think that the whole plan for these treats is to help move the heavy meal along.

I decided to make some of these pastries and was amused to find that 90% or so of the available recipes simply list the commercial dough and jam as ingredients. The frozen dough is usually made with margarine which, in spite of its advantage in the convenience department, doesn't really taste like anything which for all the calories involved is a definite downside. The commercial jam, too, doesn't have much taste either. In fact, the dough is so easy and convenient, that the only thing that might make it even easier is to pre-score the dough for cutting.

First I found a recipe for plum jam after a semi-comic discussion with Jarkko and his etymological dictionaries over the word marmalade since the filling is often called plum marmalade on the containers it is sold in. Marmalade, in English, almost always implies a citrus jam, usually including the rinds. I don't know that we came to an agreement on the how and the why it is called marmalade, but it has roughly the same texture and consistency as apple butter. It's not really a jam either, so maybe it should be called plum butter instead. Semantics aside, I made a plum jam from fresh plums, not prunes, for a nice red colour instead of the brown colour in the usual jam and also added a bit of cinnamon and ginger for taste. The colour and texture (left: store right: homemade) difference is noticeable.

Then I tried making a 'quick' puff pastry dough that didn't puff up like the commercial dough did and my demanding taste testers also commented that, while they liked the jam, the texture was more like a shortbread cookie instead of a flakey pastry. So, I tried again with a real puff pastry recipe and, though it worked better, it still wasn't puffy enough. Irritated, I consulted a few different sources about the untold simple secrets behind such a simple dough and discovered a few things that made sense, like using bread flour instead of regular flour in the dough to make it a bit more elastic which helps to keep it from breaking open when rolling it out. I paid more attention to lining up the edges and always turning the dough in the same direction and, eureka, it worked like a charm. It's all in the technique. It was difficult to keep from eating far, far too many of the pastries from this batch as they were light and flakey and addictive.

In the US, I can't really think of any single food that might be a holiday classic that has one single agreed upon form. Everything from apple pie to chocolate chip cookies have hundreds of variations and holiday meals and traditions tend to be both regional and within families. It's interesting that Finland has quite a few traditional holiday foods that are, for the most part, widely accepted around the country. Having made these pastries both from scratch and from pre-made building blocks, I can appreciate the ease and convenience of the pre-made ingredients, but of all the things on the Christmas table that can, and often are, be bought ready-made the joulutorttu really taste so much better when made with real butter and they're fresh out of the oven. No one ever said that padding your ass and clogging your arteries should be easy or convenient, especially since Christmas only comes but once a year. :)

plum jam/butter

Makes: About 4 dl / 2 cups - enough for 2 batches
Time: about an hour
source: all about canning & preserving

• 2 pounds or about 1kg plums, pitted and quartered
• 2 1/2 cups or 6 dl sugar
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh or bottled
• (Add ginger and/or cinnamon for a bit of spice)

1. In a tall saucepan, cook the plums, sugar and lemon juice, lightly crushing some of the fruit. Boil rapidly, stirring frequently until it reaches the jelling point and begins to thicken. Puree with a hand blender and/or press through a sieve for a smoother mixture if desired. Simmer for 30 mins to 1 hour to desired thickness, cool and refrigerate up to 1 week.

Puff Pastry

Makes: about 24-36 joulutorttu
Time: active time about 30 minutes
Source: King Arthur Flour Baking Companion

Tips:

• Always use unsalted butter
• Use a pastry scraper
• Keep your workspace cool and refrigerate the dough the moment is gets too warm
• When cutting the dough, cut with a straight, sharp edge or pastry wheel.
• If using an egg wash, take care not to get any of the egg on the edges of the pastry as it may seal the dough and inhibit puffing.
• The dough should be allowed to rest for 5-10 minutes between rolling and cutting to reduce shrinkage.
• Follow the illustrations for rolling out the dough with some degree of diligence.
• Make sure your oven is hot enough and use convection if you have it

Pastry:

• 3 1/2 cups or 8.25 dl bread flour
• 1/2 stick or 60g unsalted butter, chilled
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 1/4 cups or 3 dl cold water
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice

1. Place flour in a mixing bowl and combine it with the chilled butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Add the salt and lemon juice to the water, stir well, then add to the flour. Mix gently with a fork or a dough whisk until you have a rough dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl. If you need to add more water, do so a tablespoon at a time until the dough holds together. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until it's smooth and a bit springy, 2 to 3 minutes. Pat it into a square, wrap it in plastic wrap, or place in a large plastic bag and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Butter block:

• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl bread flour
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3 1/2 sticks or 400g unsalted butter, softened but still cool to the touch

1. Using a mixer, a food processor, or a spoon, combine the flour, lemon juice and butter until they are smooth and well blended. Lightly flour a piece of plastic wrap or waxed paper, and on it shape the butter-flour mixture into an 8-inch square. Cover the butter and place it on a flat surface in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. Adding flour to the butter helps to stabilize it, so it won't "flow" out the seams when it is being rolled.

Rolling and Folding:

1. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and put it on a lightly floured surface. Gently roll it into a square about 12 inches across. Put the butter square in the center of the dough, at a 45-degree angle, so it looks like a diamond in the square.
2. Fold the flaps of the dough over the edges of the butter until they meet in the middle. Pinch and seal the edges of the dough together; moisten your finger with a little water, if necessary. Dust the top with flour, then tap it gently with the rolling pin into a rectangular shape. Make sure the dough isn't sticking underneath, and roll it from the center into a larger rectangle, 20x10 inces.
3. When the dough is the right size, lightly sweep off any excess flour from the top with your pastry brush, then fold the bottom third up to the center, and the top third over (like a business letter). Line the edges up on top of each other and even up the corners so they're directly atop one another. Turn the dough package 90 degrees to the right so it looks like a book ready to be opened. It's okay to use a little water to stick the corners together so they don't shift. If the dough is still cool to the touch and relaxed, do another rolling and turning the same way. If you've successfully rolled out the dough and folded it twice, you've completed two turns. Make a note of how many folds you've completed and the time, and then put the dough back in the refrigerator. Classic puff pastry gets six turns before being formed into finished shapes and should rest, chilled, for at least 30 minutes between every two turns.
4. Repeat the folding and turning process two more times. When all six turns have been completed, wrap the dough well and refrigerate it for at least an hour (preferably overnight) before using.

Assembling:

1. Preheat oven to 225C/435F.
2. Cut dough in half and leave one half in the refrigerator.
3. Roll dough out into a square roughly 34cm/13in on each side.
4. Using a pinwheel cutter or a pastry wheel and a ruler, cut squares roughly 8,5cm/3.35in on a side. See also: cutter pattern.
5. Place about 1 teaspoon of jam in the center of each square.
6. Lift every other corner to the center of the jam and, using the dull end of spoon or knife handle, press the corners firmly into the jam to keep them from unfolding during baking.
7. Bake in 225C/435F oven until puffy and light brown.
8. Decorate with powdered sugar.

permalink Ω 5 December 2005, Helsinki

Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

« Finnish whipped porridge with lingonberries and milk. »

There are few foods that are so basic as to transcend their lower station on the food chain and become something just about anyone and of which everyone has fond childhood memories. Porridge is just such a food. It's a hot and filling treat on a cold winter's day which can be either sweet with fruit or savoury with meat and cheese. Finland is a cold place for 9 months a year so it's no big surprise that porridge is popular here.

I was somewhat amused that aside from the Helsingin Sanomat running an article about porridge in September, two of the 'gourmet' sort of magazines in Helsinki have also printed articles about porridge in the past two months. People out in the countryside must be wondering what kind of dorks live in the cities where porridge needs to be rediscovered. Of course, in true cityfolk fashion, some of the recipes try to doll up a decidedly proletarian dish that no modern urbanite hipster would want to be caught preparing or eating. The attitude towards porridge is much the same in the US, though it is thought more of as a wholesome food for children, rather than adults.

Porridge is much more than a breakfast food in Finland which is both interesting and strange. The mannasuurimo, cream of wheat more or less, can be whipped and served with milk as a dessert. Latvia also features this in their national cuisine so I suspect that it is a Baltic regional specialty. I never even knew you could whip cream of wheat into such a pretty, billowy mound. I had tasted the vispipuuro from the supermarket where it comes ready-made in a plastic dish but I don't know how they can be compared as the texture and taste are very different.

One new thing I tried was the spelt manna/cream of wheat. Spelt is a sort of ur-wheat that has begun being cultivated again because it is more hardy and disease resistant. I don't know that I can go back to the plain stuff again as it has a slightly nutty flavour that is really, really good. If you can get your hands on a sack of it, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Aside from the whipped porridge, I gave a pancake recipe with mannasuurimo a try and also found it excellent. What's not to love about milk, eggs, sugar, spice and porridge baked together? There are also porridges made from rolled oats, rice, rye, potato and barley. Rice porridge is very traditional around the holidays and is served with fruit, cinnamon and milk.

I'd bet that porridge mixed with onions, carrots, blue cheese, sausage with a bit of mustard and lingonberry sauce then baked like a casserole would be pretty delicious and a nice change from the usual potato accompaniment.

A non-food related aside; I've had a week from hell at work so I've not answered much email in about 2-3 weeks now and my apologies to those expecting replies. (If anyone has a tale of woe regarding the absolutely abominable enterprise-level 'support' Apple sells with their systems in Finland, talk to me. Who knew that 30-minute response time would translate to 4+ weeks waiting for a replacement Xraid? ) If I survive the office pikkujoulu and subsequent hangover, I'll try to answer email and such soon.

Debessmanna / puolukka vispipuuro / whipped cranberry porridge

Makes: 2 servings
Time: about 15 minutes
Source: The Cuisine of Latvia

• 75g or 2.65oz lingonberries or cranberries or red currants (or just use about 3/4 cup berry juice)
• 2 dl or .85 cup water
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup mannasurimo/semolina/cream of wheat

1. Rinse cranberries. Crush and squeeze out juice. Place cranberry solids in a saucepan, cover with water, boil for five minutes and strain.
2. Add sugar. Gradually add semolina/cream of wheat. Heat until the semolina thickens, then add cranberry juice. Pour mixture into a bowl and cool rapidly.
3. Whip mixture until it becomes light and airy and has doubled or tripled in volume. Serve in bowls with cold milk.

« Pannukakku made with porridge and served with cranberry sauce and whipped cream. »

Ahvenanmaan pannukakku / Åland pancake

Makes: 1 9-in/23cm pancake
Time: about 10 minutes
Source: Ruoka & Viini, nro. 33

• 2 dl or .85 cup prepared manna- or rice porridge
• 5 dl or 2.1 cups milk
• 1,5 dl or 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 dl or 7 tablespoons sugar (reduce by half if you want a less sweet pancake)
• 2 teaspoons finely ground cardamom
• 3 eggs, whisked together

1. Heat oven to 225C/435F.
2. Mix porridge, milk, flour, salt, sugar and cardamom in a medium bowl. Blend in the whisked eggs with a fork until smooth.
3. Pour batter into a buttered pan and bake in the oven for about 20-30 minutes. The pancake first cooks around the edges and puffs up, then it develops puffy domes in the center. When these rise and join together, the pancake is done.

permalink Ω 25 November 2005, Helsinki

Beer for Dessert

« Moist, dark and spicy gingerbread cake made with "The Great Pumpkin" mold by NordicWare. »

I'm not quite sure why, but I seem to be on a pumpkin kick lately. I saw the really adorable Great Pumpkin Pan on the Williams-Sonoma website along with the picture of the finished cake and fell in love with it. By the time it arrived from my mother, pumpkins had already disappeared from the shops so I couldn't make the seemingly appropriate pumpkin cake in the pumpkin pan and I had to find another cake that was dense and would bake properly in a sorta-but-not-really-bundt pan. I thought about a carrot cake which would also be a bit on the orange side, but kept looking until I found a gingerbread cake that used flat Guinness instead of milk in the batter. Beer makes many things, from BBQ to baked goods, taste better so I figured I'd give it a try.

The inclusion of the stout in the recipe did make me think about how booze of all kinds are a frequent addition in various American recipes. What cook doesn't enjoy adding a bit to the dish and consuming the remainder ala Julia Childs? *hic* Ironically, in the more traditional Finnish recipes I have yet to find one that calls for alcohol. It's interesting given that alcohol, especially around pikkujoulu season (Nov-Dec), is so much a part of the culture but isn't mixed with food. The US has always had an uneasy relationship with alcohol, one of both love and hate, but adding it to food is a rather common way to enjoy the taste without guilt. My mother used to make rum balls, an unbaked ball cookie, for the holidays that would make everyone at the office holiday party a little light in the shoes.

I also tried making this cake with margarine. I absolutely hate the taste of margarine, but the grocery didn't have the hyla (lactose-free) butter that I needed as the colleague I was making the cake for required it. I made a double batch since I wanted some extra little cakes and man, did that sucker crater. There are few things quite so sad as watching a cake puff up only to deflate in 30 seconds. I blamed the margarine as the batter tasted weird to begin with and I'm not at all familiar with some of these new 'designer' spreads. I still thought it was very odd that margarine would do that to a cake and considered something might be wrong. So, I went to a different store later in the week and found a brick of the hyla butter. Another double batch and I, again, watched the cake puff and crater. It then dawned on me that I had, in my familiarity with the recipe, perhaps gotten a bit too sure of myself. Indeed, I had somehow confused the amount of butter in grams to almost double the amount. D'oh. It's always the simple shit that will get you. Always. I could rant for a page or two about how I hate the various different measuring systems in recipes but, that's a burr up my arse that will have to wait for another day when I'm feeling a bit more inspired and irritated.

The recipe comes from Christmas 101, a cookbook that I wish more cookbooks were like as it's clear that the author has actually made most, if not all, the recipes in the book and he notes why he likes them or adds caveats for the less experienced cooks. There aren't any glossy photos and all of the recipes are fairly seasonal, but it's a trustworthy cookbook in a market awash with celebrity chefs pushing books full of food porn and crap recipes. I also added the orange sauce since I think Finns could use a little more variety in the range of dessert sauces since every dessert gets a helping of cream or vanilla sauce and there are times like with this cake when those just don't complement the dessert very well.

Deep Dark Stout Gingerbread

Makes: 12 or more servings
Time: about 20 mins prep + bake time
Source: Christmas 101

• 2 1/2 cups or 6 dl all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 sticks or 140g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 1/4 cups or 3 dl packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs + 1 egg yolk
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl dark molasses
• 3/4 cup or or 1,75 dl flat Guinness, room temperature
• confectioners' sugar, for garnish

1. Open Guinness and pour into a measuring cup about 1 hour before making the cake to warm up and go flat. You can also add just a pinch of salt to accelerate the decarbonation process. Either drink the rest or save it for cooking with another dish.
2. Position oven rack to center position and preheat to 350F/175C. Butter and flour the inside of a 12-cup fluted tube/bundt/sokerikakku pan, tapping out the excess flour.
3. Sift the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a bowl and set aside.
4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until blended and fluffy, about 3 minutes on medium-high speed. Add eggs one at a time, then the yolk. Add molasses.
5. Reduce mixer speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, alternating with the Guinness. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed until the batter is smooth. Pour into prepared pan. Rap pan sharply on the countertop several times to remove bubbles. Level top of the batter with a spatula or spoon.
6. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.. Cool on a wire cooling rack for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto wire cooling rack lined with baking paper. Transfer to serving platter, sift confectioners' sugar over the top and serve warm. (If using the pumpkin cake form, trim the tops of the 2 halves with a serrated knife, spread a thin layer of apricot or other jam on the bottom half and place the top half on top of the jam. Remove crumbs or jagged bits and allow to fully cool.) Or cool completely and serve at room temperature. (The gingerbread can be prepared up to 2 days ahead, covered tightly with plastic wrap and stored at room temperature.)

**It has been said that these sorts of cakes taste quite a bit better if allowed to sit for a day/overnight before serving.

Orange Sauce for Gingerbread

Makes: about 1 3/4 cups
Source: CI

• 1 1/3 cups or 3,25 dl fresh orange juice, orange rinds zested to yield 1 teaspoon zest
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl granulated sugar 
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch 
• 1/8 teaspoon table salt 
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice from 1 small lemon

 

1. In small sauce pan bring orange juice, sugar, cornstarch, and salt to boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Continue to cook until sauce is thick and clear, about 1 minute.
2. Remove from heat, then stir in butter, lemon juice, and zest. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature over gingerbread.

permalink Ω 11 November 2005, Helsinki

Dark and spicy

« Molasses spice cookies have appealing cracks in the top and sparkle from the sugar they are rolled in before baking. Chewy and tasty with milk. »

It all started when Arabella sent me a link to a story in Time about boutique sugars' arrival in the US since I have been known to scoff at the idea of boutique or 'gourmet' salt. Sometime in the late 80s or thereabouts came the idea that for food to be 'gourmet' it had to have outrageously difficult to find ingredients and it had to be complicated to make thereby impressing the dining company that you had spent a lot of time and money on the meal. While I will concede that there are, indeed, differences in these 'gourmet' varieties of sugar and salt, much of the time their use is frivolous and just for show. What's more is that most of the sugars considered 'gourmet' in America, can be bought in most of the corner groceries even in Helsinki. It's just sugar. These days, I would also argue that just about anything cooked or baked at home without all the extra preservatives found in commercial foods could be considered 'gourmet'.

After reading the article, I found the Wholesome Sweeteners website and poked around for a while and found an interesting recipe for ginger citrus cookies taken from a so-called "New Scandinavian" cookbook called Aquavit. The recipe looked interesting because of the toasting of the spices and the candied orange peel. I also used the A9 search engine to see if the page in the Aquavit book containing the original recipe might be available on-line and it was which would prove very useful after making the first batch.

The recipe from the book notes, unlike the on-line version, that freshly made candied orange peel is best for use with these cookies which, after I bought some from the store, I couldn't agree with more. The problem was that neither the on-line recipe nor the A9 pages contained the author's recipe for candied orange peel so I had to go hunting for one. Surprisingly, there are dozens of variations for the recipe and nearly all of them had at least one common fatal flaw and that was boiling of the peel. Citrus oils are volatile which means that boiling the peel will boil away most of the compounds that make it smell and taste good. I finally found one recipe that had one water bath and two syrup baths, none of which included boiling so I took the recipe and reduced it from its gigantic industrial production size to something far more manageable. It doesn't take a lot of time and when you compare commercial (top) vs. fresh candied orange peel there really isn't any contest in how it looks, how it smells and how it tastes. It's simple to make and is worth the effort.

After making the orange peel, I decided to make the dough for the cookies so that it could sit in the refrigerator overnight while the peel was drying and develop the spicy taste a bit more. While they were baking I kept looking at the original photo of the cookies from the book (I might also add that after baking four batches of these cookies, I find it very unlikely that the photo from the book was of cookies made with this recipe given the cracks and lack of any evidence of citrus peel in the dough. Also, several of the reviews on Amazon note the problem of deceptive photos which, I think, is a very good reason to avoid buying the book.) which, even while in the oven, I could tell that something wasn't right. The cookies came out extra-soft and flat as a pancake. I began to consider that maybe my oven was running hot and that I should get a temperature gauge to set inside to make sure the dial and the actual temperature were correct. There was a tablespoon of baking soda in the dough so pancake cookies were not the desired result.

I tasted a cookie or two and decided to double-check the recipe and this is where the original recipe from the book became very useful because there was a typo in the online recipe in the amount of molasses to use. Instead of 3/4 cup, I should have only used 1/4 cup. (Actually, the scan from Amazon was fuzzy and my eyes are bad as I wrote to the company to mention the typo and they replied that it is, indeed, 3/4 cup molasses so I stand corrected. I did bake a batch with the 1/4 cup and, actually, I thought they were better. Of course this means I'm doomed to try yet another batch with the new cookie sheets to see if that was the whole problem all along.) So, I decided to make another batch. Again, they came out of the oven slightly puffy and then pancaked. When finished baking, I noticed there were a few cookies that hadn't totally pancaked. When I moved to Helsinki, I brought my much cherished shiny insulated cookie sheets and baking pans with me only to find that they didn't fit in my tiny euro-sized oven. I haven't baked many cookies so I didn't have a replacement set of cookie sheets and used a roasting pan and a lasagna pan in their stead. The roasting pan is a very dark colour and the lasagna pan is a lighter teflon colour. The dark pans run much hotter than the shiny silver cookie sheets intended for baking and it makes all the difference in the world when baking these sorts of cookies.

After trying TWO more batches of these cookies, one with 3/4 cup and one with 1/4 cup, I have no other choice but to conclude that the 3/4 cup is a typo as the 3/4 cup cookies were just a gooey disaster even when baked on the right pan, the dough itself was much like very moist and sticky natural peanut butter, while the 1/4 cup cookies were puffy and perfect (from the left are the batch made with 1/4 cup and baked on the wrong pan, baked on the right pan but not rolled in sugar and right pan with sugar coating). While this could be the result of muscovado sugar having more molasses in it than regular brown sugar, I really doubt it. One curious discovery was that I found that rolling the balls of dough in super fine sugar not only made for pretty, sparkly cookies but also encouraged the development of cracks like the molasses cookies. I might also add that even after very carefully measuring 1 tablespoon of dough for each cookie, the recipe never yielded more than 3 1/2 dozen rather than the 5 dozen that the recipe claimed it would.) I often find recipes that are absurdly bad and just obviously wrong with mismatches in ingredients and directions and quite frequently they are copied all over the web by people who obviously haven't ever tried to use them. The net is a great place for recipes, but you have to be discriminating in your choices and trust most those who have actually taken the time to make the recipe and possibly comment on it and photograph the end product. I bake from the recipe after typing it first and only then post it which, hopefully, reduces typos, omissions, additions and other sorts of frustrating types of errors.

After two depressing failures, I decided to make a batch of cookies that the ginger cookie is derivative of; the molasses spice cookie. There are no requests for sea salt or raw sugar in this cookie and it takes about half the time to prepare. After baking the first batch which, again, pancaked, I decided to go get a few baking sheets just to make sure that it was, indeed, the dark colour of the baking pan killing my cookies. It was. :) You can see the difference clearly between the cookie baked on a proper sheet (top) and the cookie baked on a dark roasting pan (bottom). Use a baking sheet and evenly sized cookie dough portions and you'll get lovely, appetizing cookies instead of flat, unappealing ones.

As for the sugars, I'm still not entirely certain if there are any important differences between muscovado sugar and brown sugar or tumma siirappi and molasses since muscovado and the molasses-like syrup are readily available here and seem to substitute well. I seem to vaguely remember molasses cookies being much darker in colour, but my memory isn't reliable and google photos show them in various shades of brown.

Both of these cookies are very tasty, good for the holidays and disappear quickly. Be sure to have fresh spices on hand. As a rule of thumb, if you can't remember when you bought your spices or last used them it's probably a good idea to buy fresh stock. Aside from fresh spices, letting the dough cure overnight, using shiny baking pans, portioning the dough evenly and using the right temperature will make them both look and taste yummy.

I would have tried the dark rum glaze, but I drank all of the rum before I finished making the cookies. :)

Molasses Spice Cookies

Makes about 2-2 1/2 dozen cookies
Time: 15 minutes dough prep + baking time
Source: CI

• 2 1/4 cups or 5,25 dl unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves  (neilikka)
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice (maustepippuri) 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black or white pepper 
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 1/3 cup or 0,75 dl granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup or 0,75 dl packed dark brown sugar (muscovado)
• 1 1/2 sticks or 170g unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1 large egg yolk 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1/2 cup or 1,20 dl dark molasses (tumma siirappi)

Dark Rum Glaze

• 1 cup or 2,25 dl confectioners' sugar
• 2 1/2 - 3 tablespoons dark rum 

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375F/190C degrees. Grease, or line with baking paper, 2 aluminum/light coloured cookie sheets.
2. Whisk flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in medium bowl until combined; set aside.
3. With a mixer, cream together butter with brown and granulated sugars at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed and add yolk and vanilla; increase speed to medium and beat until incorporated, about 20 seconds. Reduce speed to medium-low and add molasses; beat until fully incorporated, about 20 seconds, scraping bottom and sides of bowl once with rubber spatula. Reduce speed to lowest setting; add flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 30 seconds, scraping bowl down once. Give dough final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no pockets of flour remain at bottom. Dough will be soft. Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough overnight to allow the spices to permeate the dough at this point if you like.
4. Using tablespoon or rounded coffee measure, scoop dough and roll between palms into a ball; drop ball into a bowl filled with about 1/2 cup fine or regular sugar. Roll balls in sugar to coat and set on prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Repeat with remaining dough. Bake 1 sheet at a time until cookies are browned, still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will look raw between cracks and seem underdone), about 11 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake. If using chilled dough, reduce oven temperature to 300F/150C and bake for 17-24 minutes.
5. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes, then use wide metal spatula to transfer cookies to wire rack; cool cookies to room temperature and serve. (Can be stored at room temperature in airtight container or zipper-lock plastic bag up to 5 days.)
6. If adding the dark rum glaze: Place cookies on a sheet of baking paper. Whisk confectioners' sugar and dark rum in medium bowl until smooth. If the glaze is too thick to drizzle, whisk in an additional tablespoon rum. Dip spoon into glaze and then move spoon over cookies so that glaze drizzles down onto them; repeat as necessary. Transfer cookies to wire rack and allow glaze to dry for 10 to 15 minutes.

« Ginger citrus cookies, an orange variation on the molasses cookie. It is a little softer and the candied orange peel adds a bit of chewiness. »

Marcus's Ginger Citrus Cookies

Makes: about 3-3 1/2 dozen cookies
Time: dough prep, 20 minutes + baking time; citrus peel, ~1 hour and a half
Source: Aquavit by Marcus Samuelsson

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (neilikka)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 3 1/2 cups or 8,25 dl sifted all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1 tablespoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
• 1 1/4 sticks or 140g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl raw cane sugar
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl packed dark brown sugar (muscovado)
• 2 large eggs
• 4 tablespoons (3/4 cup or 1,75 dl** see above) dark molasses (tumma siirappi)
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl finely chopped candied citrus peel (see recipe below)

1. Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 
2. Toast the ginger, cloves, cinnamon and cardamom in a small skillet over medium heat, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes, until fragrant. Remove from the heat. 
3. Sift flour into a bowl and measure out into another bowl. Add toasted spices, baking soda, salt and white pepper to the sifted flour, lightly stir with a fork and sift together. Set bowl of sifted dry ingredients aside.
4. In a large bowl, beat the butter and both sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well. Beat in the molasses. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the candied citrus peel. 
5. Drop tablespoons of the dough onto the baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Roll gently between palms to create evenly-sized balls and roll in super fine sugar. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the tops feel firm when lightly touched. Cool for 2 minutes, transfer to a wire rack covered with baking paper to cool completely. 
6. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 month.

« Freshly made candied orange peel sparkles in the sunshine. »

Candied citrus peel

Makes: about 2 cups or 4,75 dl
Time: about an hour and a half
Source: various

• 200g or 7oz of orange peel (about 3 large valencia oranges or other oranges with a thick peel)

water bath:

• 3 dl or 1 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon salt

syrup:

• 3,25 dl or 1 1/3 cup water
• 4,5 dl or 1 3/4 cup sugar

finish:

• powdered or super fine sugar for dusting

1. Preparing the peel: Peel fruit leaving as much of the white pith attached to the skin as possible.  Cut peel into 1/4-inch (0.5 cm) or thinner strips, cut again into small squares.  Reserve the fruit for other uses like fresh orange juice.  While peeling and cutting fruit peel, make simple syrup and start salted water for water bath. 
2. Preparing the syrup: In a tall saucepan (to reduce sugar splatter and burns), pour the sugar into the center of the pan and pour water gently around the side of the pan taking care not to pour it over the sugar. Set saucepan over a medium-high burner, cover with a lid and boil the water and sugar until it either reaches ~235F/455C or forms a soft ball when a small amount is dropped into a glass of cold water. Do Not Stir. This will take about 35 minutes, more or less. When done, set aside but keep warm.
3. Cleansing water bath: Place prepared peel into a pot with hot, but not boiling, salt water. As soon as the water boils, remove from heat and drain water. (DO NOT BOIL. The compounds that make citrus smell and taste good are volatile oils and will evaporate quickly with boiling.)
4. First syrup bath: Ladle just enough hot syrup over drained peel to cover (a little less than half of the prepared syrup).  Simmer for approximately 20-30 minutes until the peel starts to turn translucent. Test for doneness by removing a piece with a slotted spoon, allow it to drain and check for an even translucency. Drain peel and do not save the syrup from this bath as it will be bitter.
5. Second syrup bath: Return peel to pot, pour the remaining syrup over peel. Simmer (do not boil) until peel is clear and looks like a transparent jewel when held up out of the syrup for about a minute. This step can take up to 30 minutes. Drain syrup into a container and reserve for later use on cakes or in glazes/sauces.
6. Pour hot candied peel onto a baking sheet with sides covered with baking paper that is topped with super fine/powdered sugar. Spread peel evenly around the pan and dust top with more sugar. Allow to dry for an hour or two and toss a bit with a fork to spread the sugar around and to help dry the peel more evenly. Let dry for another hour or three and place in an airtight container for storage. Keep refrigerated if you don't plan on using it within a week or two.

permalink Ω 1 November 2005, Helsinki

Jam

« A delicious shortbread crust topped with lingonberry jam, fresh lingonberries and a rolled oat and nut streusel. Addictive. »

After picking about 20 litres of fresh lingonberries a month or two ago, I looked for recipes that I thought might be a tasty use for the fresh bounty from the forest. One of the recipes I tried was a lingonberry jam cake that I had found in a popular American Scandinavian cookbook. The first attempt failed miserably as baking it in a loaf pan was clearly wrong. The second and third attempts were also disappointing and dense. I gave up on the cake until I ran across two recipes in a small, but informative, book about Finnish berries and recipes for using them, Luonnon Marja ja Hedelmät Värikuvina. One of the recipes was clearly the same recipe as the cake that had failed, but with a very important difference; the Finnish recipe didn't call for lingonberry jam, but a macerated mixture of berries and sugar that is called a jam in Finnish which might have been responsible for the confusion in the failed recipe. It also uses a small bundt cake pan. Little differences can make a recipe great or make it fail. The cake is moist and, as so many people noted while eating a slice, tastes like Christmas with the mixture of spices.

The other recipe was called a lingonberry cake, but was more like a bar cookie than a cake. The first time I made the recipe, I read it in Finnish instead of translating it first as I usually do and accidentally mixed the jam in with the dough which gave it a weird pink colour. I made it again the right way, but both were terribly dry and crumbly. I looked for a bar cookie recipe that might be similar since I figure that the original recipe might have been inspired by cookies rather than cakes. Cooks Illustrated had a recipe that was almost an exact match except that it didn't have the egg and baking powder in the crust, it added fresh fruit in with the jam layer and it called for brown sugar instead of white for the streusel. The difference between them was pretty amazing as the shortbread crust was soft, but not crumbly, and the toppings were perfect in that they weren't too sweet and had the right texture to accompany the shortbread. They are dangerously addictive.

Raspberries or cranberries can be substituted for lingonberries depending on availability or taste. In my obsessive lingonberry jam cake baking, I also became rather familiar with all of the commonly available brands of lingonberry jam in Finland and one brand, Meritalo, was clearly better than the rest since it isn't overly sweet and it contains a visibly greater amount of fruit. As a bonus, it's no more expensive than most of the other brands.

Lingonberry Streusel Bars 

Makes: twenty-four 2-inch/5cm squares
Time: about 20 minutes prep + baking time
Source: CI

Crust:

• 2 1/2 cups or 6 dl unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup or 1,6 dl granulated sugar 
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt 
• 2 sticks or 225g unsalted butter, softened to room temperature and cut into 1/2-inch/1,25cm pieces

Filling:

• 3/4 cup or 2 dl lingonberry or raspberry preserves
• 3/4 cup or 2 dl (about 100g) fresh lingonberries or raspberries
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice

Topping:

• 2 tablespoons or 28g butter, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 cup or 0,6 dl packed brown sugar, light or dark
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl rolled oats
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl finely chopped almonds or pecans

 

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375F/190C degrees. Grease a 13X9-inch/33X23cm pan and place sheet of baking paper on the bottom of the pan leaving excess along the sides as handles for lifting.
2. In bowl of standing mixer fitted with flat beater or with a hand mixer, stir flour, granulated sugar, and salt at low speed until combined. Add butter one piece at a time with mixer on low speed. Continue mixing on low until mixture is well blended and crumbly in appearance.
3. Place 1 1/4 cups (3 dl) flour mixture into medium bowl and set aside; distribute remaining dough mixture evenly in bottom of prepared baking pan. Using hands or flat-bottomed measuring cup, firmly press mixture into even layer to form bottom crust. Bake until edges begin to brown, 14 to 18 minutes.
4. While crust is baking, add brown sugar, oats, and nuts to reserved flour mixture and mix together. Stir in remaining 2 tablespoons butter with mixer on a low speed or with your fingers.
5. Combine preserves, lingonberries, and lemon juice in small bowl; mash with fork until combined but some berry pieces remain.
6. Spread jam mixture evenly over hot crust; sprinkle streusel topping evenly over filling (do not press streusel into filling). Return pan to oven and bake until topping is deep golden brown and filling is bubbling, 22 to 25 minutes. Cool to room temperature on wire rack, 1 to 2 hours; remove from baking pan by lifting baking paper extensions. Using chef's knife, cut into squares and serve. You can also try using cookie cutters to cut the bars into various shapes to make them look even more appealing than they do as plain squares.

Spiced lingonberry cake / Mausteinen Puolukkakakku

Makes: 1 cake, 12-16 servings
Time: 15 minutes prep
Source: Luonnon Marja ja Hedelmät Värikuvina

• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter, softened
• 2 dl or 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 dl or 6 1/2 tablespoons creme fraîche/sour cream
• 2 dl or 3/4 cup fresh lingonberry jam (see below)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 dl or 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1. Heat oven to 175C/350F. Butter a 20-22cm/8-8.5-inch bundt pan (sokerikakkuvuoka), dust with flour and set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy and well mixed. Beat in eggs until well blended. Add spices and creme fraîche. Stir jam into the mixture.
3. Mix together flour, baking soda and baking powder and gradually add to the batter until mixed. Pour dough into prepared bundt pan and bake on lower rack for 45-50 minutes.
4. Allow to cool for an hour before turning the cake out of the pan. The cake is easier to slice if it is loosely covered, allowed to sit overnight and served the next day.

fresh lingonberry jam:

• 4 dl or 1 3/4 cups lingonberries, fresh or frozen
• 1,4 dl or 1/2 cup sugar

Pour clean berries into a dish, add sugar and stir together with a fork until the sugar has dissolved. Cover and set aside for a few hours. If using frozen berries, allow enough time for the berries to thaw completely before using.

permalink Ω 24 October 2005, Helsinki

Wacky Cake

« Wacky cake. The easiest cake ever. »

At some point last week I felt like making a cake for a few of my coworkers who are having a bit more stress than usual due to some stuff going on at work but I was too tired to really consider making anything of the usual variety. Then I remembered a classic cake that takes about 10-15 minutes to make and is, quite possibly, even easier than a cake from a mix. It also has the bonus of being leavened with vinegar and baking soda instead of eggs. There's no butter or milk, either. It's like a freshman chemistry lab experiment that you can eat instead of wondering how many carcinogenic compounds are in the bubbling liquids before you.

You can mix the cake in the pan, but it's easier to just stir it up in a bowl and pour it into the pan. Line the pan with baking paper, leaving enough excess paper on the sides so that you can lift the cake out of the pan when it is cool, otherwise you'll need to serve it in the pan and it does stick just enough to make serving the first few pieces somewhat annoying. The frosting really complements the cake well, as do the chopped nuts, though both are optional. The frosting will be very stiff and dry when following the recipe so count on adding warm milk or water, a small amount at a time, until it is soft enough to spread on the cake. It's interesting to note that the cake, with the frosting, tastes like both a brownie and a cake. As though a kid had mixed two Duncan Hines mixes together to get one cake with both brownie and chocolate cake flavours.

The cake originates from lean times during wars and economic lows where dairy products and other such foods were difficult to obtain. Somewhat ironically, it does resemble many of the boxed cake mixes in that they both call for oil and water added to the dry ingredients but the wacky cake doesn't require eggs. It's a tasty cake for the whole 10-15 minutes it requires to assemble and frost it.

Wacky Cake or Crazy Cake

Makes: 1 rectangular cake that serves about 12-14 people
Time: 10-15 mins prep
Source: Woman's Day Old-Fashioned Desserts [1978], as reprinted in The American Century Cookbook: The Most Popular Recipes of the 20th Century

Cake

• 1 1/2 cups or 3,5 dl sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons or 0,88 dl vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl cold water

Frosting

• 3 tablespoons or 43g butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl sifted confectioners' (10X) sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• chopped nuts (optional)

1. Cake: Preheat oven to 350F/175C degrees.
2. Sift four, sugar, cocoa, soda, and salt together into ungreased 8X8X2-inch or 20cmX20cmX5cm baking pan.
3. Make three wells in mixture with spoon: one large, one medium, and one small. Into large well pour oil; into medium well, vinegar; into small well, vanilla. Pour water over all and stir with fork until smooth; do not beat.
4. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until springy to touch
5. Frosting: Melt butter in saucepan, add 10X sugar, cocoa, salt and vanilla and beat until smooth. If too stiff to spread, soften with warm milk or water.
6. As soon as cake is done, transfer to wire cooling rack and spread at once with frosting. Cool cake before cutting.

permalink Ω 17 October 2005, Helsinki

Just make a cake

« A lakkakermakakku or cream cake with a cloudberry gelée on top. A traditional Finnish heartstopper of a dessert, the cream cake comes in many forms with many different berry toppings but all feature a generous dose of sweetened cream. »

If there is one cake you are most likely to see on the celebration table in Finland, it is a cake under a mound of whipped cream topped with a fruit gelée. The first time I laid eyes on one of these cream cakes I had to stop and stare much like I did when I first saw the vats of butter mixed with fish roe and chopped egg on the ferry to Stockholm; foods of a completely alien nature. A sweet cake layered with berry jam and cream, iced with a thick coating of cream topped with a berry gelée, the cream cake is basically a sweetened heavy cream transport protocol.

We celebrated my father-in-law's 60th birthday on Sunday and Jarkko asked me to make a cake. Coercing a type or genre of cake out of him was something of a challenge. "Well, he likes all kinds of cake." "Can you be more specific? Sweet or chocolate? Berries? Does he have a favourite? What?" Hours pass. After a bit more interrogation, we settled on the berry-cream cake. Finding a recipe for it though became something of an adventure since classics tend to have a wide array of variation and many of the recipes didn't match the cakes I've seen in the bakeries and frozen foods section at the market. I also suspect that the more modern cookbooks have shunned such classics both for their seeming banal ubiquity and for the payload of billions of grams of fat they tend to carry. I suspect, too, that food snobs judge the worthiness of a dish by how complicated the recipe is or its perceived exoticness by comparison to the local fare. Classic home cooking can be sophisticated and simple at the same time without the need for a large kitchen and a food stylist.

I decided to improvise given the lack of a clear recipe mandate. The basic cake is usually a dry sponge cake made with 4 eggs, sugar and flour that is then moistened with a heavy dose of apple juice that makes for a tough cake paired with soft cream that I generally find unsatisfying since it's like eating cream on a chewy cracker. I wanted something similar, but moist and not overwhelmingly sweet. I decided to go with a really easy plain white layer cake. The recipe calls for cake flour which is a flour with a 6-8% protein content and, in spite of the 'erikois' flour here with pictures of cakes on the packaging, it just doesn't exist in Finland (a good explanation of Finnish flours). Supposedly you can substitute by using 3/4 cup sifted all-purpose flour and 2 tablespoons of cornstarch for every cup of cake flour called for in the recipe. I've not tried this though. I used the 'erikois' flour with a 12% protein content and it worked reasonably well.

The white cake is more rich than the dry sponge, but its texture goes better with the cream and I used less cream for frosting to compensate for the richness of the cake. If you search with google for images of "vadelmakermakakku", you'll get an idea of the extreme density that the cream frosting is usually applied. The photo of the marja-kermakakku from Kotiruoka shows the decorated cream cake with strawberries, sliced kiwi and meringue cookies along with the whipped cream icing. A lot of these cakes tend to be a bit overly done in the decoration department with added sweets that really aren't necessary on an already rather sweet cake. Simple is sublime.

I used 3 round cake pans that I keep around for making layer cakes. I can't recommend baking this cake in one pan and slicing it as it is a very soft and delicate cake. Round cake pans are cheap, less than 8 euros each even in Helsinki, so buy a set of 2 or 3 identical round layer pans and you'll be set. When assembling the cake, you can opt to either make the whole amount of whipped cream and refrigerate the remainder while waiting for the gelée to set, or just whip a third of the cream for the layers and the 'glue' and prepare the remainder when you're ready to ice the cake. Since I let the cake set overnight and iced it in the morning, I opted for the latter so adjust your timing accordingly as needed. There are some who prefer to use 'stabilized' whipped cream for icing, meaning that it is whipped with gelatin or cornstarch, and, unless you're going to be keeping this cake around for a few days you really shouldn't need to use any stabilizers as long as you use good cream and keep the cake refrigerated.

I opted for using cloudberries, but raspberry and strawberry are likely the most commonly found varieties of the cake, especially when they are in season. Cloudberry is not very common outside of northern climes so feel free to swap cloudberries for raspberries, cranberries, etc. and a complementary juice for the gelée. Fresh whole fruit, jam or purée can be used between the cake layers along with the cream. Just think of the cake as cream transport with a bit of cake and berries tossed in for texture. :)

Lakkakermakakku / Cloudberry Cream Cake

Makes: 1 9in/23cm cake
Tools needed: 2-3 round cake pans, baking paper
Time: Prep, about 40 mins, total, 3-5 hours depending on refrigeration time

White Cake Layers

• 2 1/4 cups or 5,50 dl cake flour, plus more for dusting the pans
• 1 cup or 2,35 dl whole milk, at room temperature
• 6 large egg whites, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons almond extract 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25 dl granulated sugar
• 4 teaspoons baking powder 
• 1 teaspoon table salt 
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) or 170g unsalted butter, softened but still cool and cut into small chunks

Layers and frosting

• Lakka/cloudberry jam or 2-3dl of fresh berries
• 2 cups or 5 dl whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
• almond slivers or crushed almonds for decorating (optional)

Gelée

• 2 dl or 3/4 cup cloudberries
• 2 dl or 3/4 cup pure fruit juice, e.g. apple, grapefruit
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 3 2g sheets gelatin

1. For the Cake: Set oven rack in middle position. (If oven is too small to cook both layers on a single rack, set racks in upper-middle and lower-middle positions.) Heat oven to 350F/175C degrees. Butter two or three 9-inch/23cm round cake pans, line the bottoms with baking paper. Grease the baking paper, dust the pans with flour, invert pans and rap sharply to remove excess flour. (The pan prep isn't excessive. These cakes will stick to teflon.)
2. Pour milk, egg whites, and extracts into small bowl and mix with fork until blended.
3. Mix cake flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of electric mixer at slow speed. Add butter; continue beating at slow speed until mixture resembles moist crumbs, with no powdery streaks remaining.
4. Add all but 1/2 cup(1 dl) of milk mixture to crumbs and beat at medium speed (or high speed if using handheld mixer) for 1 1/2 minutes. Add remaining milk to mixture and beat 30 seconds more. Stop mixer and scrape sides of bowl. Return mixer to medium (or high) speed and beat 20 seconds longer. (The addition of the milk makes the mixture a bit gloopy so be careful of splashing batter.)
5. Divide batter evenly between the prepared cake pans; using rubber spatula, spread batter to pan walls and smooth tops. Arrange pans at least 3 inches from the oven walls and 3 inches apart. (If oven is small, place pans on separate racks in staggered fashion to allow for air circulation.) Bake until thin skewer or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 15 to 25 minutes.
6. Let cakes rest in pans for 3 minutes. Loosen from sides of pans with a knife, if necessary, and invert onto cooling racks covered with baking paper. Let cool completely, about 1 1/2 hours.
7. Assembling: Soak the gelatin sheets in a bowl cool water. Microwave the apple juice until it is piping hot. Dissolve the gelatin and sugar in the apple juice and quickly cool by placing juice bowl in an ice/cold water bath. When it is cool enough to touch, add cloudberries, reserving a few whole berries for decorative placement. Place in refrigerator while assembling the cake.
8. Fill large mixing bowl with ice water and place beaters in with the ice water. Once chilled, drain ice water and dry bowl and beaters thoroughly. Add cream, sugar and vanilla to the bowl and mix on low-medium speed for about 30 seconds and increasing the speed to medium until the cream begins to thicken. Increase the speed to high and continue until the cream has doubled in volume. Stop when the cream forms soft peaks. You can also stop using the electric mixer once it has doubled in volume and continue with a whisk until it has the right texture. Just don't overbeat the cream as it will have a bumpy, unappealing look when you ice the cake with it. Place the first cake layer on a plate and spread a thin layer of jam topped with a layer of cream. If you use fresh berries instead of jam, apply a layer of cream and cover with berries and add a small amount more cream to keep the next cake layer in place. Cover with another cake layer and repeat application of jam and cream. Cover with the third and last layer. Place the bowl of whipped cream into a cold refrigerator until you are ready to ice the cake.
9. Take a piece of baking paper long enough to run the circumference of the cake. Trim so that it projects about 3cm above the top of the cake. Apply a thin layer of cream to the outer edge of the top cake layer and wrap the paper around the cake, securing it with the cream. Check the cloudberry gelatin mixture and wait until it has begun to set a little bit before pouring it onto the top of the cake. When it has reached a good consistency, pour gently onto top of the cake, taking care that it doesn't break through the baking paper/cream seal, smooth evenly and carefully with a spatula, add whole berries in a decorative pattern and place cake into the refrigerator for a few hours for the gelatin to become firm.
10. Remove cake from refrigerator, peel away the baking paper and begin by icing the edges of the cake with an icing spatula. Pipe a border of cream along the bottom and top edges, add almonds around the sides of the cake or other decoration as desired, and place in the refrigerator until time to serve.

permalink Ω 13 October 2005, Helsinki

Orange comfort

« A Fennicized Chiffon Pumpkin Pie. Make your own as I ate this one already. :) »

Oh, I've got loads of stuff to write about but my thoughts are so disorganized and scattered lately that it makes it difficult to produce the goods. There are a few more food related things, Riga photos and a few fun odds and ends coming soon if I can get it together before the seemingly near end of times arrives.

Autumn, more than any other season it seems, makes me crave certain seasonal foods like caramel apples made with freshly picked golden delicious apples from Eckert's, caramel and chopped pecans. Most of these foods are either rare or unknown in Finland so when I read the recipe for Chiffon Pumpkin Pie on Simply Recipes, I felt compelled to try making it with what is available here.

Pumpkin, rather curiously, is almost completely absent from the Finnish culinary radar. In fact, the pumpkins sold at the market are labeled as 'pickling' pumpkins since pickled pumpkin is the only form you'll find around here. Latvia, on the other hand, has pumpkin in many of its dishes ranging from entrées to desserts. Why Finns never took to using pumpkin is an interesting question. My initial taste test on a few Finns was ok, but reserved, though a few really enjoyed it. But, in the absence of Libby's canned pumpkin (the expat extortion shop in Kamppi is gone), fresh whole pumpkins can be had and it's rather painless to make your own purée. Pumpkin has been on the American menu since before there was an America. Rick Rogers in Thanksgiving 101 explores just how important the pumpkin was to the Indians and the settlers and the origin of the pumpkin pie:

The Indians probably roasted pumpkin over an open fire or boiled it with maple syrup. Pumpkin pudding became one of the favorite dishes of the Puritan era. The pumpkin flash was scooped out, mixed with milk, spices, and syrup, then returned to the pumpkin shell, where it was roasted for hours in hot ashes. It is easy to see where the basic recipe for pumpkin pie filling came from. Known to the settlers as pompion (the name given by French explorers in the late 1500s), pumpkin saved them from starvation in the lean early years of their colony.

One of the first recipes for pumpkin pie appeared in 1655 in a British book called Queens Closed Open. This version represents the then-current taste for highly seasoned foods, and includes thyme, rosemary, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, cloves and apple. In 1672, an English-American merchant named John Josselyn was already calling pompion stew "an Ancient New England dish." He says to take diced ripe squash and "...so fill a pot with them of two or three gallons, stew them upon a gentle fire a whole day, then as they sink...fill again with fresh pompions not putting any liquor to them and when it is stirred enough it will look like baked Apples, this Dish putting Butter to it and Vinegar and some Spice as Ginger which makes it tart like an Apple, and so serve it up to be eaten with fish or flesh." Josselyn's "stew" would be recognized today as the pumpkin butter put up by New England cooks. Amelia Simmons included "pompkin" pie in the first American cookbook, published in 1796.

The history of the modern pumpkin pie can be dated back to 1929. In that year, Libby, McNeil and Libby bought a small pumpkin pie cannery, Dickinson Canning Company. The little cannery's pride and joy was its special eating pumpkin, now called the Dickinson variety. Eating pumpkins, very different from the Jack-o'-lantern varieties grown for their size and appearance, are elongated and buff-colored with thin walls. The Dickinson is noted for its bright orange color, creamy texture, and fresh taste. Libby's took years to develop its own strain, improving upon the Dickinson, called "Libby's Select."

I made the pie according to the recipe and it failed rather miserably. It tasted good, but the pie never set, not even after being in the freezer, which I attributed to the 1/2 cup of rum, not enough gelatin and not draining the pumpkin purée before using it. I'm reasonably certain the 1/2 cup of rum was a misprint from the Boston Globe or an overly generous Granny with a taste for rum as it seems rather unlikely that a pie with that much rum could set properly. So, I reworked the recipe a bit, adjusted some of the ingredients and changed the technique a bit to make a reliable recipe for expats here hankering for a pumpkin pie and Finns wanting to try something different. Pumpkin is good stuff, even if you can't, like myself, stand the smell and the slimy innards of a fresh pumpkin.

Chiffon pies have been said to be the "First really new pie of the twentieth century" (Rare Bits, pg. 256) and debuted in the early 1920's as "soufflé" or "gelatin" pies. In The American Century Cookbook it goes into some detail about the history of the pie.

"Chiffon pies were invented in 1921 by a professional baker who lived in Iowa. By beating egg whites with a fruit-flavored syrup until the mixture was light and fluffy, he achieved a filling that his mother said 'looked like a pile of chiffon.'"

It's a story I've been unable to substantiate. Besides, Knox Gelatine's 1915 booklet, Dainty Desserts for Dainty People features gelatin "sponges," "marshmallow puddings," and "marshmallow creams" - the airy mixes that would one day emerge as chiffon fillings. It only took a few more years for someone to pile them into pie shells.

Searches of several dozen early-twentieth-century cookbooks turned up a few "soufflé" and "sponge" pies, but these contained no gelatin and/or whipped cream. They were baked pies with stiffly beaten egg whites folded in just before they went into the oven.

[...]

Chiffon pies remained popular right through the '70s. Then in the 1980s when salmonella began compromising the wholesomeness of our eggs, they fell from favor. But only briefly. Savvy food manufacturers discovered that powdered egg whites, cream cheese, whipped toppings and marshmallow cream could double nicely for raw egg whites.

Thus, '90s chiffon pies are likely to contain no eggs at all. And sometimes no gelatin. There's usually no stinting, however, on whipped cream.

Finland doesn't appear to have a problem with salmonella so, aside from egg whites being pretty low risk anyway, it's likely safe to use them. I'm not dead yet. :) You can also substitute meringue powder or make an italian meringue while adjusting the sugar in the recipe to avoid sugar overload.

What's really great about making this pie is how the taste of nutmeg and pumpkin really hit me with a taste I've not had in three years or more. It can be occasionally amazing how certain flavours and scents can evoke such a powerful sense of memory and feeling. This pie would be great in spite of its rarity here, but it's even better than cheeze-its in terms of expat comfort food. :) Now all I need is a heap of roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and mom's weird, but good, cranberry mold.

Chiffon Pumpkin Pie

Makes: 1 9 inch/24cm pie
Requires: Springform pan
Time: Preparation, about 1h. Total, 6h-12h(if chilled overnight)

Crust:

• 1 cup or 200g crushed piparkakut or digestive biscuits
• 1/4 cup or 1/2 dl sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (optional)
• 3 tablespoons or 42g butter, melted

Filling:

• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/2 cup or 1,25dl milk
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (muscovado), packed
• 6 2g sheets or 2 envelopes gelatin
• 1 3/4 cups (1 can) or 4,25 dl fresh pumpkin purée or plain canned pumpkin
• 2 teaspoons dark rum or 1 teaspoon rum extract
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar (viinikivi)

Topping:

• 1 cup or 2,5 dl heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 1 teaspoon rum/vanilla extract
• crushed or halved piparkakut/digestives

For the pumpkin purée: Cut a pumpkin (not jack-o'-lantern variety) weighing about 2-3kg/4.5-7lb into quarters, scrape the seeds away, place on a lightly oiled baking pan, cover with foil and bake in an 325F/175C oven for about an hour to an and a half or until the flesh is very tender. Score the pumpkin with a knife after about 30 minutes. Scrape the cooked pumpkin away from the skin with a spoon into a bowl and purée with a hand blender or a food processor. Discard the skin. Pour puréed pumpkin into a fine wire sieve or cheesecloth, place over a bowl and leave to drain for several hours until it is a thick paste. Don't skimp on the draining of the pumpkin as it will make for a pie that doesn't set properly and has a slimy texture.

For the crust: Preheat the oven to 325F/175C. Butter a 9-inch/24cm springform pan. Line the bottom with baking paper.

Crush piparkakut/digestives in a food processor, with a hand blender or with a rolling pin into fine crumbs. Mix in sugar and ginger well and pour butter evenly over the top. Blend together well and press the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. Use the bottom of a glass to press the mixture firmly and evenly. Bake the crust for 8-15 minutes, until it is lightly browned.

For the filling: Combine nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, salt and brown sugar in a bowl and set aside. Place 6 sheets of gelatin in a bowl of cold water to soften. In a saucepan, combine the 3 egg yolks and milk with a whisk over a medium-high heat and stir with a whisk until it begins to thicken. Do not boil! Remove from heat, stir in the sugar and spices and whisk until well blended. Squeeze water from the softened gelatin sheets and quickly dissolve in the hot custard. Allow to cool for about 30 minutes and stir in pumpkin and rum or rum extract. Pour into a bowl and place in the refrigerator until it just begins to set, about an hour or so.

Once the pumpkin mixture has begun to set, put the egg whites into a dry bowl and mix on low speed until they are a bit foamy. Add sugar and cream of tartar and mix on high speed until it forms soft but firm peaks. Don't overbeat to stiff peaks or else the whites won't blend evenly with the pumpkin mixture. Fold the whites into the pumpkin mix and pour into the springform pan. Place the pan into the refrigerator for at least 3 hours or, optimally, overnight.

For the topping: Whip cream, sugar and rum/vanilla flavouring to soft peaks. Remove the pan from the refrigerator and spread the cream evenly over the top of the pumpkin layer. Refrigerate for another hour or so. When ready to serve, take a dish towel, soak it in hot water, wring out and use to warm the sides of the pan. Take a dull knife and run it around the edge of the pie before gently removing the springform rim. Pipe cream around the edge of the pie if desired, garnish with crushed or halved piparkakut/digestives, slice into wedges and serve.

permalink Ω 10 October 2005, Helsinki

Viking Balls

« Danish aebleskivers served with apple marmalade and whipped cream. »

In one of those half-dazed moments of information overload while lazily surfing the web, I somewhere ran across a Nordic Ware pan that had 7 semi-circular depressions in it called an ebleskiver pan. Curious and bored, I started hunting around for what an ebleskiver was and found that it is aebleskiver and a sort of Danish pancake ball.

One website proclaimed that they are "the newest Scandinavian party food sweeping the country (US, of course)." Perhaps I missed that memo. :) Hell, no one but the Norwegian guy at work knew what I was talking about and even the guy at customs looked at the pan I ordered and asked me what it was. Someone should remind Scandinavia of its own food sometime. The Norwegian at work also mentioned that they are popular for birthdays, aside from the holidays, and that the namesake of the pancake, apple slice, isn't really added to the pancake anymore.

I poked around at a few recipes since they seem to come in two different strains; yeast vs. no yeast and buttermilk vs. milk or water. Another popular technique is to add egg foam to the batter for lift which I suspect would just make them dry. I figure that since they are an older tradition, that yeast would be a bit more traditional and would be a bit better than chemical leavening. Yeast can be a bit overzealous and, even if you make the batter in a large bowl, be sure to set it on a rimmed plate or pan when placing it in the refrigerator overnight.

I tried various sorts of apple marmalade and jam in the pancakes and found that it tended to make the ball flat and gooey. The empty plastic catsup bottle, which made squirting batter into the divots dead easy and quick, is highly recommended as I tried one round with a large spoon but the pancakes cook quickly and I felt rushed to get them all filled before starting to turn them. Putting butter in the pan also tended to make them too greasy. Cooking the pancake just enough to develop a crust before turning it also seemed to work the best. Knitting needles are said to be old Danish grandmothers' tool of choice, but I used a wooden set of chopsticks from chinese take-away. Flipping them takes a little practice, but it comes along quickly.

These suckers are so good, I ate every one off the plate as soon as I took the above photo. They'll be a regular feature of Sunday mornings henceforth as the last few Sundays have started with them and I think I'm addicted now. :)

Yeasted Æbleskivers

Makes: about 64 æbleskivers
Special equipment: æbleskiver pan, empty plastic catsup bottle
Time: prep: 15 minutes, plan 12-24 hours ahead
Source: CI

• 1 3/4 cups or 4,25 dl whole milk
• 8 tablespoons or 113g unsalted butter , cut into 8 pieces
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 ounces)
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon table salt 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast 
• 2 large eggs 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar

1. Heat milk and butter in small saucepan over medium-low heat until butter is melted, 3 to 5 minutes. Cool milk/butter mixture until it is about 43C/109F. Meanwhile, whisk flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon and yeast in large bowl to combine. Gradually whisk warm milk/butter mixture into flour mixture; continue to whisk until batter is smooth. In small bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla until combined, then add egg mixture to batter and whisk until incorporated. Scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula, cover bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 12 and up to 24 hours. Be sure to place the bowl on a plate with a rim as the yeast will likely cause the batter to overflow the bowl.
2. Set oven to 95C/200F. Heat aebleskiver pan over a medium-high heat until a few drops of water thrown on the pan sizzle. Transfer batter to an old plastic catsup bottle to make dispensing it into the divots easy and quick or use a large rounded tablespoon to drop the batter into the pan. Allow the batter to cook for about 30 seconds, then grab a wooden take-away chinese chopstick, insert it near the top rim of the cooking batter and flip the pancake over in one quick motion. Let them cook for another 45 seconds or so and flip over again until the outside is a nice golden brown colour.
3. Place finished aebleskivers in the warm oven in a single layer on a baking sheet while you are making others to keep them warm and non-soggy. Serve with apple marmalade, apple butter or jam and whipped cream.

permalink Ω 2 October 2005, Helsinki

Fart Thursday

« Creamy Green Pea Soup. »

The cliché of all clichés of Finnish food, akin to apple pie in the US, is pea soup. You read and hear about pea soup Thursday with great regularity from random tourists, visitors and journalists alike. Now, to be honest, I've never really cared much for pea soup given that it usually came from a Campbell's soup can and shared much texture and flavour characteristics with those of white school paste. I gave up my wanton paste eating ways years ago so I had no burning desire to give much attention to pea soup, even in Finland.

But, Gourmet magazine in Finland had an interesting article about pea soup in their regular Kitchen Classics feature that often spotlights the history of foods long since forgotten. I clipped it out and thought maybe I'd get around to trying it out since there's nothing like a hot bowl of soup when it's cold and dreary outside. The article reveals that, like so many other culinary traditions here and elsewhere, the tradition has religious roots.

Home Kitchen Classics - Pea Soup / Hernekeitto

by Inga Aaltonen

Pea soup has been firmly at the center of Finnish food culture that seemingly potato, pizza and pasta have been unable to replace over the centuries. In office cafeterias, pea soup has been established as a Thursday menu fixture, though there have been attempts to unseat this ubiquity. Even the Helsinki University teachers complained when the dining room attempted to take away Thursday pea soup.

"The warmest army memories of many are about the steaming hot dish arriving in the foxhole. Peasoup never tasted better", writes the Ruotuväki (Finnish army) magazine.

"In the field kitchens, peasoup simmers for many hours and the steaming soup tastes especially good for the company out in the woods. For vegetarians the peasoup is made without meat", says the Army superintendent in charge of food, Liisa Gröhndahl.

A Tradition of Fasting

The tradition of pea soup as the Thursday meal gained in popularity already in the 1400s. Then the effect of Catholic church was strong in Sweden, especially in Western Gothenland, where there were many monasteries. According to the church rules Friday was for fasting. In the day preceding the fast it became customary to eat as heartily as possible. Pea soup gave strength and kept the hunger away for a long time. The peas were held to be better raw material (for soup) than the ingredients of the common daily meal, swede and cabbage. Moreover, pea soup was handy to make back when food was most often prepared in one cauldron. Pea soup was fortified with a slice of lard.

Pea soup is strange in that it has been been enjoyed in Finland for centuries now also during the weekend and holidays. Pea soup has been offered as a valued feast food both in weddings and at funerals. The importance of pea soup as a feast food can be seen in that the task of making the soup was given to a special pea soup cook. In Finland the pea soup has been thickened with rye flour, oats, sometimes a little bit of swede has been added. Meat is added, usually pork, but also mutton or beef.

Traditionally also a pork foot has been put to boil in the soup. The salted feet have been first soaked over night in water, then smoked or dried, baked lightly in low heat, and then added to the soup.

In my home, father was always given a pig foot for laskiainen (Shrovetide), half of which he enjoyed with some self-made mustard and beetroot-in-vinegar. Us kids were not very interested in eating and sucking the pig feet. We just ate quietly hoping that eating the laskiais pea soup without making a sound would help to keep the mosquitoes away during the summer.

Tastes from Around the World

Konrad Hagger, who was born in 1666 in Württemberg, rose from a sculley cook to the cook in the court of the archbishop of Salzburg, Johann Ernst Graf Thun. There Hagger wrote an extensive cookbook based on what he had learned over the years, and the book was published in 1719. Konrad Hagger's Saltzburgishes Kochbuch is a beautifully illustrated cookbook with over 2500 recipes. Most of the recipes are fish and other fasting time recipes and tips.

There is also a pea soup recipe which is served in wintertime with smoked tongue. The soup can be made, in addition to peas, also from barley, lentils, or beans. The barley, peas, lentils, and the like are soaked, and prepared in the best possible way, and then either pureed or left whole. In any case, the soaked tongue is sliced very thinly, cubed, and then either added to the soup or served directly on the plates. If the soup is pureed, one can also enjoy toasted bread cubes. The serving ideas of Konrad Hagger are sensible even today!

The Swedish pea soup is made of yellow peas. In northern Sweden the soup is traditionally spiced with marjoram, and in southern Sweden with thyme. Later it became common to serve warm punch and, as dessert, pancakes or crepes with jam along with the soup.

I never quite understood the whole fasting your way to holiness thing. I'll confess now that I used to eat meat on Fridays during lent and, well, any other day I wasn't supposed to. So, pea soup Thursday is a mini-version of Lent's Fat Tuesday which, after having made and eaten a bit of this soup, could easily be renamed to Fart Thursday. If methane will take you closer to heaven, this stuff will rocket you right on past Pluto. It could be a viable biofuel option in years to come.

Gourmet offered a recipe for pea soup that I started with but altered slightly since boiling stuff together generally doesn't make for a lot of flavour and, aside from not usually being able to find a pork knuckle at the local grocer, a good stock from bones tends to take a lot of time and patience, both of which I don't often have in large quantities. Sautéing the onions, spices and meat before adding the stock and the peas gives the soup a much richer flavour. The rye croutons along with the sour cream with mustard really, really make for a delicious bowl of soup with a pleasant texture. Beano served beforehand is also recommended. :)

Chunky Pea Soup

Makes: about 6-8 servings of hearty soup
Time: about 10 minutes prep, but 3 hours cooking time
Source: Gourmet (FIN)

• 6 dl (500g) or 1 lb dried peas
• 2-2,5 L or 8.5-10.5 cups water
• 600-800g or about 1.5 lb pork knuckle or lean pork, cubed
• (chicken bouillon)
• 1 or 2 onions or leeks, chopped
• 2-3 medium carrots, chopped
• (a bit of minced garlic and/or ginger)
• 1-2 tablespoons butter
• salt
• majoram or thyme

toppings

• sour cream or kermaviili
• mustard
• rye bread croutons

1. Rinse peas. Soak in cold water for 12-24 hours.
2. Chop onions/leeks and sautee with butter and seasonings until soft. If using lean pork meat rather than the knuckle, chop and quickly cook it with the onions and sesonings. Boil water and prepare chicken stock from bouillon and add to the onions and meat.
3. Pour the peas along with the soaking water into the soup pot with the meat and onions and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2-3 hours. Remove the pork knuckle if using and remove the meat, chop it up and put it into the soup.
4. Serve with a dallop of sour cream mixed with mustard and fresh rye bread croutons. (slice bread into squares, toss in a bowl with a little olive oil or butter, toast in the oven until brown.)
5. Open the windows.

After being happy with the chunky pea soup I noticed that creamy pea soup was also rather common in a lot of the local cookbooks. I was curious about the texture so I chose a recipe from CI that called for sautéing shallots or leeks and included iceberg lettuce for a bit of frothy lift which I thought was a nice touch.

One thing I do get annoyed with on many occasions are recipes that ask for a food processor since, as far as I'm concerned, all a food processor does is make more work for you as they are hard to clean, they're a pain in the ass to use and they consume a lot of precious counter space. I swear by the little hand blender I bought a few years back that does 99% of all tasks that a home cook could want from a food processor. The hand blender puréed the soup in the pot without a problem. The original recipe also directs the cook to put the purée through a strainer but the soup was so smooth I can't imagine why anyone would want to do this since, after straining, the result is a very thin, green liquid.

As with the chunky style pea soup, the addition of croutons, sour cream with mustard and a bit of reduced balsamic vinegar really make this soup. Of the two soups, I can't really decide which I liked more, but both were a massive improvement over the paste-like canned soups and cafeteria soups that generally have little, if any, flavour.

Creamy Green Pea Soup

Makes: about 6 1/2 cups, serving 4 to 6
Time: about 30 minutes
Source: CI

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter 
• 8 medium shallots (about 140g), minced, or 1 medium leek, white and light green parts chopped fine (about 1 1/3 cups or 3 1/4 dl)
• 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 3 1/2 cups or 8,25dl chicken broth 
• 1 1/2 pounds or 700g frozen peas, partially thawed at room temperature for 10 minutes
• 12 leaves Boston/iceberg lettuce (about 3 ounces/85g) from 1 small head, leaves washed and dried
• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl heavy cream 
• Table salt and ground black pepper 

 

toppings

• sour cream or kermaviili
• mustard
• rye bread croutons
• reduced balsamic vinegar

1. Heat butter in large saucepan over low heat until foaming; add shallots or leeks and cook, covered, until softened, 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until thoroughly combined, about 30 seconds. Stirring constantly, gradually add chicken broth. Increase heat to high and bring to boil; reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 3 to 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in food processor, process partially thawed peas until coarsely chopped. Or, if you don't have a food processor, use a hammer on the bags of peas to break them up a bit or the chopper attachment for a hand blender. Add peas and lettuce to simmering broth. Increase heat to medium-high, cover and return to simmer; simmer 3 minutes. Uncover, reduce heat to medium-low, and continue to simmer 2 minutes longer.
3. Puree soup with a hand blender or in a standing blender. When smooth, stir in cream. Heat mixture over low heat until hot, about 3 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper; top with sour cream mustard, balsamic vinegar, and croutons. Serve immediately.

permalink Ω 30 September 2005, Helsinki

Little, Orange, Tart

« Layers of rich chocolate cake sandwiched between a light and fluffy tyrni mousse topped with a sweet tyrni gelée. »

One of the more unusual foods in Finland is the tyrni berry, a.k.a. sea buckthorn, which is a tart and bright orange fruit that grows up north. Jarkko brought a bottle of the unsweetened juice to Boston once and sprang it on me without preparing me for the taste of the day-glo orange coloured fluid. My mouth puckered so hard from the tartness that I think it took a few hours for my face to return to normal. After all the trouble he went through of buying the juice and carting it all the way to the US, I'm glad he had a good laugh.

The herring market in early October usually brings with it quite a lot of tyrni products. It's an expensive berry since the fruit is difficult to pick and must be done by hand so, aside from jelly, juice and frozen puree, it's not very common to find products containing tyrni even in Finland. The Finnish word for the berry is rather recent with the first citation being from 1850 hailing from the old Norse þyrnir and old Swedish thörne. It is a virtually unheard of berry outside of cold northern climes and China though it appears that some attempts are being made at cultivating plants for commercial harvesting at more southern latitudes. The Berry Bible didn't have any recipes containing the sea buckthorn, but did include a rather informative description of it.

Sea Buckthorn Berry

Common Names: buckthorn, sanddorn (Germany), oblepikha (Russia), argousier (France), havtorn (Sweden). The name sea buckthorn is derived from its habit of growing near the sea with its thorny spines.

Scientific Classification: Sea buckthorns (Hippophae rhamnoides) are a member of the oleaster family (Elaeagnaceae) and related to the Russian olive and the oleaster. Their name is derived from the Greek language: hippo, meaning "horse", phoas, meaning "light", and rhamnoides, from their resemblance to the genus Rhamnus-the buckthorns. The ancient Greeks fed this plant to their horses to improve their health and to make their coat shiny. the Russian name for this plant, oblepikha, means "to cling to," referring to the berries, which are firmly attached to the branches.

Habitat and Distribution: Sea buckthorns are deciduous shrubs with round orange berries (they can be red or yellow, too, but not as commonly) that are native to the northern regions of Eurasia. They are particularly widespread in northern Europe and on the seacoasts of Romania, Mongolia, and China and are divided into eight subspecies by geographic location. they grow from sea level, preferring the slopes of riverbanks and the seashore, to 10,000 feet in the Himalayas.

In Russia families grow sea buckthorns in the gardens at their dachas. The berries are harvested at the end of summer and canned or made into jams or taken to the cities and sold at farmers' markets.

North American gardeners grow sea buckthorns as ornamentals for their colourful orange berries that remain on the bush all winter long.

History: Legend has it that the sea buckthorns were the food of Pegasus, the flying horse of Greek mythology. The medicinal qualities of these historic fruits are recorded in ancient Greek and Tibetan texts from as early as the seventh century, when the sea buckthorn was considered a universal healing agent. It was used to treat rheumatism, scurvy, tumors, skin diseases, and intestinal disorders.

Where they are grown commercially: Sea buckthorns were domesticated in Siberia in the 1930s and are often called Siberian pineapple after their similar flavor. In Eurasia this shrub is one of the most widely grown northern fruits.

Russia, Mongolia and China are the largest producers of sea buckthorn products in the world. The berries are harvested commercially and processed for jellies, juices, liqueurs, candy, vitamin C tablets, tea, ice cream, cosmetics, and medicines.

Currently, many countries, including Canada, Russia, China, and Scandinavia, have breeding programs for this berry. With recent scientific studies showing their high antioxidant levels, which give them protective and anti-inflammatory properties, production is likely to increase in North America if a sea buckthorn can be developed that can separate easily from the plant so it can be harvested mechanically.

Sea buckthorn plants are available for home gardens. To order, see One Green World's web site, www.onegreenworld.com.

So, when I noticed a recipe for tyrni in the most recent issue of Ruoka & Viini, I decided to give it a try since the juice is good when it has been sweetened and I vaguely remembered that it is Jarkko's favourite berry. Thus begins my saga of 1 week and 3 cakes.

The original chocolate cake recipe called for 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks along with a decilitre of ground almonds. The big problem with this recipe; the cake was dry to the point of being nearly impossible to slice into two layers and, once layered, the cake was too hard to go well with the soft mousse which made it fall apart when eating it. The chocolate flavour was dulled by the almond as well which I didn't think complemented the tangy zing of the tyrni either.

I went looking for a simple, moist, chocolatey cake recipe that might work in its stead. The soft, rich chocolate cake I found has the perfect texture to accompany the mousse. I have always avoided slicing chocolate cakes into layers whenever possible since I'm not very good at it and they tend to be very delicate. However, it becomes an issue with this cake since the springform pan is necessary for building the cake. I did make one cake with 2 layer cake pans and baker's cellophane but it was an exercise in patience. The springform pan is far easier to deal with but, unless you have two of them in the same size, you're going to have to slice the cake into layers. It helps to have a long, sharp serrated knife and a pancake spatula or two to assist in positioning the cake without damaging it in the process. The chocolate layers are the most difficult part of this cake.

The mousse is easy to make though I decided to whip the cream first since it requires that the bowl and beaters are clean, dry and cold and getting that out of the way is more efficient. I also added the cooled gelatin-fruit juice mix to the cream cheese mixture without the whipped cream and chilled it while the cake was baking and cooling since it is too runny to whip with the cream and expect it to be fluffy. Chilling it a bit makes it firmer and easier to whip. If you can't get or don't want the added liquor, you can simply add an equivalent amount of juice and extra sugar.

It's a beautiful cake and one must enjoy the bright orange qualities of it as well. Allow the cake to warm up a wee bit before serving and decorate with dark chocolate swirls and possibly some tyrni purée or berries. This cake is so good that only one of the three I made got taken to work and my taste testers loved it. If you don't have tyrni juice or jelly available, you might substitute cranberry or raspberry successfully, too.

Chocolate-buckthorn mousse cake

Makes: one 20-24cm/8-9.5in cake
Time: 35 mins prep + chilling and baking time
Special tools: springform pan
Source: Ruoka & Viini

chocolate layer cake

Makes: 2 8-9in/20-22cm cake layers
Source: CI

• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl cocoa (natural)
• 2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
• 1.25 cups or 3 dl all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (optional)
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl whole milk, room temperature
• 1.5 sticks or 170g unsalted butter, softened
• 1.25 cups or 3 dl sugar
• 2 large eggs, room temperature

buckthorn mousse

• 200g or 7oz philadelphia cream cheese or other tuorejuusto (softened)
• 1 1/3 dl or 1/2 cup tyrni/buckthorn jelly
• 3 tablespoons tyrni/buckthorn liquor (optional)
• 2 dl or 3/4 cup whipping cream
• 3 2g gelatin sheets or about 1 .25oz gelatin packet
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup sweetened pure tyrni/buckthorn juice

buckthorn gelée

• 3 2g gelatin sheets or about 1 .25oz gelatin packet
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sweetened pure tyrni/buckthorn juice
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 dl or 1/2 cup water

1. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 350F/175C degrees. Grease two 8-9.5 in/20-24 cm round baking pans or one springform pan. Line pan bottoms with waxed or parchment paper; grease paper as well. **(note: I used a 24cm pan so a 20cm pan might need to use a little less of the batter else the layers might be a bit too thick. YMMV.)
2. Whisk the cocoa, instant coffee, flour, baking soda, and salt in medium bowl and set aside. Add vanilla to the milk and set aside.
3. Beat butter in bowl of electric mixer set at medium-high speed until smooth and shiny, about 30 seconds. Gradually sprinkle in sugar; beat until mixture is fluffy and almost white, 3 to 5 minutes. Add eggs one at a time, beating 1 full minute after each addition.
4. With mixer on lowest speed, add about 1/3 of dry ingredients to batter, followed immediately by the milk/vanilla mixture; mix until ingredients are almost incorporated into batter. Repeat process twice more. When batter appears blended, stop mixer and scrape bowl sides with rubber spatula. Return mixer to low speed; beat until batter looks satiny, about 15 seconds longer.
5. Divide batter evenly between pans. With rubber spatula, run batter to pan sides and smooth top. Bake cakes until they feel firm in center when lightly pressed and skewer comes out clean or with just a crumb or two adhering, 23 to 30 minutes or about 45-50 minutes if using single pan. Tranfer pans to wire racks; cool for 20 minutes. Run knife around perimeter of each pan, invert cakes onto racks, and peel off paper liners.
6. For the mousse: Place gelatin sheets in a bowl of cool water for a few minutes. Heat the juice in the microwave until hot. Squeeze water from the gelatin sheets and dissolve in the hot juice. Set aside to cool.
7. Whip the cold cream to stiff peaks and place in the refrigerator until needed.
8. Whip softened cream cheese, jelly and liquor together until fluffy. Beat in the fully cooled gelatin-juice mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and whip again until smooth. Place into the refrigerator for about an hour while the cake cools. Don't leave the gelatin-juice mixture in the cold for too long as you only want it to thicken, not gel.
9. After the cake has cooled and the layers are ready, remove the whipped cream and the cream cheese mixture from the refrigerator and whip them together until smooth and fluffy.
10. Wash the springform pan ring, if using a springform pan, and position it on the pan with the bottom cake layer in place. Pour half of the mousse over the bottom layer and make even with an offset spatula. Gently place the second layer of chocolate cake on top and repeat with the other half of the mousse, taking special care to make the top even and smooth. Cover top with plastic wrap and place flat on a shelf in the refrigerator for an hour or two. Microwave the gelée juice, sugar and water until hot and dissolve gelatin. Set aside to cool while the mousse is firming up in the refrigerator.
11. Remove the cake from the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap and slowly pour the cooled gelée mixture into a spoon held just above the mousse. Replace the plastic wrap and refrigerate the cake for another few hours or overnight.

permalink Ω 25 September 2005, Helsinki

Berry Berrissimo

« Cranberry Berrissimo Pie »

The problem with the lingonberry being plentiful and easy to harvest is wondering what in the hell to do with two big buckets of them. Technically the benzoic acid in lingonberries keep them from spoiling for quite a long time but if I don't deal with them while they're fresh, I'll forget about them and then I'll have the first known specimen of furry green lingonberries in the history of humankind. So, welcome to red food month which follows on the heels of blue food month.

Lingonberry is, for all practical consideration, a smaller, juicier version of the American bog cranberry. I've been making stuff all week with the berries we picked on Sunday, but I'll start with a pie. I wanted a quick and easy pie, i.e. I was cooking too many other things at the time to make a pulla crust pie, so I went looking for one of those 'one bowl' kind of pies where you mix everything up in a bowl and shove the pan in the oven. The Berry Bible had a recipe that was close, but called for blackberries but I figured I could substitute lingonberries without too much trouble. It's called 'berrissimo' because it means 'the most berries', but it sounds more like one of the Sopranoes talking with their mouth full. :) The recipe is also very similar to many of the Nordic pie recipes but with a slight twist. I liked the 3-step baking of the crust, then the berries and then the filling since getting all the parts of a pie baked for just the right amount is often a challenge.

The pie is very easy to make though I found it difficult to slice and serve from the tart pan, which didn't have a removable bottom, so it might be easier to use a springform pan or a tart pan with a removable bottom. I used the créme fraîche, but think it would work equally well with rahkaa or kermaviili for a slightly lighter taste. The taste of the berries isn't overwhelmed by the filling or crust nor is it overly sweet.

One litre of berries down - only 20 more to go. :)

Berrissimo

makes: 10-12 servings
time: about 1 hour
source: The Berry Bible

crust:

• 2 cups or 4.75 dl all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
• 1/2 pound or 225g cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
• 1 large egg

filling:

• 1-1 1/5 cup or 2.5-3.5 dl sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 4 cups or 9.5 dl fresh lingonberries rinsed and drained

topping:

• 1 cup or 2.5 dl sour cream/creme fraiche/rahka
• 3 large egg yolks
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 2 tablespoons vanilla sugar

Preheat oven to 400F/204C.

Put the flour, 2 tablespoons sugar, lemon zest and salt together in a bowl and blend together. Add butter and egg and mix until just blended. Press the dough, using your fingertips, into an 11-inch/28cm tart pan. Chill.

Mix together sugar with the cinnamon. Sprinkle a little of the mixture over the tart shell and bake it for 15 minutes. Sprinkle with the rest of the cinnamon sugar over the berries and mix well. Pour into pie shell. Bake for another 15 minutes.

Whisk together the sour cream, egg yolks, honey and vanilla and pour it over the berries. Bake for 15 minutes longer, until the topping is set and just starts to turn golden brown around the edges. A knife inserted in the center should come out clean. Server warm or at room temperature for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or a snack.

permalink Ω 8 September 2005, Helsinki

Blue Foods

« Blueberry pie with a pulla dough crust. »

Continuing with the blue foods month theme from the blue moomin princess cake there is the blueberry pie. The Finnish blueberry/bilberry is a bit different from the North American blueberry, though from what I gather from reading around the net, there has been some successful cross breeding of the two varieties to get a sweet blueberry that grows on taller bushes and in more easily harvested bunches. The blueberries are smaller and have serious staining power. Marianna's Finnish Berries reference has a good comparison between the two, though it describes the North American blueberry as sweeter but I always remember blueberries tasting icky when picking them as a kid for my mother's jam making projects. If you use the non-Finnish blueberries, adjust the amount of sugar accordingly to 1/4 cup or so.

I love pie, but I never have enjoyed making the pie crust since American pie crusts are a butter dough that is a pain in the ass to work with given that it's mostly butter with a bit of flour to hold it together. More modern pie crust dough recipes use something called Crisco which, if you ever want to get the mystery glare from a Finnish grocer, ask for it or hydrogenated vegetable oil and enjoy. The idea with Crisco is that it has a higher melting point and thus makes it easier to work with when rolling the dough and makes for a flakier crust. It used to be touted as a healthier alternative to butter but a solid fat is a saturated fat so, all things being equal, the natural product is likely a better way to go. I have found a brick of something called 'Kulta-munkki' which is a solid vegetable fat even at room temperature that is a looks to be a promising candidate for a Finnish Crisco, though I've not tried it yet.

So when I saw the recipe for a pulla dough crust instead of a floury butter crust, I couldn't wait to try it. I find making a yeast dough much more enjoyable and easier than a pie dough. A colleague of mine gave me a big bowl of blueberries so I thought a pie would be perfect. I pulled down my jadeware pie plate/form and proceeded to fill it. Bad move. Finnish pie is not American Pie as I had to bake that sucker far too long to get the filling up to temperature. I keep forgetting that in Finland, pie is something more like the thickness of a brownie than a heaping round pie plate like I'm used to. I could probably manage a pie of American dimensions with this recipe, but I'd cook the filling a bit first and cover the top crust with foil until the last 10 minutes. In spite of the volume error, the pie was excellent even though the crust was a bit crispy. :)

Mummin Mustikkapiirakka / Grandma's Blueberry Pie

Makes: 1 pie
Source: Ruoka & Viini, Nro 30, 5/2005

Pulla dough crust:

• 3 dl or 1.25 cups milk
• 100g or 7 tablespoons butter
• 25g cake yeast or dry yeast equivalent
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons finely ground cardamom (optional)
• 7,5-8,5 dl or 3.24-3.75 cups flour

Filling:

• 6 dl or 2.5 cups blueberries
• 1-1,25 dl or about 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice

Topping:

• 1 egg
• pearl sugar

1. Filling: Mix blueberries, sugar and flour together in a bowl and allow to macerate while making the crust. Set aside.
2. Dough: Warm the milk and butter over a low heat until it is warm to the touch (approx 35C/95F). (You can also leave the butter until the very end and knead it in if you prefer) Stir in yeast until dissolved. If using dry yeast, mix it first with a little flour and only then add it to the milk which should be a bit warmer, about 42C/107F. Add salt, sugar and cardamom. Add in about half the flour. Stir the mixture until it begins to thicken.
3. Add remaining flour about 1 dl (1/2 cup) at a time and knead in by hand or with a mixer fitted with a dough hook. The dough will become soft, elastic and form a ball when the right amount of flour has been added. (If you add too much flour, the dough will be dry and chewy when baked so it's better if you add the flour by hand since you have a better feel for when the right point has been reached. I tend to sift in the flour, too.)
4. Place a towel or plastic wrap over the bowl with the dough and place it in a warm, draft-free place, such as the oven set on warm. Allow to double in size (about 30 minutes).
5. Crust: (use 2/3 of the dough and make pulla or another small pie with the remainder.) Take half of the dough, place on a sheet of baking paper and roll out to a size to fit your pie form. Moisten the counter first before placing the paper on top to make it easier when rolling the dough.
6. Roll to about 1cm thickness and transfer to the pie form. Work the dough into the pan and place in the oven/proofing box to rise again for about 15 min while you make the top crust.
7. Roll the remaining dough out and, with a pizza cutter or a knife, make about 14 strips of dough. Remove pie dough from the oven/proofing box and add blueberry filling. Make lattice with strips (see PDF illustration). Finish edges of the pie by trimming the lattice strips and smoothing/crimping the dough around the edge of the pie form. Brush dough with egg white and sprinkle with pearl sugar.
8. Bake in pre-heated oven at 225C/425F for about 15 minutes. Allow to cool and thicken before serving.

permalink Ω 17 August 2005, Helsinki

Brane Royale

« Charlotte Royale, a.k.a. Brain Cake. »

It was a busy weekend of not staying indoors and scanning photos so it'll be a few more days before I catch up with the pile of photos that need scanning. A week or so ago I saw a cake in the Finnish food pool on Flickr that I had seen pictures of before but didn't know what it was called which prompted an almost pathologically obsessive search for what the cake's name was. Many cookbooks and web searches with google later I came to realize that, rather curiously, what Finns call this cake is not what the rest of the world calls this cake. The Advanced Professional Pastry Chef defines charlottes rather succinctly:

The two types of charlotte (hot and cold) share two characteristics: the bottom and sides of the charlotte molds are always lined before the filling is added and, once the filling has set, the desserts are removed from the mold before they are served. In the case of the well-known Charlotte Royale and Charlotte Russe, the molds are lined with jellyrolls and ladyfingers, respectively. In other recipes, the molds are lined with sponge cake, meringue products, buttered bread, or thinly sliced fruit. Charlottes are made in individual servings or in forms that serve up to ten people. The first recognized chilled charlotte was the Charlotte Russe, which was invented by Antonin Carême at the beginning of the nineteenth century and was derived from the original classic, warm apple charlotte. (Carême originally named his creations charlotte á la parisienne, but this name was changed during the Second Empire, when Russian dishes became very fashionable.)

Another book, Rare Bits, by Patricia Bunning Stevens discusses the history behind Carême's cold charlottes.

Chance led the child to a humble cookshop, and by the time he was fifteen Carême had entered the service of Bailly, a celebrated pâtissier. Here he came to the attention of Talleyrand, a noted gourmet as well as one of Napoleon's chief ministers. Soon he was working in Talleyrand's own kitchens and then was made head chef. Carême taught himself to read and write; eventually he would write and illustrate seven books, five on cooking and two on architecture.

Carême was a restless man, and all of Europe vied for his services. Before retiring to complete his writings, he would supervise the huge kitchens of the Prince Regent of Great Britain (later George IV), Tsar Alexander I of Russia, the court of Vienna, the British embassy at Paris, and the Baron de Rothschild at his country estate. Yet few of Carême's dishes remain in the repertory today. Styles change, and his was a very elaborate, complicated cuisine. One exception is the Charlotte Russe.

Carême began by experimenting with English Charlottes, seeing ways, as he did with so many dishes, to make them more appealing. First he turned the Charlotte into a cold dish, a pastry shell filled with pureed applesauce; then he went on to create a totally new dessert, which he called Charlotte á la parisienne. The pastry shell had been replaced by sponge fingers, and the filling was now a rich Bavarian cream, a mixture of egg custard, gelatin, and whipped cream with varied flavorings. Carême served his new marvel to Louis XVIII, the reinstated Bourbon king, at a banquet for twelve hundred at the Louvre in 1815; for reasons now unclear the name was changed to Charlotte Russe during the Second Empire.

So my confusion began when I looked for a recipe for Charlotte Russe in a number of cookbooks, there was a picture of a real Charlotte Russe with ladyfingers instead of the rather strange looking jelly roll dome. In the few Finnish cookbooks that had a recipe for Charlotte Russe, none of them had a picture but the recipes called for a jelly roll and something other than a bavarian cream filling. After digging around with google for a while it became rather evident that the only Charlotte Russe recipes with the spiral jelly roll outer layer were Finnish. Now, pedantry aside, the point of having a name for an object is communicating an idea or a concept effectively as simply making up some nonsense words would otherwise serve about as well if there wasn't some continuity in our collective use of vocabulary. I find Finland's use of Charlotte Russe for what is a Charlotte Royale elsewhere on the planet very curious and would love to know how it came to be so. My theory is that the Charlotte Russe entered Finland from Russia and changed rather quickly from the ladyfingers to the jelly roll slices since ladyfingers likely weren't a familiar food and the jelly roll was, and remains still, very popular as well as changing the bavarian or moscovite custard to jellied cream with a bit of sugar (in older Finnish recipes). In spite of the crust and filling substitutions, the name remains unchanged and thus the curious anomaly of only the Nordic countries, as far as I can tell, calling this cake by the wrong name.

The cake, no matter which name you use, is not terribly challenging to make and has the added appeal of closely resembling a brain with the spirals on the outside and the gelatinous mass on the inside. Admittedly, I've never tasted brain, human or otherwise, but I suspect that this is as tasty as it gets. I made two of them since I wasn't happy with the first cake as I let the sponge cake get a bit too brown which didn't harm the taste of the cake but I didn't quite like the look of it. I made the second cake's sponge with a jelly roll sponge recipe and baked it only until it became slightly brown on top. This sponge was far easier to roll, was lighter tasting and it looked more attractive on the finished cake. I used a whipped rahka and cranberry purée for the filling which tasted terrific, but if you want nice, perfectly round spirals of sponge cake, then leave off the cream filling and just use a thin layer of jam. If you choose to use just the jam, you may also need to make two jam rolls depending on how large your mold is and/or how thinly you slice it.

The bavarian cream filling leaves a bit of room for being creative as well. I added a bit of cranberry purée to 1/3 of the mixture to create a stripe in the middle of the cake for a bit of colour and variation. Apricot jam in the jelly roll and fruit in the bavarian cream seem to be traditional, but you can use any fruit you like as the brain cake nazis won't be waiting outside your door if you don't use apricots. I think a lakka/cloudberry variation would be terrific and have the same range of colour as apricots. Bavarian creams are a lot easier to make than most are led to believe, but you must give it your full attention while it is cooking which is why the jelly roll[s] and the mold are prepared first since once the cream is chilled, it needs to be poured into the mold and allowed to set overnight in the refrigerator. I don't even much like bavarian cream and I love the Charlotte Royale, so give it a try.

Charlotte Russe / Charlotte Royale / Aivokakku / Brain Cake

makes: 1 cake with ~10-12 servings
time: about 90 mins prep but needs to set overnight
special tools: 2,5-3 L round bowl or springform pan, jelly roll pan (a cookie sheet with sides), fine sieve

Steps:

1. Make sponge cake
2. Make jelly roll and chill
3. Prepare bowl or springform with butter and jelly roll slices
4. Make custard and chill
5. Prepare whipped cream
6. Fold custard and cream together and pour into bowl
7. Top with jelly roll slices
8. Chill overnight

Jelly roll

• 1/3 cup (33 grams) sifted cake flour
• 3 tablespoons (23 grams) unsifted cornstarch (corn flour)
• 4 large eggs
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1/2 cup (100 grams) plus 1 tablespoon (13 grams) granulated white sugar
• 1 teaspoon (4 grams) pure vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• fruit jam of your choice for filling

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C) and place oven rack in the middle of the oven. Grease a 17 inch (43 cm) x 12 inch (30 cm) jelly roll pan, line with parchment, and then grease the parchment paper. Set aside.
2. While eggs are still cold separate two of the eggs, placing the yolks in one large mixing bowl and the whites in another bowl. To the two yolks, add the additional yolk, and the two remaining eggs. Cover the two bowls with plastic wrap and allow the eggs to come to room temperature before using (about 30 minutes).
3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together the sifted cake flour and cornstarch. Set aside.
4. Once the eggs are at room temperature, place the egg yolks, along with 1/2 cup (100 grams) of granulated white sugar, in your electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high speed for five minutes, or until thick, pale, and fluffy. (When you slowly raise the beaters the batter will fall back into the bowl in slow ribbons.) At this point beat in the vanilla extract.
5. Sift half the flour mixture over the egg yolk mixture and fold in gently with a rubber spatula, just until the flour is incorporated. Sift the remaining flour mixture into the batter and fold in.
6. In a clean mixing bowl, with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until soft peaks form. Sprinkle in the remaining one tablespoon (13 grams) granulated white sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Gently fold a little of the whites into the batter to lighten it, and then add the rest of the whites folding just until incorporated. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, evenly spreading the cake batter with an offset spatula.
7. Bake for 7 minutes or until golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean and the cake, when lightly pressed, will spring back.
8. Immediately upon removing the cake from the oven invert the sponge cake onto a clean dish towel that has been sprinkled with confectioners sugar. Carefully remove the parchment paper, sprinkle lightly with confectioners sugar, and roll up the sponge, with the towel, while it is still hot and pliable. Place on a wire rack to cool. (If the parchment paper sticks to the cake, lightly brush the back of the paper with a little warm water, allow to stand for a few moments, then peel the paper from the cake.) When ready to fill, unroll the sponge, spread with the filling, and re-roll. Transfer to a serving platter, cover, and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours or overnight. (You can serve this cake immediately but chilling it for a few hours first sets the filling and makes it easier to slice.) Just before serving, dust with confectioners sugar. Cut the cake into slices using a serrated knife.
9. Butter bowl, mold or springform pan and place ~2cm slices of jelly roll around the sides, fitting them tightly together so that there are no spaces for the custard to seep through. Reserve some slices for placing on top of the bavarian cream which will be the bottom of the cake when removed from the mold. Refrigerate until you are ready to fill the mold.

Bavarian Cream:

makes: about 2 L
source: Larousse Gastronomique

custard

• 15-20g, 8 sheets or 2-3 envelopes gelatine
• 6 dl or 2.5 cups whole milk
• 1 vanilla pod or 2 tablespoons real vanilla sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 100g or 1/2 cup superfine sugar
• pinch of salt

whipped cream

• 3,5 dl or 1.5 cups whipping cream, very cold
• 0,75 dl or 1/3 cup whole milk, very cold
• 50g or 1/4 cup superfine sugar
• fresh berries or purée (optional)
• 2 tablespoons liqueur (optional)

1. Soak gelatine in 3 tablespoons cold water (or a shallow bowl of water if using sheets).
2. Whisk together egg yolks, superfine sugar and salt until smooth. Heat milk with vanilla over a medium heat. Pour yolk mixture into a fine mesh sieve and strain it into the milk while stirring constantly. When the mixture is hot to the touch, stir in gelatin (squeeze water from sheets).
3. Stir continuously with whisk over a gentle heat until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. The mixture must NOT boil. Pour into a bowl and allow to cool, then refrigerate until the custard is cold and just beginning to thicken. (Note: some recipes suggest pouring the hot mixture into a bowl resting on ice to hurry the cooling process.)
4. While the custard is cooling, whip together the cream and milk until it just starts to thicken and add superfine sugar. Continue whipping to soft peaks. Fold in fruit, purée and/or liqueur if using. (You could substitute rahka or a firm yogurt in place of the cream, but with 8 egg yolks in the custard it's really well beyond the point of trying to cut fat or cholesterol. :)
5. Fold cream together with the cooled, but not set, custard. (If the custard has cooled and set a bit too fast, use your mixer to make it creamy before blending it with the whipped cream.)
6. Pour into the prepared dish, top with slices of jelly roll and chill overnight.
7. To unmold, place bowl/mold into warm water briefly, cover with serving plate and invert. Tap gently and ease the bowl/mold off of the cake. Add whipped cream and fruit as garnish if you like. A fruit purée makes for a nice companion as well.

permalink Ω 8 August 2005, Helsinki

Pieplant

« Mascarpone cheesecake with rhubarb glaze topped with chocolate covered strawberries looking a wee bit like a bird. »

Since moving to Finland, I hadn't before noticed the numerous recipes and foods made with rhubarb. It seems like everywhere I look these days there is rhubarb pie or something else containing the vegetable declared a fruit in 1947 by the US Customs court based on its primary use in desserts and baked goods. I had never tried rhubarb before as I had always assumed that it was a regional treat in the US which I incorrectly associated with the South. The Dictionary of American Regional English, volume IV, contains both rhubarb and pieplant (no space) [which is said to be German or American depending on what source you read]. The distribution map clearly shows that pieplant, thus rhubarb, is known and used mostly in the north.

rhubarb n Usu |'ruba(r)b|
1929 AmSp 5.126 ME, "Rhubub" or "pie plant" was rhubarb. a.k.a. apple cabbage, apple (of) peru, elephant's ear, garden sauce, go-quick plant, pieplant, pie stem, sour sticks, wine plant, raspberry pieplant. (pieplant first citation in 1838.)

It doesn't grow well in hot climates which would explain why I can't recall much rhubarb growing in St. Louis and the subsequent lack of pies. It grows well in the Northern US and Canada with Utica, Michigan proclaimed as the Rhubarb capital of the world. I was surprised to find that June 9th is National Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day. I wonder who is in charge of making up these wacky national days.

Rhubarb apparently grows very well in Finland, too, which explains the multitude of uses for it in spite of it being a very unlikely food plant. Jams, juices and pies seem to be the most popular ways to enjoy rhubarb. It is the harbinger of summer when the stalks are ready for harvest in late May/early June. The leaves, as well as the stalks or petioles, are poisonous due to the oxalic acid content. The leaves have a higher concentration but you'd have to eat a few pounds of them before achieving a lethal dose though you'd likely vomit long before that might happen.

Oxalic acid is a strong acid and is what is responsible for the extreme sour/tart flavour associated with rhubarb. A number of people mentioned that foods with rhubarb must contain milk or be served with milk or cream to temper the acid which binds to the calcium to make calcium oxalate which isn't all that good for you either. Oxalic acid is also strong enough to corrode tooth enamel so it might be good to brush your teeth after eating rhubarb to limit the damage. It's not often mentioned that rhubarb's primary use for hundreds of years was using the roots for their laxative effect and magical cure for dysentery. Rhubarb doesn't appear to have been very popular in pies until sometime in the early 1800s which is about when sugar became a more attainable commodity for the average home. Maybe it was the cowpie plant originally before being shortened to pieplant. :)

So what's the allure of a stringy, sour, poisonous, corrosive, laxative plant? I'm not really sure just yet, but in 1995, two Yale scientists discovered that oxalic acid, found in rhubarb, helped neutralize CFC's. I suppose that's great news if you live near a Monsanto toxic waste dump or have a housemate who uses way too much hairspray. You can also clean your aluminum pots with juice from the leftover stalks. It's a pie filling and a pot cleaner, too! It's use as a floorwax has yet to be determined.

I made both a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler and a cheesecake with a rhubarb glaze and, while I found the taste of the rhubarb quite good, I'm not convinced that the plant is such a laudable foodstuff. My main problem with rhubarb is that it's like pink celery and I'm not keen on celery since the texture is mealy and stringy even though the taste is mostly agreeable. I wasn't very happy with the cobbler because of the extreme fibery nature of the fruit. It was sweet, tangy and buttery from the topping but the texture was all wrong, slimy even. Everyone seemed to like it, but I will wait for blueberry season to make another cobbler that tastes right.

The cheesecake, however, was a perfect application of rhubarb separated from its stringy support structure which is, perhaps, the best way to enjoy rhubarb. I had some excellent Italian mascarpone cheese from the Gran Delicato deli (Kalevankatu 34) that I needed to use and rhubarb is still plentiful so I found a recipe on Epicurious that looked good and was pleasantly surprised with the results. I know quite a few Finnish recipes suggest Hovi or other 'tuorejuusto' for cheesecakes which really should be avoided since Philadelphia and mascarpone are widely available here and Hovi is not a smooth cheese with a completely different texture and taste.

When I make this cheesecake again sometime I will reduce the number of eggs to 4 since 6 seemed a bit excessive, even for the amount of cheese, and the cake rose quite high before sinking after it cooled. I'm fairly certain that the recipe for the filling could be halved rather easily while still resulting in a good cake. The glaze should really be a gelée prepared with gelatin even though I thought the sauce was quite excellent poured over the sliced cake. The gelée would make for a nicer overall presentation I think. It's easy to make but just don't ask how many grams of fat are in a slice as if you have to ask, you probably don't want to know the answer. :)

Mascarpone Cheese with Rhubarb Glaze and Chocolate-covered Strawberries

Makes:12+ servings
Time: about 1 hour prep
Source: Bon Appétit, April 2002

Crust

• 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs or 150g of ruis or plain digestive crumbs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 stick or 60g unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2-1 teaspoon cocoa (optional)
• 0,5 dl ground hazelnuts (optional)

Filling

• 16oz or 500g Philadelphia cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup or 2,25 dl sugar
• 16oz or 500g mascarpone cheese, room temperature
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 6 eggs
• 1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract or vanilla sugar
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
• Pinch of salt
• 3/4 cup or 1,75 dl sour cream/fraiche/kermaviili

Glaze

• 1,5 pounds or ~700g fresh rhubarb cut into small pieces
• 8 strawberries, hulled, halved (possibly use frozen mansikkasose since it's cheaper than late-season strawberries and leave until after straining the rhubarb before adding to juice)
• 3/4 cup or 1,75 dl sugar
• 2/3 cup or 1,50 dl water
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2-4 tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in 3 tablespoons of water (if you want a gel instead of a thickened sauce, use 3-4 gelatin sheets softened in water and squeezed of excess water or 2 packets gelatin powder instead)

Chocolate-covered strawberries

• 6 oz/170 g bittersweet (not unsweetened) or semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 12 large strawberries

1. For crust: Preheat oven to 325°F/160°C. Grease 9-inch/23cm round springform pan with 2.75 in/7cm high sides with butter. Mix crumbs, sugar, and cinnamon (cocoa and hazelnuts if using) in medium bowl. Add butter and stir to blend. Press mixture evenly onto bottom (not sides) of pan. Bake until crust is set, about 10 minutes. Cool completely. Maintain oven temperature.
2. For filling: Using electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar in large bowl until smooth. Add mascarpone and beat until smooth. Mix in flour. Beat in eggs 1 at a time. Mix in vanilla, lemon juice, lemon peel, and salt. Pour filling into pan.
3. Bake cheesecake until puffed around edges and center moves slightly when pan is gently shaken (center may fall and crack), about 1 hour. Turn oven off; leave cake in oven with door closed 1 hour. Transfer cake to rack and cool completely. Stir sour cream until smooth; spread atop cake. Refrigerate cake overnight.
4. For glaze: Combine rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, 2/3 cup water, and lemon juice in large saucepan. Bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Reduce heat and simmer until rhubarb is tender, about 9 minutes. Remove from heat; let cool 10 minutes. Pour mixture through strainer set over bowl, pressing on solids to extract liquid. Return liquid to same saucepan; bring to simmer over medium heat. Whisk cornstarch or moisten gelatin; add to liquid in saucepan; whisk constantly until mixture boils and thickens, about 6 minutes. Allow the mixture to reduce for 10 minutes. Pour glaze into small bowl; chill until cold, about 2 hours. Spread glaze over cheesecake. Refrigerate cheesecake for at least 4 hours and up to 1 day.
5. For chocolate-covered strawberries: Line small baking sheet with waxed paper. Stir chocolate in top of double boiler set over simmering water until smooth. Remove chocolate from over water. Dip strawberries halfway into melted chocolate. Gently shake off excess chocolate; place on prepared sheet. Chill until chocolate is set, about 30 minutes and up to 6 hours. Place strawberries around top edge of cake. Serve.

permalink Ω 15 July 2005, Helsinki

The Pinecone

« The käpykakku made with 4 sponge cake layers, raspberry jam, chocolate cream and thin semi-circles of marzipan dusted with cocoa and garnished with almond halves. »

It may come as a relief to those who suffer my 'cookery' that I managed to find a cake that has put me off the idea of baking another cake for a while. No, I just ordered the fucking cookie book and will plan on making loads of lewd cookies loaded with aphrodisiacs for the rest of the summer. Maybe the cupcake periodic table if I feel inspired. The cake that gone and done me in was the nefarious käpykakku.

Due to my particularly masochistic streak and my strange determination to like things like herring and marzipan due to their ubiquity in the Nordic taste palate, I got the crazy idea to try making the cake that looked much like a lumpy turd in bakery cases around town. I figured that somehow I could improve on the cake while making it look less like a turd and more like a pinecone. My ambition seemed simple and harmless enough, but this cake finally made me realise that I definitely dislike marzipan, but marzipan and chocolate is gagtastic. Now I also know why I never liked Hershey bars with almonds as a kid. I moved to a part of the planet that should really erect a shrine to the almond as it's in so many different dishes. Surely, this is proof that I'm a glutton for self-punishment. One of these days I'm going to have to find out why the almond and not the walnut, hazelnut or pecan. Speaking of marzipan, Jarkko found a copy of Jenny Åkerström's Prinsessornas Kokbok in Finnish yesterday at the big book sale in Vammala which contains three different bizarrely complex princess cakes. After some poking around with google, it would appear that this year is the centennial of Princess Astrid's birth and that the current form of the princess cake is a combination of the three cakes made not by Åkerström, but a baker in Stockholm. I'll likely put a scan of the recipes [1.8mb pdf, Finnish] and more of the background on the princess cake recipe entry. I'm still considering doing a blueberry moomin version of the cake when blueberries come in season. The world needs more blue foods, even if they are made with almonds.

The pinecone cake has about as many varieties as there are cakes and the provenence of the creation might be Tampere sometime in the 1990s, but there are enough sponge cake layer cakes covered with marzipan around that it could have come from anywhere. My question is, why a pinecone? I found a recipe for käpykakku in the cookbook, Isoäidin Keittiössä, but aside from a lovely picture of the outside that was decidely an improvement over the usual store cake, there wasn't a picture of what it should look like on the inside [and nothing on google]. So, before beginning, I went and bought a store bakery cake as a test control and also to get an idea of how to put it together. The store cake was bland, a bit greasy, with a soggy sponge and a heavy chocolate marzipan aftertaste. I made three different versions of the cake, hoping to make it better and without marzipan.

1. cake 1: sponge cake, strawberry purée filling, and meringue topping made look like a pinecone with a spoon and dusted with cocoa. This was a lovely light cake but the meringue was far, far too sweet.
2. cake 2: sponge cake, chocolate filling, raspberry purée, and thin semicircles of marzipan and almonds arranged on top to look like a pinecone. This cake looked good but the chocolate filling was far, FAR too chocolately which overwhelmed the light sponge and raspberry while the marzipan began to melt either because of the humidity or because of the strong cocoa filling underneath. Much of this recipe was from Isoäidin Keittiössä and I think the recipe was pretty far off from being reliable. The chocolate filling remains below, but that's about all I kept. With less cocoa, it'll be good.
3. cake3: chocolate sponge cake, strawberry purée/whipped cream/mascarpone or rahka filling and meringue topping with less sugar than cake 1. This tasted great as the light chocolate sponge didn't overwhelm the strawberry flavour and the meringue wasn't quite so sweet. Note: Meringue + humid weather = sticky goo. :)

So, out of the three cakes, I liked the third cake the best as the light chocolate sponge and the fruity sweetness of the filling complemented each other without being overwhelming and the meringue wasn't so heavy and almondy. I thought about mixing plain almond paste with some of the purée and spreading it on the sponge cake as a base layer before adding the filling to keep the almond flavour in the cake but I left it out due to my dislike of almond and chocolate on the previous cake. I can highly recommend this combination.

The basic form of käpykakku is 4 layers of sponge moistened with fruit juice or purée or jam, filled with chocolate cream or fruity cream and topped with marzipan or meringue. I won't be making it again anytime soon, but the Isoäidin Keittiössä cookbook claims that it's one of their most popular recipes so, given that there is very little information about the cake on the net, maybe someone else will. :)

Käpykakku / Pinecone cake

Preparation steps and approximate time

1. Prepare filling, either the chocolate cream or the fruit filling. chill. (15-30 mins)
2. Make sponge cake. (45 mins)
3. Cut sponge into pinecone shape, add filling, and chill.(20 mins)
4. Make meringue or prepare marzipan. (10-20 mins)
5. Cover cake with meringue or marzipan. (15-30 mins)
6. Chill and serve. (1-2 hours)

Chocolate Filling:

time: about 25 minutes
source: Isoäidin Keittiössä

• 4 gelatin sheets
• 2 eggs
• 2 dl whole milk
• 4 tablespoons cocoa (should really be more like 1 tablespoon)
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 3 dl or 1 1/4 cups whipping cream, cold

1. Soften the gelatin in cold water for about 10 minutes. Place cream container in a bowl of ice and chill the bowl in which you plan to whip the cream by putting it into the refrigerator/freezer.
2. Stir the eggs in a saucepan until the yolks are broken. Add milk, cocoa and sugar. Bring the mixture to a simmer while stirring. Do not allow the mixture to boil or it will become lumpy. Squeeze the water from the gelatin sheets and stir into the hot mixture.
3. Cool the gelatin mixture by placing the saucepan in the sink filled with cold water. Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold it into the cooled gelatin mixture. Place in refrigerator while you prepare the sponge cake.

OR

Fruit Filling:

• 250g rahka, excess liquid drained from top or 250g mascarpone
• 2 dl or 1 cup strawberry/raspberry/puolukka purée
• 3 dl or 1.25 cups cold whipping cream
• fine or confectioners' sugar

1. Whip cream on medium high speed to soft peaks, add sugar to taste. Set aside
2. Whip rahka/mascarpone and add purée until well mixed. Fold in fresh fruit if desired.
3. Gently fold whipped cream and rahka/mascarpone together until well mixed. chill for an hour or two until firm.

Sponge Cake:

makes: two 8- or 9-inch cakes
time: about 45 minutes
source: CI

Sift together

• 1/2 cup or 1,25 dl cake flour
• 1/4 cup or 0,75 dl unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt
• 1-2 tablespoons cocoa (for chocolate sponge only)

Heat together, cover and set aside

• 3 tablespoons whole milk
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla sugar

separate and mix

• 5 eggs room temperature
• 3/4 cup or 1,75 dl granulated sugar

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and heat oven to 350F/175C degrees. Generously grease and flour two or three round 8- or 9-inch cake pans and cover pan bottoms with a round of parchment paper. Whisk flours, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl (or sift onto waxed paper). Heat milk and butter in a small saucepan over low heat until butter melts. Remove from heat and add vanilla; cover and keep warm.
2. Separate three of the eggs, placing whites in bowl of standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment (or large mixing bowl if using hand mixer or whisk) and reserving the 3 yolks plus remaining 2 whole eggs in another mixing bowl. Beat the 3 whites on high speed (or whisk) until whites are foamy. Gradually add 6 tablespoons of the sugar; continue to beat whites to soft, moist peaks. (Do not overbeat.) If using a standing mixer, transfer egg whites to a large bowl and add yolk/whole egg mixture to mixing bowl.
3. Beat yolk/whole egg mixture with remaining 6 tablespoons sugar. Beat on medium-high speed (setting 8 on a KitchenAid) until eggs are very thick and a pale yellow color, about 5 minutes (or 12 minutes by hand). Add beaten eggs to whites.
4. Sprinkle flour mixture over beaten eggs and whites; fold very gently 12 times with a large rubber spatula. Make a well in one side of batter and pour milk mixture into bowl. Continue folding until batter shows no trace of flour, and whites and whole eggs are evenly mixed, about 8 additional strokes.
5. Immediately pour batter into prepared baking pan[s] [makes 9-10dl of batter, so ~3dl per cake layer]; bake until cake tops are light brown and feel firm and spring back when touched, about 16 minutes for 9-inch cake pans and 20 minutes for 8-inch cake pans.
6. Immediately run a knife around pan perimeter to loosen cake. Cover pan with large plate. Using a towel, invert pan and remove pan from cake. Peel off parchment. Re-invert cake from plate onto rack. Repeat with remaining cake[s]. Cover with clean cloth until ready to assemble cake to keep the cake moist. You can use the paper from the cake pans to create your cutting pattern, too.

Topping:

• about 500g natural colour marzipan
• a bit of cocoa powder

OR

Meringue Frosting

**Note: Everything MUST be perfectly dry when making meringue, use a blowdryer on your mixer blades if you must. It's also not recommended during particularly humid days. It will look creamy and soft when it comes out right. Halve the sugar for less sweetness and/or add a bit of melted semi-sweet chocolate at the end to give it a chocolaty taste and a pinecone brown colour if you like.

• 3-4 large egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 1/4 cups or 3 dl granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup or 0,75 dl water

1. Beat egg whites at slow speed in electric mixer until frothy. Add vanilla, cream of tartar and a pinch of salt and beat at medium speed to soft peaks. Raise mixer speed to high and beat whites to stiff, glossy peaks. Turn off mixer.
2. Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to boil over high heat, constantly and gently swirling pan by the handle. Cover and boil 2 minutes, then cover and boil until a candy thermometer registers 238 degrees (syrup will form soft, gum-like ball when dropped in ice water).
3. With mixer at high speed, pour syrup in thin, steady stream into egg whites. Continue to beat until frosting is cool, 7 to 10 minutes. Apply frosting in heaps to the top of the cake, smooth over the top and sides of the cake with a spatula or frosting knife, and with a spoon, create divots or spikes to give it the pinecone look. Dust lightly with cocoa. Serve.

permalink Ω 3 July 2005, Helsinki

Rings of suburbia

« Pineapple upside-down cake »

Nothing like having the flu off-and-on all week and, when feeling a bit better, enjoying a pint or two after work with a few colleagues from work only to have the flu return. At least Jarkko has it now so we can be achy and miserable together when Otava takes us out for a walk/drag.

The 'let's see if they'll eat it' experiment last week was a pineapple upside-down cake since pineapple is a frequent addition to food here and it seems to be very popular in desserts, perhaps a bit too much so. Pineapple, like banana and other tropical fruits, was an expensive exotic food that didn't make its way into the average home until the advent of canning and refrigerated shipping/storage in the early part of the 20th century. One curious factoid about pineapple is that the original native word is 'anana' which explains the taxonomic name as well as the Finnish 'ananas'. [Which makes you wonder if 'banana' was ok then why did the fools change anana to pineapple.]

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON PINEAPPLE

Pineapple is one of the world's favorite tropical fruits. First called "anana", a Caribbean word for "excellent fruit", the name "pineapple" came from European explorers who thought the fruit looked like a pinecone with flesh like an apple.

Christopher Columbus was the first person to introduce pineapples to Europe. In 1493 he was exploring the Caribbean islands and found pineapples growing on the island of Guadalupe. He brought some of these pineapples back for Queen Isabella of Spain who loved the sweet tropical fruit. So did other Europeans. In fact, Europeans loved the taste of pineapple so much they tried to grow them in Europe, but the tropical plants did not fare well in Europe's cool climate.

THE HISTORY OF CANNED PINEAPPLE

Canned pineapple was first made in the 1901 but wasn't widely available until engineer Henry Ginaca invented a machine in 1911 that could remove the outer shell, inner core and both ends of 100 pineapples in less than a minute! If you've ever tried to peel a pineapple, you'll know how amazing this is. This machine, known as the "Ginaca machine" is still used in pineapple canneries today.

James Dole began marketing canned pineapple by placing ads with recipes in women's magazines in 1907, possibly the first of its kind, a technique that remains popular even now. In 1925 the company ran ads requesting new recipes using their pineapple. A recipe for upside-down cake was in the book of winners but apparently there were 2,500 or so upside-down cake recipes submitted which would give the impression that the cake was not unknown to homemakers at the time.

The pineapple upside-down cake has its roots in skillet cakes which were, and possibly still are, very popular in the Southern US. The availability of canned pineapple made an exotic fruit into a suburban novelty. The most recognizable form of the upside-down cake has pineapple rings dotted with toxic red maraschino cherries which evoke a 1950s modern suburban dream, but the cake has been around for much longer. Both pineapple and the strange red cherries were popular in the 1920s and, in spite of not being able to find a citation for who put them together on a cake, it's likely safe to assume they collided on the cake around that time. The cake has remained an icon of American cooking kitsch, though somewhat shunned and relegated to a 1970s Betty Crockers' Men's Favorites recipe card.

I looked at quite a few different recipes, including one Dole upside-down cake recipe, and most of them are quite similar. Cook's Illustrated featured a recipe in the September 2004 issue which I tried first, but found the batter too thick to spread evenly in the pan and it didn't have the right texture when it was done. I was rather surprised as I'm so rarely disappointed by CI's recipes but I won't make that recipe again. This didn't keep Jarkko from eating a few too many pieces of it though. :)

I found another recipe that Cook's Illustrated had in one of the first cookbooks they printed a few years ago as a master recipe for a fruit upside-down cake. This cake, given the fluffy egg whites and the cornmeal, has a much nicer crumb and overall texture as well as a fluid enough batter to spread easily over the caramel and fruit. The basic idea is to make the caramel, place the fruit in it, pour the batter on top and bake. The other CI recipe called for using fresh pineapple and reducing it by cooking it in with the caramel and draining it before placing it into the pan. I thought this made the fruit come out a bit rubbery and difficult to slice though it does make for a pretty top after baking. Also, it's good to make the caramel first and allow it to set with the fruit a bit before pouring the cake batter over it to avoid the fruit shifting around too much. Unless, of course, you have the Nordicware pineapple upside-down cake pan. It is very delicious when served with a bit of vanilla ice cream and a glass of milk. :)

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Serves: 8-12
Time: 25 min prep + 1hr bake time
Source: CI

Topping

• sliced pineapple, drained (or peaches, plums, nectarines, mangoes, apples)
• maraschino or candied cherries / dried cranberries (optional)
• 1 cup or 2,5 dl light brown sugar, packed
• 3 tablespoons or 42g butter

Cake

• 1.5 cups or 3,5 dl all-purpose flour
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 3 tablespoons cornmeal
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons or 113g unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup or 2,5dl plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 4 large eggs, separated, room temperature
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup or 1,5dl milk

1. For the topping: Butter bottom and sides of round 9x3 (23cm x 8cm) cake pan. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a medium sauce pan over medium heat; add brown sugar and cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture is foamy and pale, 3 to 4 minutes. Pour mixture into prepared cake pan; swirl pan to distribute evenly. Arrange fruit slices over topping; set aside.
2. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350F/176C degrees. Whisk flour, baking powder, cornmeal and salt together in medium bowl; set aside. Cream butter in large bowl with electric mixer at medium speed. Gradually add 1 cup sugar; continue beating until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in yolks and vanilla (scraping sides of bowl with rubber spatula if necessary); reduce speed to low and add dry mixture and milk, alternately in three or four batches, beginning and ending with dry ingredients, until batter is just smooth.
3. Beat egg whites in large bowl at low speed until frothy. Increase speed to medium-high; beat to soft peaks. Gradually add 2 tablespoons sugar; continue to beat to stiff peaks. Fold one-quarter of beaten whites into batter with large rubber spatula to lighten. Fold in remaining whites until no white streaks remain. Gently pour batter into pan and spread evenly on top of fruit, being careful not to disperse fruit. Bake until top is golden and toothpick inserted into cake center (not fruit, which remains gooey) comes out clean, 60 to 65 minutes.
4. Rest cake on rack for 2 minutes. Slide a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen it from the pan. Place a serving platter over the pan and hold tightly. Invert the cake onto the platter. Carefully remove the cake pan. If any fruit sticks to pan bottom, remove and position on top of cake.

permalink Ω 19 June 2005, Helsinki

Cake for Coffee

« Sour cream coffee cake with raspberry and cinnamon streusel filling. »

When I think of coffee cake, I think of a dense, slightly sweet cake with cinnamon swirls and nuts in it, but when I say coffee cake in Finland, I get this weird look as if to ask why one would put coffee in a cake. Treats with coffee in Finland, if not some kind of pulla, are some sort of seriously heavy and sweet cream confection. I've also noticed that while berries have an exalted, perhaps even near ubiquitous, place in Finnish desserts, I've not found any local cakes that have the fruit baked inside the cake and instead are always part of the topping or unbaked filling. I don't know if this holds in all parts of Finland, but I couldn't find a single recipe in older, and even some recent, cookbooks that had berries baked in the dough or batter. It's interesting and makes me wonder why not.

So, I decided to torture my familiar test subjects, a.k.a. coworkers, to a sour cream coffee cake with blueberries to see if the concept was too alien or if a real coffee cake might not appeal. A couple commented that it was strange, but few crumbs were left on the serving plate so in spite of the unfamiliar concept, it didn't appear to slow down consumption. :) So, if Finns want to try this cake as a change of pace, I don't think there will be any leftovers.

Coffee cake is another one of those comfort foods that make me think of home. I totted up a list of foods from home that make me feel homesick and, strangely, almost all of them are sugary dessert or breakfast kinds of foods, neither of which I ate very often back home. I'm sure there is a doctoral dissertation on the gastronomic nostalgia of expats in there somewhere.

At long last, too, I finally found the dairy product in Finland that most closely resembles American sour cream, Flora Fraîche with a 20% fat content. It's not créme fraîche, not smetana, not kermaviili, just fraîche. I figured that a country with a dizzying array of dairy products, especially sour ones, that I'd eventually try the right one. It performed perfectly where I had previously been somewhat disappointed with kermaviili.

A sturdy, powerful mixer is highly recommended for the mixing of the butter and sour cream with the dry ingredients as it gets quite stiff and difficult to work with. You could probably also do it with a biscuit dough tool/potato masher [the one that cuts the butter into the flour] but that will take more time and effort. Jarkko was playing World of Warcraft on the computer which is plugged into the step-down transformer my mixer requires so I had to do the first cake the hard way which made my hand mixer very, very hot. Adding in the egg mixture should also be done slowly as it will slop over the sides of the bowl if not added slowly.

Adding the streusel and fruit layers is easy, but I was disappointed when I followed the recipe to the letter with the 2 cups of batter between layers as I found that it wasn't enough and that they melded into one band of goo. I had so much batter left over after the adding the layers that the streusel distribution through the cake was suboptimal. So be more generous with the batter between layers and save a wee bit for yourself as the batter is damned tasty.

Lemon-Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake

Makes: 1 cake that serves 12 to 16 people
Special tools: A fixed-bottom, 10-inch tube pan (with 10-cup capacity), good mixer, preferably standing
Time: 20 mins prep and 1 hour baking
Source: CI

Berry filling

• 1 cup or 2,5dl frozen blueberries or raspberries
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

Streusel

• 3/4 cup or 1,75dl unbleached all-purpose flour (3.75oz or 106g)
• 3/4 cup or 1,75dl granulated sugar (5.25oz or 150g)
• 1/2 cup or 1,25dl packed dark brown sugar (3.5oz or 100g)
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons or 30g unsalted butter, cold, cut into 2 pieces
• 1 cup or 2,5dl pecans, chopped

Cake

• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) or 170g unsalted butter, softened but still cool, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 tablespoons or 30g butter, softened for greasing pan
• 4 large eggs
• 1.5 cups or 3,5dl sour cream [Flora Fraîche is the closest to American sour cream in .fi with 20% fat]
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2.25 cups or 5,25dl unbleached all-purpose flour (11.5oz or 325g)
• 1.25 cups or 3dl granulated sugar (8.75oz or 250g)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon table salt

1. Toss 1 cup frozen blueberries with 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest in small bowl and set aside.
2. For the streusel: In food processor, process flour, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup (,75 dl) dark brown sugar, and cinnamon until combined, about 15 seconds. Transfer 1 1/4 cups (3 dl) of flour/sugar mixture to small bowl; stir in remaining 1/4 cup (,75 dl) brown sugar and set aside to use for streusel filling. Add butter and pecans to mixture in food processor; pulse until nuts and butter resemble small pebbly pieces, about ten 1-second pulses. Set aside to use as streusel topping.
3. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350F/175C degrees. Grease 10-inch tube pan with 2 tablespoons softened butter. Whisk eggs, 1 cup (2,5 dl) sour cream, and vanilla in medium bowl until combined.
4. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in bowl of standing mixer; mix on low speed for 30 seconds to blend. Add butter and remaining 1/2 cup (1 dl) sour cream; mix on low speed until dry ingredients are moistened and mixture resembles wet sand, with few large butter pieces remaining, about 1 1/2 minutes. Increase to medium speed and beat until batter comes together, about 10 seconds; scrape down sides of bowl with rubber spatula. Lower speed to medium-low and gradually add egg mixture in 3 additions, beating for 20 seconds after each and scraping down sides of bowl. Increase speed to medium-high and beat until batter is light and fluffy, about 1 minute.
5. Using rubber spatula, spread 2 cups (5 dl) batter in bottom of prepared pan, smoothing surface. Sprinkle evenly with 1/2 cup (1 dl) blueberries. Sprinkle evenly with 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) streusel filling (without butter or nuts). Repeat with another 2 cups batter, remaining 1/2 cup (1 dl) blueberries, and remaining 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) streusel filling (without butter or nuts). Spread remaining batter over, then sprinkle with streusel topping (with butter and nuts).
6. Bake until cake feels firm to touch and long toothpick or skewer inserted into center comes out clean (bits of sugar from streusel may cling to tester), 50 to 60 minutes. Cool cake in pan on wire rack 30 minutes. Invert cake onto rimmed baking sheet (cake will be streusel-side down); remove tube pan, place wire rack on top of cake, and reinvert cake streusel-side up. Cool to room temperature, about 2 hours. Cut into wedges and serve. (Cake can be wrapped in foil and stored at room temperature for up to 5 days.)

permalink Ω 9 June 2005, Helsinki

Brownie Bomb

« Chocolate brownie topped with chocolate mousse and a fruit gelée. A tasty chocolate cholesterol bomb. »

After the last two days at work I considered ranting about the system that continues to be my nemesis and the comedy that is vendor support but instead I'll write about the deadly chocolate mousse brownies that I made for Mother's Day on Sunday. System administration and these brownies will both contribute to a shorter life span except that one makes you welcome a shorter life span and the other tastes delicious. :)

In the current issue of Ruoka&Viini I noticed a picture of a particularly attractive layered brownie that was part of the ongoing cooking school series. This lesson features a few tips and recipes from one of the pastry chefs at Kakkugalleria on Bulevardi which is always filled with desserts that are so pretty that it's almost a shame to eat them. I looked through the recipes and noted that the various layers in the desserts were fairly easy but they all require a lot of patience and some skill in knowing what the recipes leave out as far as technique goes for the novice baker. The brownie and the glaze are very easy to make, but the mousse requires a bit more attention and ability to keep several things going at once before combining them all together.

I took a few liberties with the recipe by adding instant espresso powder to the brownie and the mousse since I think the flavour complements chocolate perfectly. I have also added whipping half of the egg whites since it's an easy way to add a bit more air to the mousse without increasing the cholesterol load of the already present 10 egg yolks and heavy cream. Another variation would be to use maitorahkaa since it whips easily and has a firmer body to it than whipped cream which will then allow for using only 5 egg yolks to make it a bit less decadent. Having a good mixer and a double boiler for this recipe helps although you can improvise a double boiler with a saucepan and a metal bowl or another slightly smaller saucepan.

Aside from the mousse recipe being a bit complex, the confection is a lot easier to make than it looks as long as you remember to be patient and not overdo the mixing where it specifically says not to. The nice part about these brownies is that they look far more impressive and complicated than they really are. Be sure to keep them refrigerated until it's time to serve them as the mousse contains all those egg yolks which can be dangerous if eaten after sitting out for a while.

Chocolate Mousse Brownies

makes: about 12 artery hardening brownies
time: about 90 minutes preparation
special tools: deep rectangular pan, baking paper
source: Ruoka&Viini nro 28, 3/2005

Chocolate Brownie / Suklaabrownie

• 150g or 5.5oz dark chocolate
• 250g or 2.25 sticks butter
• 100g or 3.5oz walnuts
• 3,5 dl or 1.5 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2,5 dl or 1 cup wheat flour (or cake flour for a more tender brownie)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso [optional]

1. Prepare pan. Place a sheet of baking paper in the pan leaving enough paper on the sides for lifting the brownies out of the pan when finished. Grease the 2 non-papered ends.
2. Chop walnuts and toast them lightly in a dry skillet. Set aside.
3. Melt butter and chocolate (both cut or broken into small pieces) and espresso powder together in a saucepan over low heat. Stir with a whisk or fork until completely melted and remove from heat.
4. Pour sugar into a mixing bowl.
5. Pour chocolate/butter mixture over sugar and allow to cool.
6. Stir in egg yolks one at a time.
7. Add flour and walnuts, stirring well, but not too vigorously, until blended. You can also choose to pour the nuts on top of the batter instead if you prefer more crunch since the nuts get soft when baked inside.
8. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake at 200C/395F for about 20-25 minutes.
9. Place pan on cooling rack and allow to cool for an hour or so.

Chocolate Mousse / Suklaamousse

• 250g or 9 oz baker's chocolate (70% cocoa)
• 10 egg yolks (reserve egg whites) (or reduce to 5 if you use maitorahkaa)
• 3 dl or 1.25 cups kuohu or whipping cream (or try maitorahkaa)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso [optional]

• 1 dl or .50 cup water
• 1,5 dl or .75 cup sugar

1. In a saucepan, pour sugar into the bottom being careful not to touch the sides of the pan. Add water and do not stir. Set on medium-high heat, allow to boil vigorously once and set aside to cool.
2. Melt chocolate and espresso powder over low heat [or microwave].
3. Separate the egg yolks and whites.
4. Mix yolks into cooled sugar syrup with a whisk.
5. Warm the egg/sugar mixture just a bit in a double boiler. Stir with whisk until bubbles in the mixture are small and uniform.
6. Remove the mixture from the heat and use electric mixer to whip until light and airy.
7. Stir chocolate into egg/sugar foam.
8. Whip cream/maitorahkaa.
9. Warm half of the egg whites (or all if using only 5 egg yolks) in double boiler and whip until soft peaks form.
10. Gently fold in egg whites and then the whipped cream/maitorahkaa into the chocolate. Stir manually and only until just blended.
11. Pour on top of cooled brownies and smoothe out with spatula.
12. Cool for 2 hours in the freezer or 12 hours in the refrigerator.

Glaze / Mehukiille

• 2 dl or 1 cup concentrated juice, e.g. black currant or cranberry
• 2-3 gelatin sheets (or a packet of knox powdered gelatin)

1. Place gelatin sheets in a bowl of water to moisten them.
2. Warm 1/2 of the juice in a saucepan.
3. Remove gelatin sheets from the water, removing excess water and place in the warm juice until it dissolves.
4. Add remaining juice.
5. Set aside to cool.
6. Gently pour on top of the mousse while using a spoon as a diffuser.
7. Return to the freezer or refrigerator for an hour.

Serving

1. Remove from the freezer or refrigerator and run a warm, dull knife around the edges of the pan, taking care not to cut the baking paper, to loosen the brownie.
2. Carefully lift the brownie from the pan with the paper and place onto cutting board.
3. With a warm, sharp knife, trim the edges of the brownie to make them straight, clean and smooth.
4. Rinse the knife after each cut in hot water and pat dry on a clean dishtowel.
5. Cut the brownie in the center on the long side making two large, long pieces.
6. Then cut the brownie in the center of the short side and continue from there to make even slices.
7. Garnish with a goldenberry, a.k.a. Physalis peruvianus, cape gooseberry or ananaskirsikka and a chocolate flourish if you want to be really fancy. The chocolate garnish is easy to make as all you need to do is melt some chocolate, let it cool a little, pour it onto some baking paper on a flat surface, e.g. a small tray, with a pastry bag and place it into the refrigerator until it's time to use them. Gently lift them from the paper and place on top of the brownie.

permalink Ω 10 May 2005, Helsinki

Sweet Tentacles

« Tippaleivät in the Eckberg window. »

The traditional Vappu tippaleipä cake is so hard and crunchy that I can only imagine it as a torture device for the hungover as the loud noise inside your head when eating them is truly painful. It makes me wonder if some old granny made them as a cruel way to get back at the drunks in the park. :) [ Well, if I am to believe what I read on the internet, the tradition here came from Germany to western Finland in the 1700s. They were first made in Helsinki in the 1830s at Kaisaniemi restaurant by Kajsa Wahllund (namesake of the park) and became a traditional treat only after the 1900s. They were known as "lonkeroleivistä" or tentacle cakes. :) Sadly, no mention of a vengeful granny. ] They are much like American funnel cakes (and we even have a Funnel Cake King) but the ones people buy from the stores are hard to the point of just assuming that they're stale as they don't really taste like much of anything. Like a bird's nest without the birds. They're also rather expensive since they're a traditional treat that everyone buys instead of making at home. I tested my homemade tippaleivät on a dinner party and everyone, especially the kids, seemed to love them, even those who said they really never liked the traditional crunchy ones.

I consulted my copy of Kotiruoka for a recipe and it had the absolutely brilliant idea of using a catsup or mustard bottle for pouring the batter into the hot oil. Both the funnel technique and the old plastic bag trick are a pain in the ass and make a huge mess. With the catsup bottle, you can make the batter, pour it into the bottle and store it in the refrigerator overnight if you don't want to make them right away. The soup ladle technique is also a great idea although I just used some egg forms I have for frying eggs or small pancakes that worked very well.

For frying, choose a deep metal pot with a lid that fits as it's safer to use with less hot oil splattering around the kitchen. Keep the lid handy in case of problems. The tongs and the oven mitts also minimize contact with the hot oil and the pan. Tongs are better at manipulating the cakes than a spoon or a fork, too. The temperature of the oil is important but it doesn't need to be exact. Sunflower oil has a high smoke point so just keep the oil hot and mind the burner setting to keep it from smoking. Be sure to remove any bits of cake left behind as they'll burn in the oil and start to smoke. The cakes take about a minute to fry and, once they're a nice and medium golden brown on both sides, use the tongs to lift the cake up from the oil, shake a bit of the oil from it and place it onto a cooling rack lined with paper towels to drain. Top with powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar. Eat. :)

Tippaleivät or Finnish Funnel Cakes

Makes: about 24 cakes
Time: less than an hour
Special tools: catsup bottle, deep metal pot, tongs, round egg forms or large soup ladle with long handle
Source: Kotiruoka

• 4 eggs
• 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 dl or 1 cup whole milk
• 4 dl or 1.75 cups wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• about 500ml or 2 inches deep in the pot sunflower oil for frying
• confectioners' sugar and/or cinnamon sugar for dusting

1. Whisk eggs in a bowl with a fork. Add sugar, salt, milk and flour/baking powder mixture. Mix batter well until smooth.
2. Pour batter into a strong plastic bag (double-layer) and close the bag. The batter is handily piped from a clean plastic catsup or mustard bottle. (brilliant idea)
3. Heat the oil in a thick-bottomed iron pot to 180C/355F. Sink a round steel soup ladle into the hot oil so that it is half-full of oil. Cut a small corner from the plastic bag. Let the batter run in a thin ribbon into the ladle so that it slowly forms a lattice. Cook 2-3 tippaleipä at a time. Turn the cake when the bottom turns a golden brown.
4. Lift the finished cakes onto a cooling rack lined with paper towels to drain. After they have drained, decorate with confectioners sugar and/or cinnamon sugar before serving. Serve with sima.

permalink Ω 1 May 2005, Helsinki

Warm cowpies

« A beautiful kulitsa/kulich cake in the Ekberg bakery window. »

It's Easter weekend and the weather has been fabulously warm and living up to the holiday's origin of being a celebration of spring before it was appropriated by the various organised religions [I remain ever puzzled why the faithful rarely wonder why all the major holidays coincide with equinoxes or solstices]. I've not been out to enjoy it as much as I might have liked as I've been busy cleaning the house, doing laundry and making kulitsa and pasha which are traditional Easter artery clogging delicacies from Eastern Finland. The kulitsa was dense and the pasha was a soft blob instead of the firm cone that I was aiming for. They tasted good, but I think I'll still be digesting them a week from now. If I live that long. *thunk*

I've been wanting to make mämmi, an Easter food from Southwestern Finland, for the past two years but haven't gotten around to it yet. The HS had an article this past week about a Tunisian guy who founded the Suomen Mämmiseura. I've definitely got to go see the mämmi eating championships next year.

Naturally the founder of Suomen Mämmiseura was also the jury chairman at the World Mämmi-Eating Championships held last weekend in a shopping mall in Toijala, a town between Hämeenlinna and Tampere.

Toijala is also incidentally home to "the world's largest mämmi factory", as you may learn if you see the product in the Finnish shops this week. Annual consumption runs to about 2 million kilos and the Toijala plant turns out around 3.5 million packets of the dessert to stores and kitchens.   

There were two competition categories: the "Camping" series and the "Salon" series. In each case the competitors had to eat two decilitres of mämmi in a manner that appealed to the panel of judges.

"In a civilised fashion!" stresses Ladarsi.

And if there is a book only about salmiakki, surely there is room for a book about mämmi. I'd certainly buy a copy or two. :) The HS also had an article about a mämmi making course along with a recipe that doesn't include molassas since it is considered 'cheating' to sweeten it that way. I'll try it next year....maybe. :)

This becomes mämmi

Ancient traditional delicacy was made in steaming pots helped by oven brooms

by Anna Paljakka of the Helsingin Sanomat

Greetings from a mämmi course!

The ten litre cast iron pot has never, as far as it is known, been used for anything else than cooking mämmi.

As soon as a dash of boiling water has been poured to the (bottom of the) pot which is then sprinkled with rye flour and malt, the sweet and heady smell of mämmi spreads into the room. However, several hours of work, spread over two days, awaits. The women of old didn't let themselves off easily, not in mämmi making.

We are in a traditional house at the Karjaa Folklore Society, called Antkärrgården. The participants of the mämmi course are from Swedish speaking areas and "memma" has belonged to their lives since childhood.

A wood-burning oven and two pots are being used. Two baking ovens are being preheated for the next day's bake.

Over the past weekend, birch bark pans [tuohiropponen] were made with bark that was removed from birches felled last June. It would have been wise to twist the bark into pans at that time for reasons that will become obvious later.

Can it be true that so little is needed for mämmi? Water, flour, malt, a little bit of salt, dried Seville orange peel, maybe a little bit of fresh orange peel.

"Yes, but it requires work. There is no rushing in mämmi making.", reminds the instructor of the mämmi course, a domestic science teacher, Hagar Johnsson.

The pots are stirred vigorously. "It may simmer but not boil, not even bubble," Johnsson keeps reminding us. Hot water is added carefully and once in a while a small amount of malt and flour is added, which gets swallowed by the brown, hot goo.

After three hours cooking it is time to cover the pots and leave to sweeten overnight. "Only a cheater uses syrup for mämmi.", Johnsson reminds us.

The next morning the pots are still hot, as they should be. Sweetening requires a temperature of about 50 degrees Celsisus, in which the carbohydrates are refined into sugars, Johnsson teaches us.

And stirring continues again. Now the mämmi has to boil properly to thicken.

Then the pots are lifted with iron hooks out to the stairs to cool. Now begins the insane whipping of the mämmi mass, as if exorcizing evil spirits. The idea is to get as much air as possible into the mämmi.

When the pots stop steaming, they are lifted into the snow and the whipping in high strokes goes on and on.

Inside the kitchen it looks like a witch's kitchen. The ovens are swept with a broom which has a tuft of coniferous branches at the end of a stick, much like the brooms of the Easter witches.

The best oven temperature for the success of mämmi is 180 degrees Celsius. Then one can still put one's hand into the oven and the bark pans do not burn.

They do not burn, and the bark that has been drying since the last summer is severely tested, even though the pans have been moistened. Some of the pans break, and the precious mämmi falls to the bottom of the oven. The slightly too hot oven is partly to blame.

After a couple hours of slow baking the mämmi pans are covered with foil. The afterbake is important.

Mämmi is easy to freeze. When fresh it keeps like bread.

The Norwegian Ann Lise Lövli Nilsen has also arrived at the Karjaa mämmi course. She is interested in seeing how the famous mämmi that looks like dung, but apparently tastes delicious, is made.

Lövli Nilsen is told one of the innumerable mämmi jokes, the one where a Finnish Swede named Varma Koskitar received a packet from home. The customs needed only to peek at the box and read the name of the recipient. Everything was fine: the packet said "varma koskitar" ("warm cowpats" in Swedish).

There have been attempts to make mämmi more enticing for strangers by comparing it with dark beer. The ingredients and the taste are the same.

Did you know?

Hefty traditional food

• Mämmi is thought of as western Finland invention, but a sweetened grain porridge already existed in Persia.
• The ancient mämmi porridge has all the properties of a catholic fasting food. It is a nutritious, tasty morsel, and is eaten especially on Good Friday, when even firemaking was forbidden at one time.
• From western Finland the sweet and sour mämmi spread eastwards. The oldest literary mentions of mämmi have been found in the doctoral thesis of Daniel Juslenius, the professor from the Academy of Turku, "Aboa Vetus et nova", during the early 1700s. The Finnish-Latin-Swedish dictionary of Juslenius from 1745 mentions a Finnish delicacy, the mämmi porridge, made out of rye.
• A biblical connection has also been found: the children of Israel left the slavery in Egyt so quickly that they had to grab unleavened bread dough. The Jews celebrate Passover to remember that but, in the far north, the place of unleavened bread has been replaced by a traditional food, the nutritious mämmi.

Basic Mämmi

Makes: about 6 pans

• 5 liters (1.3 gallons) water
• 500g (1.1 pound) malt
• 1.5kg (3.3 pounds) rye flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons powdered Seville orange peel
• (zest of 2 orange peels)

1. Add to 1 liter of boiling water, 1 dl (1/2 cup) rye flour and 1 dl (1/2 cup) of malt. Stir well and be careful not to boil the mixture. Add flour and malt only once an hour. Stir again. Repeat until flour and malt are gone.
2. Cover the pot and leave on the stove or in a warm place for about 12 hours to allow the mixture to sweeten.
3. Add salt, Seville orange zest and, if you like, the zest of 2 orange peels. Bring to a boil and allow it to thicken.
4. Take the pot from the stove and, while cooling the mixture, whip the mämmi.
5. Fill the mämmi boxes half-full.
6. Bake at 180C/355F (electric oven works well) for 1.5-2 hours.
7. Cover the boxes well with baking paper or foil for the afterbake.
8. Serve mämmi with milk or half&half. Taste and add sugar on top if it needs it.

permalink Ω 27 March 2005, Helsinki

Where skin porn and food porn collide

It's fun to use google and see what it returns when searching for 'sticky buns' as, well, the imagination is a poor substitute for reality. When food and skin porn collide it gets fairly ugly pretty quickly. Sticky buns are likely the source of inspiration for the Finnish bostonkakku which are served like a pie rather than the individual buns. One of the guys at work quipped that it is served this way because you can feed 20 instead of 8 people.

I figured that since I was making dallaspulla that I'd make the inspiration for texaspulla and bostonkakku so that my test subjects would know just what they had been missing all these years. :) The dough is a snap to make even without a mixer and is much easier to work with than the pulla dough. The only drawback is the time spent waiting for the dough to rise. With a four-day weekend approaching where absolutely nothing will be open and we'll likely have crappy weather given that it's a holiday, what could be better than making a pan of sticky buns and eating them instead of chocolate eggs? These are, by far, the best cinnamon rolls I've ever made and my test subjects consumed them in a shark chum feeding frenzy. Two guys even asked me for the recipe.

Sticky Buns, a.k.a. caramel rolls or cinnamon rolls

Makes: 12 sticky buns
Time: ~30 minutes prep, 3 hours for dough rising
Source: Cook's Illustrated

This recipe has four components: the dough that is shaped into buns, the filling that creates the swirl in the shaped buns, the caramel glaze that bakes in the bottom of the baking dish along with the buns, and the pecan topping that garnishes the buns once baked. Although the ingredient list may look long, note that many ingredients are repeated. Leftover sticky buns can be wrapped in foil or plastic wrap and refrigerated for up to 3 days, but they should be warmed through before serving. They reheat quickly in a microwave oven (for 2 buns, about 2 minutes at 50 percent power works well); they can also be put into a 325F/175C-degree oven for about 8 minutes.

Dough

• 3 large eggs at room temperature
• 3/4 cup buttermilk (2 dl piima) at room temperature
• 1/4 cup (.5 dl) granulated sugar 
• 1 1/4 teaspoons table salt 
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast  (1 packet sunnuntai dry yeast)
• 4 1/4 cups (10,5 dl) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting work surface
• 6 tablespoons (85g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm

1. In bowl of standing mixer, whisk eggs; add buttermilk and whisk to combine.
2. Whisk in sugar, salt, and yeast.
3. Add about 2 cups (5 dl) flour and butter; stir with wooden spoon or rubber spatula until evenly moistened and combined.
4. Add all but about 1/4 cup (1/2 dl) remaining flour and knead with dough hook at low speed 5 minutes.
5. Check consistency of dough (dough should feel soft and moist but should not be wet and sticky; add more flour, if necessary); knead at low speed 5 minutes longer (dough should clear sides of bowl but stick to bottom).
6. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface; knead by hand about 1 minute to ensure that dough is uniform (dough should not stick to work surface during hand kneading; if it does stick, knead in additional flour 1 tablespoon at a time).
7. Lightly spray large bowl or plastic container with nonstick cooking spray. Transfer dough to bowl, spray dough lightly with cooking spray, then cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap.
8. Set in warm, draftfree spot until doubled in volume, 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Caramel Glaze

• 6 tablespoons or 85g unsalted butter 
• 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) light brown sugar, packed
• 3 tablespoons corn syrup, light or dark
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream 
• 1 pinch table salt 

1. Meanwhile, combine all ingredients for glaze in small saucepan.
2. Cook over medium heat, whisking occasionally, until butter is melted and mixture is thoroughly combined.
3. Pour mixture into nonstick metal 13- by 9-inch (33cm x 23cm) baking dish.
4. Using rubber spatula, spread mixture to cover surface of baking dish.
5. Set baking dish aside.

Cinnamon-Sugar Filling

• 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) light brown sugar, packed
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 
• 1 pinch table salt 
• 1 tablespoon or 15g unsalted butter, melted
• Raisins (optional)

1. Combine brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in small bowl.
2. Mix with a fork until thoroughly combined, using fingers to break up sugar lumps.
3. Set aside.

To assemble and bake buns:

1. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface.
2. Gently shape dough into rough rectangle with long side nearest you.
3. Lightly flour dough and roll to 16-inch x 12-inch (40cm x 30cm) rectangle.
4. Brush dough with 1 tablespoon melted butter, leaving 1/2-inch border along top edge; with butter remaining on brush, brush sides of baking dish.
5. Sprinkle filling mixture over dough, leaving 3/4-inch border along top edge; smooth filling in even layer with your hand, then gently press mixture into dough to adhere. Add rasins if you desire.
6. Beginning with long edge nearest you, roll dough into taut cylinder.
7. Firmly pinch seam to seal and roll cylinder seam-side down.
8. Very gently stretch to cylinder of even diameter and 18-inch (45 cm) length; push ends in to create even thickness.
9. Using a serrated knife and gentle sawing motion, slice cylinder in half, then slice each half in half again to create evenly sized quarters.
10. Slice each quarter evenly into thirds, yielding 12 ~1.5 inch (3,75 cm) buns (end pieces may be slightly smaller).
11. Arrange buns cut-side down in prepared baking dish.
12. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and set in warm, draft-free spot until puffy and pressed against one another, about 1 hour.
13. Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to lowest position, place pizza stone (if using) on rack, and heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.
14. Place baking pan on pizza stone; bake until golden brown and center of dough registers about 180F/82C degrees on instant-read thermometer, 25 to 30 minutes.
15. Cool on wire rack 10 minutes; invert onto rimmed baking sheet, large rectangular platter, or cutting board.
16. With rubber spatula, scrape any glaze remaining in baking pan onto buns; let cool while making pecan topping.

Pecan Topping

• 3 tablespoons or 50g unsalted butter 
• 1/4 cup (.5 dl) light brown sugar, packed
• 3 tablespoons corn syrup, light or dark
• 1 pinch table salt 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract  or vanilla sugar
• 3/4 cup (1,75 dl) pecans or walnuts, toasted in a skillet over medium heat until fragrant and browned, about 5 minutes, then cooled and coarsely chopped

1. Combine butter, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt in small saucepan and bring to simmer over medium heat, whisking occasionally to thoroughly combine.
2. Off heat, stir in vanilla and pecans until pecans are evenly coated.
3. Using soup spoon, pour heaping tablespoon of nuts and topping over center of each sticky bun.
4. Continue to cool until sticky buns are warm, 15 to 20 minutes.
5. Pull apart or use knife to cut apart sticky buns; serve.

permalink Ω 23 March 2005, Helsinki

Dinner for One

« A shrine to candle wax in the restaurant Kynsilaukka, the Finnish equivalent to the Stinking Rose. »

I've begun to notice that restaurants and just about any place that offers food and tables almost always have newspapers and magazines for their patrons. These are, I presume, for those who are alone and want something to read while eating instead of staring at the walls. Given that a large percentage of the population in Finland lives alone, it makes a certain amount of sense, but I still find it odd to gaze upon a sea of tables occupied by people trying to read and stuff their mouth at the same time, something I find quite difficult to do. I don't remember too many places in the US, other than diners or breakfast houses, that would offer newspapers for the patrons.

I always used to get take-away whenever I had no companion to dine with as I viewed restaurants as a place to be social and would feel very awkward were I alone. Sometimes I would take a book with me to a local pub where I would sit at the bar, order a beer and a burger, and read a little bit until someone would ask about the book or about work or whatever just to start a conversation. I suppose I admire the wherewithal it takes to take yourself out to eat, but there's something incredibly lonely about it, too. Finns likely don't even notice the silent ones in the corner munching away over the paper and even if they did they'd likely think they want to be left alone. I suppose they have to believe that.

permalink Ω 19 March 2005, Helsinki

So do I have time for a last smoke and a pancake or what?**

« Finnish pannukakku, cut into squares and layered with a fresh fruit compote. »

pan·cake n.

A thin cake made of batter that is poured onto a hot greased surface and cooked on both sides until brown. Also called flannel cake, flapjack; Also called griddlecake, hotcake; also called regionally battercake.

Aside from transcending cultures, pancakes also transcend social classes. They are served in the simplest households and in the grandest royal palaces.

American pancakes seem to have an almost mythological aura surrounding them since so many Americans travel around and scoff at what the locals call a pancake. Yankees with their pancakes and maple syrup were pretty late on getting into the pancake scene as nearly every culture has some kind of pancake as part of their regional cuisine. There are likely as many different varieties of pancakes in the US as there are states, too. But, America elevated the pancake to a valued breakfast food and welcomed diners serving breakfast all day and all night. Finding a good stack of pancakes with warm syrup and a side of scrapple is sometimes difficult, but the pancake is more than just a food, it's a feeling of being home. Pancakes are the basic comfort food in the US.

Some of my fondest memories as a kid involve going to IHOP after Sunday mass for a stack of pancakes topped with a smile fashioned from 2 maraschino cherry eyes, a whipped butter nose and a pineapple ring smile. I despised going to church, but I sucked it up every week knowing that I only had to suffer for an hour to be rewarded with heavenly pancakes. I was easy back then. :) Even when I was older, going to the all night diner for pancakes and eggs after drinking and dancing was a cherished tradition. Finland may have pancakes but the lack of diners or greasy spoons really is a gaping chasm in the comfort food landscape.

Jarkko attempted to make a Finnish pancake for me at some point when we were living back in Boston. He made three attempts and was convinced that the milk or eggs were too different when he failed every time to recreate his beloved pancake. I'm not sure what went wrong, but I'm pretty certain that the eggs and milk in the US aren't quite that different. Finland has a few different varieties of pankcake; the lettu, a crepe-like thin pancake that is fried on a large paella pan, spread with strawberry jam and folded, the ohukkaat, small dollar pancakes and the pannukakku, an oven baked pancake. All of these use a similar, if not the same, batter. They are served a variety of ways, depending on if they are sweet and served with jam or fresh fruit, possibly with cream, or savoury and served with meat and vegetables. Pancakes are very flexible.

I like the Finnish pancakes as what's not to love about a sweet, fried/baked treat served with jam and cream? But, there are certain foods that you eat as a child that become your basic measure of familiarity, your comfort foods, and as much as I enjoy Finnish pancakes, they just aren't the fluffy blueberry flapjacks served with whipped butter and hot maple syrup with a side of scrapple and eggs from my favourite diner back home. It works both ways though as, given the choice between both the pannukakku and the German pancake in the icebox, Jarkko goes for the pannukakku first. I wanted to solve the mystery of the Finnish pancake not working in the US and I think that maybe Jarkko just wasn't remembering the recipe correctly. Or something. :) The Finnish pannukakku recipe is quite good and I'm happy with it after sifting through about 40 different recipes on the net and in a few cookbooks I have. I'm sure that it will work just as well elsewhere in the world. I also wanted to make something American [in spite of the 'German' in the name] that might meet somewhere between the flapjack and the pannukakku. The German pancake is a baked pancake that has fruit and cream in it, as well as a caramel sauce, which are all popular standards in many Finnish desserts, but not common in the pannukakku. If I had any maple syrup around I would try that on it as well since it might swing the taste back towards home.

Pannukakku, maailman paras!/The world's best [Finnish] Pancake!

Makes: about 35 small ohukkaat or 1 med-large pancake ~1-2 cm thick or a reasonable number of waffles.
Time: about 80 minutes, including a 30 minute rest for the batter
Source: Ruoka ja Viini

• 8 dl or 3.5 cups milk
• 2-3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 dl or 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar**
• 4 dl or 1.75 cups wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 50-100g or 1/2-1 stick melted butter

1. In a bowl, whisk eggs until the yolks are broken and add milk.
2. Mix together dry ingredients. You can reduce the amount of sugar or remove it entirely if you wish.
3. Add the dry ingredient mixture gradually into the egg-milk mixture, stirring well.
4. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes.
5. Pour batter into baking pan covered in baking paper, place in a cold oven and bake at 225C/425F for about 30 minutes. The baking paper may also be greased with oil or melted butter so that the pancake relases easily from the pan.

The pannukakku batter is very similar for all the varieties of lettut [crepes], ohukkaat [dollar pancakes], vohvelit [waffles] and pannukakku [pancake]. This particular recipe is excellent and, perhaps, a bit on the sweet side but you can reduce the amount of sugar or remove it entirely and add vegetables and/or some sort of meat for a savory version. I also found that sifting the flour into the mixture made a smoother batter since the egg and milk tend to make unsifted flour form clumps. I used 75g of butter and thought it to be a bit on the greasy side so using the 50g instead of the 100g suggestion seems the better amount. The baking time will vary as I found 30 minutes was not quite long enough as, even though it was getting brown on top, the center was still a bit gooey.

**About vanilla sugar: Don't substitute vanilla extract for this. The difference in taste is akin to the difference between a quart of Bryer's Vanilla Ice Cream with the full bean and some other cheap vanilla ice cream. Life is too short to use fake vanilla considering that we may be the last generation to enjoy the real bean. You can make your own if it's not readily available.

Vanilla Sugar

• 2-3 vanilla beans
• 2 cups confectioner's [or granulated] sugar

Slice down the side of the vanilla beans with a knife and scrape the seeds into an airtight container with the sugar. Mix seeds into the sugar and seal tightly with lid. Let sit for 1 to 2 weeks.

German Apple Pancake

Makes: 1 10" or 25cm diameter pancake
Time: about 1 hour
Special Equipment: Ovenproof skillet
Source: Cook's Illustrated

The perfect pancake should have crisp, lighter-than-air edges and a custard-like center, with buttery sautéed apples baked right into the batter.

A 10-inch ovenproof skillet is necessary for this recipe; we highly recommend using a nonstick skillet for the sake of easy cleanup, but a regular skillet will work as well. You can also use a cast-iron pan; if you do, set the oven temperature to 425 degrees in step 1, and when cooking the apples in step 3, cook them only until just barely golden, about 6 minutes. Cast iron retains heat better than stainless steel, making the higher oven temperature unnecessary.

• 1/2 cup or 1.25 dl unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt 
• 2 large eggs 
• 2/3 cup or 1.5 dl half-and-half  [half cream, half whole milk]
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 
• 1 1/4 pounds or about .56 kg Granny Smith or Braeburn apples (3 to 4 large apples), peeled, quartered, cored, and cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
• 1/4 cup or 1/2 dl light brown sugar or dark brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice 
• confectioners' sugar for dusting

1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position; pre-heat oven to 500F/260C degrees.
2. Whisk to combine flour, granulated sugar, and salt in medium bowl. In second medium bowl, whisk eggs, half-and-half, and vanilla until combined. Add liquid ingredients to dry and whisk until no lumps remain, about 20 seconds; set batter aside.
3. Heat butter in 10-inch/25cm ovenproof nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until sizzling. Add apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon; cook, stirring frequently with heatproof rubber spatula, until apples are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Off heat, stir in lemon juice.
4. Working quickly, pour batter around the edge of the skillet and over the top of the apples. Place skillet in oven and immediately reduce oven temperature to 218C/425F degrees; bake until pancake edges are brown and puffy and have risen above edges of skillet, about 18 minutes.
5. Using oven mitts to protect hands, remove hot skillet from oven and loosen pancake edges with heatproof rubber spatula; invert pancake onto serving platter. Dust with confectioners' sugar, cut into wedges, and serve.

This recipe is wonderful if you like apple pancakes. I did notice that the baking time was a bit longer than 18 minutes. If you like firmer apples, you can reduce the initial frying time by half. If you lack a proper skillet, i.e. one with a plastic handle, you can likely use a small baking pan if you heat it first in the oven and quickly transfer the apples to it after frying them. Be sure to remove the pancake from the pan as soon as you remove it from the oven since it will stick if you leave it to cool for even a few minutes. Make the caramel sauce as it complements the pancake perfectly, but prepare it a few hours or even a day or two ahead of time as it seems that the flavour blooms after resting and cooling for a while. A scoop of vanilla ice cream is a tasty accompaniment, too.

Caramel Sauce

Makes about 1.5 cups or 3.5 dl

• 1/2 cup or 1.25 dl water 
• 1 cup or 2.25 dl granulated sugar 
• 1 cup or 2.25 dl heavy cream 
• 1/8 teaspoon table salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice 

1. Place water in heavy-bottomed 2-quart saucepan; pour sugar in center of pan, taking care not to let sugar crystals adhere to sides of pan. Cover and bring mixture to boil over high heat; once boiling, uncover and continue to boil until syrup is thick and straw-colored (syrup should register 300F/150C degrees on candy thermometer), about 7 minutes. Reduce heat to medium and continue to cook until syrup is deep amber (syrup should register 350F/175C degrees on candy thermometer), about 1 to 2 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, bring cream and salt to simmer in small saucepan over high heat (if cream boils before sugar reaches deep amber color, remove cream from heat and cover to keep warm).
3. Remove sugar syrup from heat; very carefully pour about one quarter of hot cream into it (mixture will bubble vigorously so don't use a small saucepan), and let bubbling subside. Add remaining cream, vanilla, and lemon juice; whisk until sauce is smooth. (Sauce can be cooled and refrigerated in airtight container for up to 2 weeks.)

**As uttered by Goldmember in an Austin Powers movie....

permalink Ω 10 March 2005, Helsinki

Cake with your Chocolate

« Best chocolate cake ever.... »

I have a puppy who doesn't often let me relax on the couch in the evening but somehow sleeps contentedly on the kitchen floor if I am baking something, so I have been baking a bit more than usual lately. I was looking for a cooking pan one evening and rediscovered the gothic cathedral Bundt pan I've had for a few years that I'd forgotten about and thought about making a Bundt cake that would appeal to the Finnish dessert palate. I figured I could make the cake for some friends we were having over but I would subject my coworkers to a test cake to see if they liked it as much as I guessed they might. It's funny how so many products in Finland claim 'Authentic American Taste' but how few of them are anywhere near the actual taste and, when given something that really does taste like it does back home, how few Finns really enjoy it. I have learned through trial and error that it is a rare American dessert that appeals to the Finnish palate. The cake is very chocolatey, not overly sweet and the whipped cream and raspberries are a near constant feature in Finnish desserts.

As a disclaimer, I'm not all that crazy about chocolate cakes, but if I had tasted the batter before I poured it all into the pan and shoved it into the oven, I could have easily decided to eat the entire bowl of batter myself instead of having only the spatula to lick the remainder from. I think a couple of people at work went back for a second piece so it's safe to say that it was well received. I made the first cake with kermaviili because I didn't think that Finland really had a true sour cream and kermaviili was reasonably close to the mark. The second cake I made with smetana, which I was told was more like sour cream than kermaviili. Kermaviili is about 10% fat, smetana is about 47% fat and American sour cream is somewhere around 21% fat. Of the two cakes, the kermaviili cake was far better because it was more moist and less rich than the smetana cake. I think this is one of the few occasions where less fat is better than more.

Don't overdo the mixing as it will introduce too much air into the batter and cause the cake to rise more than it should. I used my standing mixer for the first cake and noticed that I really didn't need it save for the creaming of the butter and sugar. The cake release should be used on any pan you use, even if it is the most stick-free teflon on the market. Wrap cake in foil or plastic wrap after cooling for an hour or two if you don't plan to eat it right away to help keep the cake moist.

The Best Chocolate Bundt Cake

Serves: 12 to 14
Special equipment: Bundt or tube pan
Time: about 90 minutes
Source: Cook's Illustrated

Cake Release

• 1 tablespoon butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon cocoa

Cake

• 3/4 cup (2.25 oz) or 1,75dl cocoa, natural (not Dutch-processed)
• 6 oz or 170g bittersweet chocolate (2 100g bars of Fazer baking chocolate which leaves a few bits for eating.)
• 1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
• 3/4 or 1.75dl cup water (boiling)
• 1 cup (8.75 oz) or 2,5dl sour cream (kermaviili not smetana if in Finland), room temperature
• 1.75 cups or 4,25dl unbleached all-purpose flour 
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• 12 tablespoons(1.5 sticks) or 170g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups (14 oz) or 4,75dl light brown sugar 
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 
• 5 large eggs, room temperature
• confectioners' sugar for dusting

FOR THE PAN:

1. Stir together butter and cocoa in small bowl until paste forms; using a pastry brush, coat all interior surfaces of standard 12-cup Bundt pan. (If mixture becomes too thick to brush on, microwave it for 10 to 20 seconds, or until warm and softened.)
2. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.

FOR THE CAKE:

1. Combine cocoa, chocolate, and espresso powder (if using) in medium heatproof bowl; pour boiling water over and whisk until smooth. Cool to room temperature; then whisk in sour cream.
2. Whisk flour, salt, and baking soda in second bowl to combine.
3. In standing mixer fitted with flat beater, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
4. Reduce speed to medium and add eggs one at a time, mixing about 30 seconds after each addition and scraping down bowl with rubber spatula after first 2 additions.
5. Reduce to medium-low speed (batter may appear separated); add about one third of flour mixture and half of chocolate/sour cream mixture and mix until just incorporated, about 20 seconds.
6. Scrape bowl and repeat using half of remaining flour mixture and all of remaining chocolate mixture; add remaining flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 10 seconds.
7. Scrape bowl and mix on medium-low until batter is thoroughly combined, about 30 seconds.
8. Pour batter into prepared Bundt pan, being careful not to pour batter on sides of pan.
9. Bake until wooden skewer inserted into center comes out with few crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes.
10. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then invert cake onto parchment-lined wire rack; cool to room temperature, about 3 hours.
11. Dust with confectioners' sugar, transfer to serving platter, and cut into wedges; serve with Tangy Whipped Cream and raspberries, if desired.

Tangy Whipped Cream

• 1 cup or 2,50dl heavy cream (cold)
• 1/4 cup or ~.60dl sour cream 
• 1/4 cup or ~.60dl packed light brown sugar 
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract 

With electric mixer, beat all ingredients, gradually increasing speed from low to high, until cream forms soft peaks, 1.5 to 2 minutes.

Lightly Sweetened Raspberries

• 3 cups or 7dl fresh raspberries gently rinsed and dried
• 1 - 2 tablespoons granulated sugar 

Gently toss raspberries with sugar, then let stand until berries have released some juice and sugar has dissolved, about 15 minutes.

permalink Ω 27 February 2005, Helsinki

Winter Apples

« Omenanyytti or Omenamunkki or Baked Apple Dumpling or Inside Out Apple Pie »

I noticed a recipe for omenamunkit in Kotiliesi [2005, no. 4, pg. 59] and it reminded me of the baked apples my mother used to make every autumn after we would return from picking apples in a nearby orchard. The filling was different as my mother would always include brown sugar, walnuts and butter and the idea of baking it with a dough crust like a dumpling sounded tasty, sort of like an inside out apple pie. I consulted Cook's Illustrated to see their recipe for baked apples and they had the brilliant idea of using a melon baller to core the apple which I can attest does an absolutely perfect job of removing the seeds without punching through the bottom of the apple. They also found the Golden Delicious apple to be the best apple for this recipe.

I found that the skin should be removed from the apple if baking with the dough crust since it remains tough after baking and makes the end result difficult to eat. The skin should be left intact, save for a strip around the stem end of the apple, if baked without the crust. I pre-baked one batch of apples and added the dough crust after 30 minutes of baking since I thought that the dough would bake far more quickly than the apple would, but the apple came out mushy, the skin was tough and the dough was undercooked.

The frozen/ready-made pastry dough [voitaikina] was rubbery, difficult to work with and not very tasty so I cannot recommend using it at all. I made a fresh batch of dough and will note that refrigerating the dough before rolling it out is necessary. A silicone mat to roll the dough on is useful, too, since the dough is difficult to work with and the mat allows you to maneuver the apple and the dough together. The recipe describes applying the dough to the apple 'as if making a snowball' and it is an accurate description. Once you drape the dough over the apple you can then pack it around to enclose the apple and smooth it out by rolling it over the mat or another flat surface.

Select apples carefully as bigger isn't better and the apple should be able to stand erect on a flat surface. If baking without the crust, you should choose apples with unblemished skins as well.

Baked Apple Dumplings/Omenamunkit/Omenanyytit

Serves 6
Time: about 90 minutes
Special tools: mellon baller

• 6 medium Golden Delicious apples (about 2 pounds/1 kg)

Filling:

• 1 dl or 1/2 cup dark raisins 
• 3/4 dl or 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1dl or 1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 4 teaspoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon or more to taste
• 2 teaspoons freshly shredded or powdered ginger

Basting:

• 1 cup pure apple juice/cider (preferably unfiltered) or enough to come up 1/2 inch up side of pan

1. Prepare dough and place in refrigerator to chill. Heat oven to 350F/175C degrees.
2. Core apples using a melon baller taking care not to puncture the bottom of the apple. If you are planning to eat the apples without the dough crust, remove one strip of the peel from the stem end otherwise remove the entire peel.
3. Place apples in 9-inch pie pan or 8-inch-square baking pan. Mix raisins, walnuts, cinnamon, brown sugar, ginger and butter together and divide the mixture among the apples, stuffing their cores. Skip to the dough section if baking apples with the crust.
4. Sprinkle cinnamon over the apples. Pour cider into pan.
5. Bake apples, basting every 15 minutes, until tender when pierced with thin, sharp knife or cake tester, 35 to 45 minutes. Be careful not to overbake, or skins will split, causing apples to lose their shape. Serve warm. (Can be cooled to room temperature, covered, and refrigerated for 2 days. Reheat before serving.)

Dough:

• 120g or 1 stick butter
• 1/2 dl or 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons freshly shredded ginger (optional)
• 3 dl or 1 1/3 cup wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

• confectioners sugar

1. Cream butter and sugar together. Add egg and mix well.
2. Add ginger.
3. Combine baking powder and wheat flour and mix into dough. Mix until smooth and place into refrigerator to chill while you are preparing the apples.
4. After you have prepared and filled the apples, briefly knead the dough and divide the dough into six parts. Roll each portion out into an oval large enough, wrap around each apple and pat as if making a snowball until the dough encloses the apple.
5. Bake at 175C/350F for about 40 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
6. Top with sifted confectioners sugar and serve warm with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream.

permalink Ω 21 February 2005, Helsinki

Fat Buns

« Laskiaispulla, the traditional pastry during Shrovetide. If you don't have fat buns before you eat one of these, you will. »

Try the 'new and improved' version of this entry.

No, I'm not becoming the Martha Stewart of the North, but after inflicting my coworkers with the runeberg cakes last week, one of them mentioned the laskiaispulla and I thought I'd give them a try since I've not made bread in a while. There is the bonus of having people at work to give the bulk of the treats to since they're native taste testers and fattening them up makes me look thinner. :) Also, Laskiainen/Shrovetide is a Finnish holiday a recovering Catholic can love since the Finns wisely rid themselves of the papal plague but kept the foods and parties. What's not to love? I saw a bunch of skaters and people careening down the very icy hills today when I took Otava to the park. The kids are just warming up for Penkkarit. :)

Working in the kitchen also seems to make Otava happy as he will lie on my feet as I'm working instead of being the petulant ball of fur he usually is when I try to sit on the couch for five minutes in the evening. I've not answered email that requires more than one or two sentences in a week or two since I am usually too worn out, if I get the time. I have conversations I can't remember an hour later or lose my train of thought in mid-sentence when talking. I've been meaning to send out invites for a puppy party, but find myself staring at a blank email trying to remember what I was going to write and who I was going to write it to. I am the wakeful dead.

Baking doesn't really require much in the way of deep thoughts so it is a perfect activity. So, again, I returned to my copy of Kotiruoka and, rather insanely, decided to try making the buns around 11pm on Sunday after we had spent the afternoon taking Otava to Suomenlinna and riding the tram around town where a group of people offered us, and Otava, some pulla. Otava declined.

The recipe for pulla in Kotiruoka reads much like something your grandmother might have written down at some point, if she ever bothered to use a recipe for making it, so it assumes a lot and leaves out a lot. There was one word, kermamaito (creammilk) that no one I asked seemed to have an authoritative translation for so I settled on whole milk [it is actually a mixture of half whole milk and half cream, a.k.a. Half&Half in the US]. I had one batch of buns that tasted good but didn't rise because I read the recipe, but forgot how fussy yeast bread doughs can be and how they will not be rushed. The dough is easy to make but requires time and patience as well as some precision.

I've reworded many parts of the recipe as well as made some parts more clear and moved the addition of the butter from the kneading stage to melting it with the milk soup for the yeast. I also halved the recipe since the laskiaispulla recipe asked for half of the dough from the recipe and the original made enough pulla for a small regiment. If you have fifty friends you need to feed, use the measures in the ()'s. Also, the amount of flour is a little on the low side and is closer to about 5 cups before the dough comes together. I was a bit worried that so much more flour than the recipe called for might make them chewy but I sifted the flour a little at a time into the dough so it wasn't likely that I had overdone it. Everyone seemed to eat them and, I think, they were better received than my runeberg experiment. :)

One caveat is that the almond paste filling is 2000 times more almondy than marzipan and is not for the almond averse. It's like a 200 pound almond infusing your entire body with its taste and smell. The jam variety is popular, if not traditional, for those who aren't all that keen on the almond paste.

Arkivehnänen (pulla) Everyday bread

Makes: 12 to 24 buns (24 to 50 buns)
Preparation time: approximately 3 hours
Source: Kotiruoka

• 2.5dl or 1 cup (5dl or 2c) whole milk
• 75g or 3/4 stick (1.5 sticks or 3/4 cup) butter
• 25g yeast cake, .88oz or 1 packet of instant yeast (50g | 1.75 oz)
• 1 (2) eggs
• .75dl-1dl or 1/3-1/2 cup (1.5-2 dl | 3/4-1 cup) sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons (1 tablespoon) cardamom
• 3/4-1 teaspoon (1.5-2) teaspoons salt
• about .5kg [7.5-8dl] or 3.25-3.5 cups (1kg [15-16dl] or 6.5-7cups) wheat flour

1. Take the ingredients needed for the dough and bring them to room temperature before starting so that they will not chill the yeast.
2. Heat milk and butter in a saucepan on a warm, but not hot, burner. Whisk until butter has melted and the mixture is brought to 100F/38C. Crumble the yeast into the milk. Stir with a whisk until the yeast has fully dissolved.
3. Add egg[s], sugar, salt and cardamom, mixing well.

4. Add flour after first whisking the mixture, then knead by hand. Leave some of the flour unused at this point and add only if needed after the dough has risen. You will know the right amount of flour by feel. Add flour slowly, with a sifter if you have one, as the dough will go from sticky to smooth very quickly when the right amount of flour has been reached. Resist the urge to add too much flour as this will result in a dry, dense bun.

   **If you want to prepare the dough with a mixer, use less flour than when doing it manually. Knead to dough only for 2 to 3 minutes so that the elasticity stays.

5. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or tin foil and place in a warm, draft-free spot to allow the dough to double in volume. This will take about 1 hour. Warm oven to 85F/35C to use as a proofing box or use the microwave by placing the covered dough inside with a cup of boiling water.
6. When the dough has doubled, remove from the proofing box, and knead for a few minutes. Roll the dough into small buns, about the size of an egg. The dough makes about 15-24 small buns or two braids.
7. Place the small buns onto lightly greased pans, cover with a towel and place in the oven/microwave and allow them to rise again for another 20 minutes or so. Remove from the oven, and place them on the counter while they are still covered. Pre-heat the oven to 225C/425F.
8. Brush the whole top side of the raised buns [for even browning] with a whisked egg white and sprinkle with sliced almonds, powdered almonds, or pearl sugar. You may leave them plain and dust with confectioners sugar after baking or filling with cream.
9. Bake small buns in the middle rack of the oven at 225C/425F for ten minutes and braids at the bottom of the oven in 200/395C for 20 to 25 minutes. The buns go from light brown to very brown in a flash so keep a close watch on them while they are baking.
10. Place buns on a cooling rack and cover with a towel.

Laskiaispullat or Lenten/Shrovetide Buns

Filling:

• 150g | 3/4 cup almond paste (not marzipan) (or 1dl ground almonds and 1dl confectioners sugar)
• about 1dl | 1/2 cup whole milk or half&half

or

• raspberry [or another berry] jam

and

• 2.5dl | 2 cups whipping cream
• vanilla or vanilla sugar

Decoration:

• confectioners sugar if not baked with sliced almonds or pearl sugar

1. Place cream [container] into a bowl filled with ice and put into the fridge to chill while making the almond filling. It's also a good idea to chill the mixing bowl as well.
2. Using a sharp knife, slice a "lid" from the buns. Gently scoop a little bit of the bun from inside with a spoon and crumble into a bowl. Mix in either the crushed almond and sugar or the almond paste. Add whole milk and mix into a smooth paste. Chill the paste to make it easier to work with and spoon the paste into the buns. You may also fill the buns with raspberry jam.
3. Pour the chilled cream into the mixing bowl, add a few drops of vanilla or vanilla sugar to taste, and mix on high for about one minute until you have a firm peaks. Do not beat too long unless you want to fill the buns with butter. :) Using a pastry bag or spoon, fill the buns with cream and replace the 'lid'.
4. Sift a bit of confectioners sugar on top if you like. Serve in a bowl with hot milk and a spoon or with coffee.

permalink Ω 9 February 2005, Helsinki

Bullets of Butter

« Runebergintortut / Runeberg cakes »

( See also the 2006 Runeberg Cake update where I try again and manage to make some pretty decent cakes.)

February 5th is Runebergin Päivä and every year little bullet cakes topped with jam and rings of icing start appearing a few weeks after the Christmas holidays are over to commemorate the the national poet [who wrote in Swedish] J.L. Runeberg [Lovely website. Requires Flash]. I had never tried the cakes because I'm not particularly fond of cavity inducing sweets and Jarkko had warned me off of them. On a whim I bought a package of them at the grocery one evening and tried one for the hell of it and found it to be not too horribly sweet and rather tasty in spite of the handicap of being mass produced and subsequently a bit on the dry side.

So, I consulted my copy of Kotiruoka and was intrigued by the use of bread and cookie crumbs in the recipe. I looked at other recipes for the cakes and found them suspect by comparison due to many of them using margarine instead of butter. Unless you have serious dietary requirements which bar you from enjoying butter occasionally, any recipe for a confection that calls for synthetic fats [exception for pie crust and pastry dough] should be held suspect since they are not the same as butter and, given I'm a chemist, I consider them to be far worse for you than butter when used in moderation. Many of the recipes also omitted the gingerbread cookie and bread crumbs or tried to tart up the recipe with various other ingredients. The Kotiruoka recipes are decidedly not fancy, very traditional and trustworthy recipes. Considering just how far off the English versions are from the original Finnish recipes, it's a pity there isn't an English translation for the bible of Finnish cooking. I made four different variations, including the original and had a few willing victims taste them and pick the one they liked the best.

The Problem: Runeberg cakes are a traditional confection for Runberg's Day on 5 February in Finland. They are generally regarded to be either too dry or too sweet when rum or liqueurs are added to moisten them.

The Goal: To make a traditional Runeberg cake that is not quite so dry without resorting to adding liqueurs for moisture.

The Solution: Part of the dryness problem stems from the fact that most people rely on bakeries to provide the cakes and, especially if they are purchased in the grocery, they dry out fairly quickly in the winter air if not sealed well. The combination of bread crumbs and gingerbread cookie crumbs also soak up much of the available moisture. I went back to the classic recipe in Kotiruoka and found that it calls for jam topping before and after baking which most of the other recipes and the bakeries don't do. The jam supplies a bit of extra moisture during baking. I also added a bit of fruit juice to complement the jam of choice and to add a bit more moisture without making them soggy.

Runebergintortut - Runeberg Cakes

Makes: 12 regular or 8 large bullet-shaped cakes
Preparation time: approximately 1 hour
Special Equipment: Runeberg forms or straight-edged muffin pan [ dimensions: 5.7cm/2.3in wide and 5.5cm/2in deep ]
Source: Kotiruoka, pg. 411

Ingredients

• 150g | 1.5 sticks butter
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 dl | 1/2 cup ground or finely chopped almonds
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup wheat flour
• 1.5 dl | 3/4 cup bread crumbs [korppujauhetta] (optional: substitute 1/4 cup gingerbread cookie crumbs)
• 1 tl | 1 teaspoon baking powder
• .5 dl | 1/4 cup cream
• 2 tablespoons orange juice (optional)

Decoration

• raspberry jam or marmalade
• 1 dl | 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• about 1/2 tablespoon water

Apple-walnut variation

Substitute full fruit apple jam [chunky] in place of the raspberry, apple juice for the orange juice and use finely chopped walnuts instead of almonds.

1. Mix dry ingredients [ flour, bread crumbs, gingerbread crumbs (if used), baking powder ] together and set aside. Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well. Add cream and dry ingredients. Stir vigorously until smooth and thick. Fold in nuts.
2. Pour the batter into muffin cups or greased popover/straight-edged baking pans. Fill the cups 2/3 full [about 1/3 cup]. Press floured fingers into the batter to create a divot in the top and fill with raspberry or apple jam.
3. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 395F/200C for about 15 minutes. Remove the forms/remove from the pan and decorate the cakes when cool. Add more raspberry jam to the top of the cake. Mix the confectioner's sugar with water until it becomes a thick paste. Pour or pipe the icing into rings around the jam.
4. If gingerbread crumbs are used in the batter, you can spice it up with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of cloves.

The classic shape of the cakes are squat and bullet-like from the straight-edged forms [5.7cm/2.3in wide and 5.5cm/2in deep] but those less fussy about how they look may use a muffin pan with paper cups, bake-proof ceramic coffee cups/small souffle cups or even small tomato paste cans [they're smooth] with the bottom removed. Finding these special forms locally in the country where they are traditional at this time of year is surprisingly difficult. I did eventually find them at Stockmann for 2.50 euro/ea. Apparently few bother with making their own or making them with the forms. Outside of Finland/the Nordic region, the closest ready-made pan is the Nordic Ware Crown Muffin Pan. The advantage the forms have over the muffin/popover pan is that they lift off of the cakes instead of having to tease them out of the muffin pan, 6 at a time, without mangling them. If using the muffin pan, allow extra time to cool since they are a bit more fragile when they are warm.

Creaming the butter and sugar together and then adding in the eggs is, perhaps, the most important step in this recipe. I reluctantly purchased one of those Braun hand held mixers last year and have rarely used my standing mixer since. It's perfect for this job as the purpose of creaming the butter and sugar together is to get a bit of air into the mixture. The original recipe doesn't state how much of the gingerbread cookie crumbs to use but I found a 1:3 ratio of cookie to bread crumbs to be the best. After adding in the dry ingredients you will have a thick, porridge-like batter that won't ooze out from beneath the cake forms. Add the fruit juice last.

Grease the pan and forms well and pour about 1/3 cup of batter into each form. Press the batter into the form with a moist spatula and smooth the top and edges since the batter retains much of the shape after baking and it will look ragged if not smoothed out before. Place a small blob of jam on top of the batter in each cup. The directions in the original recipe call for using floured fingers to make a depression for the jam, but I didn't find that this worked very well and used a wet spoon with some success or just shoved the spoon with jam into the batter without bothering to make a divot first. I found the latter to work better since the jam didn't bubble up quite as much during baking. Once they're done baking and have cooled, decorate and eat. The cakes do travel well if packed properly and I will note that the square clear plastic boxes that some of the butter cookies are sold in [in Finland] will hold 9 cakes perfectly.

My attentive assistant and discriminating taste-tester seemed to prefer the cakes where I used the gingerbread cookie crumbs from the original recipe version although claimed that the batch I made without gingerbread but with added orange peel and orange juice tasted 'more like the Fazer' version of the cakes. I subjected 8 test subjects at work to a blind tasting with 4 samples; 3 of mine and one from a Fazer control. Again, the gingerbread cookie crumb variety was popular as was the apple variation. Interestingly, several picked the Fazer control which may be due to baseline normal for this annual traditional cake as they liked the variations very much as well. The apple variety could also be good to make all year as it's not so closely associated with Runeberg's day.

permalink Ω 4 February 2005, Helsinki

A "Wellness Sensation"

« Aloe Vera Yogurt: medicinal cream or foodstuff? Yes, this is as deep as my thoughts get today. It tastes good, actually, but I'm tempted to apply some to the giant scrape down my arm that I got last night when I slipped and fell down the snowy stairs when leaving work. It also has an aftertaste that lingers for several hours that is reminiscent of worn sweatsocks. They're marketing it as a 'wellness sensation'. The hot buzzword used to be 'nutraceutical' but it might sound just a little too much like neuticles for comfort. »

permalink Ω 26 January 2005, Helsinki

Snap Crackle Squish

« Finnish jätehuone still-life; bucket, waste drum of some Sodium Dicyanamide (used mainly for the production of chlorhexidine, a versatile bactericide, and agrochemicals), a dead dot matrix printer, torn insulation on heating pipes, a 1970s chair and a bizarre red, gold and black pillow adorned with ancient Egyptian motifs. »

The deep thought for the day came to me in the grocery where I noticed a new kind of cereal: Are Multigrain Rice Krispies© still Rice Krispies©? Shouldn't they be Multigrain Krispies© or something Krispies© instead? What about Rice, Oat and Maize Krispies©? Maybe Pro-Biotic Krispies© for the middle-aged yuppies? When they started with Corn Chex©, they franchised into multiple flavours but never Multigrain Corn Chex©, rather Multigrain Chex©. I am perplexed. I did notice that the same cereal is being marketed in the UK as Rice Krispies© Muddles which come with a pro- and pre-biotic bio-bonus payload! Sounds more like a biology lab experiment than a breakfast cereal served in sugar with a little milk.

I am also frightened by the disturbing rumour that Oliver Stone is thinking about making an epic fanfic movie that will make every Thatcherite pre-order the DVD for enjoying it in private with a jar of vaseline and tissues. He is supposedly thinking about Meryl Streep for the lead probably because every other self-respecting actress in the UK would laugh at the very idea of it.

And, Scene from My Life, nee A Day in the Life, has finally returned after a long hiatus with a photographer in Paris whose photoblog I follow regularly.

Seven more days until we get the puppy. :)

permalink Ω 10 January 2005, Helsinki

Spritz

« A rather sinister looking Moomin stencil. »

Every culture that celebrates Christmas invariably has a selection of traditional holiday cookies, some of which are unique to or identified with a particular country or culture. My mother used to get the whole family into baking somewhere around 45-60 different kinds of cookies every holiday season to give to patients, nurses, interns, family and anyone else who looked like they wouldn't refuse a plate of homemade cookies. Many of the cookies were made from traditional recipes her mother gave her from Germany, like the anise cookies she'd have to hide from me since I had a bad habit of stuffing myself sick with them. :) The cookies I thought were rather bland but enjoyed making the most were the spritz cookies since I loved playing with the cookie press. We would either dye the dough green and make wreaths or use coloured sugars and candied fruits to make them into wreaths and otherwise festive symbols.

Spritz cookies are generally claimed to be of Swedish origin although just about every European country has some sort of variation on a simple butter cookie. Even with the spritz cookies, there are as many variations in recipes as there are recipes. Beatrice Ojakangas, the author of many Finnish and Nordic/Scandinavian cookbooks, has a spritz recipe that calls for cake flour that I've used before and found the cookies dull, crumbly and powdery. The closest recipe in the Finnish cookbook I could find is a generic dough called Murotaikina which is then used in a wide variety of cookies. The recipes generally call for baking powder and whole eggs. I've also seen a number of other recipes that use either margarine or shortening which I would never even consider using. They're butter cookies, not crisco or margarine cookies.

Cook's Illustrated this month takes on this abused cookie and comes up with a recipe that is the result of testing all the ingredients and finding the right combination for a buttery, slightly sweet cookie that keeps its shape and doesn't disintegrate before it hits your mouth. The creaming of the butter and sugar together is the essential step since the air pockets created by doing this give the cookie its proper texture. The method for pressing CI used was a pastry bag, but they did test a number of cookie presses and found the Wilton Comfort Grip press to be the best they tried. They do make a strong argument for the pastry bag though since it provides for more creative shapes.

Spritz Cookies

We had the best results baking these cookies one sheet at a time. When reusing a cookie sheet, make sure that it has completely cooled before forming more cookies on it. Unbaked dough can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days; to use, let it stand at room temperature until softened, about 45 minutes. Baked cookies will keep for more than a week if stored in an airtight container or zipper-lock bag.

Makes about 6 dozen 1 1/2-inch cookies

• 1 large egg yolk 
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened (about 70 degrees)
• 2/3 cup sugar (about 4-3/4 ounces)
• 1/4 teaspoon table salt 
• 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (10 ounces)

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 375 degrees. In small bowl, beat yolk, cream, and vanilla with fork until combined; set aside.
2. In standing mixer, cream butter, sugar, and salt at medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Scrape down bowl with rubber spatula. With mixer running at medium speed, add yolk/cream mixture and beat until incorporated, about 30 seconds. Scrape down bowl. With mixer running at low speed, gradually beat in flour until combined. Scrape down bowl and give final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no flour pockets remain.
3. If using cookie press to form cookies, follow manufacturer's instructions to fill press; if using pastry bag, follow illustrations 1 through 3 below to fill bag. Press or pipe cookies onto ungreased baking sheets, spacing them about 1-1/2 inches apart. Bake one sheet at a time until cookies are light golden brown, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking time. Cool cookies on baking sheet until just warm, 10 to 15 minutes; using metal spatula, transfer to wire rack and cool to room temperature.

almond variation: Grind 1/2 cup sliced almonds and 2 tablespoons flour called for in the spritz recipe until powdery and evenly fine; combine almond mixture with remaining flour. Follow recipe for spritz, substituting 3/4 teaspoon almond extract for vanilla.

lemon variation: add 1 teaspoon lemon juice to yolk/cream mixture in step 1 and add 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest to butter along with sugar and salt in step 2.

permalink Ω 18 November 2004, Helsinki

Snacks of America Demystified

Chicken? Are you a man or you an elf?. I see this van around quite a lot. Next time they should use a bigger marker and write backwards so the car ahead can read it in the rear view mirror. :)

The Morning News has a brilliant article titled Unexplained Snacks of America written by an Australian who has a few observations and guesses about a some mysterious American foods. This coming from the land of vegemite is a bit amusing. :)

Americans tend to assume that 99.9% of the population of the planet have a deep, broad knowledge of American popular culture and for the most part few disappoint us in that assumption. Finns, including my own husband, know more at times about my own culture than I do. I find that I take a near absurd pleasure in explaining things to Jarkko that he hasn't ever seen, like 'Rooty tooty fresh and fruity'. Suddenly, somewhere, a bunch of Americans just got a craving for breakfast at midnight at Denny's. :) The world gets innundated with American TV, movies, books and cartoons so I always feel dreadfully exposed and dull by comparison to my European friends. It's like a woman who gets shagged on the first date; the mystery is gone. I have a giddy glee in seeing that the popular culture machine hasn't given up all the little things that make life in America and that some enigma still remains.

The author, Matt Roden, makes some very good observations and I have only a few small bits to add to his explanations of the unexplained. :)

• Grits ~ Grits are, most assuredly, a food found in the southern US, south of the Mason-Dixon line and as far west as Texas. I've seen boxes of 'instant grits' as far north as St. Louis. Grits are also known as hominy grits and less often grit-corn. Hominy is ground corn separated from the hull and germ. It is ground corn [ though i've also had wheat grits ] cooked in a vat of salted, boiling milk. It's like a corn porridge served with butter and milk or cream. There is also the expression, "Kiss my grits", which was made popular by the TV show Alice in the 1970s, but us yankees have no idea what that really means. I mean, ok, she was saying "Kiss my ass", but does that mean that grits taste like ass? Some would tend to agree with that assessment. Hollywood doesn't have a clue what grits are either so this is likely why it hasn't been exported via the usual channels just yet.
• Hush Puppies ~ Curse you for reminding me of one of my favourite foods! :) Hush puppies are deep-fried cornmeal batter. Again, this is mostly in the South and in parts of the Midwest, like St. Louis. Where did the name come from? Well...the more colourful explanation is that after hunting, fishing and eating a big meal, folks would toss the cornmeal bits to the dogs, calling, "Hush, puppies!" You can, of course, add a nice southern drawl for extra flair. The UK has fish and chips and the southern half of the US has catfish and hush puppies.
• Tums ~ My father used to eat these by the pound. They are, essentially, flavoured chalk. An antacid for the tummy, a.k.a. the tum tum. They are now marketed as a 'calcium supplement' for women who want to avoid osteoperosis. Not much fun as a candy goes.
• Mr. Pibb ~ Not Pibbs. Mr. Pibb was Coca-Cola's competition for the Dr. Pepper market for crappy, sugary, not quite root beer. If you want real root beer, those yankees with good taste drink IBC Root Beer which probably hasn't made it into the tinsel town marketing machine yet either. There is one soda fountain still operating in North St. Louis, the Crown Candy Kitchen, but few are left these days since most folks just belly up for the super-size coke at the McDonald's drive-thru.
• Collard Greens ~ Collard greens are another very southern menu item. I'm starting to get the idea that the South needs a better PR guy in Hollywood. Collard, derived form colewort, is another word for Kale but collard greens these days can be a mixture of kale, spinach, cabbage and other green leaves. They are boiled in a big pot with fatback, i.e. pork bacon fat and served with corn bread and black-eyed peas. Only southerners eat this stuff as the smell is enough to kill a northern yankee at 40 paces.
• Pork rinds ~ *ding*ding* A bag of gristle is a 100% correct answer. Pork rinds are just pork skin, sometimes a bit of seasoning, cooked in the fryolator and munched while watching sports with a cold Bud. Accept no substitutes that aren't genuine pork skin. Again, a southern treat especially loved by former president Clinton.
• Clark Bar ~ Better than the Butterfinger candybar, the Clark bar gets a bad rap. The Clark bar was, apparently created long before the 1950s in one of those romantic rags to riches stories that few immigrants experience anymore. It's interesting that Necco [the company who make all those valentine candy hearts] bought the Clark bar as they're right across the street from MIT and people always said that the factory is right over the particle accelerator. So, think of the Clark bar as the closest you'll get to MIT. :)
• Snapple ~ *ding*ding* Fruit juice with a good marketing team is an astute answer. Marketing in the US is a fight club all of it's own. I lived in Boston, which is right in Snapple marketing central. They dumped all the 100% juice flavours like cranberry and have gone into the yuppie GMO fruit flavours. They're a lot like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream which is good, occasionally brilliant, but it's the marketing that makes them so popular. And don't blame TV for making you eat a cream cheese crust pizza...ick! :)

I hope he does another of these and I may just do a version of unexplained Finnish foods just for the fun of trying to explain mämmi without using certain words to describe the visual and the tactile senses. :)

permalink Ω 24 March 2004, Helsinki

The Fazer Chicken

Easter is defined by calendrical engineers as "Easter Sunday is the first Sunday after the first full moon after vernal equinox." I have a hard time remembering what day of the week it is most of the time so I rely on a far more simple algorithm to determine when Easter is approaching; the arrival of Easter candy in the stores. It is less precise but accurate enough since the candy is the best part of the holiday.

Mämmi is back in the groceries, little hens and chickens are everywhere, chocolate bunnies, feathers, daffodils in pots and grass seed packets at the cashier since it's traditional to grow some small pot of grass for the return of the sun and warm weather. I didn't notice the Fazer Mignon eggs last year but these are the neatest Easter chocolates ever. They are real eggshells filled with an almond-hazelnut milk chocolate. The logistics of eating one of these eggs is complex and merits more study. The egg shell is removed rather easily with a brief bit of refrigeration. However, getting your teeth around a rather large, solid chunk of chocolate can produce at least 10 minutes of pure entertainment. Those who prefer to eat, not wear, their chocolate might use an egg slicer on a reasonably warm egg. The box mentions that these have been around for more than 100 years....

Mignon is an Easter tradition created by Karl Fazer in 1896, the second oldest product in Fazer's range. A genuine eggshell filled with fine nougat chocolate made with almonds and nuts. In the olden days they were delivered as an Easter treat even to the Tsar of Russia and his family....

What is it about Tsars and eggs? :) Anyway, I bought a few of these eggs, just to see if they were real eggshells and my results are inconclusive since, although they look and feel like real eggshells, the eggs are all perfectly sized. Does Finland have a chicken that lays identically sized, blemish-free eggs just in time for Easter? If so, I wonder if the chicken is pals with the Cadbury Crème egg rabbit or the Marshmallow Peeps. :)

update ~ Two people sent me links to articles about the Fazer Mignon eggs written in Finnish. I am amazed to find out that they are not only real egg shells, but that they are filled by hand, all 2.5 million of them each year. I made PDFs of the two articles and added translations for those who might be curious: Finnfood's Mignon - A Perennial Favorite of Easter [approx. 60k] and Mignon - the Classic of Easter Eggs [approx. 258k].

permalink Ω 19 March 2004, Helsinki

Dive

I don't know how many times we've passed the Seahorse Restaurant in Eira, but every time Jarkko would describe it as a 'classic dive'. Maybe there is a translation difference here as 'dive' usually is applied to pubs and diners of not quite the most pleasing reputation or patronage. It's slightly more damning than 'greasy spoon'.

We went there for dinner there the other night and, if this is a Finnish dive, then I want to see one on every corner. The food was hearty, delicious, served with understated but lovely presentation and reasonably priced. Jarkko ordered the herring steaks which made me rethink my lukewarm stance on herring and I had the breast of chicken served with the most delicious aura blue cheese sauce I've ever tasted. The pancakes with ice cream and jam for dessert were sublime. In the genre of Finnish cuisine, I don't think there is another restaurant that has such delicious, beautifully presented, reasonably priced food in a nice atmosphere like the Seahorse does. It's not listed in the travel guides so I presume that the people who go there like to keep it to themselves and I can't really blame them. :)

permalink Ω 16 February 2004, Helsinki

If Santa were on the Menu

If Santa were merely a holiday dish I think a brioche [recipe: 50k .pdf] would suit the jolly old fat man, especially this one I saw in a bakery tonight.

permalink Ω 18 December 2003, Helsinki

Haisuli

This is one of the cutest cookie cutter shapes I've ever seen. It is a complex shape and requires a firm dough that will bake well at a 4 or 5cm thickness. He is Haisuli, Stinker, from the Moomin. Hands down, the piparkakut recipe from Kotiruoka is the best ginger/spice cookie recipe I've tried. They could use a touch of shredded candied ginger but I'm a freak for ginger.

permalink Ω 10 December 2003, Helsinki

Holiday flashback

Ho!Ho!Ho! Just another reason to be glad it's not the 1970s anymore - people don't show up at your parties with monster cheese balls and stale crackers. This stuff makes herring look good.

permalink Ω 2 December 2003, Helsinki

Carrot Cake

I adore the Cook's Illustrated cookbooks. I don't have many cookbooks but I have nearly all of the CI series and subscribed to the magazine for a number of years. Their most recent addition, Inside America's Test Kitchen: All-New Recipes, Quick Tips, Equipment Ratings, Food Tastings, Science Experiments from the Hit Public Television Show, is another wonderful book full of reliable recipes borne from testing and research. What I find most attractive about these cookbooks, aside from their being utterly reliable, is that all of the recipes are for foods that most people could realistically imagine themselves making and eating regularly. The books also appeal to the chemist within since many of the recipes, ingredients and kitchenware are discussed in detail.

Recently we had dinner at a nominally American-style restaurant and for dessert we decided to split a slice of carrot cake. I love carrot cake so I was a bit bummed when it arrived smothered in caramel sauce. Oh, and no cream cheese icing. Finns seem to enjoy things SWEET when they have something with sugar which I can appreciate except in alcoholic ciders but, not everything tastes better with more sugar. Carrot cake is lovely on its own so leave the pineapple in but lay off the karamelli kastike, ok? :)

So, I was really happy to find that CI has a terrific recipe for carrot cake in the new book. They emulsify the vegetable oil for a lighter cake and adjust the carrot portion to keep it from being either soggy or dry. And they didn't forget the cream cheese icing. :)

Simple Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

carrot cake

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon gound cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound ( 6-7 medium) carrots, peeled
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1/2 cups safflower, canola or vegetable oil

cream cheese frosting

• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened but still cool
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still cool
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar

For the cake:

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350F. Spray a 13X9 inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment and spray the parchment.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in a large bowl; set aside.
3. In a food processor fitted with a large shredding disk, shred the carrots (you should have about 3 cups); transfer the carrots to a bowl and set aside. Wipe out the food processor workbowl and fit with the metal blade. Process the granulated and brown sugars and eggs until frothy and thoroughly combined, about 20 seconds. With the machine running, add the oil through the feed tube in a steady stream. Process until the mixture is light in color and well emulsified, about 20 seconds longer. Scrape the mixture into a medium bowl. Stir in the carrots and the dry ingredients until incorporated and no streaks of flour remain. If you like nuts in your cake, stir 1 1/2 cups toasted chopped pecans or walnuts into the batter along with the carrots. Raisins are also a good addition; 1 cup can be added along with the carrots. If you add both nuts and raisins, the cake will need and additional 10 to 12 minutes in the oven. Pour into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time. cool the cake to room temperature in the pan on a wire rack, about 2 hours.

For the frosting

1. When the cake is cool, process the cream cheese, butter, sour cream, and vanilla in a clean food processor workbowl until combined, about 5 seconds, scraping down the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Add the confectioners' sugar and process until smooth, about 10 seconds.
2. Run a paring knife around the edge of the cake to loosen from the pan. Invert the cake onto a wire rack, peel off the parchment, then invert again onto a serving platter. Using an icing spatula, spread the frosting evenly over the surface of the cake. Cut into squares and serve.

Ginger-Orange variation

Follow the recipe for the carrot cake, reducing the cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon, adding 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger along with the spices, adding 1/2 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger along with the carrots, and processing 1 tablespoon grated orange zest along with the sugar and eggs. For the frosting, substitute an equal amount orange juice for the sour cream and 1 tablespoon grated orange zest for the vanilla.

permalink Ω 2 December 2003, Helsinki

Piparkakut

Among the traditional holiday cookies in Finland are the piparkakut. They are commonly cut into a round scallop shape but pigs and little boys are the traditional holiday shapes for these delicious cookies.

There are a lot of different recipes out there for piparkakut. The most common variations in the US omit the orange zest and add nuts and/or cardamom. One yankee recipe online had margarine instead of butter. Blech. The Finnish variations seem to all have much the same ingredients but differ in the amounts.

The most important and curious omission is in preparation of the dough. The sugars are brought to a near boil along with the spices and then allowed to cool. Afterwards, the dough is chilled for 8-12 hours. Both of these steps are omitted in all the US variants I found either online or in cookbooks. The sugars in the corn syrup are complex and long so heating allows them to breakdown as well as have the spices mix with the butter. The chilling firms up the dough and gives the dough much more time to develop the complex spice flavours.

If you're not familiar with cooking sugars it's not terribly hard, but you have to be on top of it. It is interesting that the cooking of the sugars is just not present in many recipes and perhaps it is a result of a difference in baking culture or laziness. Corn syrup is generally used to make cookies browner and surface crisper. The acidic orange peel is likely added for aroma as well as to keep the sugars from crystallising into granite hardness. If you want a softer cookie, you could replace the white sugar with brown sugar. Since the cooking of the sugars also involves the butter, don't crank up the burner to 10 as the butter will form solids and burn. Start with a low-medium heat and a whisk and stir it until it looks a bit bubbly then remove it from the heat.

I should make a batch of both the boiled sugar and the non-boiled sugar recipes and see if there is as much a difference in taste as I expect there would be. The recipe is translated and converted from the Finnish classic cookbook, Kotiruoka :)

Piparkakut, Finnish Ginger Cookies

Ingredients

• 250g or 2.5 sticks salted butter
• 2 dl or 1 cup sugar
• 1.5 dl or 3/4 cup dark corn syrup
• 2 eggs
• 3 teaspoons cinnamon
• 3 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 3 teaspoons orange peel zest*
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 8 dl or 5 cups all-purpose white flour

Instructions

1. In a saucepan, bring the corn syrup, sugar, butter and spices to a boil. [ The text in the original recipe doesn't say anything more than boil. This likely doesn't mean the same as a sugar boil for candy. I'd suggest a slow heat, while stirring constantly, until it looks close to boiling. ] Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Add in eggs, slightly beaten.
2. Mix flour and baking soda and sift into bowl containing wet ingredients. Mix well and roll into a ball. Cover bowl and place in refrigerator for 8-12 hours or overnight.
3. Split the dough into two parts. Roll dough to about 1/4-inch or 2-3mm thickness. Cut into shapes and bake at 175C/350F until golden brown, the cookies feel firm to the touch or about 10-15 minutes, whichever comes first. :)

* - Jarkko points out that orange peel in Finland is not from the usual Florida orange, but from the smaller and thinner Moroccan kind of orange. Florida orange peel will likely be fine as well though. :)

permalink Ω 28 November 2003, Helsinki

Tracey's Potato Casserole

I always lose this recipe and wind up calling my sister for a copy of it so maybe putting it here will help. I don't know where she originally found it but Tracey has been making it for at least 15 or so years and there's never any leftovers. In fact, I'd bet people would lick the dish if they could :) It's easy, likely bad for you and tastes really, really good in cold dark weather.

Tracey's "Get Fat Quick" Potato Casserole

• 2 pounds frozen hash brown potatoes, thawed [ 2 500g pannu peruna packages ]
• 1/4 cup onion, chopped
• 1 can cream of chicken soup [Stockmann - Cream of Mushroom]
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 4oz butter, melted or softened
• 1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
• 1 pint sour cream [kerma villi]
• Bread crumbs (topping)

Mix all the above ingredients together in a 2 quart covered casserole dish, sprinkle the top with bread crumbs. Bake for 1 hour at 350F.

I always add extra onions and cheese and a little less butter. Garlic is an excellent addition too.

permalink Ω 21 November 2003, Helsinki

I Like Pie

Tarts with Tops on: How to Make the Perfect Pie by Tamasin Day-Lewis is a lovely new cookbook. It's filled with all sorts of savoury pies, apple pies, American pies and other traditional kinds of pies from around the UK. It's impossible to read this cookbook without getting hungry as well as a little amused at the colourful selection of words in the recipes themselves. Hearty winter comfort food with ingredients easily found even here in Helsinki.

Cod, Smoked Haddock and Scallop Pie

Ingredients

• 1kg/2.25lb cod or unsmoked haddock, skinned and filleted
• 225g/8oz or so natural smoked haddock
• 8 or 9 scallops with large commas of coral, cleaned and the white discs sliced in two, the corals left whole or sliced if large enough.
• 290-425ml/10-15fl oz milk
• 55g/2oz unsalted butter
• 30g/1oz plain flour
• 1 bay leaf
• nutmeg
• a large glass of white whine or better still vermouth
• the white part of three leeks, cleaned and cut into rings
• 1kg/2.25lb potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed with butter and milk
• handful of fresh dill, chopped
• sea salt and black pepper

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Put the unsmoked piece of fish in a gratin dish, pour over the milk and cook in the oven for 15 minutes. It may not be cooked right through when you remove it, but that doesn't matter.
3. Remove any bones and flake the fish in large chunks into the gratin dish you're going to cook it in, reserving the poaching milk.
4. Meanwhile, cover the smoked haddock in boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain the water off and flake the haddock into the gratin dish.
5. Make a roux with the butter and flour, then add the hot poaching milk, bay leaf and a suspicion of grated nutmeg and whisk into a smooth sauce. Add the wine or vermouth, cooking it down for at least 10 minutes. Season well with black pepper, but go easy on the salt as smoked fish carries a lot of it.
6. Steam the leeks until tender and add them to the fish.
7. Put the raw scallops and the coral in with the fish, then strew the handful of dill into the sauce and pour it over the fish.
8. Cover with mashed potato, ruffle the top with a fork and dot with butter.

Place on a baking tray and consign to the heat for about 30 minutes. The sauce often erupts through the potato like a geyser and courses down the sides, which is part of the charm of the finished offering. One of the few dishes that really should be brought to the table nuclear hot. Serves 6.

permalink Ω 19 November 2003, Helsinki

Taste the Black Rainbow

Today at the grocery I noticed a black box of liquorice skittles and I bought them out of curiosity. I looked around on the web for more information and only found a mention in NTK about a sighting in the UK a few months ago. A veritable black rainbow of taste sensations. :)

• green — aniseed. They taste much like the Springerle cookies my mom used to make at christmas every year. Yummy.
• yellow — vanilla. A nice combination of vanilla flavour and liquorice.
• white — mint. A bit too minty for my taste.
• red — spice. I think it's cinnamon but it burns a little on the tongue.
• black — liquorice. Very strong liquorice flavour.

They're a nice change of pace but the original skittles and the sour skittles are much better.

permalink Ω 6 July 2003, Helsinki

A Pleasant Afternoon

Jarkko and I went to his cousin Heini's confirmation party yesterday and I took some photos of our rather pleasant afternoon there. Jarkko has a really nice family and they, hopefully, didn't think it too strange when I took photos of the absolutely divine cookies for which I had to hunt the recipe down.

I decided to put the photos into a mock-up photo album of what I hope to have perl and mysql do for me soon but I wanted to get a feel for the presentation since I'm working in reverse. It was a good exercise as I have a much better idea of what I need to do and noticed small details from the one I am copying the layout from such as the thumbnails are carefully chosen bits from the picture instead of just a miniature version of the whole picture. I'll have to look into some of the graphics utilities to see if there is anything that will select a 50x50 chunk of a picture based on pixel variation.

Aside from its pleasantly austere display of the photos it really forces you to choose the best photos in a series and limit them to a small number since too many would ruin the effect. I really like this as I've been through far too many picture collections on the web where there is only 1 interesting photo in 25 or more which is a waste of time, especially since they are often not sized for the web.

Herewith follows the recipe for the cookies I could eat far too many of and still want more :)

Lusikkaleivät - Teaspoon cookies

Ainekset (ingredients):

• 200g Voita - 1 cup butter
• 1,5 dl Sokeria - 1 cup sugar
• 2 tl Vaniljasokeria - 2 teaspoons vanilla sugar or 3 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 tl Soodaa - 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 dl Vehnäjauhoa - 3 cups sifted white flour
• Omenasosetta - apple puree/jam
• Sokeria - granulated sugar

Ohje:

Kiehauta rasva kattilassa välillä sekoittaen. Kun vaahto alkaa laskea, kaada rasva kulhoon. Lisää sokeri ja anna seoksen jäähtyä. Sekoita jäähtynyt seos tasaiseksi. Lisää keskenään sekoitetut kuivat aineet. Painele taikinaa soikeaan, mielellään melko syvään lusikanpesään ja vedä tästä pellille leivinpaperin päälle kupera puoli ylöspäin. Paista 175°C asteen lämmössä 12-15 minuuttia. Pane vähän jäähtyneinä kaksi vastakkain ja väliin sosetta tai marmelaadia. Kierittele pikkuleivät sokerissa tai siivilöi päälle tomusokeria ennen tarjoilua.

Directions:

Brown the butter in a heavy saucepan. Cool. Stir in the sugar and vanilla and mix well. Sift the flour with the soda and slowly add to the butter mixture, mixing until a smooth dough is formed. To shape, press dough into a teaspoon and level off with a knife. Place oval flat side down onto a greased baking sheet. Bake in a slow oven at 350°F for 12-15 minutes. While they are still warm, gently roll cookies in a shallow bowl of coarse granulated sugar and/or sandwich 2 cookies together with a bit of jam.

note: I am told the jam is not often used as the cookies are very delicate and are difficult to eat when sandwiched together. I also suspect that it would make the cookies a bit too sweet so a jam that isn't overly sugary like apple would likely be better.

permalink Ω 16 June 2003, Helsinki

the wrong noodle bar

Helsinki has a wide variety of ethnic restaurants but a recent find is the Wrong Noodle Bar which has some quite excellent noodle dishes to choose from. Wrong take-away, Wrong catering, Wrong menu; a cute play on the English. It's a welcome change from rye bread and cold-cuts for dinner. An added bonus is that across the street is an Asian grocery where I could probably buy noodles and such to make something similar at home once the house is no longer covered in dust and grit from the renovation.

permalink Ω 29 March 2003, Helsinki

50 Years of frozen culinary liberation

It's the 50th Anniversary of the Swanson TV Dinner. Yes, years of TV trays and tasteless rubbery chicken haven't diminished the popularity of the meal you don't have to cook. Oddly enough, the TV Dinner also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame though I don't remember one starring in any movies. All hail the TV Dinner! :)

permalink Ω 17 January 2003, Helsinki

Cookie Cutter Menagerie

I think I'm on every catalogue mailing list on the planet since I receive at least 5 of them every day which contain varying amounts of useless crap. I look through them for laughs and today I noticed that Williams-Sonoma, a shop legendary for overpriced yuppie kitchen stuff, has a set of 10 animal cookie cutters that includes a camel for under $20. The ORA animal and perl obsessed might be enthused by this :)

permalink Ω 5 November 2002, Helsinki

Finnish secret weapon

Cinnamon Ears (Korvapuustit)

The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas, 1999, ISBN 0-8166-3496-3

Dough

• 2 packages active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm water, 105-115˚F
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 slightly beaten eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom (optional)
• 4.5-5 cups all-purpose flour

Filling

• 1/2 cup soft butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Glaze

• 1 slightly beaten egg
• 2 tablespoons milk
• pearl sugar or crushed sugar cubes

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in the warm water and let stand 5 minutes. Stir in 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/2 cup sugar, the eggs, salt, cardamom, and 4.5 cups flour until dough is smooth. Cover and refrigerate 2-24 hours.

Sprinkle board with some of the remaining flour. Divide dough into 2 parts. Turn out onto lightly floured board, and roll each part out to make a rectangle about 12 inches by 24 inches long. Spread each half with half the butter and sprinkle with half the sugar and cinnamon. Roll up, starting from a 24-inch side. cut each roll diagonally into 12 pieces. Each piece will be about 1/2 inch on one side and 3 inches thick on the other. With two thumbs, press down the middle of the side of each roll. In so doing the two cut edges will be forced upward. The rolls will resemble “ears.” See figure.

Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment or lightly grease them. Place cinnamon ears on prepared baking sheets. Let rise until puffy. Mix the egg and milk to make a glaze. Brush rolls with the glaze and sprinkle with the pearl sugar.

Preheat over to 400˚F. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or just until golden. Makes 24 rolls

permalink Ω 3 November 2002, Helsinki

Cheech and Chong would dig this

When I was a chemistry student and had keys to the labs we would have fun parties and occasionally work out new ideas for the show we would do to get local high school students interested in chemistry. One of my favourite amusements was to dip the Green Hulk super strong bendy doll into liquid nitrogen then try to smash him with a mallet. Usually we were laughing more than the kids. The twinkie skits always got their attention though as we would show them a mass spec of the sponge cake and the filling then light one on fire that had been presoaked in ethanol.

I noticed today that of all the things we did to those twinkies we never thought of frying them. The Chip Shop apparently got tired of frying only fish and chips and branched out into frying candy bars and twinkies. I have always coveted deep-fryers since I would find endless hours of fascination in frying everything edible and anything else that might be cool to fry. I would go out and buy one today if we weren't moving soon.

So, if you have a deep-fryer and a box of twinkies, here's the recipe for making your own lard cake on a stick to help your cholesterol levels :) It just doesn't get more American than this.

Deep-Fried Twinkies

For Twinkies:

• 6 Twinkies
• Popsicle sticks
• 4 cups vegetable oil
• Flour for dusting

For batter:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon malt vinegar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 12 ounces water
• powdered sugar
• berry coulis

Chill or freeze Twinkies for several hours or overnight.

Heat 4 cups vegetable oil in deep fryer to about 375 degrees.

To make batter: Mix together all ingredients [ except the powdered sugar and berry coulis ] to a custard-like consistency. Refrigerate while oil heats.

Push stick into Twinkie lengthwise, leaving about 2 inches to use as a handle, dust with flour and dip into the batter. Rotate Twinkie until batter covers entire cake. Place carefully in hot oil. The Twinkie will float, so hold it under with a utensil to ensure even browing. Fry it for about 90 seconds, just until filling is starting to melt and outside is golden brown.

Remove Twinkie to paper towel and let drain. Slice on the bias. Serve on a pool of Four-Berry Coulis. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Four-Berry Coulis

Put equal amounts of frozen raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and blueberries into a pan on low heat with a tablespoon of sugar per cup of berries. When mixture begins to boil, remove from heat. Pour into blender. Blend until berries are crusted. Pour mixture through a sieve to remove seeds.

And we STILL don't know what ingredients are in twinkies.....

permalink Ω 12 September 2002, Helsinki

The 'real' Ginger

If you like ginger then run, don't walk, to The Ginger People. The ginger chews are viciously addictive :)

permalink Ω 10 May 2002, Helsinki

Sweet Buns

I don't buy a lot of cookbooks as most have bad recipes with pretty pictures of food made by professionals or they have ingredients that are hard to find and impractical to make. Ditto for cooking magazines. But, Cook's Illustrated Magazine and their Best Recipe Cookbook series from their test kitchen are impeccable in their attention to detail and explaining how and why the recipe works.

In the July 2002 issue of the magazine there is a recipe for the best cinnamon buns I've made in a long while and they were quick and easy too since it is not a yeast bread. Forget those Pillsbury canned cinnamon buns and make these in about an hour instead.

Quick Cinnamon buns with Buttermilk Icing
Make 8 buns

Melted butter is used in both the filling and the dough and to grease the pan; it's easiest to melt the total amount at once and measure it out as you need it. The finished buns are best eaten warm, but they hold reasonably well for up to 2 hours.

Cinnamon-Sugar Filling

• 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon unsaslted butter, melted

Biscuit Dough

• 2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour, plus additional flour for work surface
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Icing

• 2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar

Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425F. Pour 1 tablespoon melted butter in 9-inch nonstick cake pan; brush to coat pan.
2. MAKE FILLING: Combine sugars, spices, and salt in small bowl. Add 1 tablespoon melted butter and stir with fork or fingers until mixture resembles wet sand; set filling mixture aside.
3. MAKE BISCUIT DOUGH: Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Whisk buttermilk and 2 tablespoons melted butter in measuring cup or small bowl. Add liquid to dry ingredients and stir with wooden spoon until liquid is absorbed (dough will look very shaggy), about 30 seconds. Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface and knead until just smooth and no longer shaggy.
4. Pat dough with hands into 12 by 9-inch rectangle. Brush dough with 2 tablespoons melted butter. Sprinkle evenly with filling, leaving 1/2-inch border of plain dough around edges. Press filling firmly into dough. Starting on long side, roll dough, pressing lightly, to form a tight log. Pinch seam to seal. Roll log seam-side down and cut evenly into eight pieces. With hand, slightly flatten each piece of dough to seal open edges and keep filling in place. Place one roll in center of prepared nonstick pan, then place remaining seven rolls around perimeter of pan. Brush with 2 tablespoons remaining melted butter. Bake until edges are golden brown, 23 to 25 minutes. Use offset metal spatula to loosen buns from pan; without separating, slide buns out of pan onto cooling rack. Cool about 5 minutes before icing.
5. MAKE ICING: While buns are cooling, line rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper ( for easy cleanup ); set rack with buns over baking sheet. Whisk cream cheese and buttermilk in large nonreactive bowl until thick and smooth. Sift confectioners' sugar over; whisk until smooth glaze forms, about 30 seconds. Spoon glaze evenly over buns; serve immediately.
6. Eat.

permalink Ω 3 May 2002, Helsinki

Mad Science in the Kitchen

I don't know if Einstein really had a cook and, as a theoretical physicist, he probably sucked at something so concrete as applied organic chemistry, but What Einstein Told His Cook: Kitchen Science Explained may be an interesting read. It's probably a popular science version of the outstanding Cookwise.

permalink Ω 30 April 2002, Helsinki

Gastronomica

New England grocery stores are weird. When I first moved to Rockport the grocery stores required you to get a membership card of sorts to get the 'discounted' price on products in exchange for the opportunity for them to demographically track you and your purchases. The first major difference from any other US grocery store was found in the frozen food section; not 1, not 2 but 3 whole aisles filled with ice cream. I discovered that New England is the highest per capita consumers of ice cream in the US. The layout of the stores were wrong too as the aisles were narrow and the dairy and meat were at the beginning of the store instead of being near the check-out. The produce section was small and disappointing but the seafood counter was usually impressive. Meat, especially chicken was very expensive compared to the midwest prices.

Well, I know I'm getting old as I just discovered the best grocery store in the Boston Area and I'm excited about it; The Roche Bros.. They have an extensive deli/bakery/produce section with fresh products, reasonably priced meat and the dairy/frozen food section is the last thing you see before heading for the cashier. It's as though an engineer who shops designed the layout. Amazing. Oh, and the reciept is categorised! And they have baggers who have a concept of how to pack groceries and then wheel it out to your car. I feel a bit weird about them taking the cart out to the car still. Maybe everyone else has this, but since I left St. Louis with Dierberg's, I've lowered my expectations to meet the average New England grocery store. So long Shaw's/Star Market, Stop and Shop, Trader Joe's, Bread and Circus and every other grocery I ever had the misfortune to shop at.

Food is often the barometer of a culture and whenever I visit somewhere new I usually visit a grocery store just to get a handle on the people. Helsinki's grocery stores are small but there is a high premium placed on freshly baked goods, produce like fruits/berries and dairy. The packaging isn't as elaborate as the US and whole foods outnumber processed food. Finns lack Velveeta, call the Embassy. We took Jarkkos parents to the grocery when they visited last year and while she couldn't really articulate what she thought of it, I could tell his mother was entertained by the size of the store and the 50 varieties of mustard or 135 different cereals available. She asked me how I found the time to shop in such a store with all the choices. The US may only have 2 political parties but we have plenty of mustard produced by the monster food conglomerates to choose from :)

If you like food and culture then you will probably be interested in Gastronomica, a quarterly magazine and the new Modern Library Food Series including Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet.

permalink Ω 22 April 2002, Helsinki

Secret Life of Food

Yesterday, while book shopping, I found the coolest and cutest book I have seen in a long while, The Secret Life of Food. I'm no chef but this is a book filled with food creations that imitate life with fairly easy recipes that even a cooking retard like me could manage to make without too much fuss. The meatball eyeballs are hilarious and the Jell-O Aquarium [ pictured above ] is something I'm definitely going to try making since Jell-O by itself is a pretty boring food but making an aquarium with it is simply brilliant :)

Jell-O Aquarium by Clare Crespo

Ingredients

• 1 gallon glass goldfish bowl
• 2 boxes Berry Blue Jell-O gelatin
• 1 can fruit cocktail
• gummi fish or plastic fish [ or print out some tropical fish on a colour printer, print the mirror image of them, cut them out, paste them together to create a fish on both sides then laminate them ]
• plastic aquarium plant [ optional but really adds something to it ]

Directions

1. Prepare the Jell-O as per the directions on the box. Pour into fishbowl.
2. Drain fruit cocktail and slowly pour it into the goldfish bowl. This is the 'gravel'. If you have the plastic tank plant, add it before pouring in the fruit cocktail and hold it in place until the cocktail anchors it on the bottom.
3. Place fishbowl into refrigerator to thicken for an hour to partially set.
4. Remove from refrigerator and place fish in the gelatin using a stick or utensil to position them.
5. Return the fishbowl to the refridgerator to set completely and firmly.
6. Serve with a spoon and don't eat the plastic bits :)

permalink Ω 21 April 2002, Helsinki

It's the Easter Boobie!

This weekend, those of us non-theists are left wondering what to do since almost everything is closed and family is several thousand miles away in either direction. Well, I stayed up late last night drinking Bailey's and heard an odd noise that sounded a lot like Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" in the kitchen where I had left the peeps out to dry for Sunday's peep-o-rama. I got off the couch, saw what was going on, grabbed my camera and captured the following shocking peep porn on digital film.

One overzealous peep was going at another female peep who seemed rather bored with the entire process. Then I saw two bunnies in the butterfly position and a bunny sitting on anothers face. Holy Cow Batman, who knew Peeps got it on! After they saw me with my camera, I think they started hamming it up a bit.

More peeps came to the scene. "We're fat free and not a significant source of vitamin c!", they cried. The flew out of the box and got right into the 69 position where even my dog got in on the action.

"My peeps are pervs!", I giggled wickedly, but they were just warming up. A threesome of bunnies and a peep duo were doing it ...well, you know. Some other bunnies were into the hot wax and candle fetish. When I thought it couldn't get any more disturbing, I caught the timer chicken watching peep bondage.

Honeybear started really digging the sweet bunnies and peeps. Soon, he had spawned an entire family of sugary goodness ensuring a ready supply of peeps for easter next year!

I'm going to have to keep these perverted holiday treats away from the kids from now on and I just can't wait to see what the Halloween ghosts and Christmas trees do when I leave them alone in the kitchen :)

permalink Ω 31 March 2002, Helsinki

Props to my Peeps

It's that time of year again where you give in to the sugar craving, buy a bunch of Marshmallow Peeps and surf the net late at night looking for the Peep FAQ, Food Chemist thesis research, take a tour of the Peeps factory, chuckle at the Blair Peep Project, get annoyed by the cliche' Peepdance, see an American Peep in Paris and view the creatively limited Peeps artwork. I especially love this weeks Dr. Fun Peeps series.

I like to leave them out for a few days so they get hard and chewy. :) I'm going to sleep all weekend and eat lots of chocolate and Peeps.

permalink Ω 28 March 2002, Helsinki

Just Born Peeps

In the long line of quintessentially American foods behind Jell-O, Velveeta and SPAM lies the Marshmallow Peep. They used to only come around Easter time, which is March 31st this year, but they have expanded to be year 'round treats. The Just Born history details the little critters evolution. Even Martha Stewart has a Marshmallow treats kit so you can make your very own if you have lots of time and homemaking on your mind. Jarkko made me try herring in Finland so I'm working my way up to feeding him Velveeta by way of the peeps and I don't think Peeps would be a hit in Helsinki. :)

permalink Ω 27 February 2002, Helsinki

Think Hard™

New Englanders like to think they know how to barbeque but since I'm a transplant here I am often sorely disappointed at the culinary offerings in the name of pilgrim barbeque [ exceptions being East Coast Grill in Inman Sq. and Blue Ribbon BBQ in Arlington ]. I am already salivating at the thought of being back home for YAPC so I can go out and have a beer and pile of real barbequed meat and then have breakfast at Uncle Bill's Pancake House at 4am for a good home cooked heart attack on a platter since it will probably be the last time I'll see such food for a long, long time.

It could have been the subconscious longing for grilled meat smothered in sauce that prompted me to look at a book with a bottle of BBQ sauce on the cover, Secrets of the Wholly Grill: A Novel about cravings, barbecue, and software. The publisher Carroll & Graf have one of the most ecclectic catalogues I've ever seen so after reading the flap I took a risk and bought it. It was an excellent purchase :) It's an amazingly well crafted satire on the current shady practices of the computer/software industry. It's hilarious and sharp, an unexpected find in a sea of rather boring fiction these days. The author is an IP lawyer in the valley so he's got the whole scene pegged and possibly a bit cliche in parts. The first chapter is online which may convince you to go get a copy :)

The February Issue of Harper's this month contains a fun list of new trademark applications since 9-11 on page 25...a few of the funnier ones:

• Bin Laden to Rest™
• Bin There Bombed That™
• Bum Laden™
• Fight Terrorism: Go Shopping™
• High on America™
• Hero Hanky™
• Osama, Yo Mama!™
• Terrorists Suck™
• Trash bin Laden™
• T.U.R.D. Terrorist Under Restrained Discipline™
• We're Our Own Enemy™

and the best one is....God Bless America!™.

I guess it's time I applied for use Perl; get laid();™.

n.b. - I decided to go hunting for who might be trying to register "God Bless America™" and was rewarded with several including GBA Fireworks and America Bless God!™ Ephemera and did you know that Perl& has been trademarked by Perl, Inc.? TESS is sure to give hours of umitigated horror and delight. :)

permalink Ω 28 January 2002, Helsinki

Like a Luddite at COMDEX

Today I escaped work for a little while and went by SoftPro Books in Burlington to see what might be new in the world of technical books and chat with the staff who, over the years, have become practically family. Sadly, they are feeling the same lull in business everyone else is and the store was pretty quiet. After getting the lowdown on what has been popular and the usual gossip I noticed that the author of the Ugliest Perl Book has a new title Perl to Python Migration. I looked at it a while and wasn't that impressed. I guess it won't sell that well just because if people have production Perl code that they probably aren't going to 'migrate' it and just do new stuff in Python and eventually get around to reimplementing the Perl stuff later. This guy makes up for low sales by writing in volume though. There was also another book, The Procmail Companion that looked promising both in it's brevity [ 300 or so pages ] and by its content. Nothing else was really all that new or exciting in the world of books. I did see a few that would make excellent doorstops though. :)

After work I decided to brave the grocery stores so I could 'beat the rush' on Wednesday for the annual American Thanksgiving Holiday Feast. Everytime I go to the grocery store I feel like a luddite at COMDEX. Everything is big, shiny and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing there or what I'm supposed to buy. Women with carts full of stuff and kids go by me and give me that knowing look of 'you're a stranger here' while I'm standing in the middle of the produce section dazed and confuzed. In my 20s, my fridge used to be a shrine to minimalism; coke, cigarettes and take-away boxes from eating out the night before...is there some magical transformation that is supposed to happen when you hit your 30s to infuse you with this vital grocery knowledge?

I had to trek to not one, not two, but three stores to find everything I needed which is almost legendary. I even found myself shopping at Bread & Circus, a 'whole foods store' where everything, and I do mean everything, is organic. I just want a pound of butter, not 6 different choices of damn organic salted sweet creamery butter. You know, butter, it just shouldn't be this hard. It's enough to make you homicidal by the time you check out and they ask you innocently enough, "paper or plastic?". I looked at the woman tonight and said, "Don't you mean toxic or organic grocery bag?" . Fortunately, she got the dry sarcasm. I asked for the hand-milled paper bags. :)

After I made it safely home unscathed I sifted through the mail to find that Martha Stewart must be reading my journal with her latest special issue At Home with Technology that includes a section on how to make your own laptop tote, how the supermarket checkout works, shopping on-line, 'tucking in technology', computer crafts and an "Ask Martha" column with such tough questions on cleaning your computer and if it is safe to leave the computer on all day. Wahoo. And, to add insult to injury, I find that Tiffany has decided that, after years of sending me a catalogue, that now that I have a husband he should receive a catalogue instead of me since, I guess , no married woman buys her own jewelery these days. When we bought our wedding rings I'll never forget the women in Tiffany's telling me, with a wink to Jarkko, that should I ever find that my rock is too small that I could 'upgrade' my rock by trading in the old rock for a bigger one. Well, sexist jerks or not, they do make some lovely things and I'm a sucker for their beautiful south pacific pearlnecklaces.

Guh, now I feel like I need to watch the Man Show, drink a few beers, scratch myself and find a football game on TV to shake off all this girly crap. Hmm, pass the beef jerky and the pr0n will you?

permalink Ω 19 November 2001, Helsinki

Now with Wishstixs™!

It has been a long busy week dealing with a particularly high maintainence user who likes to shoulder surf around me and who thinks everything is a critical emergency. His group uses a product named Continuus and they just bought a nice 4-way 420R as the old 2-way E450 didn't seem to be performing well enough for them.

They don't really need the extra horsepower really, but they can't afford any downtime and the guy who masqueraded as a Unix admin prior to me should be taken out and beaten for crimes against system administration as putting a database on Sun DiskSuite partitions at raid 5 is just insanity...ah well. Well, once they get migrated to the new box by next week, I'll get to reinstall the old E450 from scratch and they'll have lots of extra cycles and faster disks.

I've spent much of my week working with the Solaris kstat utility and the SE Toolkit which is an indispensible suite of tools when coupled with Solaris Internals book and the Sun Performance and Tuning bible by Adrian Cockcroft. Thank you Alan Burlison for kstat :) Now, can I ask for a self-tuning kernel?! :)

Other than mangling solaris kernels and resisting the urge to harm annoying users this week I replaced the tank valve on the toilet. It's odd how pedantic you can be about computers then put up with a cantankerous toilet for months. Finding a plumber around here requires getting a convent of nuns to say a novena so I just decided to fix the bloody thing myself. I understand why plumbers charge so much as it isn't difficult work but plumbing is never in a convenient and easy to reach place. After an hour of grunting and cussing I now have a toilet tank that fills *and* shuts off once the water level is reached. Oh, the luxury! Yes, it's sad, I'm turning into my parents...

And I'm preparing for a big Thanksgiving dinner at home for a small crowd. One of the people coming is a vegetarian so his wife mentioned they'll be bringing a Tofurkey which is described as:

Tofurky™ is a pre-cooked vegetarian feast designed to be the delicious centerpiece of your holiday or everyday meal.

They even have 'Wishstixs™' made out of Tofurky Jurkey [of course] to fill the nostalgia for wishbones of a real turkey:

To begin your feast, we have included 2 Tofurky WishStixs™ in every box of Tofurky! Made from our new, Tofurky Jurky, these stixs are meant to add a little bit of fun to your meal. Gather 2 to 4 folks, have everyone take an end, make a wish and pull! With Tofurky WishStixs, everyone has already won because no animal was sacrificed in the making of this product.

No animal may have been sacrificed but a few dictionaries were I think...stixs? :) I should dig out the postcard I have that shows a butcher from the waist down slicing up a side of beef with the caption "Screw vegetarians! Let's eat meat!" and put it on the fridge for amusement value.

Minnesota Public Radio interviewed the company to get to the bottom of the enigma of the Tofurkey. Personally, I think the radio personality just liked saying Tofurkey. They claim that while no Tofurkey has been seen in the wild they know it has four legs since it has four drumettes. :) Hmm...I think my recipe for Maple-glazed Turkey with Dijon Gravy and Country-bread stuffing with parmesan, raisins, and pine nuts sounds more...meaty, but I may just have to try it for the novelty of it. MPR also had a piece on the meat version turkey taste test by Cooks Illustrated who also have the very helpful Turkey Help site for stricken meat bird bakers for any occasion.

I'm looking forward to staying at home next weekend after the holiday to catch up on a few projects and maybe even read a few books stacked up on a chair who even now mock me from where I sit.

permalink Ω 15 November 2001, Helsinki

J - E - L - L - OH!

I know you lose sleep at night wondering which flavour of Jell-O you'll make for dinner, what Jell-O is actually made of and envisioning cute co-eds in thongs sliding around in a tub of cherry Jell-O and Cool Whip so I thought I would mention the newly published bookJell-O: A Biography by the same author who wrote Spam: A Biography. I'll hold out for her next title, Velveeta: A Biography.

Maybe I should pitch the titles Peeps: Icon of American Pop Culture and The Immortal Spork to Penguin Putnum afterall.

permalink Ω 22 October 2001, Helsinki