new take on runeberg's tarts

february 5th is runeberg's day in finland, the day is mostly known for runeberg's tarts, not forgetting runeberg's literary accomplishments, though.

knowing that i would be away on the day, and the fact that certain someone loves these tarts, i made some ahead. certain someone also loves all things almondy, so i decided to try something with this recipe. the link is in finnish, my revised recipe follows. i wanted to use this particular recipe for the fact that there is no butter in it, the finnish version is called "lightened" tarts.

i've told the story on these tarts on previous posts, so if you're interested just type runeberg's tart on my search and you'll get the old posts.

first of all, this shape is far from traditional, but since these silicone molds haven't been used (i think) i thought i'd give them a try. plus, they are kinda cute, and valentine's day is approaching, and what not...

i found these amaretti cookies in the pantry. i had bought them in order to make a tart that i got a recipe for from claudia at our hotel in malcesine. naturally, i lost the recipe, so no amaretti tart. my train of thought was that since there are almond flour and almond extract in most runeberg's tart recipes, these cookies might do the trick and other cookie crumbs could be replaced with these.

my adapted recipe (in metric measures):

3 large eggs
1,5 dl demerera sugar
1,5 dl flour (i used all purpose)
1,5 dl amaretti crumbs
1 dl almond flour
1,5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 dl turkish yogurt

to start mix all the dry ingredients together and the vanilla with yogurt. then whisk the eggs and sugar until fluffy and the mixture holds a pattern on surface. fold in the dry ingredients alternating with the yogurt. bake in 200C oven for approx 15 mins on the mid-level. let cool, keeps in room temperature for 2-3 days, freezes well up to 3 months.

although i think silicone molds don't need to be buttered, i buttered these slightly, just to make sure i'd get the tarts off in one piece.

the almond aroma from the oven was quite strong, in a nice way. i have no strong feelings for runeberg's tarts and before certain someone came into the picture i really didn't bake them or eat them. things you do...

this batch made 12 hearts and 3 round one (paper forms). surprisingly, i kinda liked these, plain, no decoration. i did the one just to show they'd look if one bothered. there's been a thing or two on my mind lately so i forgot to get some raspberry jam for decorating That's strawberry on the first pic). on the other hand, most of these were going to the freezer anyway, so the jam would gone yacky anyway.

this is the more traditional form of the tart.

made some old-fashioned as well, they are tasty, but quite boring compared with the amaretti version, definitely in need of something on top.

as i'm writing this i'm anxious as i take off tomorrow to somewhere i've never been to before. if i get a chance to post while i'm away, i'll let you in on where i am. if not...see you in about a week or so!

fish patties & apology

week ago friday i drove to my brother's with the intention to bake (a lot) for little niece's birthday, felt a little chilly when getting into bed friday night. saturday i had the house all to myself as my brother and nephew went to help my dad at the cottage and my sister in law took the nieces to an orienteering event in tampere. here is all i have to show for...







i baked pulla (coconut and cinnamon fillings), dorie greenspan's party cake in wilton dancing daisies pan, martha's coconut macaroons and made marchmallow's (a first!) with a recipe from delicious. i was having a flow so i forgot to take pics while preparing everything.

i had the intention of making buttercream frosting in pink and pale green to decorate the cake, etc, when, on saturday afternoon, i started feeling little woozy and had to lie down. first, on the sofa and later in bed with a bucket beside me, i will spare you the details. i ended up staying in bed for 3 days, fever and all. sister in law and older niece were left to make do with what i had started and some more to bake...i'm sorry i missed yet another little niece's birthday, and i was so close to making it this year! and you missed a grand post with my latest baking accomplishments, so sorry about that, too.

i stayed at mom and dad's apartment while sick and on tuesday afternoon, after carefully considering whether a 2½ hour drive could be accomplished, i drove home. i ended up staying horizontal most of wednesday, my stomach wasn't quite settled yet.

but eventually one needs to eat something...dad had caught some small pikes and knew that certain someone and i would appriciate them. there is one kilo of pike filees in there...certain someone got one fried in butter but the rest went into fish patties...







i made fish patties for first time a year ago, almost to a date. i used more or less the same recipe (who am i kidding? there was no recipe...), i did browse thru some recipes for inspiration, like one from maku magazine.







i ended up using:

1 kg pike filees
3 dl cream
2 eggs, separated, whites whipped
4 pieces of rye crisp bread, minced
1 dl bread crumbs (white bread)
10 cm piece of white part of leek, minced
salt, pepper, chili powder, peel of one lemon, fresh parsley and dill minced

first mixed together all of the dry ingredients.







then minced the pike filees in the food processor. (let the machine run long enough, you don't want tiny fish bones in your patties!) then, the machine running added the cream (mixed with the dry ingredients), leeks and yolks, mixed well. at this point i felt the machine might be getting over its capasity (a slight odor...), i mixed the whipped egg whites in a large bowl.







then shaped the batter into patties with wet hands, rolled the patties in rye breadcumbs and fried in butter on medium for 4 minutes per side.







perfectly done







served it simply with boiled jacket potatoes, butter and lemon juice

dorie's lemon poppy seed muffins

dorie as in dorie greenspan. i have no idea how i have managed all things kitchen all these years and not bumb into her...

anyway, as i mentioned in my april 10th post, i recently got her baking, from my home to yours cookbook. her lemon poppy seed muffins looked very attempting at first sight...ahem, these are mine...







i tried to find dorie's recipe on her website but couldn't (which isn't necessarily the same that it's not in her blog). her recipe is online but i'll let you find yourself, i feel that if the author didn't post it, i won't.

it din't take much to figure out what sour cream and creme fraiche are in finnish. in fact, that part was quite easy. trying to determine which of the dairy products offered in finland are similar in texture, taste and behaviour compared with dairy products recipes from all over the world call for is a another, longer story.

i made these muffins already last weekend at the cottage sans the poppy seeds (equally good without) and found out that whatever the english name for our kermaviili might be, it works in this recipe and one package is just the right amount. it's like with kajmak in croatia, i loved cooking and baking with it, but we just don't have anything just the same.

when working with recipes that call for lemon peel, make sure you get organic lemons (you don't want to be eating all those pesticides...)







what fragrance! don't skip this part, rubbing the sugar and lemon peel with your warm fingers will bring out all the flavors.







the batter will be lumpy, bigger mistake will be to mix too much.







almost too hot to handle. i had to resist the urge to put butter on top the hot muffin (did manage to do that!) baked these last night and had one for breakfast today. they definitely are best straight from the oven (what isn't?) but 15 seconds in the microwave did "freshen" it up a bit, still very tasty.







i've picked out a habit to post-it all interesting recipes in my cookbooks (dorie got 17 of them) and magazines (that would be the february issue of delicious in the background) for easy reference. now, if i could only find the dicipline to stick to any one recipe and not freefall them...well, baking is a no brainer, but with food i'm hopeless.







ps. i made a biga last night for sour dough bread. as i thought that cling film wouldn't stay on the jar i made it in, i placed the lid on (the lid isn't completely airtight) the jar and the jar in a plastic bag that i then tied with a knot. very simple. during the night, the jar had moved 15 cm and keeled over...certain someone saved the biga, but i'm not sure i want to bake with it... what if it explodes in the oven?!?

carelian pastries - karjalanpiirakka

baking carelian pastries had been on my mind for the longest time, years in fact. somehow i had always felt that they would be too much work, too difficult and what-not. sopankeittäjä made them few days ago and about posted her efforts. sopankeittäjä had used a regular oven to bake them, the oven being one of my main hinders. i had thought a wood-burning oven was needed to have an oven hot enough.

now, these pastries have history, there are probably even rules and regulations as to which ingredients can and should be used. well, if something can be done easier, i'm prone to go that way...someone who has been baking these pastries for decades might not agree with my methods and perhaps even accuse me of sacrilege, but this was my way.







i followed more or less the same recipe as sopankeittäja (pretty basic) but i didn't use any wheat flour. there are several recipes online, even how-to videos on youtube.

getting good quality rye flour might be the first obstacle for someone not living in the nordic countries. i used sunnuntai fine ground rye flour. sorry about the PW style photo-marathon, i thought it served a purpose here.

for the dough you'll need:

2 dl cold water
1 tsp salt
5½ dl rye flour (or, a mixture of rye and wheat if your rye isn't very finely ground)

mix the ingredients in a bowl, after they come together as one lump...







...remove the dough onto a work surface and knead it for a few minutes. it will stick a bit at the beginning but will firm after some vigorous kneading...







...enough to be rolled into a log and cut into 30 (or so) pieces







the pieces are then flattened, i used a glass to do it, made the job easy. all the recipes warn that the dough will dry out and should be covered when not being worked. also, at this point you'd want extra flour on the counter and the baking sheet in order for the pieces of dough not stick together







flat as a pancake







this particular type of rolling pin, pulikka, is used to roll out the dough. i have had this rolling pin for, hmm, must be close to 15 yrs, never been used before...you should aim to roll the dough into very thin rounds, approx 10 to 12 cm in diameter







a pastry brush is needed to brush off extra flour before filling the pastries. a pastry brush? you ask...well, i got mine from the hardware store...







for the filling i used:

2 dl water
2 dl (porrige) rice
1 liter milk
1-2 tsp salt

as the luck would have it, i had originally decided to make these on saturday, therefore made the rice porridge (the filling) on saturday morning, before i realized that i might not be ok. i had put the pot on, the rice and milk in when i started to feel quite woozy.

long story short, it's never a good idea to leave a pot with milk in it on stove unattended...i managed to save the porridge, and myself from a huge cleaning job, in the last minute. only to forget to tell certain someone that i had made the porridge for the pastries. he so likes rice porridge...fortunately there was enough to fill the pastries.







the pinching then, i was quite intimidated about the pinching, this is where you make it or break it. remember, i had not made these before... you start in the middle...







...then move on...







...keep pinching...







...until you get something like this. i was trying to be smart and form the dough into ellipticals rather than rounds, at this point i realized rounds would have been better. but that's trivia, one needs to make a few mistakes to ever learn anything.







mine are certainly not traditional in form, far from it, i would call them personal, these here are ready for 275C oven (fan on) for 14 mins







just out of the oven







after the oven, when still hot, each and every pastry gets a dip in hot water&butter bath (to a small kettle, add 1 dl water, 50 gr butter, bring the water to a boil, mixture is ready when the butter has been melted)







sopankeittäjä was right, with warm pastries, you really don't need anything besides a glass of cold milk...







although the traditional way to serve the pastries is egg-butter spread, i like to eat mine with emmental cheese and pickles or gherkins.







these pastries aren't something you just "whip up", lots of hands-on work involved, therefore rather time-consuming. however, the recipe easily doubles (or triples), do what sopankeittäjä did, have a friend over, make a huge batch together. unbaked pastries freeze beautifully and bake without thawing. if freezing, first place them on a baking sheet, when frozen place in a plastic bag to store in the freezer

fresh from the oven

the november issue of bon appetit came yesterday. usually i browse the magazine thru and choose recipes to try...and never actually cook them. this issue had an interesting recipe for oatmeal muffins (interesting because it calls for blueberries, that i have a lot in the freezer) (thanks mom!)







the ingredients are pretty basic, but i didn't have natural oat bran (need to figure out what it is...), wheat germ nor pecans. the measures for oat bran and wheat germ are only 2 tbsp so i thought it was ok to leave them out. i substituted pecans with mixed nuts. i think there was one pecan in the mix!







this bear hasn't been doing too great of a job keeping my brown sugar moist, there are huge rock-hard lumbs in the jar. but the bear is cute...







the batter resembled spicy, nutty oatmeal...







...until i added the blueberries, somewhat peculiar color







but they looked decent once baked. i thought the amount of cinnamon would be too much, but its taste blends in nicely. also, i used muffin tins with large cups, i got 11 out of the recipe, magazine says it makes 8 large ones. i don't think the muffins need much else in them, might try once with pecans (although pecans aren't something i can say i like...)







one day last summer (there isn't a post of it yet) i made some tomato sauce. tomatoes were dirt cheap at the grocery store, figured it was time to try making my own sauce. i had pizza in mind when making the sauce, but as i was making dinner tonight i remembered the frozen sauce and decided to use some in my bolognese







by now, you all are using whole wheat pasta, right?







with the one cup of my own sauce i used one 400 gr tin of crushed tomatoes and some browned ground beef. i bought 800 gr of ground beef and browned it yesterday, but as it is so good right off the pan, some disappered...i didn't think the sauce needed any spices but ground black pepper might work great, as would fresh parsley, basil, oregano...







i let the bolognese cook for 15 mins before mixing it with penne pasta. served with grated parmigiano







ps. certain someone made the mistake of leaving a half-eaten muffin on a plate on a low table...the dog seized the opportunity...he seemed to enjoy the catch