Buns for Santa Lucia's day

Hello,

There has been such a de-acvity with my food blog, that I need to be ashamed. However,  I have been able to clear my focus for the future blog posts, and I have decided to share bakings and dishes related to Finnish festivities during the calendar year. However, I will do them with my own twist, and try to find optional ways to make them.

The last time this kind of baking I have executed in my home kitchen are "Lusse bullar", meaning buns for Santa Lucia's day. The day of St. Lucia is spent on 13th of December. Here in Finland the minority of Swedish speaking Finnish are especially active in spending it. Santa Lucia has Catholic origins and is the saint of blinded and visualle impaired people.

Rather than baking traditional buns with cinnamon, raisins or butter, the Lucia buns include saffron and quark. The saffron gives an especially interesting and tasty twist not to forger about the beautiful colour and the quark gives them the softness.

The procedure for the baking is somewhat different than for the "traditional" Finnish bun baking procedure. The package of yeast (50 grams) is added to a warm liquid of butter (150 grams) and milk (5 decilitres) where the quark (250 grams) and the saffron (1,5 grams) have been added.

Then you can add sugar (2 deciletres), salt (half teaspoon) and one egg. Add around 15 deciletres of flour, and be careful not to add too much of it to avoid the buns to become too dry.

Let the batter to rise around 30 to 45 minutes and mould them to 32 pieces with the shape oblongs, but roll the buns from the ends of the oblong pieces are circled into opposite direction. Let the rolls rise for another 30 minutes. Spread the buns with eggs and add raisins into the centre of the circles in the ends.

Finally bake them in a 250 degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes. Enjoy with a cup of coffee, tea, milk or mulled wine!

The Cake of Salmensaari

Tomorrow, on 5th of February is the day of Johan Ludvig Runeberg in Finland. This is an annual festivity, and as for many similar days pastries are related to them. Mr. Runeberg was a Finnish poet and writer, and he is considered as the national poet of Finland. So a very important man, but this ain't a Finnish history lesson, so enough of history and towards baking ;-)

Common tradition is to bake little tarts on the day of Runeberg. This year I decided to bake a cake instead. The recipe of the cake is not the same as for the tarts, but it is very close to the texture and taste compared to the the original tart recipe. The name of the cake is the Cake of Salmensaari. And I won't bore you anymore with history lessons, so I won't even try to find out where does the name of cake comes from.

Simply, as far as the equipment for this recipe is conserned, you need three bowls. Fill the first one with one decilitre of almond flour or groats, one declitre of breadcrumbs and one and a half decilitres of wheat flour. The the second bowl you can mix two decilitres of sour cream and one tea spoon of baking powder. What about the third bowl then? Mix 150 grams of butter, one and a decilitres of sugar and two eggs. Finally, add the mixtures of two first bowls the the butter-sugar-egg mixture.

Add the mixture of three mixtures (boy I am witty with the mixture word!) to a cake tin and bake the cake in 175 degrees about 30 to 40 minutes.
I baked it for 40 minutes.

When the cake has cooled down, you can moisture it with rum-water mixture or with apple, orange or lemon juice.

This cake is the kind of "after few days it gets even better", so I am excited to serve this the day after tomorrow for my guests!

Quite a person this Mr. Runeberg as we can cook delicious tarts and cakes on his day!

Blackcurrant-chocolate muffins

Hey,

It has taken really long time since my last blog post. But here comes a new recipe I had not tried before.

I love to bake muffins, but often it is hard to get them fluffy enough. Actually I did not get these too fluffy either, but the taste was delicious with tangy blackcurrant and rich dark chocolate. Yummy...

I started by mixing three eggs and 1,5 desiletres of sugar. After that I added four desiletres of wheat flour, with one tablespoon of baking powder. I also added 3/4 desilitres of milk and 150 grams of melted butter.

The key incredients - blackcurrants and chopped dark chocolate - were added as last and mixed with the batter. You can use white chocolate as well.

The tastes of blackcurrants and chocolate might work even better if you would add cocoa powder to the batter.

200 degrees of heat and 15 to 20 minutes in the oven will make the wonders to cook these muffins to your coffee table!

PS. Please share your idea how to moderate this recipe!

Soupe à l'oignon

Crispy autumn days almost demanded to cook something hearty, warm and little bit sweet... but salty, onion soup!

One could think that onion soup would be boring and bitter dish. Well, could not be more wrong. French people trust for their classic dishes for reason. This recipe is worth trying!

I prepared a smaller amount of soup than what is regurlarly recommended in cook books. I started by peeling and slicing regular yellow onions, leeks and garlic. I fried them in butter for about 5 minutes and after that added two tablespoons of wheat flour and mixed it well with the onions.

I continued with adding six desilitres of water with one vegetable stock cube. Seasoning is in quite important role in this dish. I used black pepper, thyme (very important!) and a hint of salt to season.

The longer you let the soup boil on the stove, the better the soup gets. However, I let it boil 30 minutes and was happy with the result. I was too hungry to wait longer! I hope you enjoy it, too!

First "La Citrouille" food blog post: Apple-chokeberry jam!

Hi everybody,

Welcome to read my first ever blog post! La citrouelle (Eng. Pumpkin) blogs mainly about cooking and baking. I also want to share some knowledge about wines and things that inspire me.

What is inspires me at the moment is the current season: The autumn. Today I wanted to prepare something sweet and homely, yet not so common jam - from apples and chokeberries. Might sound a bit scary, but I am really looking forward to enjoying it with yoghourt, porridge and toast!

I began with preparing the berries and apples. I peeled and chopped 500 grams apples ( I used cultivars Malus Domestica and "Huvitus") and put them into a kettel with about 400 grams of chokeberries and one decilitre of water.

I boiled them for 15 minutes with gentle heat, mashed them with a mixer and added 1,5 deciletres of jam sugar. I continued boiling the jam for 10 minutes. Finally I poured the jam to empty disinfected cans.

And that's what the jam looks like! (sorry for the dark picture)

And the taste is... delicate, bit tangy and surprisingly refined. I recommend for you to try the recipe!

PS. It is good to keep the cans refrigereted after the jam has cooled in the cans.