Pannari or Finnish "oven pancake"

Yes, this is the fun part nro 2 for tonight: Pannari or traditional Finnish oven-baked pancake. I remember this as an absolutely tasty evening snack from my childhood, which was easier to prepare than the usual pancakes and satisfied the sweet teeths of the whole family. There is also salty versions of it topped with cheese, ham or other things, but I have never tried any of them. Pancakes must be sweet ;)

I looked for the traditional grandmother's recipe for a while and this one from Sorsanpaistaja blog was selected as a pretty good match with my pancake memories! I think if I continue making pancakes all the time, this soon is going to turn into a pancake blog ;)

Pannukakku

6 dl täysmaitoa
2 munaa
1 1/2 dl sokeria
1/2 tl suolaa
reilu 3 dl vehnäjauhoja
50 g (tai omantunnon mukaan) voita sulatettuna

1. Kaada maito kulhoon, hajota sekaan munat. Lisää muut aineet ja sekoita. Anna turvota.

2. Lämmitä uuni 200-225 asteeseen. Kaada taikina leivinpaperilla vuoratulle uunipannulle ja kaada sulatettu voi tasaisesti päälle. Paista noin 20 minuuttia kunnes pannari on kauniin kullanruskeaa.

3. Tarjoa heti esimerkiksi mansikoiden kera.

Finnish pancake

6 dl milk
2 eggs
1,5 dl sugar
0,5 tsp salt
about 3 dl wheat flour
50 g melt butter (or according to your taste...)

First advice: no fat-free milk, no margarine. It only tastes like the real thing, if you use real milk and real butter, and maybe add an extra egg ;) I reduced the amount of sugar to 1 dl though.

1. Mix milk and eggs in a bowl. Add sugar, salt and flour and whisk well. Let it rest for some time.

2. Heat the oven to 200-225C. Cover a baking tray with baking paper and pour the dough on it. Pour the melt butter on top of it. Bake about 20 minutes until the pancake is golden brown.

3. Enjoy with strawberries. Jam, curd, whipped cream or ice cream also work with it :)

Apple pie has got some new fans!

I made this very same pie again last week for some foreign guests and they seemed to love it as well..this time I put more apples, because I had got a huge bag of them from a friend and I couldn't eat all of them. One of the new fans of this pie said that I will be get to a good marriage, so let's hope that this pie works wonderfully on some innocent, unmarried guy ;)

Irresistable apple pie

I have made this apple pie twice this week and both times it disappeared so fast that I didn't manage to photograph it, sorry! Maybe that tells something about it more than any picture would do? And anyway, it just looks like any other apple pie, but tastes like a piece of heaven!

I promised to translate it so that also my boyfriend, whom I'm trying to encourage to take first steps on the divine path of baking, could make it at home :) So here it comes, freely translated from the original recipe at the Finnish baking website and online shop Ullan Unelma .

Apple pie

200 g butter
1,5 dl sugar
2 eggs
3 dl wheat flour
1 dl grated coconut
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tsp baking soda
0,5 tsp cardamom
0,5 dl milk
3-4 apples, depending on their size
cinnamon and sugar

Preheat oven to 200C and lightly grease a pie form with butter or oil.
Beat sugar and butter into a smooth mass. Add eggs one by one, beat well.
Mix flour, coconut, vanilla sugar, baking soda and cardamom and add some, then milk and then the rest of the flour.
Spread the dough on a pie form and add sliced apples on top of it. Sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on the pie.
Bake in 200C for about 25 minutes and enjoy with vanilla sauce, ice cream or just like that :)

I guess I have to make it again, just to have a picture of it as well. This is a very easy recipe, doesn't take much time but tastes very good! Happy apple season :)

Barley cake

During some really busy weeks I haven't really had time for cooking, but I wanted to post something that I tried some weeks ago for the first time at home, a barley cake or a barley ring! In my childhood memories barley equals to barley porridge, sticky, sweet, oven-cooked yellowish mass of something unidentified extra-terrestial material, which I didn't like to eat even if I saw how my daddy carefully prepared it! However, now it's time to get rid of my barley fears, so I picked a recipe which I had seen being prepared on a climate-friendly vegetarian cooking course in January.

It seems that there's a growing interest in eating healthily, but also take other point of views into consideration: fair trade, organic, demeter, vegan-friendly and so on seem to be already widespread terms. Climate-friendly (or maybe in a broader sense environmentally friendly) food is considered to be vegetarian, simple, following the natural cycle of seasons, locally near your home grown, organic...in fact we should look at the whole process: less processed and overpacked food with tons of plastic, cooking big quantities at the same time, using all the stuff you have grown or bought etc. So that has an impact not only on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, but aims to more sustainable, environmentally-friendly food production.

Here are some good links to read more about climate-friendly kitchen and labelling climate-friendly food in Sweden and about global picnic (in Finnish).

And here's the recipe. It's translated from the notes I got from the teacher of the cooking course, Päivi Mattila, an author of climate-friendly vegan cookbook (available in Finnish only: Härkäpapua sarvista)

2 tbsp oil
1 onion
0,5 tsp sugar
1 tsp paprika powder
0,25 tsp turmeric
100g piece of swede turnip
3 dl barley grits
1 vegetarian stock cube or 1 tbsp of vegetarian stock powder
8 dl water
1 tbsp dried basil
(0,5 dl roasterd hemp seed)

Peel and chop the onion, cut the swede turnip into small cubes.
Heat the oil in a kettle and fry the onion lightly. Add swede turnip cubes, paprika powder, turmeric and sugar. Cook for some minutes.
Add barley grits, vegetable stock and water, cook on a low heat for around 35 minutes. Stir every now and then, in the end swich off hotplate and let it cook without the lid for some five more minutes. Add basil and hemp seeds.
Rinse a round, deep cake mould with cold water and pour the barley mass into it. Press it tighly to the mould and let it cool for 5-10 minutes. Turn the cake out of mould on a plate and serve e.g. with vegetarian patties.

Tips: if you like spicy food, double the amount of spices and add some chili and cumin :) I used brown mascobado sugar and other organic ingredients. Wholegrain barley grits were ready in around 35 minutes, as mentioned in the recipe, but check the cooking time on the barley package.

Raspberry and blueberry pie

Where to begin? I have a head full of tasty things I want to share, but this first recipe ever is an old favourite..when I became a vegetarian around 10 years ago, the first cook book I bought was a Finnish veggie classic, Vegaanin Kasviskeittokirja (Vegans' cook book). I carefully read information about beans and protein, how to make tofu and replace eggs. Some of those recipes I have learnt by heart, like carrot-lentil soup with grated coconut. This is my favourite pie recipe, which I made yesterday with raspberries and blueberries:

150 g margarine
2 dl sugar
3 dl fine wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
some soy milk (or water)

3-4 dl blueberries and raspberries (frozen or fresh)
2-3 tbsp potato starch
2-3 tbsp sugar

Heat the oven to 200 C. Beat margarine and sugar together in a bowl. Mix the dry ingredients and add to sugar and margarine. Add also a drop of soy milk or water to form a solid dough. Place the dough in a prepared pie shell and prebake for 10 minutes, if you like. You can also add the filling right away: toss together the berries, starch and sugar, place evenly on the dough. Bake alltogether for 20-25 minutes until the crust is golden. Enjoy with a scoop of soy ice cream :)

I like to improvise in the kitchen and thus I followed the recipe otherwise, but I tossed also a can of curd (200 g) on it before baking. It's also a good variation, but not so vegan!

I usually bake with cane sugar (Mascobado) and like to replace some of the wheat flour with wholewheat flour, so all the bakings are a little bit browner than if you use white sugar & fine wheat flour.