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 :)

Sesame rolls

How to avoid reading for an exam? My best tip: 1) Start baking 2) Notice that the oven is hot and to make the best use of it, bake also something else 3) You have happily spent the whole evening baking and relaxing and thus will get a good grade! :)

Tonight I felt like making some bread rolls, because I have a lot of flour of all sorts, and other ingredients..my sesame seed were already a bit out of date, which was a good reason to use a lot of them in the dough! I found the recipe on a website of the Finnish organic honey producer Komppa-Seppälä Farm. That honey we sell on the university organic food circle also comes from them!

Seesamisämpylät

* 5 dl vettä
* 50 g hiivaa
* 1 tl suolaa
* 3 rkl Voi hyvin -hunajaa
* 2 dl seesaminsiemeniä
* 1 dl vehnäleseitä
* 11-12 dl hiivaleipäjauhoja
* 1 dl öljyä

Liuota hiiva kädenlämpöiseen veteen. Lisää suola, hunaja, seesaminsiemenet ja vehnäleseet. Alusta taikina hiivaleipäjauhoilla. Lisää öljy alustamisen loppuvaiheessa. Kohota taikina lämpimässä paikassa. Leivo sämpylöiksi. Kohota. Voitele kohonneet sämpylät vedellä ja ripottele pinnalle seesaminsiemeniä.

Paista 225 asteessa 15 minuuttia.

Sesame rolls

5 dl warm water
50 g yeast
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp honey
2 dl sesame seeds
1 dl wheat brans (or flakes)
11-12 dl flour (preferably not the whitest wheat flour ;)
1 dl oil (I used olive oil)

Dissolve the yeast in warm water. Add salt, honey, seseme seed and wheat brans, and little by little the flour. Add the oil in the end of kneading. Let the dough rise in a warm place. Cut it into equal pieces and form into balls. Let them rise on an baking tray. Heat the oven to 225 C. Before baking the rolls, brush them with water and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top. Enjoy!

Mmm, I love freshly baked bread! It is my dream to wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread, or optionally to the smell of pancakes! :)

Rice and Banana Pancakes

In less than two months I will be going to Indonesia for four weeks. As I have started to look for the travelling information, like train timetables and interesting things to see, I have also searched for websites about Indonesian food. I found some prtty good websites like Tasty Indonesian Food that provides the readers with a great variety of recipes and other food-related infromation. I hope to cook some vegetarian main dishes before I leave :)

Today I tried for the first time the famous banana pancakes. I don't know if these are THE Famous Banana Pancakes that the Southern Asian travellers eat for breakfast on Banana Pancake Trail (!) since I have never traveled there, but at least they were my first attempt! I found the recipe here.


Rice and Banana Pancakes

Ingredients

3 Medium Ripe Bananas
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Active Dry Yeast
1 Cup Warm Water
1 Cup Rice Flour
Corn Oil -- for brushing skillet

Directions

In shallow dish, mash bananas to a smooth consistency. In a bowl, dissolve sugar, salt and yeast in the water. In another bowl, combine banana, flour and yeast mixture. Stir the mixture until it has the consistency of pancake batter. Let stand 30 minutes. Brush skillet with oil. Heat until hot. Pour in 1/3 cup of batter. Cook pancake on both sides over moderate low heat until golden and risen. Continue with remaining batter. Serve warm with syrup.

Hmm, to be honest, there were some slight difficulties in preparing these banana pancakes! The dough was very coarse compared to the usual pancake dough, so I was afraid of them being too thick and uncooked inside. On the other hand, as we discovered after a few attempts, you can move the dough on the pan with a spoon and make it thinner so that it fries faster. We also needed a bit more oil than just "for brushing skillet". However, patiently you can manage to make pretty pancakes which have a slight taste of banana, and which indeed are delicious with honey, syrup or jam!

Cookie debts

New year, new ideas! I'm eventually recovering from the terrible flu I had during the Christmas holidays and now cooking feels like something nice and tempring again. Of course I had prepared something vegetarian, seitan roll for the Christmas table, but I didn't eat even half of it, so the leftovers are still in the freezer :)
I think it is better to make many small promises for the new year so that at least some of them will be realised! One of the promises was to return this lovely Lebkuchen box to the owner, who gave it to me over a year ago, full with some lovely homemade cookies. I had promised to return it full as well, so I baked some of my favourite cookies this weekend. This superrecipe is from a Swedish friend Torun, who gave it to me many years ago, and I have done my fair share to spread around the chocochip evagelion! Here is the original recipe, as written in the tiny piece of paper I have got:

COOOOKIES
* cream 250 g butter
* add and beat in 2,5 dl white sugar and 2,5 dl brown sugar
* beat in 2 eggs and 1,5 tsp vanilla sugar
* sift (it's not 100% necessary, but the cookies DO get better) mix & stir in 6 dl flour, 1,5 tsp salt and 2 tsp baking soda
* stir in 300g chopped dark chocolate and 200 g chopped nuts (if you like)
* make small balls, bake at 150-170 for bit more than 10 minutes
* hide the cookies well

Well, I bake them every time a bit differently. This time I only used brown (Mascobado) sugar so the cookies became browner than usually. I also noticed that there was less chocolate in the cupboard as I had thought (!) so I added 100g of dark chocolate and 200g of walnuts and hazelnuts, finely chopped. Cookies are very tasty even if you add less than 300g chocolate, which is quite a lot! next time I think I'll add a tablespoon or two of cold strong coffee which might give a nice kick to them as well.

And yes, after all also the nutty version was so tasty that I had to hide the cookies :) I'm happy that I can eventually pay back my cookie debts!