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some bread rolls, because I have a lot of flour of all sorts, and other ingredients..my sesame seed were already a bit out of date, which was a good reason to use a lot of them in the dough!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! :)

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!

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 :)

Playing with agar agar

Wow, it's been busy times and that's why I have been mostly cooking something quick and not even taken any pictures for a while..I have also tried some new things which I want to share with other curious cooks.

My mum had bought agar agar for our first attempts to make vegetarian panna cotta. As I eat dairy products and eggs, it's not too difficult for my family members to cook and bake for me. Gelatine I try to avoid if I just can: I usually check package information carefully and leave cakes and desserts with gelatine for the others. Sometimes I would like to try making a cheese cake, so it's time to try agar agar, gelling agent made from seaweed. In many countries it can be purchased from supermarkeat, but here in Finland it's sold in pharmacies and ecoshops.

In fact I tried agar agar for two dishes: panna cotta and white chocolate & coconut cake. I found several vegetarian panna cotta recipes in fact in various languages, but just checked them out for the approximate amounts of agar agar. I had a one small cup of cooked cream (around 1,5 dl) and I mixed 1 teaspoon of agar agar in it. It was too little and it ended up being like thick cream with some bigger pieces of jelly in it. Not very pretty, but tasty with blueberries ;) I hope to try it soon again.

Because it was mothers' day, me and mum also baked a cake together. My mum has been making some no-bake cakes with jellified coffee or cream filling, and this time we tried one with a white chocolate and coconut combination. I was suprised how well it worked and how pretty the cake looked in the end! The original recipe was taken from the website of a Finnish cooking programme and slightly modified; there would have been a caramel sauce on top of it, but we left it out.

So here's a recipe for it:

Bottom:
150 g cookies (e.g. digestive)
1 dl grated coconut
75 g butter or margarine

To the side decoration of the cake:
a sliced carambola fruit

Filling:
(gelling agent, see later)
3 dl cream
200 g white chocolate
250 g curd
1 dl sugar
2 tsp vanilla sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

(Caramel sauce:
1 dl sugar
1 dl grated coconut
1 dl cream)

Mix the cookies and coconut in a food processor and pour in melt butter. Press the mixture on the bottom of a springform pan, which is covered with baking paper (just to get it out easier). Place the sliced carambola on the sides of the form.

At this point mum soaked the gelatine, but if you don't want to use it, boil some hot water and mix agar agar with it. Since I mixed the gelling agent with about 2-3 dl of filling, I took 1,5 tbsp agar agar and mixed it with some tablespoonfuls of hot water. It dissolved quickly into a jellified mass, which I left aside to cool a little.

Prepare the filling: melt the white chocolate in the microwave or water bath and let cool a little. Whisk the cream and pour the chocolate into the bowl, beat again. Add curd, sugar and vanilla sugar. Spice with some lemon juice. Then add the agar agar mass, mix very well until the consistency is smooth and pour into the baking form.

Let it cool at least for some hours and then remove carefully from the springform. You can also cook some caramel sauce to decorate it: boil cream and sugar together on a low heat until thick brown sauce and add then the grated coconut. Let cool and spread on the cake.

As you can see, we made one bigger cake (with gelatine) and one smaller one (with agar agar). I took maybe one fourth of all the filling, so my cake was thus very small 2-3 persons' cake :) I also used for the bottom just 3 cookies, some coco flakes and a knob of butter. However, this was a good attempt and I'm positive about trying it again. I have read that it might not work so well with dairy products and end up being gritty and not very prettily jellified, but I liked the consistancy of the cake. However, since I'm just experimenting for the first time with agar agar, all tips and recipes are welcome. Mum said that she'll happily leave gelatine out of all the cakes and desserts, if she's convinced enough about switching to the veggie-friendly version :)