Granny got twisted

Now, don't be afraid if you've never heard of mayo cookies before. They're perfectly alright, perfectly sweet and actually quite perfectly perfect.
(And if you're still afraid, consider the ingredients of mayonnaise for a second - they're actually all used in sweet cookies too, you see! yeaaah!)

My grandmother is an expert and no matter how many times I try, I'll never get them that right. Maybe that's why I decided to give her mayo cookies my own twist, adding white chocolate on top (the best of ideas - she'd be proud of me). The first time I made them, I accidentally made them according to her original quantities which resulted in the whole kitchen being filled with cookies. Oh, you know, grannies and their recipes...


The quantities are reduced here, you shouldn't be afraid of flooding your kitchen with cookies if you plan to make them. (not that that's a bad thing, it just came unexpectedly to me)


Mayonnaise cookies with white chocolate

100 g mayonnaise
100 g butter, at room temperature
4 dl flour
2 dl sugar
1 egg

White chocolate

1. Mix butter well with sugar, until the mixture becomes fluffier.
2. Whisk in mayonnaise and then the egg. Finally add the flour.
3. Place the dough into the fridge for 30 minutes.
4. Make small balls of the dough between your fingers, place them onto a buttered baking sheet and flatten with a fork.
5. Bake at 190C until slightly golden at the edges, about 9 minutes. Let cool.
6. Melt white chocolate over a waterbath and decorate the cookies with it. Spread it on top or make other decorations. Let them cool for the chocolate to harden.

I must admit it - the batter tastes funny. But that's okay, because the cookies end up being sweet in that good childhoody way. That's the best way to put it, actually, the flavour is difficult to describe. But they're utterly delicious and the white chocolate gives them another sweet kick, making the final result girly and - again - childhoody.

Warm curd cheese toasts with feta cheese and smoked sausage

Curd cheese toasts (or rather 'kohupiimasaiad') are sweet (sorry if I'm confusing you, but usually they are) Estonian treats we usually make during wintertime when stale bread seems to be lying around everywhere and curd cheese just happens to be in the fridge. They're delicious for a dessert and delicious for breakfast the next morning. Check out Pille's recipe, for example, cause this will be the last time you hear about sweet curd cheese toasts from me today.

INSTEAD, our curd cheese toasts went un poco loco. That's what confused appetite does to a person, because I really craved something savoury.

You could try using ricotta instead of curd cheese here. Or even cream cheese for a richer treat. Though as long as I've got curd cheese, I wouldn't even look towards those two...


Warm curd cheese toasts with feta cheese and smoked sausage
(makes 6 toasts)

about 6 slices of bread

250 g curd cheese
1 egg
1/2 - 1 onion (according to your love for onions)
butter
about 1/2 tsp dried herb mix of basil, oregano and marjoram (you could also use only one of them)
20 g smoked sausage of salami (I used deer sausage)
50 g feta
about 1 dl grated cheese
salt, pepper, sugar

1. Dice the onion and sautee it in butter until it becomes transparent and slightly golden, about 10 minutes.
2. Finely dice the sausage and also dice the feta.
3. Mix the egg into the curd cheese, add the herb mix, sausage, feta and sauteed onion. Flavour with salt, pepper and a bit of sugar.
4. Lay bread slices onto a greased baking sheet and spread the mixture onto them.
5. Bake at 200C for 10 minutes, then add the grated cheese on top of the toasts and bake for 5 more minutes. Serve warm.
   

Nothing is overpowering the taste in those toasts, just like in good pizza. The bread is crisp, the filling warm and creamy. They're good just on they're own, with slices of fresh tomatoes on them or together with a fresh salad for a lunch-er lunch.

Weird how dishes as ordinary as kohupiimasaiad can sometimes surprise so much:/
Just the weirdness I love!

Rye bread pudding with berries

Leftover rye bread usually turns into leivasupp (literally 'rye bread soup') at our household, but this time I felt like making something else. And, I like the kitchen full of something elses. This particular something else here is a perfect opportunity to use up those summer berries stacked in the freezer.


Rye bread pudding with berries

200 g rye bread slices
2 dl apple juice
4 egg yolks
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
100 g cream cheese
4 dl (frozen) berries (I used morellos and bilberries)
1 tbsp sugar

1. Soak the rye bread slices in the apple juice, stirring occasionally, for an hour.
2. Beat the yolks together with the 4 tbsp sugar and cinnamon with an electric mixer. Add cream cheese and beat until incorporated well.
3. Make sure there aren't any big pieces in the bread and apple juice mixture, then mix the two bowlfuls together.
4. Grease a 24 cm pie pan and cover the bottom with berries, sprinkle 1 tbsp of sugar on them, then pour the bread batter over them.
5. Bake at 200C for 20 minutes, serve warm with vanilla ice cream or vanilla sauce.

The berries on the bottom turn into mild chunky jam, a succulent memory of summer. The rye bread pudding on top is moist in a good cream cheese-y way and the yolks sure have used their charm somewhere in there too.
As I mainly used fine rye bread this time, it's taste (and color!) was a bit lighter, but next time I'd like to go for darker bread with seeds. Oh yes. I've tried making rye bread pudding a few times before and always cursed myself for it afterwards, but this one here worked like a charm.


The dessert is great for eating while still warm, but it's good when cooled down to. You just need to have a cup of milk beside to keep you happy;)

Sweet double bread pudding

Made of leftovers.
And delicious.

Somehow, unexpectedly (I egoistically like to think it was because of my birthday), too much bread found its way to our house. What's worse - it found its way to our fridge. Now, bread in the fridge is not a nice sight for me, so I figured that the best way to get rid of it is just to go ahead and eat all of it.

What would usually happen? White bread would turn into sweet bread pudding saiavorm (read more here) and rye bread would turn into sweet rye bread 'soup' - leivasupp (my classical). But today I rebelled a bit and made an experimental bread pudding - which is going to be a keeper! Curd cheese can be replaced with sour cream, cream cheese or yoghurt (although I would never ever replace it!), light cream or even milk can be used instead of double cream. But...you do want double cream, you do.


Sweet rye bread and white bread pudding

150-200 g white bread
150-200 g rye bread
1 dl sweet apple puree/jam
2 eggs
2 dl double cream
1 dl curd cheese
3 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp - 1/2 tsp cinnamon
vanilla

1. Dice white bread and rye bread.
2. Grease a loaf pan and lay white bread onto the bottom of it.
3. Cover the bread with apple puree and top with rye bread pieces.
4. Beat eggs with curd cheese and double cream until smooth, add sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Then pour the mixture onto rye bread (Try to make sure that all of it gets soaked).
5. If you wish then sprinkle some sugar onto the pudding, then bake it at 180C for about 30 minutes.
6. Serve warm with cold milk (poured over it or on the side), with ice cream or with some kissel poured over it.



The bottom part is so soft and sweet enough to fill my appetite, I love the texture curd cheese gives to bread puddings (or anything, actually!). The top part is nicely brown and crunchy under one's tooth. Although it might seem that rye bread tends to burn dangerously during those 30 minutes in the oven, it's not like that - it just takes time for it to become crunchy and all. I wish I'd added a bit more cinnamon, 1/4 tsp is a bit too little for us who we are used to eating heaps of cinnamon on saiavorm.

What about next time? I said the recipe was a keeper! I'd really really like to add berries or fruit - I can feel the dessert calling for fresh blackcurrants picked from the garden or sour morellos. Or on another day - for bananas and blueberries.


Ahh, how I love our cuisine.

A tricolor cake for patriots of Estonia

Either thinking about Estonia's recent experiences during street riots or Eurovision song contest - the time's never wrong to think about my home country while cooking. No it's not going to be about sauerkraut in the middle of may! But who cares about the weather, one's mood or current prime minister - there's always room for sweet bites.

My idea was to make a flag cake. A simple, yet...special. Different sponge cake recipes can be used here, but I preferred to make one without eggyolks to maintain the white colour (which I...almost did). The amount of batter I made would have never fitted into my cake mold, so I reduced the recipe to 2/3. To keep it simple.


Estonian flag cake

120 g soft butter
200 g sugar
290 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/5 tsp salt
1 1/2 dl milk
2 eggwhites
vanilla
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
blue food colouring

1. Beat together butter and sugar
2. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Add the mixture, in turn with milk, to butter until smooth. Add vanilla.
3.Beat the eggwhites stiff and gently mix them into the batter mixture (first mix only some of it to make the batter more fluffy).
4. Divide the batter into three equal parts
5. Grease a loaf pan and pour in 1/3 of the batter. Bake in a middle osition for about 10 minutes at 180C.
6. Add cocoa powder to one part of the batter and pour it onto the first layer. Bake for another 10 minutes.
7. Add blue food colouring to the third part of dough and after pouring it onto the cake, bake for additional 30 minutes.



The taste of the sponge cake is mildly sweet, cocoa gives the middle stripe a strong flavour. The crust is quite hard, so it's actually better to eat the cake using one's hands. Leave your spoon behind! I'd add vanilla sauce or ice cream. Oh yes I would.

But the visual effect kicks ass. It caught my eye every time I passed the kitchen counter (Which I do and do and do and do) and would catch the guests' eyes even more when served as dessert at a party. OK, so these arent' the REAL flag colours...but the cake is blue-black-and-white enough to wait for the Independence Day to come again.

A pinch of Estonia plus a pinch of onions

When I decided to bake something for the Waiter there's something in my...bread event hosted by Spittoon Extra, I immediately thought about onions. I've eaten some great onion bread (rye bread, of course - it's Estonia after all) while in South-Estonia and unfortunately they don't sell it here in the north (like the country was so big!)

But my rye bread adventures still lie ahead of me. Nevertheless I wanted to stay traditional and decided for barley flour and curd cheese. With a personal favourite of course - onions. Onions-onions-onions. What luck that someone had bought them, cause I remember eating them all:)


Onioned barley and curd cheese soda bread
(adapted from Estonian National Cuisine)

125 g curd cheese
2 1/2 dl milk
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar/honey
2 tbsp butter
2 1/2 dl barley flour
1 1/2 dl wheat flour
1/2 tsp soda
200 g chopped onion

1. Melt butter in a saucepan or a skillet and cook onions at low heat until transparent. Then puree until smooth.
2. Grease a loaf pan with butter and add some flour or semolina, shaking to cover the bottom and sides evenly.
3. Beat the egg and add curd cheese, milk, salt, sugar.
4. Mix flour with soda and add.
5. Pour the batter into the mold and bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.



My bread turned out nicely moist. It was pure pleasure eating it warm from the oven with only some butter on it. In fact it's almost the only thing I've eaten the whole day. The taste of onion is rather on the background, but it's there. Barley flour gives the bread a somehow rougher taste, it's also slightly sweet.

The orginal recipe had no onions, so I decided to add an additional 1/2 dl of wheat flour too (that might just be the mind of a beginner, but hey - it worked!). For more oniony taste I'd add more of them. Not pureed, but as tiny bits, so the taste would be in tthe foreground too. This time I decided not to add herbs to get a pure taste, but thyme or parsley would fit well. Pumpkin seeds are another idea - inside or on the top.
Anyway - a thank you to my ancestors.

'Leivasupp' or just sweet rye bread soup

At least this is what it's called in Estonia, although it's not really a soup. But what it is, is a childhood memory. My mother would never ever ever eat or even worse - make - leivasupp (one of the few things I don't understand about her), so you can imagine my immeasurable happiness when granny first taught me the trick. So HOLD ON - secret family recipe!
Oh who am I kidding, that's so easy anyone could make it!


I LOVE this dish. It's healthy, it's Estonian, it's really simple, it's fast, it's delicious. Yes, maybe I was very little myself, but I remember how granny used to have a HUGE bowl full of leivasupp when she made it and I mean HUGE. I usually make a small batch, it's a perfect way to use up rye bread. Sometimes I'm in the mood for fine-, sometimes for wholemeal rye bread. Seeds and nuts are quite compulsory ingredients for me, so I'll throw in a handful of them too if there's none in the bread already. This recipe should be taken as a guideline, as l always just throw the ingredients together.


Leivasupp - a sweet rye bread dessert
(3-4 servings)

150 g rye bread
3-4 dl water
1 tbsp semolina
3 tbsp sugar
nuts, seeds, raisins, dried fruit (optional)
milk, whipped cream or jam for serving

1. Let the bread soak in water for some time (It's very comfortable to soak it overnight and boil for breakfast) or start making the dessert right away. If you want to do it the fast way, just crumble the bread into water, add semolina and sugar (and raisins-seeds-nuts if you wish) and boil until almost smooth (it will take a little more than 10 minutes, but it will take even less time if you've soaked the bread)
2. Serve warm or cold, together with milk, jam or whipped cream.

The dessert will firm a bit when it's cooled down and that's the way I like it the most. Although the first serving for me is always warm, suppose I'm just lousy at waiting:) (as you can see from the picture too) .The pure taste of rye bread is what makes this dish so wonderful. I've tried adding cinnamon (which was nice) and I've tried adding vanilla (and I love vanilla in everything, but it ruined the taste for me in this dessert). I guess adding traditions to this dish is the component that really makes it work.

Pasha with custard - a variation of an Easter tradition

I've heard from different sources that every Estonian makes pasha (pashka) at Easter. What? Really? The first time ever I heard about this traditional dessert was some four years ago when I was accidentally watching a Russian TV show Subboteja on one of the Estonian TV channels. I asked my mom about it. Her description was rather like 'well...it's like...hmm...' than 'it's an Estonian tradition too, you know'.

So I have been associating pasha with the Russians, it's their tradition after all. But recently I've discovered how many people in Estonia actually make it and I mean among the Estonians. My family has been making it for three years now (we've gotten over this 'well...it's like...hmm...'). But still - to discuss it as a traditional Estonian Easter dessert? Don't mention it when I'm around. Nevertheless I like pasha as I love all things made from curd cheese and the recipe we chose this year was a true hit. Custard is not a very usual component in pasha, but it might turn into one at my household!


Pasha with custard
(from the April 2006 edition of Oma Maitse magazine)

100 g butter
3 dl double/single cream
4 eggs
2 1/2 dl sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
1 dl raisins
1 dl candied citrus peel or marmalade
1 dl almonds
500 g curd cheese
+ extra raisins/almonds/candied peel for decorating

for draining:
a special pasha mold/large sieve/flowerpots with holes in the bottom
cheesecloth

1. Prepare the almonds. Peel them (you can do so by first 'scaring' them for about half a minute in boiling water, then cooling under cold water and gently pressing the peels off between two fingers), roast them on a dry pan or in the oven (about 5 minutes at 200C) until golden and chop.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat the eggs and sugar until fluffy. Melt butter in a saucepan, add cream. Then add the egg mixture into the saucepan and start heating it up, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens (don't let it reach the boiling point!). Add vanilla and let the custard cool.
3. Press the curd cheese through a sieve if it's not smooth and then add raisins, chopped almonds, candied peel or marmalade and custard to it.



4. Rinse the cheesecloth carefully with hot water and then use it to line the mold you've chosen. Pour the curd cheese mixture into the mold and cover it with cheesecloth. Place something heavy over the top to fasten the thickening process and let the dessert stand in the fridge for at least 8 hours.
5. For serving - turn the mold over and decorate with raisins, almonds, candied peel, marmalade or with whatever else you want.




Want a definition to rich food? I guess this is it, this is the one. But it's really good. Moderately firm, but silky on the tongue, with bits of roasted almonds that crunch between the teeth. The mild custard challenges the sourness of curd cheese and finally wins, but with the help of sugary marmalade that almost melts itself into one's bite when bitten.
But yes, it's rich. What if I discarded double cream and used milk instead? And what if I accidentally forgot to add that huge amount of butter? Would it still taste heavenly? I mean...everybody loves the taste of fat (even when they don't admit it), but I do think people wouldn't mind if I broke some rules. Even pasha might like the feeling of being slim:)

Kama overpowers breakfast scones

It's this funny thing that I don't have graham flour at home. So every time I need it, I look around in the kitchen and discover:
a) no way I'm making this without graham flour
b) OK, I'll manage without
c) oh I'll just use kama again
And so it happens that the Estonian national dish kama (I wrote about it here) unintentionally discoveres itself in all kinds of dishes. I replace some of the graham flour with regular wheat flour and some of it with kama. The results are always interesting. This weekend my breakfast scones turned really Estoniany.


These scones are equally good with some cheese or a sweet topping. Good quality butter or some jam on a warm slice is a breakfast classic - as simple and good as it can get. I ate a slice with some cheese and one with vanilla and chocolate sauce.

Breakfast scones with kama

1 3/4 dl wheat flour
1/2 dl kama
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
25 g butter at room temperature
1 dl milk

1. Mix together the flours, baking powder, salt and sugar. Add butter and mix carefully.Finally quickly blend in milk.
2. Heat a skillet and form an about 1 cm thick round. Make holes in it with a fork and bake it over medium heat for about 6 minutes on each side.
3. Serve warm or cooled, cut into slices.



The scones don't taste so good anymore later and should be eaten the same day. But as they're fast to make, this is not a problem, fresh scones are a lovely substitute to bread on weekend mornings or even on weekdays if you're not a person who loves to sleep until the very last minute.

A pinch of traditions

I thought it would suit just perfectly to start with something Estonian. At this time of year everybody is talking about baked potatoes, blood sausage or rich pork roast, so I'd better remind kama.

Kama is a traditional Estonian food, a flour mix of different roasted and grinded grains (wheat, rye, barley) and legumes. It is usually eaten mixed into dairy products (buttermilk, yoghurt, curd cheese), but is sometimes just the taste a cake or some snack needs. In this cake the taste of kama can be felt pretty strongly and the sweet, sour and salty tastes compete with each other in a pleasantly baffling way.


Rhubarb-kamacake with cinnamon flavoured glaze

100 ml vegetable oil
130 g honey
1 egg
1 tbsp baking soda
150 ml unflavoured yoghurt
250 g wheat flour
100 g kama flour
2 tsp salt
350 minced rhubarb
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g chopped nuts (i.e. almonds, hazelnuts, pecans)
70 g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp butter (at room temperature)

1. mix together oil and honey, add the egg and blend well, then add yoghurt and vanilla extract.
2. mix together wheat flour and kama, baking powder, shopped nuts and salt, add to the mixture.
3. you can add the rhubarb the way you like it the most. I like to puree half of it and add the other half minced. put the blended batter into a baking pan.
4. mix together the butter, sugar and cinnamon. gently cover the batter with the mixture.
5. bake the cake at 170 C for about 1 hour until firm.

The cake is just perfect served warm with a cup of cold milk, but nearly as good served at room temperature. It's not the sweetest of bites, but is a good change with its controversial tastes. Maybe serve with apricot jam and green tea?