Childhood nostalgy: tiny cheesy mouthfuls

When I was still young and beautiful, that is in 1980s, schoolkids in Estonia had their own newspaper, called 'Säde' or 'Spark'. I even have vague memories of attending their young correspondents’ school, where we were taught how to write newspaper articles. As it happened, I never became a journalist after all. The few pieces I’ve written for newspapers are outnumbered by academic articles, and I’m not sure how helpful my early journalism masterclasses have been.

However, the newspaper had a section called 'Kati köök' or 'Cathy’s kitchen', which published easy and childfriendly recipes. One of them was for small cheesy mouthfuls called 'küprukad'. There’s no such word in Estonian, really, it’s a combination of 'küpsised' (alias cookies) and 'pirukad' (alias pirogi). I guess the editor couldn’t decide which ones these cheesy mouthfuls are. I remember making these on quite a few occasions back then...

I made them again a short while ago. Cannot really give a recipe, as it uses a special pancake mixture from Estonia (flour, sugar, milk powder, whey powder, baking soda, citric acid, salt, egg powder) and I have no clue what would be the equivalent brand abroad. But you mix 500 ml of pancake mixture, 250 grams of butter and 250 grams of ricotta or quark into a dough, and after resting in a fridge, you divide it into 3, roll each into a thin circle and divide into 16 sectors. You then put a piece of cheese onto the wider end and roll each into a small crescent. And then bake them golden in the oven.


I like the way how the cheese disappears into the thin air, sorry, into the surrounding dough (as well as escaping the pastries, of course) (look at the last picture here to see what I mean).

Küprukate retsept

NB! Proper blogging - i.e. with nice pictures and delicious recipes - will resume in a fortnight or so. For the last few weeks I've been staying with various friends in Edinburgh, and haven't cooked at all (cutting tomatoes, cucumbers and feta cheese into chunks doesn't count as cooking, neither does microwaving soups, I'm afraid). Two more weeks to go before my big move, and I cannot wait to start cooking & blogging properly again:)