Estonian desserts: Kaeraküpsised, my favourite oat cookies in the world

I've got a problem with most oat cookie recipes I come across. They are way too complicated and contain way too many ingredients, whereas I want my oat cookies to be simple, bordering on the plain. Also, I don't want my oat cookies to be dentally challenging, i.e. too crunchy or hard, as most of the commercially available oat cookies are. Finally, I like my oat cookies to be sweet rather than savoury, so as much as I love the sensible and healthy Scottish oatcakes, these are best suited to transfer a tiny chunk of cheese into my mouth, and not as nibbled when I feel peckish and want something sweet to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Here's my favourite oat cookie recipe that I've adapted over the years from the Finno-Ugric cookbook (Soome-ugri kokaraamat, 1995) that I've mentioned before. These cookies only contain the bare minimum of ingredients (no flour or baking powder in sight). They're crisp on the edges but with melt-in-your-mouth centres. And they are incredibly tasty as well. I love yellow raisins in my oat cookies as opposed to dark ones, but I think Buderim's candied ginger nibbles would work well, too. Or dark chocolate chips, if you're feeling naughty..

Pille's melt-in-your-mouth oat cookies
(Suussulavad kaeraküpsised)
Yields about 40-45 cookies



500 grams old-fashioned porridge oats
4 large eggs
150 grams sugar
170 grams butter, melted & cooled
1 tsp vanilla extract
100 grams small seedless yellow raisins

Whisk eggs with sugar until pale and frothy, season with vanilla extract, then stir in melted butter, oats and raisins. Stir until combined. The mixture should be on the soft side.
Take scant tablespoonfuls of the mixture and transfer them onto a lined baking sheet. (You don't want to make your cookies too large, as egg is the only thing holding them together, and they'd collapse if they're too large).
Bake in a pre-heated 180 C oven for about 10-11 minutes, until cookies are baked and golden brown on edges.
Transfer gently to a metal rack to cool. Keep in a airtight container for a few days.

Other cookie recipes @ Nami-nami:
Crumbly pistachio cookies (March 2006)
Estonian Christmas cookies (December 2005)
Hazelnut butter cookies (November 2005)
Lemon & pistachio shortbread cookies (March 2007)
Mayonnaise cookies (August 2005)
Peanut butter cookies (November 2005)

BLAST FROM THE PAST
Two years ago today I wrote about the expensive and beautiful flowering tea. Last year I posted some pictures about three fabulous breakfasts I had on the Greek island of Santorini and asked you to nominate your favourite :)

Gluten-free buckwheat cookies recipe

Are you on Pinterest? I am, with a nice number followers (thank you, all!) and various "boards". One of my boards is called buckwheat recipes, and I've been pinning various recipes there utilising this non-grain/pseudo-grain. Despite the name, you see, buckwheat is not a grass, but a plant related to sorrel and rhubarb.

During the recent months I've noticed that this particular board is getting new followers on a daily basis, and individual buckwheat recipes get repinned by increasingly many pinners. Buckwheat is "in". I guess the popularity of buckwheat recipes is caused by a) this "pseudo-grain" being gluten-free and hence suitable as a wheat substitute for all those avoiding gluten and b) some popular Paleo templates/frameworks allow small to moderate consumption of buckwheat dishes. Plus it has a lovely nutty flavour when baked.

Have you tried buckwheat? It's pretty popular here in Estonia and I've got several buckwheat recipes here on Nami-Nami (listed at the end of this post, see below). While I prefer cookies with buckwheat groats, then I tend to have some buckwheat flour in the house as well. It's the compulsory ingredient in blini, the small yeasted pancakes served with smetana and caviar. Plus I love this buckwheat cookies recipe that I discovered years ago in a British food giant's Sainsbury's client magazine. Apparently the original recipe is by Doves Farm, and you could also use rice flour instead of buckwheat flour. I prefer buckwheat, for it has a lovely flavour of its own. Note that my version has way less sugar (100 g instead of 150 g)  - if you've got a very sweet tooth, you may want to use more sugar perhaps.

I used to make these with chopped hazelnuts, but since our son is sensitive to hazelnuts, I've been using sliced/slivered almonds instead.

Have I missed your excellent buckwheat recipe and you'd like me to include it to the buckwheat recipes board? Leave a link to your blog post in the comments and I'll check it out!


Buckwheat cookies
(Tatraküpsised)
Makes about 2 dozens



125 g butter, at softened
100 g caster sugar
1 egg
150 g (light) buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
100 g chopped hazelnuts or chopped/sliced almonds

Heat the oven to 180C/350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cream together the butter and sugar, followed by the egg. Mix in the flour, baking powder and nuts/almonds, combine. (If the mixture is on the dry side, add a spoonful or two of cold water)*.

Take a heaped teaspoonful of the mixture, roll into balls and place onto the baking sheet. Gently press with a fork to flatten the cookie dough balls a little.



Bake for 15-20 minutes in the preheated oven until the cookies are light golden.

Let cool for about 5 minutes, then transfer onto the metal rack to cool completely.

* I've also used a different method - combined all the dry ingredients (buckwheat flour, sugar, baking powder), added the grated softened butter and the egg, and simply mixed everything and rolled into walnut-sized balls.



More buckwheat inspiration here on Nami-Nami:
Buckwheat with leeks and soy sauce
Buckwheat with beets and dill
Cabbage and buckwheat kasha
Buckwheat kasha with mince
Warm buckwheat and mushroom salad
Buckwheat with beef liver
Buckwheat and mushrooms casserole

More buckwheat cookies by other bloggers:
Buckwheat chocolate chip cookies by Karina @ gluten-free goddess
Multiseed buckwheat cookies  by Clotilde @ Chocolate & Zucchini
Nibby buckwheat butter cookies by Heidi @ 101 cookbooks
Buckwheat sugar cookies @ LA Times
Buckwheat chocolate chip cookies by Garrett @ Vanilla Garlic
Buckwheat chocolate chip cookies by Alanna @ The Bojon Gourmet

Estonian cookie cake (küpsisetort)

Here's a true Estonian classic - a layered cookie cake. If you've been reading Nami-Nami blog, you may remember that an Estonian cookie cake was also featured at the festive spread we served for Average Betty few weeks ago. It's a popular cake on children's birthday parties and on September 1st (the day all Estonian kids go back to school).

I suspect these are the main reasons for its popularity:
* There are just a few ingredients.
* It's pretty cheap and affordable.
* It's yummy :)
* There are endless variations - you can use different flavoured cookies, different cream, different decorations.
* The cake takes about 10-15 minutes to assemble, and every kid can make it, even small ones.

The cookie cake above was made with the help of my 3,5 year old daughter - she did all the cookie-dipping and cookie-placing, I was left with spreading the sour cream between the layers. And she's made this cake before - here's a family portrait taken in January - few days before our son's first birthday and few weeks before our daughter's third birthday:


Photo by Hele-Mai Alamaa (Pere & Kodu) as part for the cover story back in February. 

I make two main versions - one with halva and sour cream filling, the other with plain sour cream filling. That's right - plain, unflavoured sour cream - the cookies are sweet enough and there's absolutely no need to sweeten the cream that goes between the cookies. However, there are lots of people who add thinly sliced bananas between the layer, but I haven't tried that myself. I guess I like the classics remain classic :)

As far as the cookies go, you need rectangular unfilled cookies - either plain or chocolate-flavoured or any other flavour you like. The cookies shouldn't be more than 5-6 mm (1/4-inch) thick. In Estonia any flavour produced and distributed by Estonian Kalev or Latvian Selga would work, elsewhere you could try with Bahlsen Leibniz's Butter Biscuits, or LU's Le Petit Beurre biscuit cookies, for instance.

Sounds familiar? There's a similar, yet different popular cake in Germany, called Keller Kuchen (Cellar cake) or  Kalter Hund (Cold Dog), or radiokaka in Sweden, where butter cookies are layered with chocolate and coconut butter cream.

NB! Make this cake at least 4 hours earlier, preferably day before, so the sour cream has time to soften the cookies and make the cake more cakey. You can top the cake with chocolate glaze and decorate it just half an hour before serving.

Estonian cookie cake
(Kõige parem küpsisetort)
Serves 12 to 15

 

4 packets of square/rectangular cookies (180 g/6 oz each)
100-200 ml milk or coffee for dipping the cookies
750 g thick sour cream (about 20% fat content)

Chocolate glaze:
100 g dark chocolate
50 g unsalted butter
4 Tbsp double cream

To decorate:
crispy pearl sugar
fresh berries
coconut flakes/shredded coconut

Dip 12 to 15 cookies into the milk or coffee and place onto a suitable cake tray (I usually use 3x5 cookies or 15 in total, depending on your cake tray, you may prefer 3x4 pattern, resulting in 12 servings).
Now spread about a third of the sour cream evenly on top of the cookies. Continue with 3 more cookie and 2 more sour cream layers, finishing with the cookie layer.
Cover the cake with a cling film and place into the fridge to soften.

To make the chocolate glaze, break the chocolate into pieces and place into a small saucepan with butter and fresh cream. Slowly heat on a medium heat, stirring regularly, until the glaze is smooth and glossy. Spoon over the cake, spreading it evenly all over the top. (If using shredded coconut or pearl sugar for garnish, do it now, so it sticks into the chocolate glaze). Place back into the fridge to harden.

To serve, cut the cake into neat squares (or rectangles, if your cookies weren't square), or smaller slices, if you prefer. Garnish with berries, if you wish (I used the wonderful green variety of blackcurrants, Vertti, that I was talking about in a recent post).

Here's exactly the same cake, using chocolate-flavoured cookies and garnished with crispy pearl sugar granules:


Similar recipes in English-language foodblogs: 
Easy 7-layer cake  @ Steven and Chris
Kellerkuchen / Cellar cake  @ Light Recipes

Similar recipes in Estonian foodblogs:
Küpsisetort kohupiimakreemi ja banaaniga @ Sööme silmadega (Dagris)
Šokolaadine küpsisetort  @ Kiilike köögis (Anneli)
Kohupiimakreemiga küpsisetort  @ Siit nurgast ja sealt nurgast (Mari-Liis)
Vale-napoleoni kook  @ Kokkama Ragnega (Ragne)
Šokolaadi-toorjuustukook küpsistega @ Kokkama Ragnega (Ragne)
Hapukoorekreemiga küpsisetort @ Tassike.ee (Marju)
Küpsisetort  @ Magusad fotod (Marit)
Kohvimaitseline küpsisetort  @ Hea toit, parem elu! (Merit)
Küpsisetort @ Head asjad (Neve)
Halvaa-küpsisetort @ Maitse asi (Jaanika)

Holiday baking: Carrot cake cookies recipe

Time to start preparing for the Christmas holidays and I offer you a lovely cookie recipe! Although we'll be mostly eating piparkoogid aka gingerbread cookies here in Estonia, these slightly chewy carrot cake cookies would do just as well.

For over two years now I've been contributing recipes for one of the biggest home and gardening magazines here in Estonia, Kodu ja Aed (that translates "Home and Garden"). Since spring we've been focusing on a specific vegetable both on the gardening pages and in the food section. Carrot happened to be the vegetable of the month in December. December, of course, being the Christmas month, so I was trying to think of recipes that would feel right at the Christmas table as well. I think these cookies fit the bill brilliantly. They are easy to make, go brilliantly with a glass of glögg or mulled wine, they're "healthy" as containing a vegetable (carrot is also providing both texture and flavour), and they are egg-free, making them also suitable for some special diets. Most of all, they have a pretty colour and they taste great. As an added bonus, the kids loved them - something to think about when you've got 3 small ones running around the house!

So when you're planning your next glögg party, think of adding these carrot cake cookies to the menu!

You'll find all of Nami-Nami's Christmas recipes here and a selection of cookie recipes here.

TIP! You could make these cookie more festive by adding a scant teaspoon of mixed spices, gingerbread spice or pumpkin pie spice - all of these would work.

TIP! If you forgot to take your butter out of the fridge in advance, then simply grate the cold butter into your mixing bowl. Instant softened butter! 

Carrot cake cookies
(Porgandiküpsised)

200 g butter, at room temperature (7 oz)
150 g caster sugar (2/3 cups)
200 g carrots, finely shredded (2 medium carrots)
300 g all-purpose flour (2 cups)
1 tsp vanilla sugar or extract
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
whole almonds

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/400F. Line a baking sheet with a parchment paper.

Cream the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl, either using a wooden spoon or the paddle attachment of your standing mixer. Add the carrots, then the dry ingredients (flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder, salt). Mix the dough until combined, then take small chestnut-sized chunks of the dough and form into small balls.

Place the balls onto the baking sheet, flattening them with your palm. Press a whole almond onto each cookie.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.  Remove from the oven, leave for a few minutes before transferring the carrot cookies onto a metal rack to cool completely.

More carrot cookie recipes:
Carrot oatmeal cookies by Heidi @ 101 Cookbooks
Chocolate chip carrot cookies by Jeanine @ Love & Lemons
Gingered carrot cake cookies by Michelle @ Brown-Eyed Baker
Porgandiküpsised by Marit @ Magusad fotod (recipe in Estonian)
Porgandiküpsised by Kaare @ Koopatibi (recipe in Estonian)
Porkkanakeksit @ Kotiliesi (recipe in Finnish)

Estonian Christmas cookies: piparkoogid

When you usually get a small tiny chocolate with your cuppa in a café, then these days back home it’s more likely to be a nice and crispy piparkook alias ‘pepper cookie’ (well, pepper cake, really, if you want a direct translation). Of course, these days it’s more likely to be a nice cup of hõõgvein or glögg rather than coffee that’s served in Estonian cafés, and a Christmassy cookie goes much better with that than a piece of chocolate anyway. Piparkook is a bit like gingerbread, just without ginger. And as other Nordic foodbloggers have started making their Christmas cookies, I decided to make some last weekend as well.

To be totally honest, I can't remember making peppercake dough myself before. I cannot remember a single Christmas when I haven’t been baking these cookies, usually few batches during each holiday season, filling the whole house with a gorgeous spicy cinnamon smell. It's one of the favourite Christmas activities with kids, who get to roll the dough, cut out the cookies and decorate them afterwards. But we used shop-bought peppercake dough in our household. These aren’t too bad and I’m sure there’s a debate going on at one of the Estonian internet message boards about which supermarket or bakery sells the best peppercake dough this Christmas… (just like they’re trying to figure out which brand of black/blood sausages have turned out really well this year…)

But again, the peppercake dough is not available in Scotland, so I had to make it myself. Making the dough was actually easy – I used a recipe from a 1999 issue of Kodukiri, the best-selling Estonian women’s monthly magazine. I added a pinch of pepper to make the cookies to live up to their name (there is a story about the name of the cookie – called peppercake in all Nordic countries – pepperkakor, peberkager, piparikakut, pepparkakor etc – but I cannot recall it at the moment, sorry). The addition of ground almonds is not typical, but it contributes to the airy and crispy character of these particular pepper cookies.

Estonian Crispy Christmas Cookies
(Krõbedad piparkoogid)

150 ml honey
200 ml molasses or dark muscovado or soft dark brown sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground cardemon
2 tsp gound cloves
0.5 tsp fine salt
a pinch of finely ground black pepper
250 grams butter
2 eggs
700 ml plain flour
3 tsp baking soda
100 ml ground almonds

Heat honey, sugar and spices in a saucepan. When the mixture has amalgamated, add the butter and let it melt. Stir and cool.

Mix in the eggs, then add the sifted flour and baking soda and almonds. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon – the more you mix, the crispier the cookies. The dough should be quite thick and easily come off the sides of the mixing bowl, even if it sinks back when you finish stirring.

Let the dough to rest in the fridge AT LEAST for 1 day, longer, if possible. This allows the spicy flavours to develop and the cookies will be better in texture as well.



You can let the dough harden in a bowl for a while, then wrap into a cling film as a thick sausage for the professional, shop-bought Estonian peppercake dough look :)

Roll the dough out on a slightly floured board and cut into various cookie shapes.

(Just wondering here. The cookie cutters in Estonia are usually shaped like stars, Christmas trees, gingerbread men, etc. Why did I find a mushroom amongst my Kaiser Christmas cookie cutter set that I inherited from my Norwegian friend Guro few years ago? Is there a mysterious link between mushrooms and Christmas in Germany that I’ve missed? Or a little bird – not turkey/goose/duck, but something smaller looking? That was another mystery cookie cutter in my set)

Bake in a 180˚C oven for about 10 minutes, until cookies have changed colour and slightly hardened (they’ll crisp when cooling).




Decorate with a icing sugar and egg white glaze (up to about 400 ml sugar to 1 egg white)


You end up with a huge tray full of Christmas cookies, a selection of which can be seen here. I didn’t have any food colouring at home, so I used some liquid from a blackberry jam jar to tint some of the glaze. This resulted in a slightly pale lilac touches on some of the cookies (check out the first and third exclamation mark on the banner, for instance). But feel free to be way more bold with colours!

David Leite's Chocolate Chip Cookies, slightly modified

Here's what I had for breakfast today - a large cup of coffee, and two gigantic chocolate chip cookies. Following the famous recipe David Leite's Chocolate Chip Cookies pretty closely, I made up a batch of cookie dough on Monday night, and baked 6 large cookies this morning. They weren't bad - I especially liked the slightly chewy inside and crispy edges, and the sprinkling of Maldon sea salt flakes on top of a chocolate cookie is genious. But if I ever make these again, I drastically reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe. I made the mistake of having two of these with my coffee this morning, and that is not something I recommend. I was very close to opening a can of tinned sprats to reduce the effects of all that sugar.

Other than that, I was pretty pleased with the way these spread out and baked. Some foodbloggers mentioned that the cookies were flat - not in my kitchen - they were about 1 cm /just under half an inch/ in the center. I baked large cookies, ca 75 grams each (that's just under 3 oz), which is way larger than what's considered a socially acceptable cookie size outside the US, I'm afraid. I'll share the metric recipe here - if you're cooking and baking in cups and ounces, then please refer to any of the good foodbloggers below.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Ameerika šokolaadiküpsised)
Makes a lot, recipe can be halved and the formed unbaked cookies can be frozen



480 g all-purpose flour
1.25 tsp baking soda/bicarbonate of soda
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
275 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
200 g soft brown sugar (I used 'fariinsuhkur')
300 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
500 g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped (at least 60% cacao content)
Maldon sea salt flakes for sprinkling

Mix flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a measuring jug. Put aside.
Using the paddle attachment of a food processor, cream the butter and sugar together for 5 minutes, until it's creamy and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and vanilla extract, and beat until well combined.
Add the flour mixture, and stir just to combine. Fold in the chopped chocolate.
Using your hands, press the dough into a large ball and place in a bowl. Cover with a clingfilm and refridgerate for 36 hours (or up to 72 hours).
Line a baking sheet with a Silpat mat or parchment paper. Using a large ice cream scoop or a similar utensil, scoop out balls of cookie dough, each weighing about 75 grams. Place the cookie dough balls on the baking sheet, leaving plenty of space for spreading (I placed 6 cookie dough balls on my large baking sheet). (Return the remaining dough into the fridge!)
Sprinkle lightly with Maldon sea salt flakes.
Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 175°C oven for 16-18 minutes, until the cookie looks golden on the edges, but is still just pale tanned in the middle.
Remove from the oven, gently transfer onto a metal rack to cool slightly and firm up.
Repeat with the remaining dough.

Some other foodbloggers have tried and tested the recipe:
Molly @ Orangette
Deb @ SmittenKitchen
Stephanie @ Bay Area Bites
Clotilde @ Chocolate & Zucchini (who was smart enough to halve the recipe)
Kristin @ Kitchen Sink Recipes
Pim @ Chez Pim

Baking with whole-grain flours: Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of my recent cookbook acquisitions is Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Wheat Flours. Kim Boyce is a former pastry chef, who has been experimenting with using much more whole-grain flours instead of refined white flours/wheat flours. The book is divided into 13 chapters, each focusing on one grain/ingredient - whole-wheat flour, amaranth flour, barley flour, buckwheat flour, corn flour, kamut flour, multigrain flour, oat flour, quinoa flour, rye flour, spelt flour, teff flour, as well as a chapter on jams and compotes. Plenty of good stuff in there to keep me busy baking over the summer!

The first recipe I tried was for chocolate chip cookies. Way too sweet for my Estonian tastebuds (as most American cake recipes out there), but delicious enough for me to give it another go just a few days later. I've changed the quantities into metric, and used only about 2/5th of the amount of white sugar in Kim's recipe. This had no effect to the flavour - these were still very sweet and delicious cookies. My cookies were much smaller - one heaped Tbsp of cookie dough yields one large cookie. If you want to follow Kim Boyle's advice, take three Tbsp of dough per cookie :)

These stay nice and crisp for about three days in a air-tight cookie jar.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Šokolaadiküpsised täisterajahust)
Yields about 30 cookies

Wet mixture:
225 g cold unsalted butter, cut into 1 cm cubes
150 g dark brown sugar (dark muscovado)
100 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract

Dry mixture:
420 g whole-wheat flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
0.5 tsp finely ground sea salt

Furthermore:
200 g dark chocolate chips or finely chopped dark chocolate (I used Callebaut)

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Line a baking sheet with a parchment paper.

Place butter and sugar into the mixing bowl fitted with the beater blade or paddle attachment. Mix until just combined.
Add eggs, one at the time, mixing until each egg is fully incorporated. Add the vanilla extract.
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl, mix and then stir quickly into the egg-butter-sugar mixture.
Finally, add all the chocolate and stir until combined.
Take tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough and place heaps on the baking sheet. Leave plenty of room between the heaps of dough, as it spreads during baking. (I baked about 8 cookies at a time, 4 baking sheets in total).
Bake in a pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes, until the cookies are nicely golden brown on top.
Take out of the oven, let cool for a minute, then carefully transfer the cookies to a metal rack to cool completely (they'll crisp up during the cooling process).

Christmas Cookie Recipes: Cardamom Cookies aka White Gingerbread

K. playing around with gingerbread. See another example of his food styling here. The cookie cutter (do you recognise the Moomin character?) is a gift from Dagmar.

I baked a lot of cookies this Christmas - gingerbread cookies, matcha madeleines, sweet mayonnaise cookies, coconut macaroons, and these lovely pale cardamom cookies - to give away as gifts. The recipe is from a Finnish site, and they were called white gingebread cookies, if I remember correctly. The naughty bit is that they don't look like gingerbread cookies - which are supposed to be, of course, dark brown (see the colour contrast on the top photo?) - but they contain a generous doze of cardamom, which gives them a very Christmassy feel. Sneaky, eh?

Oh, if you don't have ground cardamom, then seeds from about 20 pods give you about 1 tsp of ground spice at the end. And be careful not to overbake them - you want white gingerbread after all!

White Gingerbread aka Cardamom Cookies
(Valged piparkoogid e. kardemoniküpsised)
Recipe from the Finnish Pirkka-site
Makes about 4 dozen



125 g butter, at room temperature
100 g sugar
1 egg
50 ml double cream
150 g plain flour
100 g potato starch/potato flour
2 tsp vanilla sugar
1 tsp ground cardamom
0.5 tsp baking powder

Cream butter and sugar until light, then whisk in the egg.
Mix the dry ingredients (flour, potato starch, vanilla sugar, cardamom and baking powder), add to the butter mixture together with the double cream. Press into a dough ball and place into the fridge for about 3 hours (I left it overnight).
Roll the dough out on a slightly floured surface into 3-5 mm thickness. Cut out cookies and place onto a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper.
Bake at 200 C for 6-8 minutes, until the cookies are very slightly golden.
Cool and decorate with sugar glazing (recipe here).

Peanut Butter Cookies

I had never cooked peanut butter cookies before. Nor anything else using peanut butter as one of the ingredients. I can’t even remember eating peanut butter before, though I’m sure I must have encountered it at some point. But on Wednesday night I made a batch of peanut butter cookies – the super-easy kind of cookies at that. I came across the recipe a while ago on a website Bears In The Kitchen, and had copied it to my Estonian site. I’m glad I did, as this could be one of the easiest cookies to make in the world. Even easier than making mayonnaise cookies - and that's something.

Peanut Butter Cookies(Maapähklivõiküpsised)

One cup of sugar
One cup of crunchy peanut butter (preferably one with at least ca 95% peanuts, a pinch of salt and some oil, but nothing else)
One egg

Mix all ingredients. Take large teaspoonfuls of batter and put on a baking tray. Bake at 200˚C for about 12-15 minutes, until your cookies are aromatic and golden brown.
Leave to harden on the tray for 5 minutes, then move carefully onto a rest to cool.



Voila. That’s all there is to eat. Enjoy. If you prefer hazelnuts, then try hazelnut butter cookies.

Although I’m not particularly keen on peanut butter, these cookies were delicious - I liked the slight saltiness of these. And for the negligent effort that went into making these, I think I’m gonna keep that ‘recipe’ at hand for unexpected cookie eating and/or baking cravings...

UPDATE: One of my Estonian readers, Thredalia over at Pisike ja Pisut Segi tried these as well. She even made her own peanut butter!!!

Snickerdoodles - nutmeg cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar

I'm not the first blogger to write about Snickerdoodles (SmittenKitchen, EggBeater, Pinch My Salt, Andrea Meyers have all beat me to it), but I love the photo I made, so I want to blog about them as well :) Additionally, my recipe uses metric measures, making it more useful for a lot of Internet-users out there ;)

I don't know whom to credit for the recipe. All the cookbooks I consulted - be it Nigella Lawson, Rachel Allen or someone less famous - had almost exact recipe, almost verbatim, and mine is a combination of quite a few of them. The only changes I made was making my cookies a wee bit smaller. I also seems to me that the photos of Snickerdoodle cookies in the British food magazines and cookbooks depict cookies that are slightly rounder (as opposed to the very thin and flat ones in American foodblogs and cookbooks).

These cookies keep for a week in a air-tight cookie jar.

Snickerdoodles
(Snickerdoodles-muskaatküpsised)
Makes about 3 dozen cookies (2 cookie sheets)



250 g plain flour
0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
125 g unsalted butter, softened
100 g caster sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cinnamon sugar:
2 Tbsp caster sugar
1 Tsbp ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 180 C/370 F.

Mix flour, nutmeg, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.
Cream egg and sugar until pale and fluffy, whisk in the egg and vanilla extract. Fold in the dry ingredients and press into a neat dough ball.
Mix cinnamon sugar ingredients in a small shallow bowl.
Take small walnut-sized pieces of cookie down and roll them into small balls (I was diligent enough to weigh that each dough ball measured 12-14 grams :)). Roll each ball in cinnamon sugar until covered, then place onto a lined baking sheet, leaving about 3 cm between cookies.
Flatten the cookies lightly with the palm of your hand or by pressing with the fork.
Bake in the pre-heated 180 C oven for about 12-15 minutes, until cookies are light golden brown.
Remove from the oven, leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then transfer onto a wire rack to cool.

Holiday baking: Sliced Almond Christmas Cookies

From the recipe archives!

It's the time to bake various Christmas cookies again. While I'll certainly be making and baking and decorating a batch of these favourite Estonian piparkoogid ("pepper cakes"), then this year I have another recipe in mind as well. These sliced Christmas cookies with almonds found their way into my heart in the midst of the summer heatwave, as I was choosing and testing recipes for my Christmas cookbook. I had seen a recipe for "French gingebread cookies" in a Swedish food magazine that I liked, and that reminded me of Jules Destrooper's wonderful almond thins that I used to love. After some tweaking here and there (less sugar and less cloves, more almonds), I ended up with this great recipe.

I usually divide the dough into four equal portions and roll and wrap them individually. Then I bake one and place three in the freezer - I can then bake fresh and aromatic Christmas cookies whenever I feel like :)

Almond Gingerbread Cookies
(Viilupiparkoogid)
Makes a lot - about 4 large sheets



250 g butter
200 g caster sugar
140 g light baking syrup (about 100 ml)
420 g plain flour (700 ml)
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
0.5 Tbsp ground cloves
0.5 Tbsp baking soda
100 g sliced almonds

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add sugar and syrup, stir until combined. Remove from the heat and let cool completely.
Combine flour, cinnamon, cloves, baking soda and almonds in a bowl, then fold into the cool butter-sugar-syrup mixture. Stir until combined.
Divide the cookie dough into four equal parts, then form each one into a cylinder/sausage, about 4 cm in diameter. Wrap in clingfilm or baking paper and place into the fridge to rest. (Ideally for 24 hours).

To bake the cookies, cut each "sausage" into 3-4 mm (1/8th inch) slices, and place onto a parchment covered cookie sheet.
Bake in the middle of a preheated 200 C oven for 6 to 8 minutes, until golden brown.
Remove from the oven, let rest for a few minutes, then transfer onto a metal rack to cool completely.

This recipe was also included in my second cookbook, Jõulud kodus ("Christmas at Home"), published in Estonian in November 2011.

Earl Grey tea cookies

Imagine a kitchen - well, actually a whole house - where the wonderful aroma of Bergamot orange is floating in the air. (If you're unfamiliar with bergamot, then my blog friend David Lebovitz comes to the rescue). Does that smell sound appealing? If yes, then read on :)

A friend of mine who works at KAFO (the Estonian distributor of Lavazza coffee, Just t teas, Jura coffee machines, Monbana Trésor chocolates, David Rio chais and such like) gave me a selection of Just t Black Label No X teas for degustation recently. All nine of them:



I had fun brewing and sipping them. Personal favourites - No 1 (Lemon balm herbal infusion), No 5 (Black tea Earl Grey Luxury), No 7 (Green tea jasmine blossom) and No 9 (Black tea Bombay Chai, with ginger, cloves, black pepper, cinnamon).

However, Nami-Nami is a food blog, not a drink blog, so I should provide you with a recipe instead of going on about my favourite teas, right? Coincidentally, my Uppsala-based friend Annika gave me two Swedish food magazines last Friday, and there was a recipe for Earl Grey-drömmar in one of them. These were egg-free cookies where one had to make an Earl Grey infused sugar to start with. Unfortunately, the cookies were a huge disappointment - they were too sweet and way too crumbly, so we sent the big box of cookies to someone we know appreciates soft and sugary cookies :)

Yet the smell of Bergamot in the air was so amazing that I had to give those cookies another try. This time I simply took my regular thumbprint cookie recipe and incorporated the lovely Earl Grey infused sugar into this recipe.

Much, much, much better. I ate them plain, well, with a large cup of freshly brewed Earl Grey tea, but a  tiny schmear of lemon curd will make them even more enjoyable.

Earl Grey tea cookies
(Teeküpsised)
Makes about 30

 

60 g (about 100 ml) icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
2 Tbsp finest Earl Grey tea leaves
200 g unsalted butter, softened
240 g all-purpose/plain flour (400 ml)
55 g potato starch/potato flour
a pinch of salt

To start with, make the aromatic Earl Grey sugar. Blitz the caster sugar and tea leaves until you've got a fine powder:



Cream the butter with the Earl Grey sugar. Mix flour, salt and potato starch, sift into the butter mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon.
Using your hands, take small chunks of cookie dough and roll into small balls.
Place on a cookie sheet and flatten slightly. (If you prefer making thumbprint cookies, then press a thumb print onto each cookie and fill with a small dollop of lemon curd).
Bake in a preheated 180 C oven for about 15 minutes, until the cookies are light golden.
Cool for a few minutes, then transfer onto a metal rack to cool completely.
Enjoy.

More recipes using Earl Grey tea leaves:
Earl Grey cupcakes with lemon Earl Grey buttercream by Hannah @ Honey & Jam
Earl Grey ice cream by Ali @ Gimme Some Oven
Earl Grey chocolate cake by Tracy @ Shutterbean
Earl Grey shortbread by Diana @ Appetite for China
Earl Grey banana bread by Lauren @ Healthy. Delicious.
Earl Grey poached pears by Karen @ Citrus & Candy
Earl Grey chiffon cake @ Happy Home Baking

NB! If you've got a favourite recipe using Earl Grey, feel free to leave the link to the comments!

ANZAC biscuits (recipe for coconut oat cookies)

 

From the recipe archives. Originally posted in 2013.

Did you know that it's ANZAC Day today? ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The Department of Veterans' Affairs of the Australian Government explains the Anzac day and tradition in detail. This being a food blog, it suffices to say that apparently these eggless crispy oatcakes were the cookies sent by the Australian and New Zealand women to the soldiers on the frontline during the WWI. And they're lovely - at least their modern equivalent!

The original recipe uses golden syrup, but honey works as well. I actually find the flavour very appealing, similar to the Estonian honey cake, and the chewy-crispy texture went down a treat with my family.

ANZAC-biscuits 
(ANZAC-küpsised)
About 20 cookies


125 g butter
2 Tbsp or 45 g golden syrup or runny honey
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
2 Tbsp water
150 g or 250 ml or 1 cup all-purpose flour
100 g rolled oats
60 g shredded coconut
150 g caster sugar

Line a large baking sheet (or two smaller ones) with a parchment paper. Heat the oven to 175 C/350 F.

Place butter and honey/syrup into a medium-sized saucepan, heat and stir until melted and combined.
Mix soda with water and pour into the saucepan. The mixture will sizzle and foam - this is exactly what should happen. Stir until combined and remove the saucepan from the heat.
In a mixing bowl, combine flour, oats, coconut and sugar. Pour in the butter-syrup-soda mixture and stir until combined.
Using your hands, roll the cookie mixture into golfball-sized balls. Place these on the baking tray, leaving plenty of room between the cookies. Press the cookie dough into thinner disks for especially crisp cookies (that's the way I like them).
Bake in a preheated 175 C oven for about 10 minutes or until cooked (the cookies will harden as they cool down; if you didn't pat the cookie dough down, they may need few more minutes in the oven).

Store in an air-tight cookie jar.

SIMILAR POSTS:
Heidi @ 101 Cookbooks (Heidi adds some orange zest)
Lottie + Doof
Tori @ The Shiksa in the Kitchen (Tori toasts the coconut first)
Emily @ Chilli Marmalade
Jennifer @ Use Real Butter (nice step-by-step photos!)
Sneh @ Cook Republic
Martha Stewart
Laura @ Pies & Plots

Recipe for ricciarelli, delicious gluten-free almond cookies from Siena, Tuscany

This photo was taken by Juta Kübarsepp for Nami-Nami, the rest are by me or my husband.  

I’m writing this post in Sicily. I’m in a lovely company of David, Rachel and Johanna, enjoying the delicious hospitality of Anna Tasca Lanza Cookery School. La dolce vita, but more about all that in future posts. I do mention that some very nice cookies were baked here yesterday, which reminded me of a lovely Italian cookie recipe I’ve got in my latest cookbook. 

Just over a year ago, in April 2013, I had a lovely holiday in Tuscany with my dear partner and our three small kids - the youngest was just under 6 months back then. We began our family holiday in Florence, then staying in various agriturismos near San Gimignano. On my birthday we took a day trip to Siena. Everybody said that we’d love Siena, but the truth is, we were not so impressed at all - San Gimignano, Volterra, Lucca, Certaldo and the old parts of Colle di Val d'Elsa had been more charming, more real. However, we did love the ricciarelli, the famous almond cookies from Siena. They are light and soft, yet chewy, just a wee bit resistant. If you love marzipan, then you’ll love these!

Ricciarelli are wonderful with a cup of strong coffee or tea, if you’re not a coffee drinker. In Toscana, they’re a festive food, baked and eaten especially during Christmas, and dipped into a glass of Vin Santo. 

They’re gluten-free. 

Ricciarelli cookies

(Siena mandliküpsised)

300 g ground almonds/almond meal

280 g caster sugar

100 g icing sugar/confectioner’s sugar 

1 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1 orange, finely zested

2 egg whites 

2 tsp almond extract (optional)

For dusting:

icing sugar/confectioner’s sugar

Mix ground almonds, caster sugar, icing sugar, baking powder, salt and the finely grated orange zest in a bowl. 

In another bowl, whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the almond mixture, folding gently to combine. You’ll have a rather sticky mixture. (Add the almond extract now, if using). 

Using a teaspoon, take about 20 to 30 grams (about an ounce or so) of the mixture and form into oval/oblong patties, flattening them lightly between your palms. Place onto a cookie sheet, covered with parchment/baking paper, leaving some space between the cookies. They won’t spread a lot, but it’s better to be safe. 

Once you’ve formed all the cookies and arranged them onto the cookie sheet, dust them generously with icing sugar. Leave to dry them out at the room temperature for 1-3 hours - the bigger the cookies, the more time they need to dry. 

Bake in a pre-heated 150C oven for 20-25 minutes, until the cookies are just a little bit golden and hardened at the edges - you don’t want them golden brown, or they’ll be too crispy when they cool. You want your ricciarelli to remain soft and chewy inside!

Cool completely. These will keep for a week in an airtight container.  




More ricciarelli recipes:
Divina Cucina
Jul's Kitchen
Lemons and Anchovies
Cook's Hideout
The Curious Baker

Crumbly pistachio cookies

This is my third nutty cookie post on this blog. On the previous occasions I've used ready-made nut butter as a shortcut (remember the Peanut Butter Cookies and the Hazelnut Butter Cookies, both delicious and oh-so-easy?). This time, however, I decided to be a proper domestic goddess and make the cookies from scratch. The recipe is very slightly adapted from donna hay magazine. I've added lemon juice to the batter and reduced the amount of butter by 1/3rd and flour by 1/5th - to result in a more lemony and more nutty flavour, respectively. Also, using just one, and not one-and-a-half packet of butter sounded more, well, reasonable*.

The recipe yields 24 delicious, elegant, nutty, crumbly, lemon-scented cookies that are gorgeously jade green in colour and are lovely with a good cup of coffee or tea.

Just try not to choke on the icing sugar:)

Very crumbly lemon and pistachio cookies
(Sidruni-pistaatsiaküpsised)
Adapted from donna hay magazine, Issue 22



250 grams butter (at room temperature)
3 Tbsp caster sugar
150 grams unsalted/green pistachio nuts, finely chopped
500 ml plain flour, sifted (I used type '00')
a small lemon (both grated zest and juice)
icing/confectioner's sugar for dusting

Using a wooden spoon, cream the butter with sugar in a bowl.
Add the pistachio nuts and lemon zest, mix thoroughly.
Sift in the flour and mix until you have moist crumbly mixture. Add the lemon juice in the middle of mixing.
Take tablespoonfuls of the crumbly mixture and press into a ball between your hands. Flatten the balls slightly and put onto a baking tray. (The cookies do not spread much at all, so no need to leave too much space between them.)
Bake at 180˚C/360˚F for 15-20 minutes, until the cookies are dry and slightly golden.
Do not brown!
Take out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Dust generously with icing sugar.

* In the UK, a packet of butter tends to be 250 grams, back home 200 grams, and in the US a stick of butter is 113 grams.

Gingery oatcakes or oaty gingersnap cookies? You'll decide.

In theory, a batch of cookies spiked with ground ginger would be most suitable for Christmas, no? I guess so. Somehow, however, I've baked two batches of these simple gingery oatcakes/oaty gingersnap cookies during this week alone, and wouldn't mind baking them again soon. I blame the long and exhausting frosty winter we're having here in Estonia - temperatures have been falling below -10 Celsius again this week. Some delicious cookies help to forget (at least for a brief moment) that all you really-really want by now is some sun and spring and birdsong and, well, end of winter..

Note that these cookies do not contain any eggs, so they're perfect if you're cooking for someone who's allergic to eggs.

Oatcakes spiked with ginger
(Ingveri-kaeraküpsised)
Inspiration: Finnish Valio
Makes about 40 cookies



125 g butter, at room temperature
100 g caster sugar
100 g (wholemeal) flour
100 g old-fashioned rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
3 to 4 Tbsp double/heavy cream

Cream butter and sugar. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, then stir into the sugar and butter mixture. Finally add the cream and stir lightly until combined.
Form the cookie mixture into small balls (about a heaped teaspoonful each) and place them onto a parchment-covered baking sheet, leaving plenty of room between the cookies, as they spread out during baking.
Bake in a preheated 200 C oven for about 8 minutes, until light golden brown on edges.
Remove from the oven, leave to cool for a few minutes, then transfer onto a metal rack to dry and go crisp.

Lovescool's Lovely Matcha Cookies

This is a story of a price-winning and very popular recipe. Lovescool's Kelli came up with a recipe for Green Tea Shortcakes, which won a Golden Scoop Award earlier this year. Then Fanny made them in France. Edith in Singapore. And then Mae and Inne in England. And Maddy in the sunny Los Angeles, and Lisa in sunny Sydney. Valentina on far-away Mauritius enjoyed them. Veronica made them. Carlos in Spain made them. Maribel liked them, and Mandy liked them. And now they've been made in Estonia by yours truly. I changed the recipe ever so slightly, using fine caster sugar instead of confectioner's sugar (I simply didn't feel like powdering my own at the moment, especially as the sugar I had was very fine indeed). I also listened to Mae's advice and reduced the temperature a little to make sure my cookies wouldn't brown too quickly. Here's my version - check out Kelli's post for the beautiful original recipe.

These are really lovely with a cup of green tea - sweet, with a hint of bitterness from matcha. Crisp and delicate. Elegant and beautiful.

Matcha Cookies
(Matcha küpsised)
Makes about 4 dozens



150 g fine caster sugar
1 Tbsp matcha (Japanese green tea) powder
140 g butter
185 g all-purpose flour
3 large egg yolks

Mix caster sugar and matcha powder in a bowl.
Cut butter into cubes, place into the bowl of a Kitchen Aid mixer. Add sugar and matcha mixture. Using the paddle attachment, cream until the mixture is crumbly.
Add flour, mix quickly. Add eggs one by one, mixing briefly after each addition.
Press the moist crumbs into a ball, cover with a clingfilm and place into a fridge to cool for about 15 minutes.
On a slightly floured surface, roll the pastry into 5 mm thickness, using your rolling pin. Use a cookie cutter to cut out various shapes.
(It's easiest to work with a smaller piece of pastry at the time, keeping the rest in the fridge).
Place the cookies into a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Bake at 165 C until the cookies are slightly golden around the edges. Take the cookies out, transfer with the parchment paper onto a metal rack to cool. The cookies will harden and crispen as they cool.

Other Matcha recipes on Nami-nami:
Matcha and Dark Chocolate Truffles (November 2006)
Green Matcha Loaf (February 2007)
And a photo of Mont Fuji cake in Mariage Frères in Paris.

NB! Matcha-pulbrit saab Tallinnas osta Piprapoest (Liivalaia 43), kus 30grammine pakk maksab 135 EEK.

Swedish 'jam kisses' or thumbprint cookies

New photo, March 2011

We hosted a pretty crazy culinary tasting party at our house last Friday - surströmming tasting party. K's colleague had brought us a selection of fermented Baltic herring, an (in)famous Swedish 'delicacy' from 2009 and 2010, both fillets and whole fish. We served these with boiled 'almond potatoes', flatbread (tunnbröd) and condiments. I prepared a selection of savoury and sweet dishes to go alongside and after the challenging fish degustation. One of the dishes on the table was a plate full of piopular Swedish cookies 'syltkyssar' - literally, jam kisses (hope my Swedish is correct here :)). These are pale round shortbread cookies, usually filled with thick raspberry jam. I didn't have any raspberry jam at home, so I used a good blackberry conserve instead.

Thumbprint cookies syltkyssar
(Moosimusid)
yields about 20-30 cookies, depending on the size



200 g unsalted butter, softened
100 ml icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
240 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (400 ml)
100 ml potato flour/potato starch
a pinch of salt

thick raspberry or blackberry jam

Cream the butter with sugar. Mix flour, salt and potato starch, sift into the butter mixture. Combine with a wooden spoon.
Using your hands, take small chunks of cookie dough and roll into small balls. Place on a cookie sheet and press a thumb print onto each cookie.
Place a tiny spoonful of jam into the indent.
Bake in a preheated 180 C oven for about 15 minutes, until the cookies are light golden.