Preserving lingonberries: an apple and lingonberry jam

A fortnight ago, Ximena and I and our respective partners J. and K., went to a bog where we picked various forest berries, including lots of lingonberries. The Latin name of lingonberries is Vaccinium viris-idaea, thus belonging to the same family with blueberries (Vaccinium Cyanococcus), bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) and bog bilberries (Vaccinium uliginosum). They're a great source of vitamin C, and have been appreciated by Northeners for that reason for a long time.

Lingonberries can be used to make apple pies and cheesecakes, rye bread and cream pudding, and a number of other desserts. Lingonberries are also great for making jam. Lingonberry jam - at least the version here - has many uses. It can be used as a typical jam on pancakes, toast, breakfast porridge. But it's not overly sweet, and lingonberries yield this am a rather tart quality. Therefore it can be also used as a chutney to accompany grilled sausages or black pudding during Christmas.

Apple and lingonberry jam
(Pohla-õunamoos)



1 kg lingonberries*
1 kg apples, peeled**, cored and cut into chunks
200 ml water
600-700 grams sugar

Pick through the berries to make sure they're clean. Bring water to the boil in a large saucepan, add lingonberries and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring, until softened.
Add apple chunks and cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add sugar and simmer for another 10 minutes.
Pour into hot sterilised jars and close immediately.

* If it's a poor lingonberry year, then you can take 2 parts apples and 1 part berries.
** If using apples from your own garden or a reputable organic source, then you don't have to peel them. I used underripe "Valge Klaar" apples from my mum's garden. They're one of the earliest apples available and very soft and juicy, so they're perfect for jam-making.

WHB: This is also my entry to the Weekend Herb Blogging, this time hosted by Zorra from Kochtopf (click through to read her round-up).

Baked apples with crispy rye bread and lingonberries

Some desserts are so simple, that it's hard to call them recipes and it's difficult to decide whether to blog about them or not. But then you did seem to like my oven-baked toffee apples a lot, and that hardly qualifies as a difficult dish. So here's another one for you. The only difficult part can be sourcing the rye bread crumbs - but you can always take couple of slices of stale rye bread (caraway seeds and all), and blitz them into fine crumbs in your food processor. As for lingonberries - I bet cranberries, which are far more easily available, would work just as well.

Baked Apples with Rye Bread and Lingonberries
(Õuna-pohlaküpsetis)
Serves 4

For rye bread mixture:
200 ml (a scant cup) of fine and dry rye bread crumbs
50 g butter, melted
4 Tbsp caster sugar

For the fruit mixture:

4-5 cooking apples, (peeled and), cored and sliced
200 ml (a scant cup) lingonberries

For serving:
vanilla custard or ice cream or whipped cream

Butter a small oven dish (ca 24x30 cm)
Mix the melted butter, rye bread crumbs and sugar.
Layer the apple slices in the oven dish, scatter lingonberries on top.
Sprinkle generously with the rye bread mixture.
Bake at a preheated 200 C / 400 F oven for 20-30 minutes, until apples are softened.
Serve with vanilla custard, ice cream or whipped cream.

Time for cake: Lingonberry Cake with Crispy Tosca topping

What's a weekend without a cake? I know that fresh lingonberries aren't available at the moment - the season only lasts from July till September, but luckily lingonberries freeze beautifully. I suggest you take them out from your fridge (or if you failed picking your own last summer, then buy a punnet from the nearest shop) and bake this Tosca cake. Tosca cake, ever so popular in Sweden and elsewhere, is a rich pound cake with a crispy almond topping. Adding a generous layer of tart lingonberries between the cake and the topping makes this popular cake even nicer, and there are some spices in the cake batter to make it even more heartwarming during the cold winter season.

Lingonberry Cake with Crispy Tosca Topping
(Toskakattega pohlakook)
15 to 20 pieces



125 g butter, melted
3 large eggs
170 g caster sugar (200 ml)
220 g plain flour (400 ml)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
0.25 tsp ground cloves
100 ml milk
200 g fresh or frozen lingonberries (400 ml)

Tosca-topping:
75 g butter
125 g caster sugar (150 ml)
2 Tbsp plain flour
50 ml milk (4 Tbsp)
100 g flaked almonds

Make the sponge cake first.
Whisk eggs and sugar until pale and thick. Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon and cloves, then fold into the egg mixture alongside melted butter and milk.
Line a smaller baking sheet (30x40 cm) with parchment paper, then pour the batter onto the tray. Scatter the lingonberries on top, then bake in a pre-heated 175 C oven for about 25 minutes.
To make the crispy Tosca topping, measure all ingredients into a small saucepan. Heat on a low heat, stirring regularly, until butter has melted and everything is combined.
Spoon the Tosca mixture onto a partially baked cake. Return immediately to the oven and bake in a slightly hotter oven ( 200 C) for another 15 minutes, until the Tosca topping is nice and golden brown.
Cool, then cut into small squares.

Lingonberry cheesecake

Lingonberries 

I had planned to make another cranberry cake for the Christmas dinner, but on the day I did the shopping, I had a choice between imported American cranberries or local Estonian lingonberries. As both berries are tart and sour, I opted for the berries that hadn't been on a long-haul flight, and I also picked up a jar of fresh lingonberry jam (IKEA sells a nice one). I used curd cheese - kohupiim - that is very common in Estonia, but feel free to use cream cheese - the texture is slightly different, but both should work.

Lingonberry cheesecake
(Pohla-kohupiimatort)



Base:
350 grams plain chocolate biscuits
150 grams butter, melted

Cheesecake mixture:
400-500 grams plain curd cheese or cream cheese
400 ml whipping cream
400 grams sweetened lingonberry jam
50 ml sugar
12 gelatine sheets

To decorate:
lingonberries

Crush the biscuits and mix with melted butter. Press the mixture into a baking sheet (I used 22x32 cm, cover with a large piece of baking paper) and put into a fridge.
Whisk whipping cream with some sugar until soft peaks form.
In another bowl, mix the cream or curd cheese with lingonberry jam.
Mix whipped cream and creamed cheese.
Is using gelatine sheets, soak in cold water for 5 minutes, then squeeze dry, mix with 50 ml boiling water and mix, until gelatine has dissolved.
Add to the cream cheese mixture, mixing vigorously, so you wouldn't end up with any lumps. Throw in few generous handfuls of berries, if you wish.
Pour the cheese mixture onto the crushed biscuit base and put the cake in a fridge for at least 4-5 hours or until the following day (or two).
Before serving, lift the cake out with the help of the baking paper. Decorate with lingonberries and cut into small squares.

Kladdkaka or a Swedish lingonberry and chocolate brownie

Photo updated in October 2013. The photo above is by Juta Kübarsepp for Nami-Nami/Kodu ja Aed. 

I went on a Stockholm day cruise last week with my friend Melissa and her daughter Natali. Melissa is a friend from my Edinburgh-days, who is now based in Toronto. She spent 9 days in Tallinn, and to give her a small break from my hometown, we popped over to the capital of Sweden for a day. It was lovely, if a bit chilly and wet, and luckily the ferry ride wasn't too bumpy.

On a way back to the ferry terminal I picked up two Swedish food magazines, and this Chocolate and Lingonberry Cake in the August issue of Allt of Mat immediately caught my eye. K's mum provides us with lots of lingonberries these days, you see, and although I liked the last week cardamom-scented Swedish lingonberry cake, it's fun to try new recipes. This one was a great hit with K (he had 3 slices on Saturday night alone), and his mum called me yesterday afternoon to tell how much she and her friends liked the cake, too. It's almost brownie-like in texture - smooth and velvety - with lingonberries giving a nice acidic kick to it. Well worth a try!

Lingonberry and Chocolate Cake 
(Pohla-kakaokook)
Serves 12



175 g butter
3 large eggs
200 g caster sugar
120 g all-purpose/plain flour
50 g cocoa powder (unsweetened!)
a pinch of salt
100 g lingonberries

To serve:
vanilla ice cream or softly whipped cream

Melt the butter on a low heat, then cool a little.
Whisk eggs and sugar until pale and foamy.
Sift flour, cocoa powder and salt into a bowl, then fold into the egg mixture together with the melted butter.
Spoon the batter (it's pretty mousse-like) into a buttered 24 cm spring form, smooth the top. Sprinkle the lingonberries evenly over the cake.
Bake at the lower half of a 175 C/340 F oven for 25-30 minutes, until you can see the sides of the cake loosening from the tin.
Let the cake cool in the tin for a short while before transferring it onto a cake plate.
Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Recipe for Crispy Lingonberry and Oat Cookies

I was in a cookie mode yesterday. Friends of us had invited us over for dinner (thank you, Marika & Tambet!), and we wanted to bring something little and nice and edible along. Browsing through my Estonian recipe site, I came across a Finnish Valio recipe for 'Puolukka-kauracookiet', which sounded perfect, as K's mum keeps us well supplied with lingonberries this autumn (remember the lingonberry and chocolate cake, and Swedish lingonberry cake? You get the picture - we've got loads of these berries).

And these cookies were lovely! They made the whole house smell like Christmas - and as it was a beautifully sunny autumn day outside and we were on a way to spend couple of hours sailing on the Tallinn bay, that smell was a good sign of the good times ahead of us..

Lingonberry and Oat Cookies
(Pohla-kaeraküpsised )
Makes 4 dozens

200 g butter, at room temperature
275 g caster sugar (300 ml)
1 large egg
200 g plain/all-purpose flour (400 ml)
110 g rolled oats or 4-grain cereal flakes (300 ml)
1 tsp freshly ground cardamom seeds
1 tsp baking powder
half a cup of fresh or frozen lingonberries

Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg. You should have a pale and creamy mixture.
Measure flour, oats, cardamom and baking powder into a bowl, then fold into the butter mixture. Combine - either with a wooden spoon or by using your hands. Fold in the lingonberries.
Take a spoonful (either a heaped teaspoonful or half a tablespoonful) of cookie mixture, roll into a small ball in your palm, then press slightly. Place on a parchment-covered cookie sheet, leaving plenty of space for spreading. (I placed 3x4 cookies on a sheet at the time).
Bake in the middle of a 200 C/400 F oven for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are golden brown.
Cool completely. These will keep nicely in an airtight cooki tin for a couple of days.

Lingonberry cheesecake

If you're stuck for lingonberry recipe ideas, then let me suggest you this creamy lingonberry cheesecake. A friend of mine came over for a coffee about a fortnight ago, bringing me a large tub of lingonberries she had picked herself. Although I've got some good stand-by lingonberry cake recipes (some of them here on the blog: lingonberry and chocolate cake, Swedish lingonberry cake), I wanted to try something new and different. Using my regular cheesecake filling, I came up with this lingonberry cheesecake recipe.

As all cheesecakes, this is best made a day before you want to serve it, so it is completely cool and set.

Lingonberry cheesecake
(Pohla-toorjuustukook)
Serves 6 to 8

Pastry:
100 g butter, softened
85 g caster sugar (100 ml)
1 large egg
175 g plain flour (300 ml)
0.5 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt

Filling:
450 g full-fat cream cheese (1 pound)
85 g caster sugar (100 ml)
2 large eggs
0.5 tsp vanilla extract
finely grated zest of half a lime

Topping:
100 g lingonberries (about 1 cup)

First, prepare the pastry. Cream butter and sugar. Mix the dry ingredients, then mix into the butter mixture together with egg. Press the pastry onto the base and sides of a buttered 26 cm springform tin. Put into the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

Prepare the filling: Mix all ingredients - if you wish, you can use an electric mixer for that (though stirring thoroughly with a wooden spoon does the job as well, as long as the cream cheese and eggs are at room temperature). Pour into the pastry base.

Scatter the lingonberries on top.

Bake in a pre-heated 180 C /350 F oven for 30-35 minutes, until the filling is almost set and the cake is light golden brown on top.

Let cool completely before trasnferring onto the serving plate.

North meets South: Lingonberry and Coconut Friands

Friands again. I wrote about these dainty Australian cakes just a short time ago when posting a recipe for blueberry and lemon friands. This is the same basic recipe, but I wanted to use coconut this time and paired the pure white coconut with bright red lingonberries. The combination worked like a dream!
I am pretty sure that lingonberries - while widely available and used here in Estonia - are hard to come buy Down Under, so in a way it's a North-meets-South fusion recipe :)

Again, it's an excellent recipe for using up those egg whites, when you're tired of making meringues and mini-Pavlovas.

Coconut and Lingonberry Friands
(Pohla-kookosefriandid)
Makes 8 regular-sized friands

100 g unsalted butter, melted
125 g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar
30 g plain flour/all-purpose flour (50 ml or 3 Tbsp + 1 tsp)
50 g finely ground almonds
50 g grated/desiccated coconut
3 medium-sized egg whites
a very generous handful of lingonberries

Preheat the oven to 200C. Generously butter eight non-stick friand or muffin tins.
Sift the icing sugar and flour into a bowl, add the almonds and mix.
Whisk the egg whites in another bowl until they form a light, floppy foam.
Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the egg whites, then lightly stir in the butter to form a soft batter.
Divide the batter among the tins. Sprinkle some berries (I used about a tablespoon for each) and flaked coconut over each cake.
Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 200 C oven for about 20 minutes, until just firm to the touch and golden brown on top.
Cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack. To serve, sprinkle with more coconut

Swedish Lingonberry Cake Recipe

Remember my recipe for Canadian Apple Pie? Well, it's been one of my most popular recipes - and for a good reason, as it's incredibly tasty. BUT. None of my Canadian friends could recognise the cake, that is to say, they loved the cake, but couldn't confirm its Canadian origin.

I'm a bit afraid this Swedish Lingonberry Cake recipe is the same. You see, the recipe is from a Finnish women's weekly magazine, Me Naiset, where it was published in September 2005 and called "Ruotsalainen puolukkakakku" (that's "Swedish lingonberry cake"). But I've got no particular reason to believe it's Swedish, so I apologise beforehand to all my Swedish readers :)

As I'm off to a Stockholm day cruise next Monday, I thought it's appropriate to share the recipe with you. It's a bit drier than my usual forest berry cakes, but it's tasty. A bit crumbly, almost with a shortcake-like texture. With a strong cardamom flavour, it's festive and somewhat old-fashioned. And different. We liked it, and I hope you'll like it, too.

Oh, and the lingonberries were picked by K's mum. I've got enough for another 5 lingonberry cakes :)

Swedish lingonberry cake
(Rootsi pohlakook)
Serves 10-12

1 large egg
100 ml caster sugar
100 g butter, melted
350 ml plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp freshly ground cardamom seeds

For the topping:
400 ml whole lingonberries
75 ml caster sugar

Whisk the egg with the sugar, then add the melted butter and dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cardamom seeds). You'll get a moist and pretty hard dough. Press that into a buttered and/or lined cake tin (appr. 20-23 cm in diameter).
Scatter lingonberries on top and sprinkle with sugar.
Bake at 175 Centigrade for 45 minutes, until the cake is cooked through.

Serve at room temperature with some ice cream or custard or whipped cream.

Puff pastry pinwheels with black pudding and lingonberry jam

Black pudding (aka blood sausages) with lingonberry jam are one of the staples on Estonian Christmas table and I like using these two elements in other dishes as well. Here's a small pastry that I've been baking for 5 years already. The initial idea isn't mine. Back in November 2008 I took part at a two-day cooking course ("Modern Christmas menu") at one of the vocational training schools here in Tallinn, and we had a brain-storming session with other participants trying to come up with new twists of old favourites. One of the other participants mentioned using black pudding and lingonberries for making small pastries - I cannot remember any longer, if she was talking about something she has made already or something that could be made, neither can I remember if she was talking about the idea in general or making puff pastry pinwheels in particular. In any case, I've been rolling puff pastry sheets with crumbled black pudding and lingonberry jam and some dried marjoram ever since (here's a photo evidence from November 2008, another one from December 2008 and here's one from October 2010).

So if you've got some black pudding and lingonberry jam left over after the Christmas feast, then you can use these two to make some delightful puff pastry pinwheels. And let your guests guess what's inside - most of them seem to think it's raisins ;)

Puff pastry pinwheels with black pudding and lingonberries
(Lehttainarullid verivorsti ja pohlamoosiga)



puff pastry - either regular or yeasted puff pastry
lingonberry jam
dried marjoram (oregano will do as well)
black pudding

For brushing:
egg, whisked with some water

Roll out the puff pastry into a rectangle about 3-4 mm thick.
Spread with a thin layer of lingonberry jam, then scatter the crumbled black pudding on top. Sprinkle with some dried marjoram.
Roll tightly, starting from the longer end, into a long "sausage". Cut into 2 cm lengths. Place into paper muffin cups and transfer onto a cooking sheet.
Brush with eggwash and bake in a pre-heated 225C/435F for 10-15 minutes, until the pinwheels are nicely golden brown.

Serve either warm or at room temperature.

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

Coconut and Blueberry Cake

I'm on a blueberry mood just now. As I told in my previous post (baked blueberry cheesecake with a sour cream jelly topping, remember) we're having a very good year of blueberries and bilberries in Estonia just now, so the amount of blueberry dishes that are being cooked and baked in Nami-Nami kitchen just now is quite considerable (take note of these yeast rolls with blueberry, vanilla and curd cheese filling, for instance). And the season is not even over yet, although other lovely berries - tart lingonberries/cowberries, for instance, are ripening quickly.

This simple coconut and blueberry cake was featured on our table twice during last week alone. Simple, quick, tasty, and has already received positive feedback from my Estonian readers, so it comes with good recommendations. Because of its simplicity, I'd describe it as rather a midweek cake and not a fancy weekend affair.

Coconut and Blueberry Cake
(Kookoshelbe-mustikakook)
Serves 10
Adapted from the Swedish food magazine Allt om Mat.



75 g butter, melted
2 large eggs
100 g caster sugar
100 g all-purpose/plain flour
100 g coconut flakes (unsweetened)
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
half a lemon, juice and finely grated zest

Topping:
200 ml (about a cup) blueberries/bilberries
2 Tbsp (demerara) sugar

Butter and line the base of a 24 cm springform tin with parchment paper.
Mix the dry ingredients (flour, coconut flakes, baking powder, salt) in a medium bowl.
Whisk the eggs and sugar in your mixer until light, thick and fluffy. Gently stir in the melted butter and the dry ingredients, then season with lemon juice and zest.
Pour the batter into the cake tin. Scatter the blueberries on top, sprinkle with demerara sugar.
  

Bake in the middle of a preheated 175 C/350 F oven for 30 minutes, until the cake is fully cooked and light golden on top.

Cool a little, then cut into slices and serve.



More blueberry/bilberry recipes:
Blueberry and sour cream tart
Baked blueberry cheesecake with sour cream jelly topping
Blueberry and lemon friands
French blueberry tart
Blueberry pancakes
Baked semolina pudding with custard and blueberries
Blueberry syrup
Blueberry jam

Our Christmas meal, 2013

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas, dear friends and readers! We had the pleasure of cooking for and hosting our respective families on Christmas Eve (that's when we, Estonians, have the main Christmas meal and distribute gifts). I was in charge of the menu and cooking - and I thought it's a good idea to share the menu on my blog as well. I decided to have a rather light and minimalist first course. Here's what it looked like:



Good black Estonian bread, some white toast and a selection of cured fish. Starting from the left, there are spiced Baltic sprats that I wrote about in the previous post (see here), but this time served simply with sliced red onion:



Then there's salt-cured whitefish from my favourite fishmonger, PepeKala OÜ. Whitefish slices are to be eaten with buttered toast:


Finally, locally grown and jellied catfish (African sharptooth catfish, to be more precise, angersäga in Estonian, Clarias gariepinus in Latin). This one came out of the jar as well :)



For those who prefer meat, I did serve some cold-smoked turkey slices:


Serving a selection of cured fish for starters is a rather Nordic thing to do, but you'd find many more dishes on a traditional Estonian Christmas table (some rosolje salad or perhaps the layered vegetable salad). But we kept it rather minimalist this year and it worked for us.

The main course was much more traditional. There was pork - but not my usual Christmas roast,  the ever-delicious oven-baked pork shoulder with honey, mustard and rosemary. I did experiment with pork belly and fennel seeds - and rather successfully - the meat was extremely succulent and melt-in-your-mouth, and gobbled up quickly.



Here's a close-up of the pork:

The cabbage was my classic õllekapsas aka sauerkraut braised in beer (the beer was A le Coq's porter):



There were simple boiled potatoes, and a duo of roasted veggies - carrots and parsnips, lightly drizzled with maple syrup:



The duo of roasted vegetables was accompanied by a trio of black pudding:  

For condiments, there were two relishes from a small Estonian producer, Treppoja. Pumpkin and horseradish (the yellow one) and chilli and lingonberry (the red one):

Neither one was bad, but my mother-in-law's apple and lingonberry jam came out tops (I've got a recipe here, but she uses more lingonberries and less apples): 


The star of the evening, as usual, was the dessert. I was planning to do the popular Danish Christmas dessert risalamande or fluffy rice pudding with almonds and a warm cherry compote. But then our little family went to Denmark for a small holiday in early December, and my dear Danish host-mum Kirsten served us a wonderful æbletrifli - a layered trifle of æblegrød, whipped cream and custard, as well as crunchy Italian almond cookies. It was simple, delicious and really festive, so that ended up finishing our Christmas feast of 2013.

 

We didn't drink much - some beers, and some small glasses of the Swedish Blossa glögg from 2012 and 2013, juice and water for the kids..

What did you do for Christmas?

See all Nami-Nami's Christmas recipe here.
Estonian World writes about Estonian Christmas traditions here.

My recipes in Home & Garden (Kodu & Aed), October 2012

This is the cover of the October issue of one of the best-selling home magazines in Estonia, Kodu and Aed (Home and Garden) and it has my name on the cover page :)

"How come?", you wonder.

In early September I got a phone call from their editor-in-chief, Ms Veigel, asking if I'd be interested in being the editor of the food section. The phone call was totally unexpected and came out of the blue - but as I am unable to return to my academic post at the University just now, I decided to say yes. It all went very quickly then - turned out they wanted me to be in charge of the October issue already and I had about a fortnight to come up with the menu and do the photoshoot. With the help of Juta Kübarsepp, the photographer, we ended up with the following "Pille Petersoo sügismarjamenüü" aka my autumn berries menu. The concept behind the menu was that while Estonians are very good in forageing for wild forest berries (cranberries, blueberries, bilberries, cloudberries, lingonberries and such like), they often overlook the berries in our own garden. Hence I focused on black aronia aka chokeberries (a popular and very beautiful hedge plant, the berries are mainly used for making cordial), sea-buckthorn berries (the super-berry of 1990s and 2000s over here) and rowanberries (the berries of rowan or mountain ash; see also and article in The Guardian).  All three are pretty abundant, especially if you live in a small garden town or on the countryside, yet the vitamin-rich and antioxydant-rich fruit of those trees/bushes are too often left for birds to eat (while trendy urbanites spend a fortune on exotic super-berries like acai, goji, golden inca etc).

Here's the menu, photos by Juta Kübarsepp. 

Gravadlax with sea-buckthorn juice and berries:

My autumn berry menu began with lightly salted salmon filet (rainbow trout would be excellent, too), that had been seasoned with salt, sugar, pepper and concentrated sea-buckthorn juice. After 24 hours in the fridge, the fish was thinly sliced and garnished with whole sea-buckthorn berries.

Beef or venison "olives" with rowanberry gravy, accompanied with carrot ragout:

The sliced beef or venison is topped with sliced carrot, onion and some rowanberries, then rolled up, fried in the mixture of butter and oil, and then simmered in liquid until done.  The carrot ragout is a simple mix of sliced carrots, onions, oil, water, rosemary and seasonings. Earlier versions of both recipes have been featured here on Nami-Nami about five years ago (see here).

Black aronia smoothie and whipped semolina pudding with apples and black aronia berries:


The smoothie is a mix of banana, a handful of black aronia berries, a spoonful of kama or oat bran or oats, a cup of kefir or plain yogurt, sweetened with honey or maple syrup. The whipped semolina pudding (mannavaht) is made with water, apples, black aronia berries, sugar and (wholemeal or spelt) semolina/cream of wheat.

Sea-buckthorn smoothie and sea-buckthorn kissel with crispy rye bread crumbs:

The smoothie is a mix of banana, regular or oat milk, (frozen) sea-buckthorn berries or undiluted juice, sweetened with honey or maple syrup. The fruit soup (kissel) contains water, sugar, pureéd sea-buckthorn berries and potato starch/flour (cornflour would do), served with curd cheese mouse and garnished with crispy rye bread crumbs.

How do you like the menu? Are you familiar with any of the berries and if yes, then how do you tend to use them in the kitchen.

We shot the November issue last week and are shooting the December one in a few days, so there's a lot of cooking and writing going on at our house just now.

Gingerbread muffins

Gingerbread muffins, anno 2011

This recipe was originally posted in December 2008. It's been fully updated, and new photos are included.

Everyone likes a good muffin, and during Christmas time, this should be a Christmas muffin :)

There are endless variations on the theme. You could bake small cupcakes and garnish them with something Christmassy. Or you could simply add your favourite Christmas spices (say ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom) into your regular plain muffin recipe (and still glaze them afterwards). Or you could throw in a generous handful of red berries (lingonberries or cranberries) into your muffin batter to give them the festive feel.

Here's a recipe for very simple muffins - made special by the use of dark muscovado sugar and a mixture of gingerbread spices.

Note I've measured the dry ingredients both in grams and in volume. A standard American cup is 240 ml, so 100 ml of muscovado sugar would be a half a cup minus a heaped Tablespoon etc.

Gingerbread muffins
(Jõulumuffinid)
Makes 12 medium-sized muffins


Gingerbread muffins, anno 2008

2 large eggs
85 g dark muscovado sugar (100 ml)
50 g butter, melted and slightly cooled
100 g sour cream or creme fraiche
120 g plain/all-purpose flour (200 ml)
1.5 tsp baking powder
25 g ground hazelnuts or almonds (50 ml)
2 tsp gingerbread spice or mixed spice or pumpkin pie spice

icing sugar, for dusting

Whisk eggs with sugar. Add the melted butter and sour cream. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, fold into the egg-sugar-butter-sour cream batter.
Spoon into muffin cups and bake in the middle of 200 C/400 F oven for 10-12 minutes, until muffins are cooked.
Let cool a little, then dust with icing sugar.


Gingerbread muffins, anno 2011

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

Juhhei! I'm a 2007 Food Blog Awards finalist!

I've just read over at Wellfed Network that Nami-nami is one of the five finalists in the RURAL category of the 2007 Food Blog Awards. How exciting and what an honour!



I must admit that I was a wee bit baffled at first, as I consider myself a 100% city girl. But then I guess my frequent mushroom forageing trips (for saffron milkcaps, yellow morels and others), my proud and fruitful forest berry picking missions (lingonberries, bog bilberries, wild strawberries, cranberries, cloudberries - all regulars in our kitchen in one form or another) and general exploratory-culinary use of wild plants (making meadowsweet cordial, enjoying nettle soup, experimenting with ground elder pie, dressing up dandelion leaves and adding chopped wild garlic leaves to salads, drinking freshly collected maple sap and sweetening my tea with either dandelion 'honey' made of dandelion blossoms or flowering quince extract), not to forget my exciting encounter with these chicks (you can see more chicken photos here) - do give my blog and my cooking a slightly rural slant :)



It's a tough competition - I'm running against very strong (and rural:) Susan (Farmgirl Fare, who won the category last year) and Ilva (Lucullian Delights, also a finalist last year). In any case, I'm thrilled and pleased to have been nominated in the first place! I am very pleased to see many of my favourite foodbloggers as finalists in other categories - there's David Lebovitz running for Best Food Blog (Chef) category, Food Blogga's Susan for Best Food Blog (New) category, Bea, Matt and Meeta (how can one possibly choose between them???) for Best Food Blog (Photography), Susan (again!) and Molly for Best Food Blog (Post), Jeanne in Best Food Blog (Writing), and Heidi, Bea and Ilva in Food Blog of the Year category. I'm sad my blogging buddies Johanna, Melissa, Kalyn, Nicky and Alanna didn't end up in the finals, but then there's always next year :)



In any case, you can go and cast your vote until Friday, December 14th. For rural category, click here, for all other categories, see here.

Pehme piparkook or Soft Gingerbread Cake - one of my favourite Christmas cakes

I've been making this very cake for Christmas for about 6-7 years now, and it's still one of the favourites with friends and family. I made it again for a friend's birthday party last weekend, tuning the recipe a bit - reducing the amount of sugar (you could use even less, I bet), and replacing melted butter with mild-tasting oil in the batter.

There are two things to keep in mind. First, the cake is eggless (so suitable for people with egg allergies!) and the raising agent is baking soda/bicarbonate of soda. As with other similar batters, it's important to bake the cake straight away after mixing the batter - the baking soda starts to react with acid in the batter (kefir in this case) within 15-20 minutes, and if you don't bake the cake during that time, you'll end up with a very flat christmas cake :( Secondly, you could use a much larger cake sheet, but i like this in the specified size - the cake will be about 4 cm in height, which is good for me.

Soft Gingerbread Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
(Pehme piparkook toorjuustuglasuuriga)

Makes a large cake that'll easily feed about 20

400 g plain flour
300 g caster sugar
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp ground cloves
1 Tbsp baking soda
0.5 tsp salt
500 ml (2 cups) kefir or cultured buttermilk
150 g lingonberry jam (IKEA stocks some)
100 g rapeseed oil or light olive oil

Cream cheese frosting:
200 g plain cream cheese, at room temperature
50 g unsalted butter, softened
150 g icing sugar/confectioner's sugar

Decorating:
lingonberries or cranberries
hazelnuts, toasted

Preheat the oven to 200 Celsius. Line a 25x30 cm cake tin with parchment paper (or simply butter it well).

Make the cake batter first. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Combine kefir, lingonberry jam and oil in a large measuring jug. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stir quickly so the batter comes together. Pour into the prepared cake tin and bake for 35-40 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean when pierced into the middle of the cake.
Let the cake cool completely (wrap in clingfilm if not decorating straight away).

For the frosting, combine the butter, cream cheese and icing sugar in a bowl - I use a wooden spoon for that, but you could also use an electric mixer. Spread the frosting over the cake.

Decorate with red berries and toasted hazelnuts or something else festive :)