In search of a perfect dough

I love joulutorttu. It is a traditional Finnish pastry that is eaten at Christmas time. A very simple thing, consisting of a butterdough and a drop of plum in the middle and shaped to ressemble a star, or a windmill, or whatever. You can buy readymade dough for this (in Finland and in well-equipped stores in Sweden also), but since it is quite hard to get a hold on here and I've heard that homemade is better (as usual..), I wanted to try to make my own dough for these Christmasstars.

Many have praised a butterdough made with quark, so I decided to give it a go. Very simple to do, but the result, well... Everyone said that these will taste better and of course have less fat, yeah maybe they do that but the consistency really was not as a joulutorttu should be. First of all, despite the baking powder the dough really does not rise, and joulutorttu should be puffy. The dough burns quite easily (because of the quark, I've heard), so it was difficult to get the dough cooked before the ends of the stars started to burn. I actually think that this dough is better off for savoury filled pastries (which I also did, and the dough worked way better in those).

I forgot my camera in Finland, so I have no pictures of these to show you. Maybe better that way, because the result was, hmmm, somewhat pitiful and nobody wants to see them. The taste is ok, but the looks ruined the whole thing.

Anyway, here is the recipe:

Joulutorttu made of quarkbutterdough

250 g quark

250 g butter or margarine

4 dl wheat flour

1 tsp 

baking powder

Plumjam /-marmalade

Mix the margarine, flour and baking powder. Add the quark. Blend until smooth, but avoid kneading.

If you want the dough a little puffier, pat the dough into a thin plate and keep it in a cool place for a couple of hours. Roll out the dough into a rectangle, fold the sides of the dough into the middle (you end up with a dough one third of the original rolled-out size). Twist the dough 90 degrees and do the rolling and folding -procedure a couple of times more. Put the dough back in the refrigerator, covered, for about 30 minutes. (This was in the original recipe, but I do not see the point of rolling and folding because it did not produce a puffy result.) Or just roll out the dough and make the stars.

Cut the rolled-out dough into rectangles and make small diagonal cuts in each corner. Put some plumjam into the middle and turn every other corner in the middle, squeeze them together so they won't open. (You can also turn the corners first and then add the plum, this way it definitely won't open in the oven). You can also make other forms but the star is the most popular. 

Bake in the oven in 175-200 degrees (depends on the oven and size of the torttu and the amount of plumjam) for about 15-20 minutes. 

Haahaa!!! The Google Translator version of the Wikipedias article on joulutorttu can be read here. :D :D :D Oh my, WHERE do they get the translations from? Mince pie???? What the heck has this to do with mince?!?! :D

Gustav II Adolf -cake

On the 6th of November is the day to celebrate the king Gustav II Adolf, the founder of the city of Gothenburg (among many others..) and a great war-hero. (And at the same time in Finland the Swedish day is celebrated.) I browsed through the Internet for the recipe, and I found many different recipes with totally different kind of ingredients. I read somewhere that originally the cake was made of sugar cake and filled with chocolate- and lemon buttercream. The cake is always decorated with the head of the king made of either chocolate or marzipan (these you cannot buy in a grocery store...). Based on these specifications I designed my own version of the cake.

Bottom:
3 pcs eggs
1.5 cups granulated sugar
2 cups plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Beat eggs and sugar until white and fluffy. Mix flour and baking powder in a separate bowl and then turn it down in the egg mixture with water. Pour batter into a roasting pan lined with waxpaper. Bake for 5 minutes and then let the cake cool.

Lemon butter cream:

125g softened butter
1 ½ cups powdered sugar
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
juice of ½ lemon

Beat the egg yolks. Beat the butter with icing sugar and vanilla sugar. Mix egg yolks little by little. Beat well with electric mixer.

If less lemon flavor is desired (for this gives a lot of flavor to the cake) just use the rind of the lemon.

Chocolate filling:

2 - 2 ½ dl whipping cream 

100 g cream cheese

130 g chocolate 

Whip the cream until stiff. Stir in the cream cheese. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or on the stove over low heat in a water bath. Add the chocolate to the foam and mix until smooth. 

Frosting:

200 g white chocolate

0,5-1 dl cream

(butter)

a bit of melted dark chocolate

Melt the chocolate in the microwave oven. Warm up the cream and stir the chocolate in the cream. I used first only half a desilitre of cream but the mixture was too stiff so I added some cream. Add butter to the warm mixture for more shine, but remember to whisk it heavily.

Assembling the cake:

Bake the bottom, devide in two halves. Make the fillings. Spread the lemon filling on the other cakehalf. Spread the chocolate filling on top of it. 

Put the other cakehalf on the top.

Pour the frosting on the cake and spread it evenly with a spatula. Decorate with dark chocolate stripes.

Baileys cheesecake

We went for a visit at our neighbours and I decided to make a cake to take with us. I chose Baileys cheesecake, because I thought it would suit adult taste quite good and because the Baileys-filling I used in a filled cake earlier was scrumptuous. The recipe is (again) from Kinuskikissa. The edges of the cake are made with melted chocolate, my first try but it was very easy.

The bottom and edges: 235 g oatmeal cookies 125 g margarine

Filling: 4 leaves of gelatine 2 dl whipping cream 1 ¼ dl powdered sugar 500 g mascarpone cheese 3 egg whites 1 dl Baileys liqueur

Cover a 24 cm -diameter springform cake tin with baking paper and brush the edges with cooking oil. Crush the oat biscuits with rolling pin or blender. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the crushed biscuits. Press into the bottom and sides of the pan using your fingers.

 Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water. Whip the cream. Add the icing sugar while whipping. Mix the whipped cream with mascarpone cheese. Beat egg whites until stiff and add to the cream mixture.

Bring the liqueur to a boil and melt the gelatine into the warm liquid. Stir in the liqueur-gelatin mixture in a thin string into the filling mousse. Pour into the cake pan and smooth the surface. 

Refrigerate for three hours. Remove from the pan and put on a serving plate. 

Princess cake

We went to see a friend's baby for the first time (a little girl), and what is more suitable to take with you than a princess cake? This time I even used a bit of raspberryjam, which actually makes this an Operacake... The topping of green marzipan was a ready-rolled cover which I spritzed with dark chocolate. 

More birthday baking

We had a small birthday party here in Sweden for my daughter, myself and my boyfriend's father. So we had three birthday heros, which means three cakes! The result was this:

A muffin cake (chocolate muffins with cream cheese frosting)

Red Velvet Cake

 New York Cheese Cake (do not remember where I took the recipe from...)

This was the first time me baking a red velvet cake. The reason was the tv-program Cake Boss, where all the customers always want a red velvet cake and I read somewhere that it is one of the most popular cakes in the USA. So I decided to give it a try and see if it really is so good. The cake is a very moist chocolaty cake and the filling and frosting is cream cheese frosting. I did not use as much as red dye as was in the recipe, but the cake still had a resemblance of red in it. The cake was so sweet that it was impossible to eat too much of it. And I have to say that I do prefer these our (European / Nordic / Finnish) type of filled cakes with airy, fluffy, fresh and different tasting fillings. If I ever make a Red Velvet Cake again, maybe I will substitute some of the cream cheese filling by a whipped cream based filling so that the sweetness won't be so overwhelming.

Apple muffins

We baked apple muffins with kids. This recipe is from Kinuskikissa, as are so many other recipes I use and which is a constant source of inspiration for my baking.

This time I used the recipe just as it was, and to share it here I used Google Translate to translate it. You must be careful with that, it is not very good in Finnish, and for example it transferred some of the desilitres to cups, which makes the amount to 2,5-times as big as it should be... So if you use it, don't forget to proofread it! 

about 20 muffins

For the dough:
200 g margarine
2 ½ dl sugar
2 eggs
6 dl wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
pinch of salt
2 ½ dl of milk

Filling:
2 apples
2 tablespoons brown sugar (fariinisokeri / farinsocker)
2 tsp cinnamon


Beat the margarine and sugar until stiff. Add the eggs one at a time. Combine the dry ingredients together. Add the dry ingredients into the mixture alternating with the milk.

Fill the muffin forms with batter. 

Peel the apples and remove the cores. Cut into thin wedges and cut the wedges to 2-3 parts. Mix the apples with the brown sugar and cinnamon. Press the apple pieces deep in the dough.

Bake at 200 degrees for about 20 minutes.

Birthday cake in form of Hello Kitty

I decided to change my blog's language, just in case there are some foreign visitors so it is easier for them to understand. And partly because my Finnish is getting lousier for using written Swedish and English daily... I will write my postings in English from now on and change the other content later, if I feel up to it.

Anyway, here is the birthday cake I made for my youngest daughter's 4-years old party. She wanted a Hello Kitty -cake, and since I have done two different types of HK:s previously I decided to try and make a formcake this time. It had strawberrymousse and something else (do not remember what..) between the three layers and the topping was sugar paste (my first go with sugar paste, actually, and it smelled bad but was easy to handle). Nose and bow are candy, eyes and whiskers are sugar paste coloured with cocoa.