Apple Cake (Finnish Apple Pie/ Omenapiiraka)

Yields approx. 16 slices
note: recipe below is adapted from a Finnish recipe, so I have converted the dl (decilitre) measurements into grams

Ingredients

• 1kg apples (pink lady or royal gala)
• 4 eggs
• 3dl (approx. 255g) caster sugar
• 150g melted butter let cool
• 2dl (200g) milk or milk substitute
• 5dl (52g) all purpose flour
• 3tsp baking powder
• 2tsp vanilla sugar (optional)
• half tsp ground cardamom (optional)

Decoration (before baking)

• 2-3tbsp sugar 
• 2tsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. Cut apples into quarters removing the core, then slice into thickness of choice 
2. Whisk eggs with sugar at room temperature, then pour cooled down melted butter into it to mix
3. Add milk then dry ingredients and mix thoroughly 
4. Pour cake batter into baking paper lined tray
5. Sprinkle over ground cinnamon and sugar
6. Bake at 200degrees on the lower shelf of oven
7. Serve with vanilla custard or ice cream if desired

Tips

• You can reduce the sugar called for in main recipe if baking for toddlers
• If you love your apples, try cutting them in thick chunks 
• If you’re out of apples, try replacing with rhubarb or berries 

Beet Cake

Apple Crumble

This is quite easy to make. If you don't try it, you'll never know... honestly, try it, it's lovely!

Ingredients:
Apple mix

• 6-7 apples
• 6tbsp brown sugar
• 75g raisins
• 1½ tsp cinnamon

Crumble
• 150g butter at room temperature
• 260g flour
• 150g brown sugar
• 1cup of rolled oats (optional) OR
• 150g of roughly chopped walnuts (optional)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 200° celsius
• Butter the sides of 1-2inch deep oven proof dish
Apple mix

• Rinse raisins in hot water and let soak for a while before draining and set aside.
• Peel, core and quarter apples into bite size chunks.
• Mix well with sugar, cinnamon and raisins.
• Pour into buttered oven proof dish.

Crumble

• Put flour in a deep mixing bowl
• Dice butter and start rubbing together with flour until the mixture has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix in rolled oats and mix roughly.
• Sprinkle crumble mix over the top of the apple and spread evenly.
• Lastly sprinkle over chopped nuts if using them.



• Bake in the middle shelf for approximately 30minutes or until golden brown.
• Serve warm with custard or vanilla ice cream.

Piparkakut (Ginger Cookies)

Christmas is coming. 3days and counting down!

Today happens to be the Winter Solstice '冬至', a rather significant day for the Chinese. On one hand, we have traditional Chinese Winter Solstice celebration food like Jiao Zhi　'饺子', and Tang Yuan　'汤圆'; on the other we're preparing Christmas food.

This recipe is adapted from the Finnish Christmas table recipe site. I've halved the portion as the original makes about 200 cookies!

Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 minutes per batch
Oven Temperature: 200 degrees celsius

Ingredients:

1. 150 g Unsalted Butter or Margarine
2. 150 g Brown Sugar
3. 1.5 Eggs
4. 175 g (1/2 cup) of Dark Syrup (I've improvised by using Golden Syrup)
5. 1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
6. 1 tsp Ground Ginger
7. 1 tsp Ground Cloves
8. 1/2 tbsp Grated Orange Rind
9. 3.5 cups White Flour
10. 1.5 tsp Baking Soda (Alternatively you can use Baking Powder - 1 tsp for 1 cup of flour)

Method:

1. Boil the syrup and spices in a pan, add the margarine and beat until the mixture is cool.
2. Beat the eggs and sugar until thoroughly mixed.
3. Mix the baking soda in with part of the flour, then combine with the spiced margarine syrup. Add whipped eggs and the rest of the flour and fold in until well mixed. Do not knead the final mixture.
4. Cover the dough with cling wrap and leave overnight in a cool place (in the chiller/ fridge).
5. Next day, roll out the dough, cut up into shapes and bake the cookies in the oven until golden brown.

Cream Puffs

Custard:
3 egg yolks
3 tbsp custard powder
60g sugar
600ml milk

Choux pastry:
250ml water
125g unsalted butter
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
150g plain flour, sifted
4 eggs (medium size)
1 egg white

Method:

1. Make custard. Whisk egg yolks, custard powder and sugar together with 2 tablespoons of milk.
2. Heat remaining milk until very hot, then gradually whisk into egg yolk mixture.
3. Pour mixture back into pot and continue whisking over medium heat until custard boils and thickens.
4. Cook 1 minute more, then pour into a bowl and allow to cool completely.
5. Make pastry. Bring water, butter, sugar and salt to a full boil in a tightly-covered pot over medium heat.
6. Pour all the flour in at once.
7. Reduce heat to low and beat with a large wooden spoon; dough will form a ball.
8. Cook for 2 minutes, beating constantly.
9. Scrape dough into a mixing bowl and beat for 2 more minutes. Beat in eggs one by one, then egg white; don't worry if dough looks uneven, keep beating and it will smoothen out.
10. Preheat oven to 220 degrees C. Line baking sheets with well-greased foil.
11. Pipe or spoon choux pastry into small mounds, about 1 tablespoon each, spaced at least 3cm apart.
12. Bake for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to 180 degrees C and bake for 15 minutes.
13. Remove puffs from oven, cut a small slit in each with a knife, and return to oven.
14. Bake 10-15 minutes more. Transfer puffs to a rack and let cool in front of a fan.
15. Once cooled, halve each puff and fill with custard. Serve immediately.

Honey and Ginger Biscuits

Ingredients:

For the spice mix

• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp grated nutmeg
• ¼ tsp whole black peppercorns
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp fennel seeds

For the dough

• 250g runny honey
• 150g unsalted butter
• 3 tbsp double cream
• 150g plain white flour
• 150g rye flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 100g soft brown sugar
• spice mix

For the glaze

• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp water
• ¼ tsp fine sea salt

Method:
For the spice mix
Pound together in a pestle and mortar until fine.

For the dough
In a saucepan heat the honey with the butter over a low heat until the butter has melted. Stir and leave to cool until warm and stir in the double cream.
In a large bowl, combine the plain and rye flours with the soda and soft brown sugar. Add the spice mix and toss with your fingers. Pour the warm honey, butter and cream mixture in with the dry ingredients and stir until you have a smooth dough. Cover with a damp cloth and leave for 20 minutes for the dough to soften.
Preheat the oven to 2100C/4100F/gas mark 6. Lightly dust the work surface with flour and place the dough on top (I tend to do it in batches). Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 5mm. Using a cutter (I tend to use a round whiskey tumbler) cut rounds of dough and place them on baking parchment.

For the glaze
Whisk the egg, yolk, water and salt together, then brush each of the gingerbread with this egg wash.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 15 minutes, or until the egg wash is golden brown. Remove the tray for a minute for the biscuits to firm up a little then, using a spatula, transfer to a wire rack. You will probably have to bake these in batches.

This recipe was contributed by Simon Bailey

Nutty Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups butter
2. 4 cups flour
3. 2 tsp baking soda
4. 2 tsp baking powder
5. 2 cups brown sugar
6. 2 cups granulated sugar
7. 5 cups blended oats - pre-blended into fine powder
8. 24 oz. chocolate chips
9. 1 tsp salt
10. 18 oz. chocolate bar - grated
11. 4 eggs
12. 3 cups chopped nuts - your choice of nut selection
13. 2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

1. Cream butter with brown and granulated sugar in a large mixing bowl.
2. Add eggs and vanilla and blend well.
3. Add baking powder, baking soda, salt, and oatmeal into flour, mix well.
4. Gradually add flour mixture into cookie batter as you blend with wooden spoon or electric mixer.
5. Lastly add grated chocolate then nuts, and chocolate chips then mix thoroughly.
6. Roll into desired cookie shape and place slightly 1 inch apart on buttered baking tray.
7. Bake cookies for 10mins at 190°

*This recipe yields approximately 122 cookies*
*For those that are health conscious, you may want to cut down on the sugar*

Banana Cake

This recipe has been adapted from a recipe found on Sunset Food - Veronica Pape's great-grandmother's moist banana cake.

Ingredients:

1. 2 Large Eggs
2. 1 cup Granulated Sugar
3. 1 cup Sour Cream
4. 1 cup Mashed Ripe Banana (approx. 2)
5. 1 tsp Vanilla
6. 2 cups All-purpose Flour
7. 2 tsp Baking Powder
8. 1 tsp Baking Soda
9. 1/2 tsp Salt
10. 1/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon
11. 1/8 tsp Ground Ginger
12. 1/8 tsp Ground Cloves
13. 1 tsp Coffee (espresso or instant coffee)
14. Icing Sugar

Method:

1. Mix eggs, sugar, sour cream, bananas, and vanilla essence in a large mixing bowl until well blended.
2. In another bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.
3. Stir flour mixture gradually into banana mixture, ensuring both mixture blend well.
4. Transfer banana cake batter into a buttered baking tray.
5. Bake at 350° in the oven for approximately 35mins, or until top springs back when gently pressed. To check, insert a wooden stick or skewer in the center, and the skewer comes out clean.
6. Dust with icing sugar before cutting up the cake to serve.

Hint:

1. The coffee acts as a camouflage to the baking soda taste in the cake.
2. For those without a convection oven, you can use aluminium foil to cover the top of the baking tray and bake for approximately 20mins, then remove foil to bake a further 15mins until cake is ready.

Joulutortut (Christmas Stars)

Joulutortut = Christmas Tart
Also known as Christmas Stars as they are shaped like stars.

This is a traditional Finnish Christmas delight. It is made of puffy pastry, and filled with either preserved plum or prune jam. We attempted these tarts the easy way - ready made puff pastry and prune jam from the annual Christmas Fair at the Finnish Church.






If you'd like to make it from scratch, here is a good recipe from Virtual Finland's site.

Scones

Ingredients

2 cups of (single or pouring) cream
3 cups of plain flour
3tsp baking powder
2tbsp caster sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Whisk 2 cups of (single or pouring) cream until soft peaks form.
3. Sift over a cup of plain flour at a time, fold the mixture in.
4. Flour in the baking powder.
5. Sift in the caster sugar.
6. Turn into a lightly floured surface and press out the dough until 3cm thick.
7. Cut with a round shaped cookie cutter and place scones onto the baking paper. Alternatively you can use a muffin tray.
8. Bake for 12-15 min until scones are puffed and golden.
9. Serve with jelly jam and cream. Serves 12.

Alternatively for different flavoured scones, you can mix in fruit, nuts or raisins. Enjoy!



Recipe contributed by Emmeline Ng

Plum Traybake

This traybake recipe yields 12 squares. Tried and tested and is highly favoured.

Recipe originates from Waitrose.com recipes.

Also try:
Blueberries instead of Plums (see below)

Fruit Glazed Cake

I was set a challenge in November - to make a Fruit Glazed Cake for Sami. I went searching for a suitable recipe online. The search wasn't that successful, but I did find one which was good to use: Tropical Fruit-Topped Cake

The cake base I'd say is rather important. Due to the lack of time for practice on the cake, I thought of other methods to ensure a successful cake base. In the end I cheated and bought those ready to use sponge cake mix - which made the base.

That way it saved me on the tedious measuring as all I had to do was to follow the instructions found on the sponge cake mix packet. Then I adapted the recipe I found for the topping & glazing steps.

Ingredients:

Cake base

1. 1 packet of Sponge cake mix
   The ready to use sponge cake mix is made up of:
   • wheat flour
   • sugar
   • vegetable oil
   • skimmed milk powder
   • raising agents
   • emulsifier
   • salt
2. 1 egg
3. 5 tbsp of water
   
   Topping
   
4. 1 packet of cream cheese, kept at room temperature
   
5. 1/4 cup powdered sugar
   
6. 3/4 chilled whipping cream
   
7. 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
   
   Glazing
   
8. 6 ounces guava juice concentrate or passion fruit concentrate or passion fruit concentrate (I improvised & used the juice from the canned fruits)
   
9. 2 tbsp cornstarch
   
10. 1 tsp sugar
    
11. 1 teaspoon lemon juice
    
12. 1 small carton strawberries
    
13. 1 kiwi fruit
    
14. 1 can sliced peaches
    
15. 1 can sliced pineapples

Method:

Cake base

1. Bake the cake bottom following instructions found on the sponge cake mix packet.
   
2. Bake for 20-30minutes until golden brown.
   
3. Leave the cake to cool in the cake tin and start preparing for the topping.
   
   Topping
   
4. Mix together cake topping ingredients in the mixer bowl. Starting from a low speed & gradually move upwards.
   
5. Keep the mixing speed constant after you've reached a high speed. Mix thoroughly until the cream is well bodied.
   
6. Spread the cream evenly over the cake base and leave it in the fridge to chill.
   
   Glazing
   
7. Heat guava juice concentration, cornstarch and lemon juice to boiling, stirring constantly careful not to let the cornstarch cake up into lumps.
   
8. Let cool. Add to the top of cake. Decorate top with fruit and chill it in the fridge again. When the glazing is set, the cake is ready to be served.
   

Having cheated on this attempt, I feel that I will give it another attempt using the original recipe & method found above. Will definitely post the outcome once I give it a try.

If you find any good Fruit Glazed Cake recipes, do leave a message!

Apple Pie

This is our family recipe. My Grandpa's speciality.

Ingredients:

• 400 ml Sugar
  
• 6 Eggs (medium sized)
  
• 300 g Butter
  
• 400 ml Flour
  
• 1/2-1 tsp Baking powder
  
• Sliced apples (2 royal gala apples, for overlapping use 3 or more)
  
• Ground cinnamon
  

Method:

1. Preheat the oven at 175 °C
   
2. Beat Eggs with sugar until foamy.
   
3. Add melted butter and then flour. Mix thoroughly. (the more thoroughly mixed, the better it bakes)
   
4. Pour the mix in large buttered tray.
   
5. Add a layer of apple slices on top. You can overlap the apples if you like, or add just a thin layer of apples on top.
   
6. Sprinkle some cinnamon powder and fine sugar on top.
   
7. Bake for 45 min-1 hour or until golden brown.
   

Hyvää ruokahalua!!!

Note: This recipe yields a large pie. If you make it for 2 or 3 persons, you can halve the ingredients.



This is made from half of the original recipe.

Strawberry Charlotte

An ideal spring/summer dessert, absolutely delicious and fantastically easy to make.

Ingredients:
Fresh strawberries (1 pck)
Creme Fraiche
Sugar
Lady Fingers (1 pck)

1. In a mixing bowl, mix the cream and the sugar until it's smooth (2 parts cream 1 part sugar- you can put less sugar if you wish).
   
2. Line the bottom of a flat base container with lady fingers and also the sides.
   
3. Cut the strawberries into small pieces and lay them onto the lady fingers.
   
4. Spoon in a layer of the cream mixture.
   
5. Repeat.
   
6. Leave in the fridge for at least an hour, for best results, leave it overnight.
   
7. The idea is to have layers of lady fingers, strawberries and cream.

Et Voila! Your strawberry Charlotte is done!

Bon Appetite!

Pulla (Coffee Bread)

A unique bread for your tea or coffee break, good to go with either beverage! Do allow plenty of time as preparation does take a while.

Ingredients:

Approximately 10 dl* Flour

5 dl* Milk

50 g Active Dried Yeast (12 g if using Fresh Yeast)

4 Eggs (2 for preparing batter, 2 for glazing)

150 g Butter (melted)

2 dl* Sugar

1.5 tsp Salt

1 tbsp Cardamom (extracted from pods & slightly pounded)

Half a cup of Warm Water

Method:

1. Heat milk and let cool.
   
2. Mix dried yeast in warm water, mix well and add in lukewarm milk. Stir well then add sugar, salt, cardamom, 2 eggs and half the amount of flour to make batter. Beat until dough is smooth and elastic.
   
3. Mix in the rest of flour and add butter. Beat again until batter looks smooth and glossy. Start kneading dough when it is less sticky.
   
4. Turn dough out onto floured surface. Cover with mixing bowl. Let rise approximately 15 mins.
   
5. Knead dough until smooth and satiny. Then bring back into mixing bowl, cover with clean dishtowel. Let rise in warm place until double the original volume. Approximately 1 hour.
   
6. Bring dough on to floured surface again and knead well. Then start to mould the dough for baking. Shape as desired, either braid, or small buns then transfer to baking tray.
   
7. Glaze prepared dough with egg wash, sprinkle sugar or sugar crumbs over glazing, then bake in preheated oven at 225deg celsius for approximately 10mins, or until golden brown. The pulla should look like ones shown below.

For alternate pulla recipes, you could refer to these:

Coffee Bread Ring (Pulla)

Coffee Bread (Pulla)

Finnish Pulla

*dl = desilitre (Amounts to one tenth of a litre. 3 desilitre amounts to 1 full cup.)

Baked Cheesecake

This is my favourite cheese cake recipe picked up 10 years back. It has a light weight cheese taste, especially suitable for those who like it light and not too creamy.

Ingredients:
Crust

150g digestive biscuit (pounded into crumbs)

90g butter (melted)

Cream Cheese Mix

500g cream cheese @ room temperature (philadelphia Kraft soft cheese)

60g castor sugar

3 eggs, separated

75g cream (single pouring cream)

30g plain flour (sifted)

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

pinch of salt

Method:
Base
Grease well 22cm springform cake pan. Mix biscuit crumbs with melted butter & spread on base of cake pan, pressing mixture down with the back of a wooden spoon. Refrigerate while preparing the filling.

Cream Cheese Mix
Put cream cheese, half the sugar, egg yolks, cream, flour and vanilla
essence into an electric blender or food processor & blend until smooth & creamy.

In a clean bowl, whisk egg whites with salt for 2mins, till fluffy. Add remaining sugar gradually & beat just until stiff. Carefully mix cream cheese mixture with beaten egg whites & pour onto chilled crust.

Baking
Bake in preheated 160deg oven for 50mins or until centre is quite firm. Turn off oven & leave cheesecake to cool inside oven. Chill in refridgerator for two hours or overnight. When serving, bring the cake out and slice to desired sizes, let thaw a few minutes before serving.


*Hints on Improvisation*
Spring Form Cake Pan = Disposable Aluminium Cake Pan
Crust = Readymade/Off-The-Shelf Cake Crusts
Single Cream = Whole Milk (when in dire urge to get cheese cake made but single cream is not available)
Sweetness of Cake = Just adjust amount of sugar as desired.