KARELIAN PIES

As some might guess based on the name of the blog, the writers have some sort of relationship to karelian pies. Since these traditional Finnish pastries are not in the selection of Kosovar supermarket nor bakery, there is not much left to do for a handy modern woman but to take a strong grip of her rolling pin and start to bake.

The process of making karelian pies is quite simple really: one cooks a rice porridge and mix rye flour with water and butter. The trickiest part is to roll the dough into pancake-like pieces that are thin enough. And of course the ruffling.

Together with Aino we decided to take up the challenge and on one certain Sunday rice porridge was cheerfully cooking in a kettle. For the pies we used the Valio's recipe (translation at the end of the text). According to tip from our karelian-pie-expert-of-a-friend, we substituted some of the milk with single cream. Not sure if it changed the composition of the porridge, to be honest, but had an impact on the taste.

The special rolling pins used for karelian pies (called pulikka) should one not look for in Kosovo. Furthermore, that is not the first thing on the list of things to be taken with when moving abroad. Empty and washed wine bottle can act as an emergency solution then. After a tiny moment of suspicious-ness, we followed the instruction very careful and were able to produce pies!

We were very happy with the results. However, for the Valio receipt we could give the feedback of not having enough salt in it. It turned out that our pies would have needed a dash of salt to bring out the flavor. But they were very delicious like this as well!

KARELIAN PIES

Dough
2dl of cold water
1 teaspoon of salt
2-3dl of wheat flour
3dl of rye flour
50g of melted butter

Filling

7dl of water

4dl of pudding rice (could not find in Kosovo but we used risotto rice instead, worked as well)

13dl of whole milk

1 teaspoon of salt

Cook a porridge preferably on the day before. Use a teflon kettle or steel one with thick bottom (please not that I used a normal enamel kettle without any problems, just needs a bit more stirring). First bring the water to boil and add the rice. Let it boil and gradually add the milk. Make sure to stir regularly. 

Prepare a dough by mixing the ingredients into water, butter as the last one. The dough should be firm and chewy. Divide the dough into 40 pieces. Roll the pieces into balls and pat the balls into  steak-shaped cakes. Pile and cover with plastic wrap to prevent from drying. Roll out these steak-shaped cakes with a rolling pin so that they are thin and circular shells. Pile, sprinkle a bit of flour in between and cover with the wrap again.

Take the shells one by one, remove the extra flours and fill with the porridge. Then you need to ruffle the edges in order to make them look like boat shaped pies (as in the picture). Place on a baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes in an oven preheated to 270-300 degrees.

Once the pies are baked, mix a bit of milk with melted butter and spread it over the pies to make them soft and juicy. Enjoy!

CINNAMON BUNS

Happiness is to have souvenirs from Finland. Same as with the mushroom risotto, souvenir is also a key element in this text: it is basically impossible to find cardamom in Kosovo and impossible to do cinnamon buns without it.

Therefore, the Academic Karelian pie Association gathered, however shorthanded, to bake because of the joy of cardamom. The order of who does what was clear: Yours truly handled everything that required “touching the dough” and Minni was in charge of melting the butter. This was done because Minni told earlier about her baking curse. According to her belief, if she touches the dough, all buns will turn into stones and will be more suitable, for example, to break a window in case of an emergency. 

I don’t know whether or not our success was defined by our clever work plan but our buns didn't turn into stones. They came out nice and soft and when we enjoyed them with glass of milk, all the problems were gone and we we able to reach the world peace!

It is very easy to find recipes for the cinnamon buns and there are also many different  ways to do them. This recipe is from the company Valio and the look of the buns here is very traditional in Finland.

Cinnamon bun and milk. Just perfect!

CINNAMON BUNS (17 piece)

The dough

• 25 g yeast
• 2,5 dl milk
• 1 egg
• 1 dl sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 0,5 tbls cardamom
• 500 g wheat flour
• 100 g butter

The filling

• 50 g butter
• 0,5 dl sugar
• 1 tbls cinnamon

Decoration

• crushed almond

Crumble the yeast into warm milk. Add egg, sugar, spices and some of the flour. Mix well.

Add bit by bit rest of the flour until the mixture turns into a dough and you can separate it easily from the bowl. Add the melted butter last.

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and leave to prove until the dough is double of its size.   

Roll and separate the dough in to two 60 x 30 cm rectangles. If you want FATbulous buns like we did, make only one 60 x 30 cm rectangle.  

Spread the soft butter over the surface of the dough. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top of it as well.

Starting with a long side of the rectangle, roll the dough up into a sausage shape. Place the seam point facing the table. Cut the roll with sharp knife into triangles.

Arrange the pieces so that the narrow part of the triangle is upright. Press the triangle with your fingers until you touch the table. This is how you’ll get the shape of Finnish model of cinnamon bun. Prove under the kitchen towel again.

Grease the buns with egg and sprinkle some crushed almond on the top.

Bake the buns at 225 Celsius for approx. 10 min.