Blondie's Recipes | Finding Feasts

Traditional Finnish Gingerbread Biscuits – Piparkakut

Traditional Finnish Gingerbread Biscuits – Piparkakut … If I were to choose one thing that is significantly Christmas to me, and for most Finns I would assume it would have to be the mounds of gingerbread biscuits that come out at this time of year.

My Nana has always been the one to stock the family with these delicious, spice laden, thin crispy biscuits. She would have tins of them, and knowing how much my sister and I loved them, would keep a continual stock of them throughout the year that we would have with coffee along with other lovely sweets.

I recently acquired a Finnish cookbook published in 1966, Kotiruoka by Uusi Laitos (translates to Home Cooking or something very similar) This is Nana’s and has been well thumbed through. It has nine different recipes for gingerbread cookies… NINE!

The Finnish/Nordic way is to have them neat, no fancy icing decorations and the shapes are simple hearts, stars and a scalloped circle… although I have, in the last several years, started a little tradition with my son and we now decorate large cookies cut from my gorgeous Donna Hay Christmas Bauble Cookie Cutters. The large size means the cookies can be intricately decorated and look stunning (my son channels Jackson Pollock when decorating these)

This amount makes about 50 cookies depending on the size of your cutters, but believe me they will disappear, and very quickly! Going with the FinSki’s theme for edible gift ideas, package them up in little bags or old biscuit tins and give them as gift.

Hyvaa joulua! Blondie

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Clarified Butter and Ghee

Clarified butter and ghee are simple enough products to get at your local shop (well ghee is), so why go to the trouble of making them yourself? Aside from the flavour, it’s simply for the fact that you have control of where the butter will come from. Maybe you like a particular butter from a farm near you or a Danish butter brand or you only eat organic. If this is the case then you need to start making this for yourself.

The difference between clarified butter and ghee is purely the time the butter has been cooked for. Butter is clarified once the milk solids have separated – there will be two distinct layers. Ghee has just been cooked for a bit longer and will have a nuttier more golden hue. Both are far more outstanding products, both in taste and aroma when made yourself… I can absolutely promise you that you will never, ever buy ghee or clarified butter again after you have tasted your own.

This recipe is probably more a ghee than a clarified butter as I cooked it a few more minutes after the splattering stopped. It’s fast to make and it lasts for ages, up to 6 months in the fridge.

Use a butter that you love, (this is my favourite for making ghee). It needs to be unsalted and butter in it’s purest form, no additives at all.

Simple, easy and tasty – Blondie 🙂

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Mum’s Divine Lamb Roast Marinade

Finding feasts-Mums Roast Lamb-Marinade — Click image for recipe

I can’t believe I hadn’t put this recipe up yet, so here it is, short and sweet… This is my mum’s marinade for leg of lamb; it’s sweet with a slight hit of mustard heat and makes the most delicious gravy afterwards.

I was raised on this and whenever I make it myself I get a nostalgic whiff of childhood. The aroma that hits you when you walk in the door is divine, hence the title, Mum’s Divine Lamb Roast Marinade 🙂

Get yourself a large leg of lamb so you can enjoy several meals out of it with your family.

Food memories… Blondie

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Simple Small Batch Aioli

Simple Small Batch Aioli – Mayonnaise is one of those amazing condiments that is used in countries all around the world to add flavour or smoothness to their dishes. Aioli is basically garlic mayonnaise (although the true way of making this is to pound the oil and garlic in a mortar and pestle – no egg is added) but you can use any number of different ingredients to make your own flavoured mayonnaise.

The reason I like this small batch recipe is because I will never get through a cup or more of homemade aioli within a week. This is just the right amount to use on some sandwiches or on toast with poached eggs on the weekend.

If you are feeling adventurous you can add some fresh herbs or throw in some hot smoked paprika or any other spice to complement your meal, maybe add a mustard. Use lemon instead of vinegar, or use a different vinegar, maybe a fruit vinegar… the combinations are endless.

Let your creativity out! – Blondie 🙂

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Danish Sweet Cheese Pastries From Scratch

Danish Sweet Cheese Pastries From Scratch comes direct from Nigella Lawson’s, How To Be A Domestic Goddess cookbook. I chose this one for the mere fact that it’s a food processor made dough, which in my mind will make the dough making process easy and clean… hahaha!!

To start with and probably the one thing EVERYONE mentions about this dough is just how moist, messy and sticky it is… and they weren’t wrong. It’s like glue!

In the original recipe it asks to mix the dry ingredients then add the cold butter in the food processor then add this to the combined wet ingredients. That was far too messy for me, considering everyone’s comments on this particular pastry recipe, so I did it slightly different – I did it all in the food processor. The result was still a success, but you are still going to get dirty trying to remove the dough from the processor into a bowl for it to prove.

**Brainwave** Leave the dough to prove in the processor bowl! Will let you know how it goes the next time around.

Get your hands dirty and have fun!.. Blondie 🙂

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Asparagus and Chorizo Soup

Asparagus and Chorizo Soup is a perfect Spring time soup with the fresh, sweet asparagus all over the veggie markets at the moment.

This asparagus soup would probably be my favourite, especially when teamed with a toasted ciabatta or turkish bread. The holes serve as lots of mini bowls that when dunked into the soup fill up and become the most perfect edible spoon. Just be sure to cut the bread length ways not into slices otherwise you will end up with most of it on the table!

This soup is a great canvas to show off a lovely chorizo sausage, with it’s distinctive smokey flavour and bright red colour contrasting with the mellow green of the soup.

Slurp it up wholeheartedly… Blondie

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Homemade Sweetened Yoghurt & Bread

Homemade Sweetened Yoghurt - Small Batch — Click image for recipe – Small batch sweetened yoghurt

Homemade Sweetened Yoghurt & Bread… Yoghurt is a simple enough food to buy but it can get expensive. I particularly like the sweetened yoghurt freshly made at my local grocer; it’s lusciously thick and creamy and lightly sweetened but we do get through quite a bit of it so this is the focus for my homemade yoghurt.

After reading the final results of other people’s homemade yoghurts (the main complaint being that it wasn’t as thick as store bought varieties, alot even separated) I chose to add a thickener, pectin to be exact, just to be safe … I really wanted to replicate my favourite yoghurt and quickly. If you aren’t in a hurry then ideally leave it to strain in a muslin cloth over a bowl to catch the whey. This will produce a deliciously thick and creamy yoghurt -You won’t be able to strain it if you have added gelatin or pectin.

Yoghurt is basic enough to make, the challenge is having a source of heat to keep it warm for 10-12 hours (times do vary immensely though). I decided to do the esky method, but you can do any of the following methods:

put it in a non draughty area with a towel around it
place it in a thermos
remove the shelves from your dehydrator and leave it at 45°C / 113°F
place it on a brewer’s heat pad with a tea towel over it… they all do the same job.

Your yoghurt can set anytime from only a few hours, but you can leave it for as long as a day. The sour taste will get stronger the longer it’s left.

If you want a basic greek yoghurt then omit the sugar and vanilla and any thickeners. Just make as the method below and then pour into a strainer lined with muslin and leave to drain in the fridge till you have achieved your desired consistency.

It’s important to use freshly opened, ‘live’ yoghurt in your first batch to ensure the bacteria is at it’s freshest then, importantly, remember to make sure you to set aside a 1/4 cup of your yoghurt to use as a starter batch to get another lot of yoghurt going. You can generally get about 4 cycles from your homemade yoghurt before you will need to buy a fresh batch of live yoghurt to use as your starter.

Other variables you can use when making your yoghurt include using pure cream or half cream with half milk instead of straight milk.

After you have tried your hand at yoghurt then get stuck into my Sweet Yoghurt Bread Rolls…

This recipe comes direct from a website I stumbled across, Pure Enjoyment. I didn’t alter anything in the ingredients, (I think that is only the second time I have ever done that!) It’s faultless! Thank you so much for sharing this with the world

The crumb is a lighter version of brioche but with a flavour that has a delicate tang due to the yoghurt. I used my homemade Sweetened Yoghurt for this recipe but you could certainly go out and buy a favourite yoghurt (at Pure Enjoyment she and quite a few of her followers used a chunky fruit yoghurt) The aroma is heavenly and it’s just so moreish.

Timeline if you were to make it on the weekend… take 10 minutes to make the dough after breakfast and then leave to prove till lunch time, spend another 10 minutes – if that – making the 10 balls and then leave to prove till 20 minutes before afternoon drinks. Cook and then you have amazing sweet bread rolls to have with a beer.

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