Category: Sour cream, Smetana, Creme Fraiche

Cottage Cheese Pie. Kodujuustupirukas

cottage cheese pie (1)Cottage Cheese Pie is a great dish for breakfast or a quick dinner.
A wonderful recipe you can serve as a sweet or savoury dish.

Did you know?  Interesting fact: In Estonia, cottage cheese began to be produced in order to meet the cheese production plan set by Moscow to the USSR. The National Planning Committee of the USSR almost doubled the cheese production of the Estonian SSR for the five-year plan, So, this is the reason why Estonia began to produce cottage cheese which was reported as cheese in the reports 🙂

 

 

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Vana Tallinn/ Old Tallinn cakes

rummikook (5)Have you noticed that dishes made from leftovers are always very tasteful?! 🙂 Like pizza or seljanka.
Or in Estonia ” Komeet” candies and cakes ” Rum Balls”.

Rum Balls cakes are made from leftovers.  All the cake edges that are left in the confectionery or bakery, will be mixed together. And the result is very delicious sweets. At home you probably have not to cake leftovers 🙂 This old-fashioned dessert is a delicious way to use up that leftover stale cake!
So use biscuits or sponge cake.

To make this cake more Estonian I replaced rum essence to liqueur Vana Tallinn/Old Tallinn. And the result is even better 🙂

 


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Very Simple Chocolate Cake. Kakaokook

kakaopohlakook (6)Pööripäev or Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year in Estonia, taking place on 21 December. On the solstice, there are only 6 hours of daylight, whereas, in summer, the longest day of the year has 18 hours of daylight.

 

Celebrate this day with Very Simple Chocolate Cake

A bitter-sweet old school retro cake. I like this cake because it is very easy to do. Just mix together all ingredients.

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Eggless Apple Pie by Anne Kuusk. Kuuse Anne õunakook

Anne 6unakook (1)This cake has a very sweet story.
Estonian famous and popular presenter Priit Kuusk lost his mother a long time ago when he was the child. A few years ago he was a guest in one broadcast and reminded childhood. Told about his mother and wonderful apple cake his mother had baked. He did not know the recipe but remembered the aroma and flavour of this cake.
And after broadcast one listener wrote a letter and told that she knew Priit`s mother and she has an apple cake recipe.

This cake is eggless, very easy to do. Between crispy layers is juicy and tart apple filling.

One more remark: Estonian apples are not very sweet, we use sour apples. And Estonian apples are quite soft. We do not cook them before. If you use sweet apples, use less sugar. And if you like very soft apple filling, cook apples before using.

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Simple Strawberry Summer dessert

Estonian fermented dairy dishes are sour milk, buttermilk and sour cream. From the east came Kefir. But yoghurt is quite new for Estonians.

During the soviet time, we saw yoghurt from Finnish television commercials. And it sounds good and delicious. And it was. I visited first time Finland in 1991, and I got and ate my two dream dishes: bananas and.. yoghurt 🙂
Now it sounds funny. But yes. I dreamt about bananas and yoghurt.

But still, we had strawberries. And we had cream. And simplest and most delicious dessert in the whole world. Mix together cream and strawberries 🙂

What to use? Sour cream or 35% double cream? Up to you. Because both desserts are so delicious but different. I like maybe just a little bit more with fresh cream.
I squeeze strawberries unevenly.  Add some 35% cream and mix until dessert is thick enough.
Maybe little bit sugar, as well.
But Estonian strawberries are sweet enough 🙂 Continue reading “Simple Strawberry Summer dessert” →

Rhubarb and Sour Cream Frozen Dessert. Rabarberi hapukooremagustoit

rabarberi kylm1(22)The perfect summer dessert. Cooling and bracing. Great rhubarb sour and sweet flavour combined with tender and light cream.
And.
Very easy to do.

Beginning of the 90s I worked a few months in Finland. One of my responsibilities was to cook, prepare dinner and breakfast. My host introduced to me house and equipment and everything I must to know.
Home appliances and equipment were a little bit fancier than we had at home. But the most interesting and weird thing was: a big freezer. This was full of different packs, as I had known later, prepared meat and fish and even cakes and pies. It was very strange. Yes. We used and had a freezer at home. But it was just a small shelf or drawer for ice cream.
It was summer. And as at home, we picked berries to preserve them for winter. It was a familiar and ordinary job for me. But the result, a juice was not preserved in an aseptic glass jar, as usual, but in the plastic box placed in the freezer.

The first refrigerator was introduced by Scottish professor William Cullen already in 1755, but freezers went into mass production until after Word War II.
The freezer is for me so important for two reasons. The first one is preserving fresh berries and mushrooms. By nowadays life has changed and you can buy fresh berries throughout the year. But still, strawberries in January are never as sweet and delicious as they are in July. Freezing helps preserve berries and mushroom as fresh as the day it was harvested, full of vitamins.
And the second reason. I am a picky person. I do not want the same food the next day and I do not like wasting the food.rabarberi kylm1(32)
Freezer helps me to preserve food and eat this when I want to.
I believe that most of the people around the world agree with me. Less wasting food, fewer food poisonings, more time for pleasures and less for everyday shopping or cooking are benefits of freezers and refrigerators. This invention made our lives easier.

Remind to take the dessert at the room temperature at least 0,5 hour before serving.

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Yeast Free Hand Pies with Cowberry and Cheese filling. Pärmivabad pohla- juustupirukad

This recipe is suitable for all people who do not like or have not time or skills to use and prepare yeast dough.

Very easy to prepare.

I used sweet filling and combined cowberries, nuts and cheese. I love savoury-sweet and sour combination. Nuts give texture and crustiness.
You are free to change it, of course. I would suggest for example carrot filling. Find the recipe from my blog.pohlajuustupirukas (9)

Did you know
The coldest months in Estonia are January and February, where temperatures can drop down to -35C. The coldest temperature ever measured in Estonia is -43.5C, recorded in eastern Estonia on 17 January 1940.

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Yeast Free Kefir Hand Pies with Turnip and Horseradish by Olga. Olga pärmivabad kaalika ja mädarõikapirukad.

kaalikaseenepirukad (1)I found this recipe from blog of Olga. It sounded and seemed so interesting and I decided to try this and share with you. Please visit Olga blog, you can find more very interesting recipes.

This recipe is suitable for all people who do not like or have not time or skills to use and prepare yeast dough. Very easy to prepare.

I used turnip and horseradish filling. But you free to change it, of course. I would suggest for example carrot filling. Find recipe from my blog.

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Vertical Layer Honey Cake. Meekook

meekook (27)Honey cake is known and famous in many countries.  Estonian honey cake is simple. The sweetness of honey is balanced with sour cream.
This time I did this cake in a little bit different way. With vertical layers.

Trust me: It is much simpler to make than you might think. I won’t tell if you don’t 😉 It sounds and seems complicated and difficult, but in reality it is simple. Read this recipe, understand what to do and this is very simple! 🙂

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Soft Gingerbread Cake. Pehme plaadipiparkook

pehmepiparkook (11)Have I said that I just love gingerbread.

The real and my favourite gingerbread is very thin and crispy. Look at for recipe here.

But sometimes you want some change and something different.

Soft gingerbread cake has all best features of gingerbread: flavour, smell, aroma, seasons… but soft.
Juicy and fruity cowberry- apple sauce complements very well gingerbread flavour and reduce sweetness ( and makes it healthier dessert :))20171201_091452

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