Kinuskikissa

So, this time I'm going to tell you about this one blog! I must admit that I don't read it, in fact don't read any baking blogs, so this is quite special post. When I'm about to bake something I just sit down, turn on the computer and look for some interesting recipes on Google. This method works out well and I'm quite stick to it, but maybe I could start to follow some other baking blogs. But for now, let's go back to the main subject of this post:

I guess that Kinuskikissa is the most popular baking "blog" in Finland - but don't be completely taken in, I'm not sure about that. The reason why I wrote the word "blog" with quotation marks is that Kinuskikissa isn't just a blog anymore, it's kind of a "baking community". The owner, Sini Visa, writes down a recipe and the members of the website can join in by giving comments and rating posts.

The members can also send pictures of their own baked goods and talk with each other on Kinuskikissa's forum.

Sini started her blog in 2007. In the beginning Kinuskikissa was just an ordinary baking blog, so I don't know what is the secret behind the popularity - but as you can see, a hobby turned out to be rather successful. Sini has written also a baking book, but of course she is still going to keep up with the blog.

The reasons why I wanted to show this blog to you were quite simple:

1. It's Finnish, so I don't have to bother to convert all the measuring units (from cups to deciliters etc.) and I can find all the ingredients (the recipes found on foreign websites have surprisingly often ingredients that I haven't even heard of or I cannot find them from my nearby K-Market).

2. Variation in recipes - there's not just sweet pastries. You can also find tutorials and tips how to decorate cakes, for an example. Or you can look for recipes in different themes such as Christmas or Easter.

3. Interactivity. You can ask for help on the same website, you can comment and rate the posts, you can send your own pictures, you can talk with other people who are also interested in baking... The list just goes on.

So, that's all for this time! I guess that next time there will be a recipe again.

Raspberry meets Quark

You don't need much to bake a pie! I was too lazy to search for an interesting recipe or go to the nearby K-Market, so I just baked something from the ingredients that I found from my kitchen closets. Frozen raspberries, milk and some quark. That's all I found (given that most of us usually have flours and sugar in our closets all the time).

As always, this is really easy to do. Nothing fancy, but it tastes good, so I guess it doesn't really matter. My little brother ate a piece of this pie and told me that he didn't like the raspberries, but otherwise it was good. The raspberries are the whole point of this pastry, I don't understand him!

Recipe

Dough:
2 dl of wheat flours

1 dl of sugar

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of cardamom

1 dl of milk
90 grams of butter

Topping:
250 grams of quark
1/2 dl of milk
3/4 dl of sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons of vanilla sugar

+ raspberries/blueberries/apples... almost whatever you want!

1. Mix the dry ingredients (flours, sugar, baking powder and cardamom) together.

2. Add 1 dl of milk and 90 grams (1 dl) of melted butter into the mixture.

3. Cover a pie plate with a thin layer of butter and spoon the dough on top.

4. Sprinkle some raspberries (for an example) over the pie.

5. Mix all the topping ingredients together in a bowl and pour them on top of the pie.

6. Bake at 200°C for 30 minutes. Let the pie cool down before serving.

White Chocolate Panna Cotta

I've been alternately so busy and tired that I haven't found time for baking! That's a shame, because baking is really relaxing and great fun to me. So, that means that there is no proper oven-baked recipe coming this time. But I'm going to do something as soon as possible.

I decided to do something quick and easy just for this blog and panna cotta was an ideal thing to do - the recipe is really simple and the actual making process doesn't take much time. I found out just recently that panna cotta sounds more fancy that it really is. In practice it is just mixing things up, waiting and of course enjoying in the end (even though this recipe is simple, it is really sweet and delicious)! This is how you can do it:

Recipe

3 gelatine leafs

2 dl  of milk

3 dl of double cream

100 grams of white chocolate

2 tablespoons of sugar

1. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for five minutes.

2. Put milk and double cream into a pan and wait until they boil.

3. Add 100 grams of white chocolate and two tablespoons of sugar to the mixture and stir them until the ingredients have melted and the mixture is well combined.

4. Squeeze water out of the gelatine leaves and soak them to the mixture.

5. Remove the pan from the heat and set the mixture aside until it has completely cooled.

6. Pour the panna cotta mixture into glasses or some sort of ramekins and then chill in the fridge for at least four hours.

7. Once the panna cotta mixture is set and firm, decorate it with raspberries for and example and enjoy!

Cookie dough fudge

So, here it comes: my first actual post!

I love to sneak spoonfuls of dough when I'm baking cookies or some other sweet things. Some time ago I found a recipe for a confection that suits perfectly for people like me - cookie dough fudge. It's basically a cookie dough base without baking in the oven. My version of these may not be the prettiest, but they taste so good that it doesn't matter.

I was going to ask my little brother to eat one and tell his verdict, but eventually I ate all of them by myself. But maybe that tells something... Cookie dough fudge doesn't need anyone to convince that it is really, really delicious (because there's loads of sugar and butter, not to mention chocolate)!

Recipe

1/2 dl of sugar

1 1/3 dl  of brown sugar

140 grams of butter

3/4 dl + 2 tablespoons of cream

2 tablespoons of vanilla sugar

1 dl of wheat flours

2 dl of chocolate chips

1. Mix 3/4 dl of brown sugar, 70 grams of butter and 3/4 dl of cream together and boil them for five minutes, so the mixture gets a bit thicker.

2. Measure the rest of the brown sugar, butter and white sugar into a bowl and mix them together. Add two tablespoons of cream into the mixture.

3. Mix up the flours and vanilla sugar in a separate bowl. After that, add them to the first bowl (the one with sugar and butter).

4. Pour the boiled mixture in with other ingredients.

5. Chop some chocolate and mix the chips carefully into the dough. Leave a little bit of chocolate chips for decoration!

6. Cover a pan (about 15 x 15 cm would be an ideal size) with parchment paper. Add the dough into the pan and sprinkle the rest of the chocolate chips on top of the whole thing.

7. Put the dough into a fridge for a couple of hours to settle. Once the dough is set, cut it into pieces and enjoy!

Phew, that was surprisingly time-consuming to translate a recipe! Maybe it gets easier in the future...

What are little girls' baking blogs made of?

What are little girls' baking blogs made of?

What are little girls' baking blogs made of?

Sugar and spice

And everything nice,

That's what little girls' baking blogs are made of.