Finnish pancakes

The Finnish pancake (sometimes I've also seen it referred to as a Dutch pancake in recipes, what's up with that?!?) is very different from the US pancakes. The Finnish pancake has less flour and more eggs, it's not fluffy at all but more dense and a bit gooey (and I'm using the term gooey very lovingly here). And it's much less high maintenance compared to its American cousin, as it's baked in the oven and doesn't require anyone to slave at the stove flipping pancakes while watching the rest of the people eat them faster than you can get them off the pan opand onto a plate.

I know this is entirely a matter of taste and preference, both which are heavily influenced by what you have gotten used to and grown up with. But as much as I love a good stack of American pancakes (with butter and maple syrup) the Finnish pancake just has that special place in my heart which is only reserved for things which make me remember happy moments of my childhood.

When we were kids, me and my sister always spent Tuesday evenings at the stables, as that was the day of our riding lessons. Or maybe it was Wednesday... Anyways, it was the best day of the week, no doubt. My sister had her riding lesson first, and me and my friends had ours after that. And obviously we would sit out there in the riding hall to watch each other's lessons. Which in the winter got really cold, as there was no heating. As long as you were on horseback you were ok (riding really is a physical sport which gives you a good work out, just take my word for it if you haven't had any hands (or legs) on experience). And I still remember that penetrating cold, your thighs would start to tingle and you lost all feeling in fingers and toes. And still it was really sad when my mum or dad would come and pick us up from the stables, as that meant it would be another week before we would get to spend time with the horses again. But when we got home, the sauna was hot for us to warm up our frozen limbs. The fingers and toes would tingle when you had a warm shower before entering the sauna, and then warmth would slowly start spreading over your body until after sitting there for a while, it just got too hot and you had to slip back out to take a cool shower. I still love that feeling of anticipation when you are really cold, but know that soon you will be warm again. Unfortunately I don't get to enjoy that often enough these days, especially as the sauna at the gym is a disgrace and nowhere near warm enough to get to that blissful state of overheating. What has this all to do with pancake you ask? Well, obviously that was what my mum had cooked for me and Sis for supper after the sauna. It was always baked in a large black oven sheet, and the best bits were the edges which were drier and crispier than the gooey middle. It was usually enjoyed with berries and my mum's home made strawberry jam (well it wasn't proper jam, it was more like mashed up strawberries frozen with a bit of sugar, and it was so much better than jam because it tasted more of strawberries and less of sugar). Every time I have Finnish pancake, that is the memory it brings to my mind. And that is why it will always taste better to me than any other pancakes.

Because the crispy edges of the pancake are much better than the middle, I though the idea of making mini pancakes in muffin tins or moulds was a genius one. This gives a perfect ratio of crispy edge and soft centre. I saw this pin on Pinterest, and it immediately went in the 'has to be tried' pile. And now I had the perfect excuse as I needed some practical take away brekkie for a morning on the go. I decided to reduce the amount of sugar a bit, and add some berries for extra flavour and vitamis. These pancakes only take a minute or two to prep, and can be baked the previous day for a grab and go in the morning. The are nice to eat cold, but I think pancake is best if eaten fresh, not hot out of the oven, but still warm after letting it cool for a while.

 

Mini pancakes (makes 6-8):

1/2 cup flour (I used whole wheat)

15 g sugar

1/4 tsp salt

3 eggs

1/2 cup milk

100 g frozen mixed berries

 

According to my estimate (made using MyFitnessPal) one pancake (1/6 of the recipe) contains 90 kcal (2.9 g fat, 12 g carbs of which 3.5g sugar and 5.2 g protein).

 

The howto:

Preheat oven to 200 deges C. Mix flour, sugar and salt. Add milk and eggs and mix with a fork or wooden spoon. Distribute batter in individual muffin moulds (or pour in an oven proof tin to make one big pancake). Sprinkle frozen berries on top. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until puffed and golden brown.

The verdict:

I loved them. Loved, loved loved. Also the culinary consultant seemed to enjoy them enough to have two, although he found them a bit tart. I don't think the whole wheat flour made them taste any healthier than regular all purpose flour would as the main flavour comes from the berries, but of course you are free to use any flour you want. I think I will experiment with using some other flours as well, maybe quinoa or spelt, why not even rice flour or some other gluten free variety. And you could add any flavouring you wanted, blueberries, cranberries, chocolate chips, raisins, pineapple, or whatever your heart desires. The traditional Finnish pancake doesn't have any topping at all, and it's really tasty on it's own as well, although for that I would probably add some more sugar. Overall, add more sugar if you find my variation with unsweetened mixed berries too tart, or leave it out completely (or replace by maple syrup or agave) if that's your preference. Or mashed ripe banana would also work perfectly to bring some flavour and sweetness. Ooh, that's my next attempt. Banana and chocolate chip pancake.

I baked my pancakes in my flower cupcake silicon mould. In the picture I turned two of the pancakes with the pretty flower side up, and left the other two upside down so you can see the berries and the puffy golden brown edges of the pancakes.

 

 

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My blueberry mornings

I might previously have mentioned in passing my love of weekend morning brunch. Ok, I admit it's possible that pretty much every second post on this blog is about weekend brunch recipes. Well, this will be yet another recipe for something to indulge in while lazily flipping through the paper of doing whatever else it is you like to do on a Sunday morning. 


I have to admit though that this morning I got up really early instead of enjoying a lazy lie in. And the reason for that was completely self-flagellatory. If you knew what I ate last night, I bet you would be horrified (have you ever heard of "Better than sex cake"? If you have, then imagine "Better than multiple orgasms cake". It was something along those lines, and it also contained about two weeks worth of calories). Anyways, this morning I was up at the crack of dawn for a run. And while I was running, there was one phrase drumming through my head at every step. "You can't outrun a bad diet". So, technically speaking, I should be chewing on a leaf of lettuce for brekkie today. And for lunch and dinner. Not just for today, but for the next three weeks. But...


I realised it's been at least a few weeks since I last had pancakes, so it's about time I try another new pancake recipe. The only problem was to find the perfect recipe. Well, actually it's not a problem, it's what I love to do. Browse food blogs (aka food porn) and pick and mix my favourite recipes. Lately, I have been making a lot of banana and chocolate chip pancakes, so I thought blueberries would make a nice change. And I really wanted to try a buttermilk pancake recipe, because to be honest, I have never cooked anything with buttermilk! And although I fully admit this is not a particularly healthy recipe in itself, I was going to throw in a handful of white choc chips as well, but decided not to in the end. Going to stick with berries and maple syrup. And I think it was all for the best, as they turned out quite delicious and not too sweet. Perfect way to reward yourself for a morning run (although technically the run was to burn off yesterday's cheat meal, and now I have to try to figure out a way to burn this off tomorrow). But weekend mornings should be celebrated, after all, only 2/7ths of the mornings of your life will be weekend mornings. And I was lucky to have some help from a friend to destroy this batch of fluffy goodness.


I found this recipe on Pinterest (go have a look at my newly arranged boards, there is one just for Pancakes and French toast). It's from a blog called Sprinkle Some Sunshine, which looks very lovely. 


Blueberry Buttermilk Pancakes from Sprinkle Some Sunshine (makes 10 pancakes):
1 egg
125 g (1 cup) all purpose flour (I used 25g whole wheat and 100g AP)
10g sugar (I used light muscovado)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
270 ml buttermilk
30 g (2 tbsp) melted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract (I used vanilla bean paste)
125 g fresh blueberries


Mix together all the dry ingredients. This can be done on the evening before, if you want to get a quick start for your brekkie. Beat egg with an electric whisk in another bow until frothy, add it with the buttermilk, butter and vanilla extract to the dry ingredients and mix. The batter will be thick. 


Spoon a few tablespoons of batter per pancake on the pan. Add blueberries onto the pancake. Cook until the batter is set and bubbles form. Gently flip over, and cook until golden brown. Serve with berries, maple syrup, honey, butter or any other topping of choice.


The verdict:
This is a really great pancake batter recipe. The pancakes turned out really light and fluffy. I'm definitely making these again. However, I think I should add just a tad more flour to the batter, it was a bit difficult to cook the pancakes as they spread out on the pan a bit too much. This would of course not have been problem if I wasn't trying to squeeze in as many pancakes as I can in my tiny little pan. Alas, I need to get a bigger pan, or one of those griddles for cooking the pancakes. That could help get beautiful, round pancakes. Now I am trying to cram three pancakes onto my small pan, and they spread until they run into each other, and then I have one giant pancake, which I have to cut into smaller pieces, and they never end up round and beautiful, but horrible disfigured blobs. Which of course doesn't affect the taste in any way, but you can't make those pretty stacks of perfectly round and beautiful pancakes which look so great on photos. 

Syrniki - russian quark pancakes

I guess I should begin by apologising for another pancake post right after the last one. But then again, who wouldn't love pancakes? To celebrate the weekend, and to make up for calories lost to rather heavy cardio lately (because the tub of Ben&Jerry's I had yesterday didn't quite do it...), I wanted to make a mean weekend brunch. When it comes to cooking, and particularly weekend brunches, I definitely don't have a problem trying to think up things to cook. Quite the opposite, my problem is that there is only two possibilities for weekend brunch each week, which leaves me with an ever growing list of recipes I want to try out, or old favourites I want to revisit and maybe pimp a bit. 

Talking about long lists, I have to go off on a tangent here for just a second. If you haven't used Evernote, I want to take a few sentences to introduce you to the software that is currently the only thread of sanity keeping my crazy life together. Basically, it's a software that allows you to organize notes into notebooks, tag them with key words and attach documents and figures. It's fully searchable, you can use it online but there are also apps for the iPhone and iPad (and apparently for Android as well, Google tells me). And the best thing, it's free! Well, it's free to a certain amount of data a month, but for my use it's good enough. The only downside with free Evernote is that you need to have access to the internet to see your notes. I always keep forgetting this. For me that only makes it useful in the UK, as I tend to turn off roaming when I go abroad (oh, the joys of a scientist's salary, you can't even afford to go online... sigh). There are also other apps in the Evernote family such as the very imaginatively named Web Clipper which allows you to save webpages, draw (Skitch) or study more efficiently (Evernote Peek). There even seems to be an Evernote food app, which I only discovered now as I was browsing the Evernote webpage while writing this post. I'm not sure what the Evernote food app would have that would make it better than Evernote proper but I'll have a look at that later. What I love about Evernote is that I can make my notes wherever I am, online on my work computer or using the app on my phone. I have standard notes like grocery list, ideas for presents etc which I can update as soon as I remember that I need to buy something, or find a good idea for a present. Then I just pull out the appropriate note when I'm at the grocery store, or it's time for someone's birthday. I also keep a list of recipes I want to try. As soon as I come across a good recipe in a food blog or a magazine I clip it or take a picture of it and save it. Then I have a library of easily browsable and searchable favourite recipes when I plan next week's menu, with all the ingredients already listed so I can just copy and paste to my grocery list.

But this wasn't supposed to be about making notes, it was about that oh so lovely lazy weekend brunch. This time I chose to cook syrniki, russian quark pancakes out of two reasons. I have been craving them ever since I saw the recipe posted on one of my favourite food blogs, Kauhaa ja Rakkautta a few weeks ago, and because I had a tub of quark in my fridge which was about to go off. So this recipe is stolen from that blog, and the blogger actually has adapted it from the oh so glamorous Pirkka magazine. For the non-Finns (if anyone besides my mum and sis actually read this...), Pirkka is the monthly magazine of the K-food chain, one of the two largest grocery store chains in Finland. You get the magazine if you sign up for the K-food chain loyalty card. It's one of those silly magazines that mostly contain adverts for new products disguised as articles, but I always loved browsing it when it arrived. Even now, when I go back home to my mum's place, I love to read it. The foodaholic in me loves to read about new food products. Also, the recipes in the magazine are often very useful, the type of quick and easy everyday food recipes you need to spice up your food life, instead of always cooking those same old dishes. And again, I was off on a tangent, I seem to have a problem staying focused today.

Anyways, back to quark pancakes. Finnish cuisine is strongly influenced by our geographical neighbours, and from the Russian kitchen we have the influence of using a lot of dairy, particularly soured dairy. The selection of dairy products in Finnish supermarkets is (in my very unbiased opinion) superior to anywhere else in the world. There are so many different types of flavoured and unflavoured creams, soured creams (different types) and quarks. I don't understand why the Brits, who seem to love their cream, haven't discovered the joys of flavoured creams. Back home we have savoury ones, like cheese, pepper or my personal favourite goat's cheese and tomato as well as sweet ones. Just imagine topping your cupcakes with caramel or strawberry flavoured cream. There is also a huge selection of flavoured quarks, such as berry, white choc and lemon, lime and many others. And on top of all this, you get many of the varieties lactose free. The positive side of me being thousands of kilometers away from all those yummy dairy temptations is that it has been easy to reduce the amount of dairy in my diet, and I have to admit it has had some very positive effects on my health (this despite that I have the genetics to prove that I'm lactose tolerant). Anyways, the point of this rant was that growing up eating Finnish food, I am very used to having a lot of different dairy choices available. So, although I'm happy that there is (one brand) of quark available in my supermarket, at the same time it's very depressing seeing that one lonely quark sitting there among all the gazillions of cheddars. And it's a depressing, fat free variety. I would prefer to have one with a bit of fat in it, but even fat free quark is better than no quark. Ok, rant over, I guess everyone is now aware of my feelings about Finnish dairy.

So how about those syrniki, what on earth are they? The one and only official source for  information, Wikipedia, tells us "In Russian, Belarusian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian cuisines, syrniki (Russian: сы́рник[и]; Ukrainian: сирники;Belarusian: сырнікі) are fried quark pancakes, garnished with sour cream, jam, honey, or apple sauce." My mum used to make these quite often at some point, I think actually that might have somehow magically coincided with the time the recipe was published in the Pirkka magazine... This is one of those foods that I really liked, but didn't get around to ever making myself. You know how you just forget about some foods if you don't actively make them. Then, one fine day you stumble upon the recipe and just remember such a food actually exists, and start craving it like crazy. Hopefully this has inspired you to try syrniki, you should be able to find quark at least in bigger supermarkets. And syrniki can almost be thought of as health food (cough, cough...). Well, at least compared to normal pancakes is that they have more protein thanks to the quark, and less carbs as there is less flour than in normal pancakes. Talk about rationalising...

Syrniki (makes about 16 small pancakes):

250g quark

3 eggs

65g white flour

30g sugar (this makes rather sweet pancakes, decrease or leave out if you are not a fan of sweet things)

10g vanilla sugar (again, optional, or replace with a splash of vanilla extract, or some vanilla pod seeds if you happen to have enough money to have vanilla pods hanging around unused)

14g melted butter

The batter is pretty  stiff, so the pancakes will keep their shape while cooking.

The howto:

Mix all ingredients, and let the batter stand for at least 15 minutes. This is not absolutely necessary if you just can't wait for your pancakes, but it does improve the texture of the batter and makes it a bit easier to cook. A pancake pan is optimal for cooking, but the batter is rather thick, so you can make small pancakes on a large pan as they will keep their shape rather well. I use about a topped tablespoon of batter per pancake. The batter doesn't contain much flour, so it takes a bit of patience to cook. Just make sure to stick to medium heat, and make sure the pancakes are properly cooked (turning a bit dark on the underside, with small bubbles forming on top) before you flip them over. That way they will not break during the flipping. Serve with berries, jam, fruit and/or maple syrup. Maybe even Nutella, ice cream or whipped cream if you are feeling very decadent.

The pancakes are ready to be flipped when they are golden
brown on the underside, and bubbles form on top.

One serving (1/3 of the recipe, or about 5 pancakes) contains 326 kcal (13g fat, 28g carbs, 19g protein). This is using low fat quark, and allowing for 1 additional tbsp butter for cooking the pancakes.

The verdict:

I cannot imagine a pancake I wouldn't like, and these are absolutely yummy. I just wish I could eat the whole batch in one go! The consistency is very different from traditional pancakes, they are much softer and more spongy. I think they are actually best eaten after they have cooled a little, that brings out the flavour of the quark much better. If you happened to like quark after trying these little dreamy things, check out my previous post about a quick and easy quark berry dessert.

Spinach and feta rice-crepsies

Spinach pancakes (sorry, recipe in Finnish) are a traditional Finnish dish, hated by many school-children but also loved by many. The pancakes are cooked small (about 6-7 cm in diameter), often served in a stack on the plate, and always, always, always served with lingonberries. You can even get them ready made from the grocery store, but the flavour has nothing on the home-made ones.

I have always liked these pancakes, but back home I always made them from frozen spinach. During the last half year or so, I have come to love fresh spinach. In fact, it is one of the few things (together with organic, full fat yoghurt, eggs and tomatoes) which I buy every single time on my weekly trip to the grocery store. I like to buy organic spinach, and I always feel like my world is tilted slightly off it's axis if I can only get the regular stuff. Last week I worked my way through two 200g bags of spinach, I eat it almost at every meal. In smoothies or effins in the morning, in my salads for lunch, and often I serve my dinner on a bed of spinach if I can't find a way to incorporate it into the dinner dish itself. Spinach is healthy, although I'm not sure I believe all health claims, at least those without a reference (anything from burning fat to curing cancer...) According to Wikipedia (yes, I'm too lazy to actually look up proper references) "It is a rich source of vitamin A (and especially high in lutein), vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, folate, betaine, iron, vitamin B₂, calcium, potassium, vitamin B₆, folic acid, copper, protein, phosphorus,zinc, niacin, selenium and omega-3 fatty acids." It's also virtually calorie free, so you can indulge as much as you want. However, spinach also contains oxalate, which will inhibit the absorption of the iron. The amount of oxalate can be reduced by boiling the spinach quickly. Be it this way or that, I'm sure at least part of all the goodies in spinach will be absorbed, oxalate or not. 

As I said before, the Finnish spinach pancake is always served with lingonberries or lingonberry jam. However, it seems it's absolutely impossible to get lingonberries on this godforsaken island. Well, actually you can get them from Scandinavian kitchen in London, and I have to get around there next time I'm down to London. As I had no lingonberries, I thought I could do some tweaks to the recipe. First tweak is adding something with a lot of flavour to replace the lingonberries. Instead of going for something sweet and tangy, I went for salty and added feta cheese. Then I wanted to make it dairy free (well, as dairy free as something with feta can be...) as well as wheat free, so instead of doing a pancake batter with milk and wheat flour, I substituted with rice milk and rice flour. I have become a huge fan of rice flour, it works really well in pancakes as it gives a more crispy texture than wheat flour. 

The batter is rather runny, therefore these are more like crepes than pancakes. Don't even think you can cook them to be small pancakes without a proper pancake pan (which is another thing that Brits apparently don't do, need to bring one with me from back home next time I go), the batter will spread to fill the whole pan. I didn't let that bother me, I just cooked them big in a regular pan. You also need to have some patience cooking the crepes, as they benefit from being cooked slowly on medium heat, and should not be flipped until properly cooked on one side to stay whole through the flipping process. If you have a bit of patience, you will be rewarded by some great tasting and almost healthy (apart from the huge amount of carbs...) crepes.

Rice-crepsies (makes 6 big crepes):

500ml rice milk

166g rice flour

3 eggs

1tbsp butter

200g spinach

100g feta cheese

Be patient and let the underside cook well before flipping the crepe.

The howto:

Mix rice milk, eggs, melted butter and rice flour. To give the batter a better consistency and making the crepes easier to cook, let the batter stand for at least an hour, stirring every once in a while. This allows the rice flour to puff up in the liquid. If you use wheat flour, you don't need to let the batter rest for such a long time. Chop up the spinach, and cook quickly in a pan until it has started to wilt a bit. Then add the wilted spinach and crumble in feta. Cook on a non-stick pan on medium heat, letting the crepe cook well on one side with lots of small bubbles forming on the surface before turning it over. 

1 serving (2 crepes) contains 500 kcal, 19g fat, 64.6g carbs and 16.8g proteins. It also contains 133% of your recommended daily amount of Vitamin A!

The verdict:

The crepes require a bit of work to cook, but are definitely worth it. Substituting regular milk and wheat flour with rice milk and flour give the pancakes a bit of a different taste from what I would expect from a traditional Finnish spinach pancake. Of course if you never have had them, you don't know what to expect so you might not be as impressed as I was. I personally think the substitutions were very successful (but I'm admittedly a bit biased...), and this is a very different dish from the original, which was my intention. I also think the combination of spinach and feta is absolutely lovely (although not very original), the salty feta and the mild taste of the spinach just work so well together. I didn't season with salt or pepper, as I think the feta is salty enough, and the dish doesn't need pepper, but you can add some if you want. Thanks to the rice flour, the crepes have a great crispy texture despite being cooked on a non-stick pan with no oil or butter. I will certainly be making this again, but I'm also going to experiment a bit with substituting part of the flour with quinoa flour or rye flour to see what it does to the taste. Oh and if you can get your hands on fresh nettles, replacing or partly substituting the spinach with nettles is amazing. Just wear gloves if you are picking them yourself!