This week I invited my friends to enjoy a feast of many Finnish dishes. I baked a Finnish Christmas Buttermilk Rye Bread, Sam’s Socklat Cake, Finnish Rice Pudding, and cooked a Finnish American Style Mojakka.

Finnish Christmas Buttermilk Rye Bread

This bread is usually called joululimppu, ‘joulu’ meaning Christmas and ‘limppu’ meaning a type of bread and is a very typical bread eaten during Christmas time.

I started the day by baking a Christmas buttermilk rye bread from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas, found on page 20. The rye bread starts with two packs of dry yeast, warm water, and buttermilk. Then I added molasses, melted butter, orange peel, fennel and caraway seed, and salt. I then mixed in dark rye flour, whole wheat flour, and all purpose flour. I then let the dough rise for an hour. After the first rise I shaped the dough and let it rise for a second time, before I baked the bread.

  • Rising Yeast
  • First Dough Rising
  • Second Dough Rising
  • Finished Bread

Finnish American Style Mojakka

The main dish of the night was Finnish Style Mojakka. This dish came from Homemade: Finnish rye, feed sack fashion, and other simple ingredients from my life in food by Beatrice Ojakangas, found on page 17. This stew is actually only know to Finnish Americans in the upper parts of the Midwest. This stew can use any type of meat. I found several recipes that used meat from lamb to venison to leftover roast. I used a nice pork roast myself. Since my family does a lot of pot roasts and stews I used the base from my family recipe with this recipe. I first browned my pork roast and then I added a Lipton onion soup mix, beef bullion, salt and pepper, and water. I let that simmer for a good hour or so before I added carrots, rutabaga, turnips, parsnips, fingerling potatoes, russet potatoes, Yukon potatoes, purple sweet potatoes, and yams. Then I let the stew simmer for another hour or so, just until the roots were tender to the fork.

Sam’s Socklat Cake with Chocolate Cocoa Fudge Frosting

This chocolate cake came from Homemade: Finnish rye, feed sack fashion, and other simple ingredients from my life in food by Beatrice Ojakangas, found on page 74. This “one-bowl chocolate cake” was baked fresh daily by Sam’s wife and served in Sam Koskela’s Cafe, where Beatrice states people came more for the conversation than for the coffee and cake. This chocolate cake is a simple cake made with Hershey’s Cocoa, sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powers, salt, butter, milk, eggs, vanilla, and boiling water. The fudge frosting was also made with melted Hershey’s Cocoa and butter, milk, and powdered sugar.

Finnish Rice Pudding

Rice pudding is a very common holiday dish served during Christmas and Winter Solstice, but is also made through out the year in large batches, refrigerated for the week, and reheated and served for breakfast. There is a very common practice of a single almond being placed in the pudding and who ever finds the almond will then have good luck for the following year.

I started off with uncooked white rice, added butter, milk, and salt and cooked over medium heat until all the milk is absorbed and it has a creamy appearance. I then added heavy whipping cream to make it very nice and rich. I then added sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, almonds and raisins.

https://finnishfoodgirl.com/2013/04/finnish-rice-pudding-recipe/

Photos by: Valerie Dingman