Happy May Day! Have something that's not Funnel Cake.

RABBIT RABBIT EVERYONE!

also

HAPPY MAY DAY and HAUSKAA VAPPUA!

 

 

Obvs it's the first of the month again, so Rabbit Rabbit to you all. I hope you remembered to say it this morning when you woke up, hmm? Today is a special Rabbit Rabbit, because it's also MAY DAY which is happy and hopeful and, for us, kind of a big deal.

Mum grew up in Helsinki (maybe I've mentioned that?), and a big part of my childhood was being aware of our family's Finnish heritage. (Another big part of it was listening to my grandparents and their friends speak Finnish to each other without understanding a word, and being wired off my ass on coffee and bored out of my skull in the conference hall of the Finnish American Society.) Now I remember that I mentioned chewing on strips of salt-cured herring as a child - that little nugget probably makes more sense to you now.

We are American and always have been, but like everyone does with their own cultural and ethnic roots, you carry on traditions from wherever your family came from. Hence salted and pickled herring, saunas, my love of potatoes, nudity when at all possible, excessive amounts of coffee, and moments of severe antisocial-ness. ALSO as of two months ago, I have the word SISU tattooed on the back of my left hand. Here's the Wikipedia entry on Sisu. I like to think that having Sisu and being a Warrior Beetle go hand in hand. And looking down and seeing it (in Copperplate Gothic Light for those who like that sort of thing) makes me happy.
 

May Day Table. There are no real flowers yet
so I had to use construction paper.

ANYWAY. May Day in Finland is a national holiday. Because the sun doesn't come up for the majority of the winter and on the first of May it's FINALLY GOING TO GET WARM AND LIGHT AGAIN and it's a nice thing to celebrate. There are parades, balloons, shenanigans with a sailor hat and a statue, etc. It's a nice, welcome-spring-and-summer day. So here, even though we don't go full out, we still do something festive. The day began, as most days do here, waking up at the crack of dawn, except this one was punctuated by twin yells of RABBIT RABBIT! from opposite bedrooms. That was followed by a very pretty yet still a bit chilly sunrise walk to see the reservoir and the geese landing. It really was a perfect early spring morning. And I only needed to stay in the shower 5 extra minutes to dethaw at the end of it.

This was followed by The May Day Breakfast.













MAY DAY BREAKFAST
Rye Caraway Buns
Cardamom Cream Cake
Butter, Cheese, Jam
Coffee

 

Tippaleipä. Funnel Cake.
If that's your thing.

Now, full disclosure. There ARE traditional Finnish May Day pastries. I did not make these. They are called Tippaleipä. They are essentially funnel cakes. I did not make funnel cakes. Yes, they look pretty and delicious and WE ALL remember how amazing fried dough was back in the day, but funnily enough Mum was not uber thrilled about eating deep fried batter comprised of eggs, flour, sugar, and beer. And as they are (duh) Beetle-lethal why I would bother making them, only to watch Mum choke one down out of parental guilt in the Emergency Room later that evening (where I would of course be for third degree hot-oil burns) was beyond me. I decided that tippaleipä could wait it's turn, and instead, made our May Day Breakfast out of something appetizing and non fried, but still inherently Finnish.



MAY DAY BREAKFAST of  CARAWAY RYE BUNS and CARDAMOM CREAM CAKE


Caraway Rye Buns

Cardamom Cream Cake

The cookbooks I use when I want to be a Finnish Housewife are all written by the same woman. This is, in large part I believe, because she is the only writer of cookbooks to come out of Scandinavia in the last century. It is also due to the fact that she knows her sh*t. Her name is Beatrice Ojakangas. These two recipes are from Scandinavian Feasts (University of Minnesota Press, 1992) which has holiday and celebration menus from Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. For the record, good ol' Beatrice totally includes a Finnish May Day Menu that FULLY INCLUDES tippaleipä.

I'M SORRY, BEATRICE. I will do my penance by baking fourteen thousand rye butter cookies.

CARAWAY RYE BUNS (Ruispullat)


I always forget how good caraway smells.
Especially when mixed with molasses.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 envelopes active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 tbs molasses
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 tablespoons caraway seeds
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 cups milk, scalded and cooled
• 2 cups light or dark rye flour
• 4 - 4 1/2 cups bread or all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in the warm water. Add the molasses and let stand 5. Add in caraway seeds, salt, butter, and rye flour and beat well.
Stir in the bread flour, 1 cup at a time, until the dough is stiff and will not absorb more flour. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured board and knead, adding more flour as necessary, until the dough is smooth and satiny, about 10 minutes. Grease the bowl and return the dough to it, turning over to grease the top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Cover with parchment paper or lightly grease two baking sheets.
Punch down the dough and divide into quarters, then divide the quarters into quarters again, to make 16 equal-sized portions of dough. Shape each portion into a long, narrow bun and place on one of the prepared baking sheets. Let rise until puffy, 30-45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Pierce each roll all over with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes, or until golden.



Definitely NOT as pretty as a proper
Finnish Housewife would make them.

BEETLE NOTES

As with the recipe below, I do not mess with Beatrice. I follow her instructions as closely as possible, and honestly I've never been disappointed. This is why I love her.

I have a feeling that my Caraway Buns were not as pretty as they were supposed to be, but they look nice and comfortingly squashy, and I didn't hear any complaints at breakfast. Incidentally, this is from Beatrice's "post sauna" menu, so I felt that even though they were not May Day buns, they were still culturally appropriate.



CARDAMOM CREAM CAKE (Kardemummakakku)

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp freshly ground cardamom
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3 eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• Powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch fancy or plain tube pan and dust with flour.
Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cardamom, and salt in a mixing bowl. Blend in the eggs at low speed. Add the cream and beat at high speed, scraping the bowl, until the batter is the texture of softly whipped cream. Turn the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then invert onto a rack and cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.

BEETLE NOTES

The only part where I deviated here (gasp!) is that I had no "freshly" ground cardamom. I'M SORRY, BEATRICE. God, guilt trip much, she even SAYS at the beginning that you should "only" use freshly ground, because the powdered has "little flavour." [Hides head under a reindeer bone in shame.] Had I known I was making this cake earlier this weekend, I would have gotten some at the health food store I SWEAR, but I didn't decide to make it until yesterday morning and by then it was too late. So I had to use the stuff that came in the jar. I'M SORRY, BEATRICE. I compensated by adding another teaspoon in the hopes that the flavour would come through as it was supposed to. I'm sure you would have spat it out and left my house in a huff. It will never happen again I PROMISE.



To make it ostensibly a "coffee cake" I used a standard 9x5 inch loaf pan. I could have used a bundt pan I suppose, but the batter amount seemed appropriate for a loaf pan, and it made it easier to slice it up for the Lovely Librarians this morning.




The pre-pan batter. Verrrry whippy.




What's interesting about this cake is that it has no butter. Go on, check. Nope. None. It's a lighter version (in density that is, not calories) of a traditional pound cake because you really do whip the batter quite big. And the fact that cardamom is the only spice used (incorrectly as it may be) lets that flavour come through, and cardamom totally deserves more credit that it gets. It's a wonderful little spice.

So Hauskaa Vappua and Happy May Day to everyone, and Rabbit Rabbit! for good measure.

Bring on spring and summer, and lots of pickled herring.

And Happy May Day to the Lovely Librarians.

Note the Warrior Beetle, please.