Quick and Easy Apple Pie

At first it seemed that we would have totally appleless autumn. How wrong we were! Now I have received  several big boxes of apples from my dad and from my mother-in-law. I am very grateful of all the apples but right now I wish I would have no apples left - there are still so many apples to dry in the veggie dryer and there are still so many apples to turn into a jam. And since making jam and drying starts to be a bit boring I decided to make a really quick apple pie.

My pie tin was 25 cm (appr. 9-10 inch)
I measured most of the ingredients in small glass and used that during the whole recipe where I needed the glass.

A glass of eggs (I used four eggs)
A glass of sugar
A glass of all purpose flour
1-2 tsp of baking powder
(100 grams (3.5274 oz) chopped almonds)
appr. 100 grams (3.5274 oz) melted butter


1. Whisk the eggs and the sugar into foam.
2. Add the melted butter (make sure it's not hot) and mix lightly.
3. Mix the all purpose flour and baking powder and add them into the pie batter. (Add the chopped almonds) Mix just as much as you need to get it mixed - no more.
4. Pour the batter into a well greased pie tin.
5. Add the apple jam/pieces on the the pie so that all the pie is covered with them. They will fall on the bottom but that is what it is supposed to do.
6. Bake in the 180 °C (360°F) for about 30-40 minutes (or longer if the apples are really moist or if you want to use more apples in a pie.)  Keep checking the pie.

If you want you can drop the almonds from the recipe. I sometimes use them and sometimes not.

Apple jam I had made earlier today. You can also use store bought jam. My apple jam for pies has big pieces of apples and I spiced the jam with cinnamon and some sugar. I used about 450-500 (1-1.1023 lb) grams of this in my apple pie.

I  used about 1200 grams (2.4251 lb) chopped apples and added appr. 100 grams (3.5274 oz)  sugar, about 100 grams (3.5274 oz) water and 4 tsp cinnamon and let it simmer on the stove as along as it takes for apples to soften and break a little. That depends on the apple variety. So this is not really a jam after all, Maybe it should be called soft and spiced apple pieces. It's good though and not too sweet.

This works well with most jams or fruit pieces. use what ever you have in your kitchen.

Even better this pie is if you serve it with vanilla sauce or ice cream. Nothing beats the classic I guess. Enjoy!

Nutty Raisin Bread

This bread recipe is perfect for our already nutty day! :D

The life here has been more than hectic. I have missed writing my blog and recipes. Now it seems that things calm down a little and maybe I am able to post recipes more often.

This bread was so wonderful to make. After such a long time I was able to do something else than just basic bread. Basic is good too but it becomes boring after a while and you would like to add something extra in it. This time it was nuts and raisins. Breads and nuts go so well together!  Add some raisins or other dried fruits with them - it's well made match in heaven!

This is what I made this time. It was rather large dough since I had lots of sourdough starter which needed to be used. It's good idea to either down size the recipe or maybe you can freeze some of the bread so you will save some time on the following days.

600 grams (1.9842 lb) sourdough starter
1000 grams (2.2046 lb) water
150 grams (5.2911 oz) hazelnuts
250 grams (8.8185 oz)  raisins
3-4 tsp salt (or what ever you prefer)
1800-2000 (3.9683 - 4.4092 lb) grams all-purpose flours
appr. 100 grams (1.7637- 3.5274 oz)  olive oil


1. Add lukewarm water to the sourdough starter.
2. Add chopped nuts and raisins to the dough and let them soak for about 30 minutes so that the raisins get softer.
3. Add some flours and salt. Then almost all the flours
4. Keep kneading and adding flours if needed.
5. Add the olive oil
6. Knead some more (add flours if necessary) and let rest about 30 minutes before kneading a bit more and shaping into breads.
7. Cut the bread in a preferred way and let them rise under a baking cloth about 6 to 8 hours depending on the room temperature.
8. Bake in the 200°C (400°F) for about an hour or so. Knock the bottom of the bread and if you hear the nice "drumming" sounds it's well baked.

Enjoy the days nutty recipe!

The Last Gifts of the Garden

The autumn came fast once the summer started to fade away. The trees are starting to have lots of yellow leaves and this week is supposed to be the last warm week when the temperature hits 20 Celsius degrees. The air is wonderfully fresh and the early mornings are starting to be a little nippy.

The last week I have been very busy with  harvesting and even though the carrots and potatoes are still on the ground I was very busy with the pumpkins and courgettes. Today I picked up the very last ones. Still left the plants be since some autumns the weather warms just enough so that we will get one or two pumpkins more. Not huge ones but still food from our own garden. When the frost bites the plants for the first time I do the rest of the garden work. Then I will be sure that there is no more harvest to get.

Last week we got apples from my husband's  parents. This week I have been slicing and drying those apples for the winter. We use them mostly on homemade  muesli but they are also great for the kids to eat instead of candies. More healthier too! And now that  I am writing this our house is filled with a wonderful scent of apples drying. Most fruits and herbs do give that wonderful scent while drying. Makes you love the autumn.

Needless to say that baking has been very limited. I have only made the daily bread and that's it. No cookies or cakes since harvesting and my little one has taken all my time. But we have had much fun too and some unforgettable moments - like when he said mother (äiti) for the very first time. :)

Next week will be different too since then my husband will go back to work after his wonderfully long summer holiday. This was great time in many ways - mostly because this was a fist time in a long time that he was able to have this long summer vacation.

In a way it's a little sad that he has to go back to work. I know that the children will be sad too - it has been nice to have dad around this much and after the vacation it's back to more or less insane working hours. But this is how life is and we need to get by with the things that are our life. We all do our share.

In the following weeks I still need to dig up the potatoes, carrots, pick up the rest of the beans (I saw small ones hanging in the bushes) and I might dry some more herbs since those little treasures have already grown up again. Last gifts of the garden before the autumn really arrives.

Rough week

This week has been extremely busy one and the last couple of months have been like that.

I am a mother of two special needs children and our third one just started the speech therapy. Also my husband's father has been on and off hospital the whole summer and right now my husband is there to see him. Things look really serious at the moment. We are very worried about him.

This week has been filled with one of my children's school things and plans for this autumn's SI-therapy. The support system at school needs to be planned with the teachers and SI-therapist so that my son's days will get easier. Things seem to start rolling nicely now but there are still tons of things to do before it's all planned and scheduled.

And since there simply isn't enough in these things we are about to start a roof renovation and that will last a few weeks. That simply has to get done before the roof starts to leak and things get even worse. I can only imagine how much noise that will make and how difficult it will be with the child/children who are very sensitive to such noises. The daily routines became even more important.

I have been extremely happy about a certain organic store which has home delivery. That makes our week so much more easier since all those hours of  running around the stores are mostly  saved for something else which is simply great. I started ordering from there during the summer and now I think we could not live without it. It truly is a life saver. Last order looked  so delicious! I am also extremely happy that the beetroots had the root part too and not cut away like they do in the supermarkets and such. I just made a new order and it will arrive next week since weekend deliveries aren't available. But I knew that and planned accordingly. :)

Life is a bit rough at the moment but it will pass eventually. It always does. You just need to remember to smile. :)

Forest biscuit - Mettäkakko

Forest biscuits are something that people who lived in northern Finland used to take with them when they
went to work in the forest. Just by looking at the recipe you can tell it's old one since nowadays no one uses that much butter and sugar since it is considered unhealthy. Mettäkakko sure was a calorie rich eating! And it needed to be since the work at the forest was hard and lots of calories were needed. This was also easy thng to take with you and it preserved  for a long time. Sometimes it was made by using sour milk or mix of cream and milk (half and half). I made these by using milk.

These cookies are sort of mix between Finnish pulla and biscuit. It's crunchy like biscuit from the outside and inside it's beautifully mellow and when the first bite melts in your mouth you simply got to have another one. Surprisingly the biscuit is not overly sweet. I would have thought that with this much sugar in it it would be disgustingly sweet but it's not. And that's a good thing. Store them in an air tight container.

People used to bake a big batch of these and the dough was not divided in order to make a smaller portion so I made a big portion too just for the old times' sake. :)

1 kg ( 2.205 lb) milk
500 grams (1.102 lb) butter
1 kg ( 2.205 lb) sugar
2 kg (4.409 lb) all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder

1. Heat the milk and melt the butter and sugar in it. Don't let it boil. Mix the flour with baking soda and baking powder. After the it has cooled a little add the flour mix and knead it into the liquid.
2. Let the dough cool in the fridge over night and bake in the morning.
3. Roll out the piece of dough and roll it into 0.5 cm (0.2 inch) thick sheet and take pieces by using a drinking glass as a cookie cutter.
4. Put them on a papered baking tray and bake in 225°C (450°F) for about 10 minutes or until they get a tiny bit color.

Traditionally these are made without sugar or almond toppings but I wanted to try out those too - just for a change. :)  Either way they are nice.

Please, forgive me

First of all let me say that I am terribly sorry and I hope my mistake has not destroyed any ones baking. Please, forgive me.

Last night I discovered something extremely terrible and have been trying to sort it out somehow today.

I have a cup measurement set. So I started to bake and  I added flour according to one of my converted recipes and it was all wrong! But when I checked it from the source I used for conversions for the blog it was right. The problems is that my cup set says that 200 grams of wheat flour is about 1 cup and different conversions sites say it's something like 110-150 grams!!!! If the variation is that huge the recipe cannot simply work!!!

I mostly bake by using weight measurements since I think it's the only way to get really accurate results so I have been thinking about changing those darn cups into ounces and pounds. Does that sound good? Let me know and I'll fix the problem during this week. And again - please accept my sincerest apologies. I am so sorry.