Mokkapalat, coffee brownies Finnish-style

These are the brownies that most Finns know ever since their mum made them (or at least those of my generation ;) : Mokkapalat! The bottom is very airy and the topping is wonderful containing real coffee.

Ingredients (quantities for a small oven):

-for the bottom:
3,3 dl wheat flour
3 eggs
2 dl sugar
1,3 dl milk
130 g butter or margarine
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1,3 teaspoon vanilla sugar

-for the topping:
2/3 package icing sugar
30 g butter or margarine
3-4 tablespoons coffee
1 tablespoon cacao powder
2 teaspoons vanilline sugar

Preparation:
Melt the butter meant for the bottom of the cake. Let it cool down for a while. Add the eggs and the sugar into a bowl and mix them with a mixer until they will have obtained a foamy composition. Take another bowl where you mix the rest of the dry ingredients together.

Take turns mixing gradually the milk and the dry ingredients to the egg-sugar foam. When you are done, mix the previously melted margarine into the foam.

Add baking paper on an oven plate and pour the foam on the oven plate evenly. Bake it on 200'c for around 15 minutes.

Melt the butter or margarine meant for the topping. Mix all the other ingredients together. At the end add the melted butter and mix. Spread the topping all over the cake, and don't be too slow or make pauses, because the topping is likely to become stiff soon.

If you like, decorate the cake with sprinkles.

Finnish-syle hamburgers with vegetarian steaks

This hamburger is inspired by Hesburger, which is Finland's biggest native fast food chain. They have got hamburgers with rye bread, and I remember them, but they don't yet have a rye bread vegetarian hamburger. I created one myself! They turned out so yummy, especially yummy for my Finnish taste. The vegetarian steaks I used I made with this recipe, but you can just as well buy ready made veggie steaks.

Ingredients (x2):
Two loaves of rye bread cut in two halves (in Finland for example Puikulat and Ruispalat work well)
butter
2 veggie steaks
2 slices of cheese
1 tomato
a small part of a bell pepper
salad leaves
ketchup
mayo
black pepper
salt
oregano

Preparation:
spread butter on the breads. Add a slice of cheese on two of the bread halves. Put the breads into the oven along with the vegetarian steaks (since they need to be heated too). Remove the breads from the oven when the cheese will have melted. You may need to keep the steaks in the oven somewhat longer.

Place the breads that have a layer of cheese on separate plates. Stuff first some salad on these breads. Then add mayonnaise evenly on the whole bread. Take the heated steaks and cut them into halves. Place the two halves next to each other on the bread, looking like two consecutive full moons. Now it's time to add a bit of ketchup. Then, cut the tomatoes into slices and lay 2-3 slices of tomato on each bread. At the end add some bell pepper that you have cut into thin sticks. Dust a bit of pepper, salt and oregano over the creations before topping them with the top half of bread. You may desire to serve these hamburgers wrapped into paper in order to make eating easier and more enjoyable!

Vegetable steaks

Nothing keeps you from making vegetable balls instead of steaks with this recipe!

Ingredients (x3):
150 g potatoes
½ or 1 egg
40 g emmenthal cheese
½ bag of deep frozen vegetables including cauliflower, broccoli and carrot
bread crumbs
salt
black pepper
nutmeg
olive oil

Preparation:
Cut the potatoes into pieces. Cook all the vegetables in a pan in salted water on heavy heat for some 10 minutes. When cooked, pour the water off and let the vegetables cool down and release stem for a while. After a few minutes mash the ingredients as if you were mashing potatoes, but don't mash them very fine. Add the cut cheese, the pepper, the salt and the nutmeg. Add the egg (keep in mind that the entire egg may not be necessary) and bread crumbs, until you get an easily manageable dough. Taste the dough to judge if you need to adjust more spices.

Spray some more bread crumbs on your cutting board. Form steaks out of the dough in your palms, dipping the steaks in bread crumbs. Pour olive oil on a frying pan and fry the steaks on rather high heat. Turn them around frequently and keep on frying them until they will have obtained a golden/brownish colour.

You can serve the steaks with for example potatoes or rice and a sauce (The sauce I used in the picture below was made by me ouf of butter, flour, milk, cheese, basil and lemon juice). If you don't mind it being more fast food kind, serving them with rice, mayo and ketchup is also a good idea.