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.

Apple-white chocolate cupcakes

Ingredients (7 cupcakes):

The dough:
75 g margarine or butter
½ dl sugar
1,5 dl wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon vanilla sugar
½ egg

The filling:
1 apple
60 g vanilla chocolate
cinnamon

Short crust pastry on the top:
20 g margarine
0,3 dl sugar
0,5 dl wheat flour

Preparation:
Put the warm margarine and all the other ingredients of the dough into a bowl. Mix them with your hands. Do the same with the short crust pastry ingredients in another bowl. Cut the apple and the white chocolate into small pieces. Form 7 balls out of the dough and settle them on the bottom of the cake cups. Add the pieces of apple and white chocolate into the cake cups. Dust the short cust pastry on top of the cupcakes. Finally add some cinnamon.

Bake in the oven heated to 200'c for about 20-30 minutes.

Serve the cupcakes after having stored them for 1 hour in the fridge.

Finnish style oat & chocolate cookies

Here's a recipe for cookies including dark chocolate, hazelnuts and lots of oats. They even made me think of how great it would be to eat them along with some hot chocolate, having a view on the lake at sunset. Maybe I am getting Finland-nostalgic.

Ingredients (12-14 cookies):
100 g dark chocolate
50 g hazelnuts
2 dl wheat flour
2 dl oats
1 teaspoon vanilline sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
100 g margarine or butter
1 dl sugar
1 egg

Preparation:
Cut the chocolate and the hazelnuts into small pieces. Mix together in a bowl the dry ingredients. Mix the soft butter with sugar. Add the egg and mix intensely. Finally add the dry ingredients and mix the dough until it becomes uniform. Form a bar 20 cm long and 6 cm wide out of the dough. Cut the bar into 1 cm wide pieces and place the pieces of dough on baking paper on an oven plate. Bake them in the oven heated to 175 c for around 12 minutes (they are ready when they have got some colour).

Banana-chocolate muffins with a shade of lemon

Here's a recipe for muffins of sophisticated taste characterised by the richness of dark chocolate (although I don't use the darkest one possible), the sweetness of banana and the freshness of lemon.

Ingredients (x12 muffins):
150g butter or margarine
2 dl sour cream
zest of one lemon
2 eggs
1 ½ dl sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
3 dl wheat flour
1 dl cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
a pinch of salt
3 bananas
200 g dark chocolate

Preparation:
Heat up the oven to 175 c. Melt the butter and add into it the sour cream and the lemon zest. Mix together the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar so that the final result is light and airy. Mix the sourcream-butter mix into it. Mix in another bowl the wheat flour, cacao powder, baking powder and salt and add this flour mix into the dough. Slice the bananas and cut the chocolate into pieces and add them into the dough. You can however set aside some pieces of clocolate in order to decorate the surface of the muffins with them.

Fill cake cups with the dough. Bake in the middle level of the oven for 15-20 minutes.

Carrot muffins

These are absolutely delicious muffins with carrot. Alike with the carrot cake, but in muffin form. Common in Finland.

Ingredients (12 cake cups):
around 300 g carrot
4 dl wheat flour
3 dl sugar
2 tl baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 dl crushed almonds
100 g margarine
3 eggs

For the topping:
200 g unspiced unripened cheese (for example Philadephia)
1 dl icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Preparation:
Mix all the dry ingredients with each other. Peel and grate the carrots. Melt the margarine and then let it cool down a little. Mix the eggs, margarine and carrots together.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet dough and mix. Fill the cake cups quite full with the dough. Bake in 200 c for 20 minutes.

Mix the ingredients for the topping. Wait until the muffins have cooled down before you spread it on them. You may even add some more decorative things on them, like we did by adding extra pieces of carrot.

Pan di Stelle

I prepared last Saturday evening Pan di Stelle cookies. I have a fascination with them from my time in Italy and as I found a recipe for them, I immediately wanted to try it! Pan di Stelle is a cocoa tasting biscuit with white stars, available in Italian stores under the brand Mulino Bianco. Here's how I made them instead (and attempted to make the stars in my own way).

Ingredients (50 cookies):
500 g wheat flour
2 tablespoons honey
50g cacao powder (sugarfree)
1 egg
160 g butter or margarine
370 g icing sugar
50 g milk (more if needed)
20 g grinded nuts
2 teaspoons baking powder
a bit of salt

Preparation:
Mix the icing sugar (leave 100 g for later use) and butter or margarine. Mix into the dough the grinded nuts and the yellow part of the egg (conserve the transparent part for later). Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until you have obtained the kind of dough that resembles to short crust pastry. Roll out the dough until it is quite thin (less than a cm). Cut biscuits out of it in the shape you like.

Take up the remained transparent part of the egg and 30 g icing sugar. Mix them together and brush the cookies with it. Cook in a pre-heated oven at 180 c for 10-15 minutes.
Once they've been to the oven, cut a pattern out of baking paper (or something else) with holes in form of stars. Dust icing sugar on the biscuits through the pattern.

Cakies with a warm chocolate heart

These little chocolate cakes in cake cups are great for giving your friends a good vibe when they come and visit you. Ideal with a hot drink like hot chocolate or espresso. What is special about them is that the inside is soft and really melts in the mouth. Also, there will be some strips of liquidy chocolate here and there. The minus is that you must do something else while they freeze up in the freezer for 3 hours before entering the oven.

Ingredients (7 cake cups):
100 g milk chocolate or dark chocolate
80 g butter
80 g sugar
20 g flour
3 eggs
1 pinch cinnamon
(icing sugar)

Preparation:
Mix the sugar and eggs in a bowl. Add the flour and dust it with a little cinnamon. Melt together in a pan the chocolate and the butter. Add the chocolate-butter into the dough you first were preparing. Mix until you obtain a pretty uniform colour. Butter the cake cups and sprinkle them with flour. Pour the mixture into the cake cups. Put the cake cups into the freezer for at least 3 hours. 3 hours passed, heat up your oven to 210 c, take the cake cups out of the freezer and put them directly into the oven. Bake them for 17 minutes. You can optionally decorate them with icing sugar when they're ready.