One of the tastiest, most original Finnish pastries I have ever tasted is the mustikkakukko. It is a traditional sweet pastry from Savo region in the east of Finland. It is basically a rye-crusted blueberry pie made with wholemeal rye flour and lots of blueberries straight from the Finnish woods! My mum had just brought us litres and litres of blueberries so I decided not to freeze it all but to make a mustikkakukko for the first time ever. Here's a little report on what I did and how it went!
I found this recipe in an old leaflet from our local store. What you need is:
| Dough | |
| 200 g | Butter |
| 1 1/2 dl | Sugar |
| 4 1/2 dl | Rye flour (whole grain) |
| 1 ts | Baking powder |
| Filling | |
| 400 g | Blueberries |
| 1 1/2 dl | Sugar |
| 1/2 dl | Potato flour |
Take out all the ingredients and a pot, bowl and a mixing spoon.
To make the dough, melt the butter in a pot, let cool a bit and add the sugar. The combine the flour with the bacing powder and addd the mixture to the butter-sugar and mix well until smooth.
Then take about 3/4th of the dough and form a bottom and sides into a small baking dish (about 20 cm diameter). Then combine the blueberries with the rye and potato flour and place them in the dish. Create a cover from the remaining dough and place it over the blueberries, creating a closed rye crust to the pie.
Then bake in 200 degrees for about 45 minutes until the dough gets a bit brown.
That's it! You can eat the mustikkakukko as it is or with vanilla sauce or ice cream. We had it outside in the sun with a cup of coffee!
