Category: sweet things

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Lucky raisin rings

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What you need:

– 15-20 g fresh yeast

– 1 tablespoon of sugar

– 1 very large egg or 2 medium ones

– 300 g flour (or more, if needed)

– 200 ml fresh milk

– 75 g butter

– 150-200 g raisins

– a shot of rhum

– pinch of salt

How to make:

Mix sugar and yeast until it has turned into liquid. Add eggs and rhum and mix. Then add milk and strips or cubes of butter (you need to incorporate it later into batter, so the smaller you make it, the easier of a life you have). Mix lightly. Mix flour, salt and raisins and add to the mix. Start kneading, at least 5 minutes, if necessary, add more flour. The dough should feel like you could take parts of it and form it with your hand without getting your hands soiled with wet dough too much:) Leave the dough to rise for around 1 hour, until it has preferably doubled in size. Heat the oven to 200 degrees. Then take out the dough, take small pieces of it, roll them into long „snakes“ and pull them together into a ring.

You can leave them to second-rise for around 15 minutes.

Then bake for approximately 15 minutes – depending on how large rings you managed to make! And enjoy!

You can make the dough in the evening before and leave it to rise in the refrigeator & use in the morning. Nothing bad happens.

How much does it cost:

Eggs are around 30-40 cents, butter around 1 euro (how do the prices keep rising monthly?), raisins around 40 cents, everything else around 1 euro – so less than 3 euros total.

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Ultimate old school waffles

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What you need:

– 3 eggs

– ca 400 ml of milk*

– 80-100 g of butter

– 150 g sugar

– 300 – 400 g flour

– a pinch of salt

– if you wish: cardamom, brown sugar, cinnamon etc to taste

How to make:

First, you need a special waffle iron for that – the one which lets you make very thin waffles. See my sad soviet era product on the pic below.

So, in case you found one of these waffle irons, the recipe is really straightforward: mix sugar and eggs and all the spices. Add milk, flour and then hot melted butter, stir vigorously and you are ready to go.

Honest warning: you will probably need to adjust the recipe as you go, first waffles are trial waffles anyway…some poor soul needs to eat them to check the sweetness and crispiness.

The only thing you need to decide, is: do you like ultra thin and crispy goodness, the crispiest waffles you ever had? If the answer is yes, lean more heavily into butter and eggs and put less milk in. The batter should be thicker, but still a little bit runny.

Now, if you want soft waffles to roll marmalade, sweetened cream, yogurt or ice cream in there: less flour and more milk. You want the consistency of the batter be like a pretty thin smoothie.

The good thing with this recipe is, that you can’t really screw this one up! Made the batter too thick? – Just add more milk as you bake etc – adjust as you go!

Now just throw a ladle of batter into lightly-buttered hot iron ( you need to butter it only once, at the beginning) and let the waffle cook for 30 seconds to a minute, depending on your waffle iron and how crispy you want the waffle to be and enjoy!

* Milk: any milk works, but each has their tricks. Cow milk gives more crispiness. Rice milk allows to get these really thin see-through soft waffles. Oat milk calls for more butter to get the waffles taste good and so on.

How much does it cost:

Since this recipe makes a ton of waffles, the cost is not that great: eggs around 50 cents, butter around 1 euro, everything else ca 50 cents to 1 euro, so under 3 euro, total.

Behold that soviet-era waffle iron for super thin and crispy waffles.

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Moist and fluffy apple cake

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What you need:

– 2 kg apples

– 3 medium eggs

– 50 ml olive oil (or other oil, I won’t tell)

– 1 large lemon (for peel+ juice)

– 150 g brown sugar + some for topping

– pinch of salt

– 1 tablespoon of baking powder

– 200 g flour

– 1 shot of rhum

How to make:

Peel, core and cut your leftover winter-apples, set aside. Pre-heat the oven to 180-190 degrees. In a very large bowl,mix eggs, sugar (if your apples are very sweet, cut sugar down to 100g) and salt until semi-fluffy. Add lemon peel, rhum, juice of the lemon and olive oil and mix again. Add flour and baking powder and mix until well combined into a pretty runny batter. Add the apples and mix until everything has combined. Take a bundt pan (the form with a hole in the middle), oil the sides and pour the cake batter in, sprinkle sugar on top. Take care to leave room on the top, because the cake will rise slightly! Bake in the middle rack for around 40 minutes. When the cake comes out of the oven, it will be very soft, almost like a pudding and needs to cool down completely to keep its form.

Behold: soviet-era bundt pan

How much does it cost:

60 cents for the eggs, perhaps 20 cents for the flour, 20 cents for sugar, olive oil around 1,5 euros, lemon 40 cents, rhum and baking powder – 50 cents. Add some electricity into the mix and you have your huge apple cake at around 3,5 – 4 euros. And apples – in January, your cellar will still be half-full of them.

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German- style apple cake

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What you need:

– 4 large eggs

– 100 g white sugar

– 70 g of butter

– 200 g flour

– 1 teaspoon of baking powder

– 1 kg apples

– optional: brown sugar, cinnamon for topping

– a pinch of salt

How to make:

Peel, core and cut the apples into smaller pieces. Whisk sugar, eggs and salt together until the mixture becomes light yellow and foamy. Melt butter. Slowly incorporate flour and baking powder, mix. Add slowly the melted butter and mix until well incorporated. The batter should have the consistency of thick, but still runny molasses. Pour the batter into a larger baking form, cover with apples (no need to mix), top with sugar and cinnamon and bake at 180 C for 30-40 minutes depending on your oven.

How much does it cost:

If you are a good poor country-living Estonian, you would have apples and eggs left in the end of November. So butter is around 1 euro, flour is 10 cents, add some 10 cents for everything else plus electricity, the total cost won’t exceed 2 euro for an truly enormous cake.