чаю

Tsaju!

I found it! The book of my happiness! Also, I went to see my parents and visited Kofeiinikomppania, this lovely coffee and tea boutique in Oulu. I would have loved to buy more (lit. every sort), but I figured I shouldn't, as I'm moving out pretty soon. So I only bought this black chili-mango tea, which turned out to be lovely. And some fatty-fatty cookies I made:

Kahvipöydän kunkku (Puputyttö ja Vohvelisankari, p.68)

2,5 dl wheat flour

1 dl dark cocoa powder

0,5 tsp baking soda

0,5 tsp salt

100 g lactose free margarine

3 dl sugar

0,5 dl soy milk (the original recipe used 2 tsp Orgran No-Egg, vegan egg replacement weirdness and  4 tbsp. water)

1 tsp vanilla sugar/vanilla aroma

1 tbsp instant coffee

120 g vegan dark chocolate, melted

120 g vegan dark chocolate, crushed

- Set the oven thermostat to 175 Celsius. Mix flours, cocoa powder, soda, salt and vanilla sugar (if you use liquid vanilla aroma, add it to the margarine-sugar mixture).

-Whisk margarine and sugar, add egg replacement weirdness or soy milk. I would have used soyguyt, but it was growing legs already...

-Mix instant coffee and melted chocolate. Add to the margarine mixture. Add dry ingridients and crushed chocolate. Mix well, but not too much.

-Make little clumps of dough on parchment paper and bake for less than 15 minutes.

-Eat. Wait for the new kitten (!!!) to make omnomnom sounds -> panic, as you realize you haven't seen the kitten for the last two hours. ( I still have no idea where it is, must be sleeping with my dirty underwear somewhere.)

(-Featured in the picture: cloudberry jelly I made a couple of weeks ago, new chili-mango tea.)

Getting ready for winter, part 4580

It's a family trait... as soon as I feel the autumn in the air, I get the urge to start canning, drying and doing weird tricks to berries, mushrooms, herbs, everything edible. Last weekend I made a short visit to my parents and brought a bag of frozen berries (there are too many, as my mother has the same urge every autumn). I don't have a freezer, nor a steamer, so I decided to cook the berries into juice and jam. Here's what I did:

In the middle there is cloud berry jelly. I've never made jelly before, but it turned out delicious. In the small jars there is cloud berry jam (from the jelly leftovers). The big jars are filled with red&white currant juice and the blue-lid jar with blueberry-raspberry-strawberry jam - which is leftovers from making blueberry juice.

I didn't really follow any strict recipes when I made these. Cooked juice doesn't differ that much from steamer juice, it's only a bit more work. You need a big kettle, sieve, bowl, berries, cold water, sugar and possibly some preservative (I use Atamon). Put the berries into the kettle, add water (enough to prevent the berries from burning, but not too much) and boil some 15-20 minutes. Pour the berries to the bowl through the sieve. Pour the juice back to the kettle, add sugar and warm up a bit. The juice needs to be hot when bottled. Add the preservative before bottling.

You can use the leftover berries to make jam. I use special sugar with added pectin to make jam. If you can't find sugar with added pectin, you can buy pectin from grocery stores or pharmacy. To make jam, you just put the berries into a kettle, pour in lots of sugar (with pectin) and cook it for 15 to 20 minutes. Add preservative and can while hot. To make jelly, just use juice instead of berries and more sugar.