Karjalanpiirakka - Karelian pie

The Karelian pie, also known as karjalanpiirakka, is one of the most popular foods in the country, and, as the name suggests, it originated in the Karelian region. It's a rye flour cake with a rice filling that can be sweet or savoury. Karjalanpiirakka can sometimes be found with different fillings, such as potato or carrot, but rice is the most common. This pie is typically eaten for breakfast with a little butter and a boiled egg.

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup white short grain rice
• 1¼ cup water
• 2 cups milk
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ¾ cup rye flour (ruisjauho)
• ½ cup spelt flour
• 5¼ oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 hard-boiled eggs

Instruction:

1. The stuffing is prepared like rice pudding by cooking round rice in a mixture of water and milk. After a long cooking, the ingredients amalgamate and form a kind of dough, which may be easily handled when cooling. It is imperative that utensils are cold during assembly so as not to soften or moisten the dough.
2. The pastry is made from a mixture of water, rye and spelt flours. These flours, more rustic than wheat, give a particular lightly roasted flavor to karjalanpiirakka.
3. The pastry should be soft enough to be divided into sausage shapes and rolled out finely. It is imperative to roll out a circle of 7 to 8 inches (18 to 20 cm), as set out in the TSG.
4. The filling is placed in the center of each circle, and the edges are folded and pinched to give the tart its characteristic shape. The filling remains visible in the center of the small “canoes”.
5. Baking in a very hot oven for about ten minutes, the pastry should be lightly colored. Once out of the oven, the tarts are immediately immersed in cold milk for a few seconds. They are then left to rest and topped with munavoi.
6. This topping is made by simply combining crushed hard-boiled eggs and butter into a type of spread.