Blinis

I am not sure how it is in your part of the world but at the moment here it is terrible weather. It seems that the short burst of spring kind of disappeared for a while. Too bad as I was so looking forward to have a long weekend during Easter with lots of sunshine and some spare time to work in the garden. It’s been a while that I had the luxury of three whole days of nothing planned, so better weather would have been nice. O well, on the plus side; it will be perfect for long sleep-inn’s in the morning, leisurely breakfast and some reading or watching movies. Ooo, that doesn’t sound too bad either, now does it. Gardening centers are traditionally completely packed for easter, which is weird if you think about it, but that seems to be the national day in which the entire nation decides to start working on the garden again! If the sun is shining I guess I would be no different. I do not like to work in the garden when it is raining though, so all the weeds will have to wait a little bit before being removed. I am sure they will not mind!

So enough about the weather now! For lunch today I finally, finally made the blinis that were on the menu for a while now. Just hadn’t gotten around to it or when I wanted to I didn’t feel like making them. But now I have. I did make blinis before as you can read here but that recipe was slightly different. I am not sure if this was a very traditional recipe either and I am sure Olga will tell me differently, but it was funny that, as soon as we decided that blinis would be the next thing to make, I kept getting new foodmagazines which featured blinis! And all look sort of the same. Olga told me that they are traditionally more like crepes in appearance and not at all like the thick little pancakes we see everywhere that are called blinis.Maybe they are different across varies part of Russia. I really do not know. But whatever they are called or whatever their origin; they are – for sure – very versatile. Because the taste is so neutral, you can combine them with both savoury things, as in the salmon and sourcream above or sweet as with the raspberry and honey below.

Blinis with raspberry and icing sugar

I loved them with the salmon and it is a great lunch. Quick too, if you do not count the rising time of the batter, but it literally takes seconds to make them. I whipped some of the sourcream with dill, pepper and salt and voila, nice little treat. In addition to that I also made a couple with raspberries, which to be honest is my personal favorite. I just love raspberries and for some reason, pancakes, to me are all about sweet stuff. I’ve never really liked the “pizza” pancakes you can get at any pancake house around here these days. Sure I like pancakes with bacon and cheese, but in general pancakes need to be sweet. But that is just my twisted mind speaking. And technically these are not really pancakes ofcourse.

But… they are part of the “pancakes-around-the-world” theme that Nurit from FamilyFriendlyFood and Trissa from Trissalicious and I have going on at the moment. Sofar we have managed to make the Dutch treat “poffertjes“, the Danish Aebleskiver and now the Russian Blinis.

Normally we all post together for a new recipes but due to a small misunderstanding our posts will be all over the place when it comes to the blinis. You can Trissa’s gorgeous chocolate blinis here and I will soon let you know where you can find Nurit’s too!

The recipe for these blinis is pretty simple:

INGREDIENTS

150 gr all purpose flour

2 eggs

150 ml lukewarm milk

3,5 gr of dry yeast

pinch of salt

For the sourcream; combine sourcream with some chopped dill and add salt and pepper to taste

Add flour, yeast, milk and the eggs together in a bowl and mix with a handmixer until smooth. Leave to rest and rise for about an hour at normal roomtemperature. To make the blinis heat a non-stick frying pan on medium heat and drop a tablespoon of batter in a pan. You can bake about four in one go as they are small.

This recipe makes 20 blinis.

Obviously for the topping you can use whatever takes your fancy. I kept it more traditional but check out Trissa’s for a more fancy approach!

In addition to making them with salmon and making them also with raspberries I also made a few with apple and gorgonzola and dressed these with maple syrup. Oooo golden goodness… So really you can combine these with just about anything that takes your fancy. You can eat them warm or you can eat them cold. Reheating them in the microwave literally takes seconds if you want them warm after all. They would also make quite a good starter or dessert!

Blinis with apple, gorgonzola and maple syrup

Related Posts:

• Blini’s
• Behind the scenes at a sweet photoshoot
• Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce
• Cranberry sauce
• Apple and caramel dumplings, I think

Blini's

Blini’s are traditional Russian buckwheat pancakes.

Why is a blini different then a regular pancake? Apart from the different method of baking them and the fact that you need to incorporate yeast in the mix etc. I really didn’t taste that big of a difference with the pancakes we would normally make here. I had read about blini’s in the decembernumber of Donna Hay Magazine and figured I wanted to give them a try. I had this idea to top the blini’s with a good blue cheese and some nectarines or other sweet fruit, so I faithfully followed the instructions to make these little buggers… O and yes, the biggest difference is the fact that they rise while baking, so they become higher then a regular flat pancake! I haven’t quite figured out if there really is a taste difference. Will need to eat more of them first!

I added flour, buckwheatflour, salt and (dry) yeast together. Put some milk together with sour cream on the stove to make it lukewarm. Add an eggyolk to it and slowly add the milkmixture to the flour. Let it stand for about half an hour, covered with a damp cloth and you’re good to go.

My idea was to make lovely round blini’s, which – as you can see – did not work all that well. And the ones in the photos where the best shape! Imagine what the rest looked like! Haha… I then had this visual in my head of making the blini’s look really nice with juicy nectarines and crumble some blue cheese on top. Well, that is where it did not go exactly as planned. The cheese was absolutely gorgeous but did not crumble at all. It was Blue de Basque (gorgeous and delicious!) and it had been sitting outside of the fridge for the good part of an hour, so was quite soft and didn’t get me the result I waned. Then it turned out that the nectarines I bought weren’t really ripe yet, so that was the end of the plan.

The honey made up a bit for the missing sweetness of the nectarines, but I can see how this would work really well with all sorts of fruit. Blini’s are quite versatile and you can have them with lots of different toppings. Either savoury or sweet. Despite the unripe nectarines this was already delicious, but will be so much better once the nectarines have ripened. I have some leftover which I am sure will be consumed later today by Tom, but I want to try this again and see if I can make it look and taste a little better then it did today.

Still for the experiment; quite successful. I will make these next time with regular pancake batter and see what happens if I bake them in a ring to achieve the same height.

Instead of the sourcream you can incorporate ricotta into the batter or add herbs or other flavours to make it either sweeter or more savoury. I started with the base recipe which is as follows:

BASIC BLINI’S (From Donna Hay magazine issue 42)

100 gr plain (all-purpose) flour, sifted

35 gr of buckwheat flour, sifted

1/2 tsp of salt

1 tsp of dry active yeast

125 ml of milk

1/3 cup or 80 gr of sourcream

1 eggyolk

Place the plain and buckwheat flours, salt and yeast in a bowl and stir to combine. Place the milk and sour cream in a saucepan over low heat and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until lukewarm. Add the eggyolk and whisk to combine. Gradually add the milk mixture to the flour mixture, stirring until smooth. Cover with a clean, damp cloth and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes or until bubbles appear on the surface. Whisk the eggwhite until soft peaks form, add the mixture and stir well to combine. Heat a lightly greased, large non-stick frying pan over medium heat. Cook teaspoonfuls of the mixture for 1-2 minutes or untill bubbles appear on the surface. Flip and cook for 1-2 minutes or untill golden. Allow to cool. Makes 30.

Related Posts:

• Blinis with smoked salmon and sourcream
• Blintzes
• Behind the scenes at a sweet photoshoot
• Pavlova with pomegranate and cranberry sauce
• Cranberry sauce