Café Cecilia made me glad today!

Our first pop-up café ever was today! And we had such a great fun - both prepairing for the day and opening our home for people who popped in for a Sunday coffee and cake.

The whole family and grand-parents helped with the preparations and bakings and the closer we got the pop-day the more there were new ideas popping.

Some we had time to try out and some will have to wait for the next pop-up.

The bakings succeeded splendidly - even if our muffins became too healthy: we had forgotten the butter from the dought...

Luckily they didn't look too healthy!

The Italian chocolate cake, torta di ciaccolato is our favourite and the queen of every big celebration in our family.

The Kisses are baked according to an old recipe and are dopped in melted butter and sugar.

It was lovely to meet new people and have time to chat with old friends, and of course, tell about the house and Cecilia...

        Thank you for your visit - we had a great day!

Dear Fredrika,

greetings from lovely winter weather! 

I thought about you today when baking your muffins. Yes, the ones that you always baked for your dear late husband...

He loved them - and hunting, both wild game and women. And you raised the children, decorated your home - I admire the beautiful stencil painting you did - and sat beside Johan Ludvig's bed when he was paralyzed and needed company. I heard you could read from many languages aloud and translate simultaneously to Swedish. And you could write, too.

What did he do? He wrote, I must admit, beautifully. Poems about stubborn but brave Finnish people. Our national anthem Our Land. Farmer Paavo and his wife who struggled against the frost that took their harvest time after time.

So I baked to honour him, too. Tomorrow it's your day. We took a head start today...

- But mum, what shall we do the whole winter? - At least now we'll have some coffee. Tove Jansson.

When shall we bake for Tove, too?

http://www.runeberg.net/runeberginkoti/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jansson

Autumn guests of the farm

We have a lovely date every Monday here at our island, a family club of our parish. Today we had a visit from the family club, about twenty guests, moms, grand-mothers, babies, children and for example Rasmus who had his 5th birthday and offered us delicious cookies. We had baked yesterday here at Pellas - a big honey bread and apple-coconat muffins - and enjoyed a nice cup of tea and coffee around our long kitchen table chatting and watching the children play.

Pellas Honey Bread


100 gr butter
1 dl honey
5 dl water
50 gr yeast
12-13 dl wheat flour
1 tbs salt


Mix with a warm water the melted butter, honey, salt and yeast, and add 5 dl of the flour. Let the dough rise under a cloth for a half hour. Add the rest of the flour and mix with a hand so that the dough is soft but gets loose from the bowl.  Let it rise another 30 minutes. 


Divide the dough in two and make a round of the first part on the baking tray (with a baking paper on the bottom). Form a sneal of the other part of the dough on top of the round one. Put some flour on the bread, cover and let it rise again 30 minutes.


Bake in the oven 50 minutes on 175 degrees, cover for the last minutes not to get too dark bread. Enjoy with fresh butter.

We had a wonderful morning sun but a brisk wind and needed our woollen hats!

Of course the sheep and Agnes the Goat got their share, too, of dried bread that some of the guests had even brought from home. They were as glad as the hostess of the farm to get a house full of life!

Thank you all for a nice time together!