The Holy Week is here and the groceries are full with chocolate Easter Eggs, lamb, pasch (pasha, an Easter desert made out of quark and found in the Easter table of a Greek Catholic family) and of course the traditional Finnish Easter dessert mämmi, which is made out of water, rye flour and malt and flavoured with dark sugar syrup and sour orange (pomeranssi, Citrus aurantium) peel. The making of this rye dessert is quite difficult and demands lot of time. So I prefer buying it ready made.
But let’s start with the main course. It is traditional to eat lamb and home made cheese, egg-milk and blood sausage on Easter. Nowadays the lamb can be found in many tables on Easter. As a dessert we eat mämmi or pasha.
Mämmi is often served also to the foreigners happening to be in Finland at the time of Easter. I admit it may look awful, but served with the right accompaniment it tastes quite good. And not even all Finns like it. Never try to eat it warm, without cream and sugar. Mämmi is one of my favourite Finnish desserts, but I never eat it warm or as such. Mämmi has to be cooled to fridge temperature (around + 3 - 4 C) and covered with sugar and almost drowned with cream. If ever in Finland that’s a dessert one has to experience. A foreign friend of mine tasted mämmi after it had travelled on room temperature almost a day to the tropic and of course served as such. I well understand, why my friend is now quite reluctant to try mämmi again. ;) The Finns have been eating mämmi since medieval times in Western parts of Finland.
Then we of course have the Easter eggs. They can be real, boiled eggs, only egg shells, chocolate eggs or even eggs made out of gold and jewelry. The most beautiful, non eatable Easter eggs have most probably been made by P.C. Fabergé and his goldsmiths in St. Petersburg f. ex. to the Russian Tsar and his family. Quite many of the goldsmiths working in the Fabergé’s factory in St. Petersburg were actually Finns. :)
What about then the eggs, that we can eat? The variation of chocolate Easter eggs is huge. Some of them contain a little toy or other surprise in them, some are hollow and made out of chocolate and then there is the Mignon Egg.I personally prefer Fazer’s Mignon egg. It has been manufactured for 117 years. Karl Fazer brought the idea of the egg from one of his business trips to Germany. It has been made since 1896 and it is still one of the most selling Easter Eggs in Finland. Also the Russian Tsar and his family enjoyed this eatable egg. According to Fazer, this year they are manufacturing 1,5 million Mignons (and there is 5,4 million inhabitants in Finland). The Mignon is solely hand made. To a genuine, emptied egg shell a mass of mandel-nut-nougat is poured and the tiny hole in the egg shell is sealed with sugar mass. One Mignon weighs 52 g.
From the following link you can find a video of the making of Mignon.
Before eating the Mignon one can also paint it. The painting of real, boiled eggs or f. ex. Mignons is a nice tradition we also have. The children are taught quite young to paint the Easter eggs. What is needed is boiled egg, emptied whole egg shell or a Mignon. The surface is then painted with watercolors. The style is free. The egg can be decorated with only one color or multiple colors. It can have pictures, texts or patterns. The decoration is fun doing for all, independent of age.
And on 1st Easter Day, next Sunday, if the weather is not cloudy, I shall wake up at just after 5 am and go to see the Easter Sun dancing. ;)
Happy Easter!
Hyvää Pääsiäistä!
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