The Finnish Cookbook: Finland's best-selling cookbook adapted for American kitchens Includes recipes for sour rye bread, Bishop's pepper cookies, and Finnnish smorgasbord (The Crown Cookbook Series)

Our family lived in Finland for one winter--yes, dark, and brr! This cookbook has been used in our family now into the 2nd generation. The pulla recipe is the great treasure for us. It is a must for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It goes stale fairly quickly but can be refreshed in the oven. It's great toasted, although the almonds tend to fall off a bit.Here are our tips from years of baking it:--Add nutmeg along with the cardamom, as in the recipe for Viipori Twists.--We always use butter in our dough.--Keep the dough fairly soft, but still workable for braiding.--When you braid, make the strands fatter and shorter rather than long and skinny. With palms of your hands, roll forward and outward, then lift hands and roll back to even out strands.--To braid, squeeze the tips of 3 strands together. Then lift each strand as you braid straight out to the side, and be a bit loose. This gives a beautiful, full finished loaf.--Use a silicone mat underneath, to prevent the bottom from burning, which will almost certainly happen if baked directly on a greased baking sheet.--We prefer using milk on top of the raised loafs, topped with sliced almonds and sprinkled with sugar. Slice diagonally and serve with room temp butter.--You can get 3 shorter loaves on one 1/2 sheet size baking pan, side by side. One Christmas we made 18 loaves to give to friends and neighbors.If you get time, the potato stuffed rye boats are really good. They sound strange, and they do take time, but they're worth it.On p. 174, try out the Rutabaga Casserole. Even if you don't like rutabagas, this might change your mind. I like to use the recipe for Carrot Casserole on p. 167 to upgrade the rutabaga casserole.Be sure to look at all the recipes starting on p. 82. Finnish rye pastries sound strange, but are very nice.Sima, recipe on p. 206, is a unique fizzy Finnish lemonade. Follow the directions carefully. The raisins are there to guide you about how the brew is progressing, not for flavor. This is a definite must make recipe.And last, don't miss out on the fruit soup recipes, starting on p. 181 (Kiisseli). These are used hot or cold on top of many dishes.This is only a smattering of the many recipes in this little treasure. But it, and enjoy!

This is definitely the best cookbook for Finnish recipes. Some are a bit more Finn-American, but it has all of the important and most common Finnish foods, and the instructions are very good. I have now bought multiple copies of this particular cookbook to give to family members (and others who enjoy cooking international foods). You can never have too many Finnish cookbooks, but for certain this one MUST be in your collection.

I grew up on recipes from this book that echoed the family recipes on my Finnish-Sami side.A wonderful collection of timeless dishes.

Recipes that sound so familiar from my childhood! I can't wait to try the breads especially. This is a lovely addition to my book shelf, and I can make some of the foods my children have only heard about, never tasted.

I was an exchange student in Finland in high school and was lucky enough to live with a host family where the mother was an excellent cook of traditional Finnish food. This book includes all the main recipes my host mother made, and a few more I had heard about but never tried. I have made these recipes for Finnish friends and they agree that they are excellent. I have two other Finnish cook books, but this is by far my favorite, the one I have used again and again when cooking for my own family.

I enjoy this book, I have used about 5 of them and not all of them are perfect, I end up tweaking most the recipes. Slightly outdated but really fun to try old Finnish recipes to get in touch with your roots.

This is an excellent Finnish cookbook. My wife, who is of Finnish decent, has been thrilled with her copy. She says she has found many recipes that her mother and grandmother both used and it is especially fun to read the titles in the Finnish words she has known . We use a great deal of Finnish food in our daily diet, but there are a great many in this book that are yet to be tried. Beatrice Ojakangas deserves 5 stars for putting forth such a great book, and for mixing in a little of Finnish culture as a bonus.

My mother is Finnish and so, as a child we spent all our summers there. I had been looking for some time for this sort of cookbook, that would bring back all my childhood memories: my grandma's desserts, the breads, the traditional soups... these days you can find almost anything online, but I really wanted to have a one-stop reference cookbook. Almost every dish I remember is in this book. The only annoying thing for me is that this is written for the American market so all measurements are imperial. As a European I'd really like to see a version adapted to the metric system. Right now, O'm in the process of translating the measurements to at least my favorite recipes.