Steemit Iron Chef 2017 #02 : Sklandrauši, a traditional Latvian dessert

So, I was listening in on Whaleshares hangout last weekend and there were a lot of awesome people there. I know, I don't usually write about food, but I have been wanting to make this dish for a long time and it is a traditional dessert from the West part of Latvia (my home country). It is very popular with my family, so I have been wanting to introduce my boyfriends German family to it for a while now. And as luck would have it, an awesome cooking contest was brought to my attention in the hangout, and this week it features carrots. Guess what my traditional desserts most important ingredient is? CARROTS.

Sklandrauši were traditionally made in Autumn, it used to be just a round rye bread in the very beginning, then carrots and potatoes were introduced to Latvians, and we started making cakes out of them, rolling up the sides, not to loose all that precious veggy juice.

It is not really a sweet desert, but it is very filling, I like the natural taste of it and the hard rye bread crust around. It puts accent on the sweet taste of carrots, and because of that it is not so unnaturally sweet.

The recipe itself is easy, but all work together takes a long time (2 hours for me). Here are the ingredients I used for 13 pieces of ''sklandrauši'':

For the dough

300 g rye flour
40 g wheat flour
120 ml hot water
40 g butter
a pinch of salt

For filling

800 g carrots
300 g potatoes
100 g sugar
a little bit of salt
1 egg
30 g butter
3 t/s of fresh cream.

For topping

Fresh cream
Sugar

This recipe can be made vegan easily, there in no need to use eggs or fresh cream, or butter for that matter, the only ingredients that you need 100% are the flour, salt, sugar, you can use oil instead of butter, potatoes and most importantly, carrots. There are no ''sklandrauši'' without carrots.

I used all the other ingredients, but you don't have to, the batter will come out good no matter if you use butter or oil and the filling can be just grated vegetables.

So, I started with picking up some carrots from our garden, they are not the biggest, but they are ours, plus they are the star of this recipe.

The thing I did first was peal the potatoes and carrots, then put the potatoes to boil, and blend the carrots into tiny pieces.

After that I started making the dough, by heating the water and adding butter and salt to it.

Pour that mixture in a bowl and add the flour, mix everything together. The batter has to be hard, but easy to roll out. Use a form or a knife to make round pieces and roll op the sides. It should look like in the picture below, the batter should be rolled 3 mm thick.

Put all the forms on a baking pan.

When you are finished with the dough and the potatoes are boiled, it is time for the next step.

Grate the potatoes and add salt, you can add fresh cream and butter if you wish.

Preheat the oven to 230 degreed Celsius.

Add sugar, plus anything else that you may want (butter, egg, cream) to the grated carrots.

Now fill the potatoes in the forms first and carrots second. The potatoes should be 1/3 of the carrot mix, because, and I am stressing this again, carrots are the champions of this recipe.

Now put it in the oven and leave for 15-30 minutes, you will see when it is ready, as the carrots on top will get a little bit browner.

Last thing, that is optional, cover the cakes with fresh cream and sugar, they are better eaten warm and fill you fast.

Labu apetīti! I hope it tastes good for you, if you try it out, too :)

I know I look overly excited, but it is the first time I tried the recipe and it came out delicious!

Have the best of the day and a wonderful life,
Linda