Baked Cheese

[pammyowl]

What can anyone tell me about Finnish baked cheese? I will put the name from the the package here, but I don't know how to add the two dots on top of the last a in the word, sorry! Juustoleipa. Is it a dessert or an appetizer, how should I serve it? I saw it at my co-op and was intrigued so I bought it, but now I don't know what to do with it!

[stormylee]

pammyowl wrote:
What can anyone tell me about Finnish baked cheese? I will put the name from the the package here, but I don't know how to add the two dots on top of the last a in the word, sorry! Juustoleipa. Is it a dessert or an appetizer, how should I serve it? I saw it at my co-op and was intrigued so I bought it, but now I don't know what to do with it!

Mia in Germany just asked the same question in the coffee thread above! Leipäjuusto is primarily treated as something-to-have-with-coffee: you can just slice it up and have it as-is. The cheese is not particularly sweet though, so you might want to add a bit of something to it. It goes very well with sweet berries: cloudberries are the #1 choice, but other berries work just as well, as do jams.

A very traditional way of enjoying leipäjuusto with coffee is to cut the cheese into cubes, put the cubes into a coffee cup, fill the cup with coffee, sip the coffee, and then enjoy the warm, coffee-soaked cheese cubes last.

As a dessert, you can cut the cheese into single servings, place the pieces into a pie dish, pour a cup (give or take!) of heavy cream on top, and bake at 200 C for about 20 minutes (until the cheese has softened). Serve with berries or jam.

Because the cheese itself is quite neutral-tasting, it also works well in salads. It's a bit like mozzarella in that sense, but I think leipäjuusto works better than mozzarella if there's something sweet in a salad, like grapes, melon or strawberries. Add lettuce, cucumber, a bit of red onion, cherry tomatoes, whatever you fancy!

[stormylee]

Oh! And there are regional differences in the name and I come from the leipäjuusto area myself, which is why I called it that - it is also called juustoleipä, as it says on the package!

[pammyowl]

Thanks for the ideas! I love the coffee idea, being a coffee junkie. The salad sounds incredible,too. Hmm, I also like the idea of baking with preserves. Oh, dear, I may have to get another block!

[pammyowl]

I looked up cloudberries the other day. Is it true each bush has only one Berry? Wow, they most be expensive!

[stormylee]

Yup! And cloudberries typically grow in swamps, so picking them is no picnic either - they do cost quite a bit.

[pammyowl]

They look really good. What flavor would you compare them to,a berry that grows here in the states?

[stormylee]

Hmm, a tough one! They have the same seedy-crunchiness going on as raspberries (they are firmer than raspberries, though), but they taste more like a tarter variety of apples, really. Unlike most other berries, cloudberries do not, in my opinion, fare well in sweet products like jams or liqueurs - somehow the sugar does not enhance the flavour of the berry but turns it into something else entirely. It's all a matter of taste, of course, but I think it's safe to say that eating fresh or frozen and thawed cloudberries is a very different experience, taste-wise, than eating cloudberry jam.

[pammyowl]

Would you compare them to lingonberries?

[stormylee]

Not really - lingonberries are far more tart than cloudberries.