A Summer Cottage and Summer Dessert

We spent last weekend at the little wooden cottage again. Spending summer holidays at a lakeside cottage is a tradition in Finland and we are fortunate enough to have access to such a cottage all year round. It was our first summer visit and we were keen to seen the forest and the lake during summer and without a layer of snow covering everything. Apart from the dense undergrowth, the forest floor was covered with thick soft mosses and fungi in many colours as well as little plants, berries and flowers. Everything looked lush and green. We are looking forward to a visit in the Autumn when all the leaves change colour and the landscape will, once again look completely different from our previous visits. It is nine years since we spent a couple of years in the USA and we are enjoying experiencing the definite changes of the seasons in the northern hemisphere again.

Saturday afternoon was spent lazily puttering around the lake on the motorboat. We spotted two fishing eagles circling above and chasing the crows as well as a couple of swans with 3 cygnets in tow.

Early Sunday morning we went hiking and as the sun came up it lit up the pine trees and the mist over the lake. Later on, the clouds came racing across the lake and it poured with rain for a couple of hours. Afterwards we went out hiking again and spent a long time photographing all the critters that came out after the rain.

Summer in Finland is berry season. All sorts of berries grow wild everywhere and is on sale from roadside stalls. There are so many berries we have never seen or even heard of. Berry picking is a favourite Finnish pastime and on Sunday afternoon, I also went berry picking and collected lots of raspberries.

Two weeks ago Paul’s sister visited us accompanied by our beautiful niece and nephew. It being summer we often discussed and consumed ice-cream during the visit. So my thoughts turned to ice-cream and specifically to sorbet when it came to time to use all those raspberries I harvested. Making a sorbet is so easy and lets the flavour of the berries come through.

While talking about ice-creams and our favourite flavours, Jane and I discovered that we both like green ice-creams but she opted for pistachio while I like mint. I had quite a bag of pistachio nuts in the pantry anyway, so I thought that a pistachio gelato would be good accompaniment for the raspberry sorbet.

Raspberry Sorbet

180 ml Water
180 ml Sugar
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 Tablespoons Liqueur of your choice(optional)
Lots of raspberries

• Simply boil the sugar and water together and let it cool.
• Blend the berries and add to the sugar syrup together with the lemon juice and liqueur.
• Let it cool in the fridge for an hour.
• If you don’t have an ice-cream machine, place in a flat cake tin or ice tray in the freezer.
• Beat it with a fork every half hour until frozen.

Pistachio Gelato

I found the recipe for Pistachio Gelato on the David Leibovitz website. I looked everywhere but cannot buy pistachio paste here in Helsinki, so had to make my own. The link to making pistachio butter is here or can also be followed from the recipe on David’s website.

What I did find while exploring for pistachio paste was a summery drink. A cute looking milkshake that I had to taste. Not made from berries, but a good match to have with all those frozen desserts.