Recipe for northern Finnish comb scones

"Kampanisu", or "comb scone" in English, is a traditional sweet pastry from northern Finland. Grandma Lempi ("love" in old Finnish), who lived in the outskirts of Rovaniemi, used to bake them into processed sour whole milk whereas most recipes recommend plain sour milk. (I'm not sure if there's a better translation to distinguish the two; the former basically resembles non-sweetened elastic yoghurt while the latter is a thick, sour drink.)

Lempi, like most other old people in the area, used to bake them regularily so as to make sure that she could serve some whenever someone happened to drop by.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

• 750 g wheat flour (about 10 dl)
• 250 g margarine
• 1.5 dl sugar
• 0.5 tsp baking soda
• 1 egg
• 200 g processed sour whole milk (or alternatively about 5 dl of plain sour milk)

How to bake

• Heat the oven to about 270 celsius (about 520 fahrenheit)
• Mix the margarine and sugar in a bowl. Don't worry if it stays a bit lumpy, the following step will take care of it:
• Sprinkle the sour milk with soda and mix immediately with the margarin and sugar. (be sure not to leave the sour milk and soda in a small dish, otherwise it will foam over.)
• Add the egg and flour and whisk until smooth.
• Shape the dough to a 0.5 cm thick rectangle with a rolling pin. Flour both your hands and the rolling pin generously; the dough is rather sticky.
• Cut the plate to 4 x 8 cm sized blocks and make 3 cuts (about 2 cm wide) to each of them. The scones scone now should look like combs with 4 thick spikes.
• Bake about 5-10 minutes (until the pieces get a beautiful golden color)

Enjoy with milk when fresh or with coffee, tea or hot chocolate later. Comb scones dry easily, so store them into a plastic bag

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(Feel free to use the recipe and the picture of the scones however you like.)