Every time when some foreigners ask me „hey, what kind of holidays do you – one million people – celebrate there in Estonia?“ I tell them about Shrove Tuesday. A holiday when almost every Estonian is sledging down the slopes (shame on you if you don’t!) and eating special buns with whipped cream called ’vastlakukkel’. „Ooooh…. You’re so… cool nation!“ say the foreigners and they feel jealous and promise to come to Estonia next year. I don’t mention that usually we don’t have snow on that time 😀
This is what I was meant to bake… Photo: Marko Saarm
At first I was the one who went to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients. How hard can it be? Heh. Well, to start with then Tom doesn’t eat much wheat. So I decided to make cupcakes with rice flour and put whipped cream on top of it. Close enough?
So, I found myself at the supermarket. Where is the rice flour? No rice flour? Okay, maybe I can make it with corn flour.. My friend who came with me (that time he didn’t know that shopping with me is pure suffering :D) notices some blue packages in the baby section. Vitaminized rice flour for the babies! Hallelujah, that’s for us. Then, after 5 minutes of playing hide-and-seek with baking powder we just try to manifest it and here you go – it’s behind the dry yeast.
No cupcake pans. Maybe I could do some origami with baking paper? But no baking paper. Let it be – whipped cream is waiting!!! …only in my dreams…
Vitaminized rice flour for the babies! Perfect.
Back to home. The situation is more than ideal: we have exactly 0 ingredients to make the real buns with whipped cream. Oh, and of course we don’t know how to use our gas oven. Luckily there are some YouTube videos for extra dumbs (works for me!).
I decide to make a carrot cake.
Now it’s Alice’s turn. „Pleaaasse, please find some whipped cream for me,“ I beg her when she leaves home to go to another market. After a while she comes back, without cream but with 5 metres of baking paper. Now we have 5 metres of baking paper, 0 buns, and one carrot cake. Not bad.
Another friend of mine comforts me that he has heard that there must be at least one market which sells whipped cream in Bishkek! If you’re lucky.. Of course he is not exactly sure where is this magical shop located.
Drought of whipped cream I say! At least we got our ’vastlakukkel’ (Kyrgyz style). Or a last piece of it:
Carrot cake with sweetened curd.
