Tippaleipiä ja simaa

For making sima some yeast and lemon are needed

First of May in Finland is a public holiday called Vappu. It isn't only a day of workers but also a day of students and spring. In Finland we don't have Fastnacht/Karneval like in the German speaking countries and I think that Vappu could be seen as sort of a Carneval, specially for the kids. There are mask balls for both kids and adults. Specially the May Day's Eve is for many students a big "drinking-party"-thing because on the Vappu day you will have time to recover :D The Vappu Day itself is a popular day for a picnic in a park no matter what the weather is like.

Part of Vappu are balloons, paper streamers, sima, sparkling wine, tippaleivät and munkit. Students will be wearing their special hats when they go for a picnic or Vappulunch. I have already once wrote about munkkis and now is time for sima and tippaleipä.

Some sima coming up

Sima is a drink which we drink specially around Vappu. It's kind of homemade lemonade. For the standard sima one needs water, sugar (preferably some fariinisokeri...don't have it here so I used normal brown sugar), yeast, raisins and lemons. This year I also added some ginger, just because I like it so much. You will need about 5 days to prepare sime. First you heat up the water and let the sugar dissolve to it. Then you add lemon slices and let the liquid cool down to lukewarm until you add the yeast. Mix well and let the pot stand in the room temperature about 24 hours. After that you can bottle liquid. Add some raisins and a spoonful of sugar to each bottle. Refrigerate. After about four days, when the raisins are swimming on the top, sima is ready to be enjoyed.

Sima

3 l water

400 g brown sugar

1 lemon, cut in slices

(piece of ginger)

a tiny amount of fresh yeast, about a size of  small pea

For the bottles:

Spoonful of brown sugar and some raisins

Funny taking a nap

Tippaleipä is made of a slightly sweet and almost runny dough piped into a hot oil and when ready sprinkled with icing sugar. I guess it's a bit similar to German Strauben or American funnel cake. I can admit that I never tasted either one of them so I can't vouch for fact. My recipe I took from the book Kotiruoka.

 Tippaleivät

4 eggs

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 dl milk

4 dl wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

Break the stucture of the eggs in a bowl with a whisk. Add sugar, salt, milk and mix. Add flour-baking soda mixture. Fill a piping bag with the dough. Place a metal stencil in a hot oil and pipe the dough into it. That way it will keep the round form. Before serving sprinkle with icing sugar. 

My tippaleipäs didn't turn out so great looking but you can check out some more photos of how they should be with the google photo search: Tippaleipä. By the way, this was my first time ever making these myself...my family is rather the "munkki for Vappu"-kind of family.

Tippaleipä

Tippaleipä with sima

Chilling