Eele's Estonian Kringel

I have very kindly been given something that I’ve often heard about, but never actually come across. Fresh yeast. Most modern recipes know that it can be difficult to get, and give the equivalent dried quantities, so I normally skip older recipes that only give the amount of fresh yeast required.  But my friend Kirsty is a star, who always uses fresh (and is kind about my bread efforts using dried) who discovered that she had way to much fresh in her fridge and passed on some of it to me.

Ohh, it looks like the surface of the moon!!!!!

Next question is what recipe to use it in. Hmm. Have you been watching the Hairy Bikers latest series Mums Know Best?A couple of weeks ago they featured a lovely Estonian lady called Eele who showed us all her Estonian Kringel, a lovely yeasty celebration bread. It did look good on the telly, but when I downloaded the pdf, I saw the dreaded words…..fresh yeast. But now I had some, so today, I made the Kringel and I’m going to have to hunt high and low for those times when Kirsty hasn’t got the fresh stuff to spare.

It’s a fairly easy recipe and doesn’t contain many ingredients, nothing that you shouldn’t have around (except for that dratted yeast), but I do think that the recipe could have been better written. When it says to roll up the dough “like a Swiss roll then cut in half’” I think the word “lengthways” should have been included. Not like you’re cutting yourself a slice of Swiss roll to go with a cup of tea. Ooops.

I was unprepared for how fast real yeast can rise.

Note to self – next time, use a bigger jug.

Once the dough is ready, spread with the butter, sugar and raisins, and then roll it up into the Swiss roll shape. Cut in half LENGTHWAYS and then twist the 2 pieces of dough into a plait. Now, I couldn’t get it to go into the B shape required, so I decided to make it into a wreath shape and see how I got on with that.

As you can see, a lot of the sugar and butter melts together and forms sticky pools that solidify. I didn’t bother with the suggested chocolate sauce as this would give Andy a headache, so once it’s cooled, a sprinkle of icing sugar will finish it off nicely.

As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I’m afraid that we managed to scoff about a quarter before it had even had a chance to cool down, I’ll try and take some photos tomorrow of it looking pretty – but I’m not sure it’ll last that long.

**UPDATE** Apparently, it holds together very well when being dunked into hot coffee, and is delicious with it **UPDATE**

Saturday morning……

We now have less than a quarter left – awesome!!!!!!