Joulutorttu, a Finnish Christmas Pastry

This is a very Finnish and very old pastry. Actually no-one really knows the true origins of this pastry, but everyone eats them during Christmas time in Finland. The first mentions of this kind of pastries is from 18th century.

Traditionally you eat these with coffee after every meal during the Christmas season.

There are two ways to eat these pastries:

1. Eat them right away when they are hot. Take a big bite and burn your mouth and lips in lava hot plum marmalade which sticks to your mouth. Proceed to try to cool your mouth with your extra hot coffee and burn some more.
2. Wait that the pastries cool down and then proceed to eat one "ear" at the time and leave the center part for the last.

To make this traditional pastries collect these ingredients:

• Puff pastry
• plum marmalade
• a little bit of water

Start with cutting the puff pastry in squares and cut from the corners towards the center leaving some space in the middle.

Slightly moisten the center part of the puff pastry with the water and fold in one of the cut edges like shown in the picture.

Continue to fold the corners of the square like in the pictures. Making the center of the puff pastry little moist with every folding helps to make them stick together better.

Once the corners are folded, put about a table spoon of marmalade in the middle. After this put them in the oven at 225 degrees for about 10/15 minutes or until they get a nice gold color.

Enjoy!