We’ve done our best to try as many traditional Finnish dishes as possible while here, and last night a good friend of ours had a “surprise” for us at her apartment. It was Mämmi.
We’ve been hearing about this traditional Easter dessert for quite a while, and we’ve gotten mixed reviews. Finns have told us that they love it, but it doesn’t look appealing to the eye. Non-Finns who live here say that it doesn’t look or taste good. But, we had to try it for ourselves. It’s usually served in a birch-wood dish, and since it’s mainly mass produced (due to the incredible amount of time it takes to make on your own) it’s packaged in birch-looking cardboard (see above picture).
Mämmi is mainly made up of rye flour (the same used to make ruis bread), powdered rye malt and darkened molasses. It’s eaten cold with heavy cream and sugar. Not being a fan of ruis I didn’t have high expectations for mämmi, but it was better than I expected. It tasted a bit like ruis, but mainly like raisin bran. It wasn’t very sweet (although I suppose I could have made it sweeter if I really loaded the sugar on) and the texture was similar to peanut butter. All in all it was pretty good, and with a cup of tea and good company it was an excellent Finnish experience!
The Wild Rose 