Tyrkisk Peber muffins – Turkinpippurimuffinssit

Let's make weird black muffins! One day I had this insane baking idea of making Tyrkisk Peber muffins. Tyrkisk Peber is basically Finnish salty liquorice "salmiak" and very popular among Finns and Scandinavians but other people sometimes find it slightly peculiar. I wonder why that is when it has been described as "tongue-numbing"and "almost-stinging"? Well I for one am obsessed with salmiak and I sometimes try to put it where it doesn't necessarily have any business being in.

These muffins are quite sweet although they have the slight spiciness of the liquorice. I tried not to overdo it with the Tyrkisk Peber but it still can be clearly tasted. You could also use other Tyrkisk Peber variations than the original. I could imagine that the Hot&Sour product would work out well in this. I think even some other salmiak or liquorice products would do as it can be hard to get the originals outside of Finland.

This recipe will make about 15 muffins.

For the muffin dough:

2 Eggs

150ml Milk

100ml Liquid salmiak extract

300g Wheat flour

100ml Butter

85g Sugar

3tsp Baking powder

10 Crushed Tyrkisk Peber sweets

For the icing:

50g Icing sugar

Few table spoons of liquid salmiak extract

15 Whole Tyrkisk Peber sweets

Some Tyrkisk Peber crush

Preparations are fairly simple. First preheat the oven to 180-200C.

Crush the Tyrkisk Peber sweets: put them into a bag and hammer away. I prefer a hammer for the job but also a ready crushed Tyrkisk Peber product for baking can be obtained at least in Finland.

Mix ingredients for the muffin dough: first mix the eggs, sugar, milk and salmiak extract into a smooth mixture. Then add the flour, baking powder and Tyrkisk Peber crush. Save some of the crush for the icing. Mix these until you have an even dough.

Put the dough into muffin cases, fill them up to the middle. Bake about 25-30 minutes until the muffins are baked throughout and let the muffins cool down afterwards.

In the meanwhile prepare the icing by mixing the icing sugar with some salmiak extract. You need to have a really tough texture that the icing isn't too runny.

Squirt the icing with an icing gun on the muffins, sprinkle Tyrkisk Peber crush on the top and place a whole Tyrkisk Peber sweet on each muffin.

Serve to your puzzled friends and enjoy!

If you got curious also check out my previous Tyrkisk Peber recipe, a cool sundae. 

Your VegHog

Tyrkisk Peber sunday sundae

Tyrkisk Peber is a sort of Finnish salty liquorice. Generally salty liquorice is very popular in Finland and sweets, alcoholic beverages and all sorts of baking are often flavoured with it. You can already guess that there will be many more VegHog posts to this subject in the future but be patient, this is only the beginning!

You can obtain this particular Tyrkisk Peber brand made by Fazer even outside of Finland and Scandinavia at least through this online shop. Also in big cities all over the world there are some kind of Finnish or Scandinavian shops where you can buy these or similar products. But I'm sure also other liquorice products would work in a sundae. Be bold and experiment!

For this sundae you only need a few Tyrkisk Pebers and some vanilla ice-cream. I used 8 sweets and some scoops of ice-cream for two portions.

Put Tyrkisk Peber sweets into two plastic bags and make sure they're sealed and folded over the sweets in several layers. Take out your hammer or baseball bat, put the bag on the floor and crush the sweets with your weapon.

Put the crushed Tyrkisk Pebers into a mixing bowl with vanilla ice-cream and mix with a hand mixer into an even sundae. Decorate with crushed or whole Tyrkisk Peber and serve ice cold.

Enjoy the juxtaposition of the flavours and the explosion in your mouth!

Your VegHog