There are special holiday treats in the Finnish tradition. One of them is the prune tart or joulutorttu (Christmas tart). My mother and my aunt made these at Christmas time.
My Aunt Syl made them for my wedding reception.
During the last summer vacation with my Dad (he was 89 years old) we enjoyed family projects. I wrote about that summer in Upper Michigan. The story was published in the Kippis Literary Journal. Here is an excerpt:
One day Mom and the kids made the special family recipe of prune tarts. It was fun for the family to bake together. My nephew caught onto the process of pressing butter into the dough, folding the dough and rolling it out. We had a passionate debate over how long to leave the tarts in the oven. When they came out of the oven we barely let them cool before tasting this special family treat. The group consensus was “the best tarts ever”.
I looked on-line and saw that there are a number of recipes for Finnish prune tarts. And then I found a blog that describes the process of making prune tarts the same way our family made them–with pictures and a recipe. The writer describes meeting the Finnish lady in Northern Michigan. It is a long story, but at the end there is a wonderful description of the joulutorttu.
This post is part of #Write28Days. To see other posts in this series click here.
They look delicious ! What a lovely heritage.
Those look great! Thanks for the story and the link to the recipe and process. They Remind me a bit of the Jewish pastry hamantaschen, which is made for Purim. They often have apricot and sometimes prune filling too.