Joulutorttu

Joulutorttu is a Finnish Christmas pastry baked with plum jam placed at the center of puff pastry. The best-known version is a star shape with four vanes, made from a square of pastry. When white powdered sugar is dusted over the golden pastry, the dark purplish-brown fruit stands out. Besides the familiar star, there are also flowers, parcels and half-moons, and the variations extend not only to the folding but also to the pastry and the filling.

Cutting into a Square of Pastry and Folding the Corners

The puff pastry is cut into squares of about 8 centimeters, and cuts are made from the four corners toward the center. With the center left connected, every other corner is gathered in and pressed down, and the parts that were not folded remain as vanes. Joining the tips with a little water or egg helps keep them from opening during baking.

Because the pastry gathered at the center and the outer vanes differ in thickness, arranging the pastries in uniform shapes is also important for even browning. Shifting the cuts slightly inward from the corners gives a rounded flower, and bringing all four corners together gives a parcel. For a half-moon, a round of cut-out pastry is folded over to enclose the jam.

The Finnish word joulu means Christmas, and the star shape is also called tähtitorttu. Martat, an organization devoted to home and household life, also suggests a method of dividing an 8-centimeter square further into four to make small pastries. On a table laid with many kinds of sweets, this size makes a small single bite.

Laminated Puff Pastry and Doughs Made with Cream or Quark

The commonly used pastry is made by layering thin sheets of wheat-flour dough with fat. Because the moisture inside turns into steam and pushes the layers apart, it differs from bread that is leavened by long fermentation with yeast. Before baking, the pastry is kept cold and its cut edges are kept intact, and the heat of the oven makes the vanes open. Besides chilling and rolling out homemade pastry, thawed store-bought frozen puff pastry sheets can also be used.

Doughs chosen for home baking also include butter doughs made with cream, cultured milk or quark. Valio’s cream version incorporates whipped cream, and its quark version mixes flour into dairy and butter; both add baking powder. There is also a method in which a dough containing sour cream is cut into rounds and closed into half-moons, so not all versions rise through the same laminating process. Depending on the choice of dairy, the dough paired with the rich fruit changes in the crispness of its exterior and the moistness of its interior.

Fillings Placed Before Baking and Fillings Added After Baking

Besides the traditional plum, apricot jam is also used. If the jam is thick enough to withstand baking, a small amount placed on the pastry stays in the center without spreading much. For fillings that use dairy such as cream cheese, or for soft jams unsuitable for baking, there is also the method of adding them afterward. While keeping the pastry layers intact, a variety of ingredients can be used, depending on when the filling is added.

The baked pastries are cooled slightly, and the star-shaped pastries are finished with a dusting of powdered sugar. Valio also has savory recipes that pair the same puff pastry with pickled cucumber, seafood and cheese, so its role on the festive table is not limited to a single sweet item.

Becoming Established as a Christmas Pastry, and Records of the Star Shape

According to the Hotel and Restaurant Museum in Finland, 18th-century folded pastries included both sweet and savory ones and were not originally reserved for Christmas. The association with Christmas is said to have arisen around the 1820s. In the late 19th century, wealthy households served tarts filled with apple or plum at the end of a meal, warmed and dusted with powdered sugar. Later they moved to the tea and coffee table, and their use broadened from a dish served after a meal to small pastries picked up by hand.

The cookbook Kotiruoka, first published in 1908, describes shaping them into three forms: a semicircle, a parcel with the four corners brought together, and a star with alternate corners gathered in. Cutting out rounds allows quick folding into half-moons, and squares allow the dough to be cut without waste, but folding the corners to make a star takes extra work. The choice of shape involves not only appearance but also the speed of work and the amount of leftover dough. A pastry using similar ingredients also appears in Cajsa Warg’s 1755 cookbook.

Buying Pastries and Making Do with Ingredient Shortages

Whether people could obtain the ingredients and equipment also affected how widely the pastry spread. Butter and flour, which farming households had on hand, had to be bought by people living in towns, and a household without a baking oven could not bake the pastries itself. The museum states, based on newspaper advertisements in Pori, that instances of buying finished pastries increased in the 1920s.

During the shortages of the 1920s and 1930s, people made do with margarine, lard and potatoes, and in wartime even carrot or lemon cream was suggested for the filling. Even for a pastry baked every Christmas, the same ingredients were not always available.

The Memory of Hot Jam, Preserved in a National Emoji

This pastry was also chosen for the “Finland emojis” of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The description adds a touch of humor about eating too many at Christmas and burning one’s mouth on the first hot plum jam. Folded at home into one’s preferred shape and enjoyed with coffee, the pastry has also become a taste that brings back memories of Christmas every year.

Joulutorttu served with coffee and glögg at a restaurant in Helsinki. Photo: JIP, 2022-12-12, Helsinki, Finland. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the source, no additional processing.

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