From the Mrs: Finnish Toast

The summer house was a strange place to be for a British girl  when I first started visiting Finland. Getting to grips with a compost toilet, trying to light the sauna and hiding from the elderly next door neighbours as they enjoyed a naked swim was a little overwhelming. But over the years I've embraced the summer house experience and although my Britishness means that I'm still too afraid to leap out from the sauna into the lake wearing nothing but a smile, I feel like I'm doing quite well in all other areas of living at the summer house...I can heat the sauna better than Janne now!

It's a simple life there: we eat, drink, swim, sauna and eat and drink some more. We have basic facilities, which means we have to be quite inventive when it comes to making food. With limited ingredients we've had to get quite creative and that's all part of the fun. This recipe was invented one summer when the blueberry bushes surrounding our summer house were loaded with berries. I spent the afternoon in wellies, dodging the snakes (I only saw one but nobody believed me) and picking the fruit to create a dessert for tea. Taking inspiration from French toast I created my own version using the ingredients that I had spare in the summer house...it was so delicious we made it for breakfast the next day too! This is perfect as a dessert or just as a naughty treat...it's a little bit messy but that's all part of the fun.

Ingredients

• 2 hot dog buns (this is all we had but you could use bread cakes or 4 slices of white bread with the crusts cut off)
• 1 tbsp of sugar
• a blob of Butter for frying
• 2 Eggs
• Berries (we used blueberries but you could use any soft fruit or even stewed rhubarb)
• Optional: Icing sugar for dusting
• Optional: Icecream or crème fraiche

First prepare your hot dog buns by cutting in half and buttering both halves of the bread. If you are using sliced bread remove the crusts and butter both sides.

Wash the berries and coat them in a generous sprinkling of sugar (depending how sweet you want them to be)

Next beat the eggs and mix in a tablespoon of sugar.

Dip each half of bread into the eggy mixture and lay on a plate or chopping board and then add your berries to one half of the bread (as though you are making a sandwich) put the other half on top and squash down.

Next, heat your butter in a frying pan and carefully add your sandwich to the pan, squashing it down with the spatula. When one side is golden brown carefully flip the sandwich over and cook the other side until golden brown and the egg is cooked through. Don't worry if some of the berries come out, they will cook in the pan and go all gooey and lovely. If you like add some extra berries to the pan and cook but don't let them burn.

When all golden and brown cook your next sandwich in the same way. Turn out on to a plate and cut in half, tip any cooked berries out of the pan on to the plate.

Don't worry about presentation...it's supposed to look messy but you can dust a little icing sugar on top and serve with a dollop of ice cream or crème fraiche if you like. At the summer house we only had yoghurt but a little bit of that worked just as well too.

Enjoy!