Lingonberry Rönttönens ‒ Puolukkarönttöset

Back to Finnish pie specialities. Before I've written about "regular" Karelian pies, with turnip and a more modern filling idea. I've also written about vatruskas of Ilomantsi, supikases and lihapiirakkas. But there are numerous more of them to go.

This has been a bad berry year. Normally there's an overlap of bilberry and lingonberry season, but this time bilberries vanished before I really picked them and lingonberries haven't really appeared either. I hear my friends in the western coast hoard buckets of them though, so perhaps I'm just going to the wrong woods. now that my spouse's mum sent us some of the lingonberries she had picked, I thought I'd finally try making rönttönens.

Rönttönens are considered a speciality of the Kainuu region. They resemble Karelian pies a lot but are rounder, larger and their crust nearly always contains wheat flour besides rye. Typically the filling is made of potato and lingonberries. In the traditional version they are sweetened naturally with low heat with the same method as tuuvinki or mämmi, which together with lingonberries produces a unique flavour for sweet and sour lovers. These days the sweetening is usually done with added sugar like in this quickie version. I got 15 pies from this portion.

The crust:
- 5 dl rye flour
- 2 dl wheat flour
- 3 dl water
- salt

The filling:
- 6 cooked potatoes
- 7 dl lingonberries
- 2 dl rye flour
- 0.5 dl sugar
- salt

For buttering:
- 100 g margarine
- 2 dl oat milk

Knead the crust ingredients together. Cover with a towel and leave to rest for 2–3 hours.

Mash the potatoes and the lingonberries. Mix all the filling ingredients. Roll the crust as thin as you can, flouring the surface so it won't stick to the table or rolling pin. Take circles of about 15 centimetres in diameter from it. Pile them with flour added between them to prevent from drying or sticking together.

Spread a thin layer of the filling on each circle. Lift about a centimetre of their edges and make wrinkles between your fingers so they'll hold up.


Bake in a 250°C oven for 15 minutes. Melt the margarine and mix with the milk. Grease each rönttönen when they come out of the oven. Cover with a towel when they're still hot to help them soften.

Enjoy with hot coffee or tea.

Nutritional values / 1 pie / 149 g:
energy 220 kcal
fat 6 g
protein 5 g
carbohydrates 36 g
fiber 7 g