Kaffeost

Kaffeost – Swedish for “coffee cheese” – is less a recipe than a way of serving coffee. A few cubes of leipäjuusto (also called juustoleipä, “cheese bread”) are put into a cup, traditionally a carved wooden kuksa, and hot black coffee is poured over them. The cheese warms and softens, and you drink the coffee and spoon out the cheese as you go.

Leipäjuusto is a fresh, mild cheese made from curdled milk – traditionally cow’s colostrum, in some northern areas once reindeer milk, and today usually ordinary cow’s milk. The curd is pressed into a flat round and baked or flame-grilled until it has brown, toasty spots. It squeaks against the teeth, which is why Americans sometimes call it “Finnish squeaky cheese”. Dried, it was a way to keep milk for months.

The combination is found across northern Finland and Sweden, including among the Sámi of Lapland and the Meänkieli-speaking communities of the Torne Valley. Sharing a cup is a gesture of hospitality, and the cheese is also eaten on its own – warmed, with cloudberry jam – alongside a cup of coffee.

Baked bread cheese is an old farmhouse food from northern Finland – Southern Ostrobothnia, Kainuu and Lapland – and from neighbouring northern Sweden. It was traditionally made from the rich first milk after calving and dried so it would keep for a long time, sometimes for years.

Putting it into coffee is a custom of the far north, associated with the Sámi and with the communities of the Torne Valley. How and when the habit started is not recorded; it most likely grew up once coffee became an everyday drink in the region, which made a hot cup the natural way to soften dried cheese.

In June 2025 Swedish kaffeost was registered by the EU as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), reported as only the second Nordic cheese to receive that certification.