Baked apple, buckwheat and kefir porridge

By Nik, founder of 東歐嚴選｜kefir.link and former chef · Updated 2 November 2026

Buckwheat and millet have filled Slovenian porridge pots for centuries, and this bake turns them into a sweet pan of grated apple, ground hazelnuts, cinnamon and vanilla. The grains go into the dish raw and cook in the oven in milk and kefir, so there is nothing to boil first. Milk kefir is part of the baking liquid and brings its rich, tangy flavour.

An old supper grain in a modern bake

Millet porridge is one of the oldest dishes in Slovenian cooking. It was cooked in milk or water as a simple supper, sometimes with dried plums or a little cream, mainly in winter and early spring. Buckwheat mattered just as much: a 1689 account of the region says it grew well there and gave two traditional foods, bread and porridge, and praises the porridge as a very good dish often sent abroad. A Ljubljana inventory from 1622 counted nearly five times as much buckwheat as millet.

Today the bake works as an easy breakfast that you can make ahead. It is just as good as an afternoon snack, or as a lighter alternative to dessert.

Raw grains, no eggs and al dente millet

Many Slovenian apple-and-millet bakes boil the millet in milk first and then fold in eggs. This bake skips both steps, and there is no baking soda either. As the grains bake in the milk and kefir, they soak up the liquid and soften. Millet stays slightly firmer than buckwheat, with a pleasant al dente bite.

Kefir cream and the right millet

For a kefir topping, strain plain kefir for 3–5 hours to get a soft cream, or longer for a thick spread like fresh cheese.

Rinse the millet in hot water until the water runs clear; this washes off its natural bitterness. In Taiwan, look for hulled buckwheat groats, ground hazelnuts and non-waxy millet. Non-waxy millet cooks up less sticky than Taiwan's native millet, which is glutinous.