HFF #13: Foreign Foods

The Challenge: Make a foreign food.

The Recipe: Krumkake

Date/Year & Region: Norwegian-American, uncertain date*

How Did You Make It:  (Full recipe given; I halved it) Mix 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar and 1/3 tsp salt.  Add cream and mix to the right consistency (thick batter); in my experience this is 1 1/2 to 2 cups of cream.  Stir in 1 tsp vanilla.  Whip the left-over cream with some sugar.

Warm the krumkake iron on the stove, at medium heat.  Place 1 spoonful of batter on the iron, cook about 1 min per side (decreases to 30 secs towards the end of the batch); I like them just starting to brown, still pliable enough to roll, but cooked enough to dry crisply.  (The underdone ones tend to stay soft and droop, the overdone ones get brittle almost too quickly to shape).  Remove the krumkake from the iron and roll around the cone-shape.  Let it dry while the next one cooks.

Serve with whipped cream.

Time to Complete: A bit under an hour for the half-batch: the krumkakes are cooked individually, and the half-batch made 14, less the 'sacrificial' first one (the first one always ends up either under-cooked or burnt).

Total Cost: Price of a pint of cream ($4-ish), if baking staples are to hand.

How Successful Was It: Delicious.  This recipe calls for fewer ingredients than the modern recipe we usually make (as it's considered richer and gives very clear amounts), for instance using butter, eggs, and cream instead of just the cream.  I do appreciate that the fat-content of the cream keeps the iron well-seasoned (no need to use cooking spray between every third krumkake in order to keep them from sticking).

How Accurate Was It: Made in the usual fashion?  Afraid I don't have much to base this on.

*Note on the date: this is a family recipe, attributed to a great-grandmother born c. 1905, and written down by her children in the third quarter of the twentieth century; the dates I have for family immigration from Norway are from the late nineteenth century.

My Krumkake Iron

Yummy Krumkake!