Monday, December 20, 2010

Making Krumkake

My husband’s grandmother was Norwegian and his grandfather was Swedish. When I first met his grandmother she was so excited to have a granddaughter that lived in town and wanted me to do all kinds of things with her. She taught me to make the traditional Scandinavian cookies Krumkake. She was so cute I just loved her and was glad to go over to her house and make cookies with her. She got out all her equipment and I was amazed to see her begin to hand whipped the whip cream that goes into the recipe, she was in her 80’s at the time, she won’t let me do the whipping I had to just watch. She did let me make the cookies about half way through the process.  I bought this Krumkake iron the first year we moved into our first house. I bought it at a Lee Ward’s store.

krumkake Notice it says Nordic ware in the upper corner. By the way mine never look like that and my guys don’t like them with whipped cream in them, they like to eat them plain.

recipe This is the recipe that I wrote down that day. It is over 30 years old. I guess I should write a new one, but I am a such a sentimental person. There is a different version of the recipe on the other side. I have never made it.

batter

As in most Scandinavian recipes there is a lot of butter, sugar, eggs and cardamom (spice like nutmeg).

iron And like many Scandinavian recipes each cookie is made one at a time. Yea know it is cold in those countries they have nothing to do on cold winter days but spend all day making cookies.

This year I was distracted while I was mixing the recipe. As I was making the cookies I noticed that they seemed very runny and were turning out very crispy. It wasn’t until I was half way done making the cookies that I reread the recipe and realized that TWO sticks of butter is NOT a half a cup. OH very buttery KrumKake this year.

HO HO HO Merry Christmas.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol What a wonderful tradition, and the memories are even more precious. It's stuff like putting in 2 sticks of butter that makes for a great memory that everyone enjoys "down the road". I'd keep the hand written copy of the recipe too.

Merry Christmas!

Vivika said...

With a name like "Vivika Hansen" you can bet that my grandmother also made krumkagge (how she spelled it) and I have very similar memories... thanks for putting a smile on my face this afternoon as I remember her! She died last month at 92, and was one of the biggest fiber influences in my life. God Jul!

Laura Wasilowski said...

I'll be right over! Anything made with butter must be good.

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