Virtual Advent Calendar Day 20: Retro Baking - Krumkake

5 Days Left Until Christmas!

Krumkake!

Okay, so technically, this is not a craft, but it does remind me of the Christmases of my childhood so I'm going to run with it.  This, for those of you who are not Minnesotans of Norwegian descent, is krumkake.  These delicious cookies are traditional at Christmas time.


About a year ago, I found this Nordic Ware krumkake iron at a thrift store in Tucson.  According to the box, I paid $5 for it.

I used the recipe right off the back of the box, though I substituted vanilla for lemon:


3 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 butter, melted
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp vanilla


To bake these, you start by heating up your iron on the stove.

Krumkake iron heating on the stove (I had a little spill over on my previous cooking project that day; my stove is usually a lot cleaner than this).

Next, you drop about 2 tsp. of batter onto the heated iron.  The directions say 1 tsp, but there is no way that was enough.  You let it bake for about a minute on one side, then flip the iron over so it cooks on the other side.  

Baked to a nice golden brown.

The next step is to take the krumkake off the iron with a spatula and curl it around the rolling cone.

Wrapped around the rolling cone to give it its traditional cylindrical shape.

That's it!  These were a lot easier to make than I thought they would be, though they do take awhile because you have to make them one at a time.  The photo on the box shows them filled with cream, but I can't remember them ever being served this way.  We ate ours plain and they were wonderful.


Other traditional Norwegian foods we ate at Christmas were yulekage (cardamom flavored sweet bread with raisins and citron), rosettes (deep-fried pastry sprinkled with powdered sugar), and fattigman (another deep-fried pastry sprinkled with powdered sugar).  Our family was spared the traditional of lutefisk, but there was always oyster stew.  But the granddaddy of the Norwegian foods was lefse.  Lefse looks like a tortilla, but is made with potatoes.  We always ate our lefse spread with butter, sprinkled with brown sugar, and rolled up.  Yum!  Maybe next year I'll find a lefse griddle at a thrift store!


See you tomorrow for Day 21!  God jul!