2 posts tagged “recipe”
... Or as she calls it in her very diluted German, "Sugar Kuga". I call it kugen.
This is an old family recipe which is a different but, I've discovered, very similar to German coffee cake, zuckerkuchen. I think my family's recipe must have been derived from that traditional cake at some point but after two emigrations, first to Russia then America, and god knows how many generations of cooks, it's become more of a tart than a cake.
It basically consists of two thin layers of crust with a fruit filling spread thinly between, topped with sugary cookie crumbs, baked and sliced into wafer-like bars. It's a simple enough concept, except that if the crust or filling is too thick the result is distinctly pie-ish. The trick of the recipe is to roll out the crusts to something like an even sixteenth of an inch [or until you can just start to see through it] and maneuver it onto a baking sheet. My grandma has an uncanny ability to do this by hand but I've found that rolling the dough onto parchment or wax paper makes the whole process much easier. I've tried it with plastic wrap as well, but the plastic stretches when you're rolling the dough and is awkward to handle. Also a double-wide unrimmed baking sheet will prevent a headache.
As for the filling, date and pineapple are both traditional in my family [date being my favourite :-) ], and I've also had success with pumpkin. I've tried some of the more common fruit fillings like blueberry, cherry, and apple but they were too thick and produced an uninteresting flavour [much more suited to pies]. Though, whatever you like, this recipe lends itself to experimentation.
You'll want to start the filling first since they tend to take a while to boil down.
Date Filling:
In a sauce pot mix 1 pound finely chopped dates, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup water and boil on medium until it reduces to a smooth consistency. Stir often and watch that the sugar doesn't burn.
Pineapple Filling:
Mix 1 can of crushed pineapple, 1 cup sugar and 1 tblsp. flour in a sauce pot and boil on medium until it thickens to a spreading consistency. Stir often, the pineapple is less likely to scald, but still needs to be stirred.
Dough:
Mix together 5 cups all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. baking soda in a large bowl. Cut in 1 1/2 cups [10 oz] lard until it's a flaky crumbly paste-like mixture. In a separate bowl beat together 1/2 cup whipping cream, 1/2 cup water, 3 eggs, and 1 tsp vanilla extract. Mix in the liquid ingredients with the flour-lard dough. It will be very sticky, but you don't want too much flour in the dough, so carefully mix in 1 tblsp increments of flour until it just becomes workable with your hands.
By now the filling should be nearing the correct consistency. So divide the dough into 8 parts and roll a single part out onto parchment or wax paper until it's an even 1/16th of an inch or as thin as you can make it, whichever comes first. Use the paper to transfer the rolled dough onto a baking sheet and peel it off carefully to reuse for the other 7 parts of dough. Spoon the filling from the burner onto the rolled dough and spread it thinly. Roll out another portion of dough and transfer it on top of the filling. Pinch the edges together so the filling doesn't boil out. Brush the kugen with melted butter or margarine and prick liberally with a fork. Top with a crumb mixture of crushed sugar cookies [vanilla wafers], cinnamon, sugar, and anise seed [or extract] to taste. This process works much more smoothly if you have one person rolling the dough and another assembling the kugen. Bake at 450 degrees for 5-10 minutes or until it has browned nicely. Set out to cool on a rack, then trim the edges and slice into bars.
I've spent the past two years perfecting my pancake recipe, making minute adjustments every time I get that pancake urge [the best off-to-college present I ever gave myself was a griddle]. First of all I add sugar [lots of it] because syrup is too thick and messy to be dumped on delicate pancakes [contrary to popular opinion]. No, a pancake needs the sweet and savory blend of butter and sugar, but in a more subtle way. So, what you need to do is add sugar to the batter, then eat the finished pancake with just the butter.
That problem solved, the dilemma has always been the pancake's consistency. If you follow the recipe on the box you get thin batter and week pancakes with no fluff. If you try increasing the batter to milk ratio [I don't even want to discuss using water instead of milk] then your pancakes simply get more and more dense until they're indigestible. No matter how subtle the change, increasing batter/milk adds no fluff. So keeping batter/milk constant if you add an egg to induce fluffiness what you get is better than the previous two but it becomes this weird cake-pancake hybrid that's not so much dense as in need of frosting.
But now, I have received a momentous bit of advice from Nick and Ashley. By separating the egg whites from the yolks and whipping them to a fine froth before folding it into the batter you can achieve fluffiness. So this is my newly revamped and ever evolving pancake recipe:
basic pancake
2 cups pancake mix
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup milk [I use skim, which works fine. If you use a different type you may need to adjust.]
Measure out pancake mix into a large bowl. Separate egg whites and yolk, pouring the white in a separate small bowl and dumping the yolk into the batter. With a whisk mix milk and egg yolks thoroughly with the batter. The whisk is very important! Not only will you need it for the whites, but if you don't beat the batter thoroughly with a beater or whisk you will get a lumpy batter with bits of undissolved powder, which you will then need to sift out. The whisk makes pancakes happy and easy.
Next, rinse your whisk, and beat the whites until as frothy as possible or until there are "stiff peaks". That is, when you pull the whisk out some egg white froth follows, breaks off, then stays in a cone-like form because of its stiffness. Blend into the batter. Fry at 350 degrees, preferably on a griddle.
A few tools I consider indispensable: one big and one small bowl, whisk, rubber spatula, extra thin extra wide metal spatula, my cheapy Presto griddle from Wal-mart.
Some variations on the basic pancake that I've experimented with and like [just add the listed ingredients to the basic recipe]:
Plain Pancakes - 1 cup sugar
Banana Pancakes - 1/2 cup sugar, and
1 black mushy banana, thawed. To handle the mushy black banana, peel open the tip, squeeze the other end, and let it slide out into a small bowl. Use the whisk to mash it up and beat it into a semi-smooth puree.
Spiced Pancakes - 3/4 to 1 cup sugar [to taste], 1 tbsp cinnamon, and possibly a dash of other spices [e.g. clove, anise, mint, nutmeg].
