Friday, October 3, 2014

My Latest Thrift Store Find - An Electric KrumKake Iron

Most of my growing up and adult years were spent in Stoughton, Wisconsin.  I lived there from 1957 until 2002 except for a short time during the late 1960's when we lived in Madison, Wisconsin.  Stoughton was then and probably still is a very Norwegian community.  Norwegian heritage is very important to a lot of the families who live there or are from Stoughton.  I'm not Norwegian, but living in Stoughton gave me the opportunity to eat specialty Norwegian foods.  Some I liked and some I think you have to be exposed to from birth.  The lutefisk was not my favorite.  Lutefisk is dried cod that has been soaked in a lye solution for several days to rehydrate it.   Then it is rinsed with cold water to remove the lye, and boiled.  It is served with butter.  It tasted like fish jelly.  Lefse was another food that I never made nor cared for.  Lefse is a soft flatbread.   It is made out of flour,  milk or cream (or sometimes lard) with potatoes added and cooked on a special lefse griddle. It looks like a big tortilla.  I always said you could put butter and sugar on a toasted paper towel, and it would be about the same as lefse.  The one thing I loved was Krumkake.  Krumkake is a waffle cookie made on a special decorative two-sided iron griddle similar to a waffle iron.  When warm they are rolled into a cone or cylinder.  You can fill the cone with whipped cream or eat them plain with powdered sugar sprinkled on.  I learned to make them on a krumkake iron that fit over the stove burner.  The trick was getting the temperature just right so they browned but didn't burn.  I usually ruined the first few until I got it right.  Imagine the thrill I had a couple weeks ago.  We hadn't gone to a thrift store for a very long time, so we took a couple hours and went to a couple stores.  I found a brand new, still in the plastic, electric Krumkake iron.

 
I haven't used it yet, but I hope it works well.  It takes the guessing out of the process by putting the batter on the iron, shutting the lid and pushing a button.

 
When it is ready, the ready light comes on.  They sell for $50 on Amazon and I got it for $7.  I will post the recipe and finished product in the future (if they turn out).  I'm looking forward to trying.



Update:
http://www.thecabincountess.com/2015/12/my-krumkake-will-not-go-to-waste.html

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