Sunday Scribblings #46 – Yummy

Very pleasing to the senses, esp. to the taste; delicious: The waiter brought out a tray of yummy desserts.
extremely attractive or appealing
an item of food that is particularly delicious: The bakery window was full of yummies.
anything that is extremely attractive or appealing.

The word “yummy” evokes all sorts of images and memories, doesn’t it? They include recollections of coming home from school in those waning days before the holiday break to find my mother baking. There was nothing as wonderful as coming in from the cold after walking home from school and opening the door to a warm, cozy house where the smell of fresh-baked peanut butter or chocolate chip cookies permeated the air.

But the best-loved yummies were the Norwegian delights.

At the top of my list of favorites is lefse, Norwegian flat bread. We Norwegians joke that lefse is to us as tortillas are to Mexicans, and there is a lot of truth to that statement, as this picture demonstrates.

Folks these days insist upon putting potatoes in lefse and will argue with you that “it has always been made that way,” but I’m here to tell you that is not the case. My grandmother was born in Norway in 1881 and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of seven. Neither she nor her mother, who had spent many years up on the fjords working as a cook for farm crews, ever put a potato into their lefse. So my mother made it the way her mother and grandmother did, sans potatoes. Frankly, I’ll take it either way!

Note the serrated rolling pin. After the dough is prepared using lard, flour and water — plus the potatoes, if you insist — it is rolled out and then baked on a lefse griddle. Most folks eat it with butter and some preserves. Yum! I grew up putting peanut butter and, sometimes, grape jelly on mine.

And at Christmas, a lot of Norwegians eat it buttered with stinky cod called “lutefisk.” (If you saw my photo and commentary about the crab feed, however, you know that I didn’t go near the lutefisk.)

Krumkakes, made from a simple concoction of butter, eggs, vanilla extract and sugar, melt in your mouth. They require a special iron, shown here. The batter is baked and then, while hot, the crepe-like result is rolled into a tube and allowed to cool. The result is a rich, crispy treat. Unlike in this photo, we ate them plain. Delicious!

I could not locate a photo of sanbakkels but, like krumkakes, the main ingredients are eggs, butter, sugar, and flour. However, the dough is pressed into forms and then baked. They are also crispy and somewhat sweet. The closest comparison I can come up with is shortbread cookies. A lot of folks fill their sunbakkels with jams or jellies, but, again, we ate them plain.

Less often, my mother made fattigman, pictured right. The dough is deep-fat fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Very yummy indeed.

Finally, my mother also delighted us with rosettes from time to time. They are also deep-fat fried and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Pictured here with krumkakes, you can see the shape which explains the name. Very pretty and festive … also scrumptious.

The sad reality is that all of these yummies are, like so many really tasty foods, loaded with calories and fat. They are also labor-intensive.

But if you enjoy cooking and want to surprise your family and friends with a dessert they have not tried before, recipes for all of them can be readily found on numerous websites. Just type the name of the yummy into your favorite search engine! You can also order lefse from a number of different vendors. Visit Terry’s Lefse Links for details. I recommend Lena’s.