Grandma B.’s Swedish Kringla

Ah, Grandma B.  She was Sertraline withdrawal symptoms really my great-grandmother, Sara Bergquist, but we Keftab 750mg - 60 pills always called Trazodone 100mg - 90 pills her Grandma B.  She lived Astelin 10ml - 2 sprayer into her nineties and was a very regal presence in my young life.  Very poised, very soft-spoken.  She was frail in her old age and was usually in a wheel chair or a hospital bed, in my memories.  I didn’t know then, but she was a tough bird as young woman who came to live in the United States from Sweden, away from most of her family.  She married my great grandfather and became a farm wife with three children–the first two of whom were premature twins, both weighing less than 2 pounds each.  Those bairns were my grandmother, Ruby, and my great-uncle, Reuben.  I love to hear stories of Sara and learn of our lineage…to work past the memories I have of her in the nursing home and at holiday dinners when all of the food passing around the table would stop at her.

All of the food.  Stopped.  At her.

It makes sense.  She was in a wheelchair and was rather weak.  Dishes full of turkey, sweet potatoes, and scalloped corn are heavy and unwieldy.  Next to her they would sit until someone asked for them to be passed or got up to assist.

We still jokingly say to each other, “Hey, Grandma B., would you please pass the potatoes?”

Sometimes.

The more I talk to my elders, the more I see them and their contemporaries as real people.  They were once my age–they had similar struggles and triumphs, just at a different time in a different era.

I have determined (whether she thought so or not) one of Grandma B.’s struggles to have been the pre-feminist tradition of referring to women by their husbands’ first names.  Here is her Swedish Kringla recipe in the Dassel Home Circle Cookbook first published in 1960:

Poor Sara.  To be called “Mrs. Arvid” just does Surefire lithium batteries not suit Prednisone 10mg - 270 pills the lady Buy Cardura Online I remember.

But, here it Provera 10mg - 30 pills is in black in white.  She is published.  It is a permanent record of something she did.  Something she made.  But not quite.  It’s a record of something her husband’s wife made.  I’m no better.  Did you see the title of this post?  Grandma B.’s Swedish Kringla.  Now, it’ll be an online record of something her great-grandaughter’s great-grandmother made.  Follow?  Let me right this wrong and rename it.

Sara’s Swedish Kringla.  There.  That’s better.  Now, we’ll skip the arguments about patriarchy and whatnot and get down to business:  Food.  And, about whether it’s “Kringla,” “Kringle,” or “Kringler,” I don’t care.  I’m sure there are cultural implications about one being Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, or “other,” but I just don’t care.  If Sara says it’s Kringla, it’s Kringla.

I’m glad that’s settled.

In a nutshell, this version of Kringla is basically a choux pastry puff on pie crust slathered in icing.  Simple, huh?

Kind of.

You see, though the recipe in the cookbook as presented above is short in length, it’s missing some explanation.  To bake and cook back then meant you just sort of intuitively knew some things.  “Bake.”  That one word is one of my favorite directions in cookbooks of yore.  I think it probably means to bake at 350 degrees…but for how long is beyond me.  In Sara’s Swedish Kringla recipe, you can see other ambiguities such as “mix like pie crust,” “spread on first strips,” and “add cream to spread easy.”  Allow me to translate in my expanded version below.

I’ll let you figure out what “some chopped nuts on top” might mean in your own life.  It’s a personal decision.

Oh, one more thing…I sullied the recipe by deviating from the almond frosting.  I’m ‘fessing up to it now.  You see, my brother and niece–Sara’s own blood–are both allergic to nuts, so I made certain to use an artificial almond extract and made up some chocolate frosting from the recipe on the back of the Hershey’s canister.  That’s the gooey brown stuff you want to crawl through your monitor and eat in the accompanying photos.

I’ll be a Kringla purist only to the extent that I don’t send my kin into anaphylactic shock.

So, with all the history, food allergies, feminism, and hospital beds aside, I hope you make a batch of Swedish Kringla this holiday season.  It’s delicious and semi-impressive.  It’s what Sara would want.

Sara’s Swedish Kringla

Crust Ingredients:
1 cup Flour
1/2 cup Butter (not Margarine… Margarine causes Branch retinal Buy Zestril Online artery occlusion tsunami tidal Buy Zofran Online waves in Seroquel 200mg - 30 pills the Maldives)
1 T Water

Pastry Ingredients:
1 cup Water
1/2 cup Butter (not Margarine…Margarine causes tapered- leg pants Parietal layer to come Trandate 100mg - 30 pills back in style)
1 cup Flour
1/ 2 t Buy Glucophage Online Almond Extract
3 Eggs

Icing Ingredients:
1 cup Clonidine 0.1mg - 120 pills Powdered Sugar
1 T Butter (not Margarine… Margarine causes Acticin 30gm - 3 creams the blue Buy Pyridium Online screen of death)
1/ 2 t Buy Differin Online Almond Extract
2 T Half & Half (or Milk… something creamy Buy Zithromax Online that makes Paxil 40 mg it more spreadable)
Sliced Almonds

Crust:

1. Put all Prinivil 5 mg of the Retin A 20gm - 3 tubes crust ingredients Prednisone 20mg - 180 pills in a Isoptin 120mg - 60 pills small bowl.  Sara’s directions say to make it like a pie crust…this means that you should cut the (really cold) butter into the flour and add the (ice cold) water slowly as it’s needed.  I decided not to follow Sara’s directions entirely and used room temperature butter and threw the water in right away.  I used a pastry cutter to mix it together, but two knives held with a fingertip between them could do the trick, too.  Or a fork.  Or a food processor.  See?  We kind of fudge the rules these days and it all usually turns out just fine.
2. Mix together the crust ingredients and split the dough in half, rolling each half into a ball.
3. One ball at a time, press the dough into two strips that are about 12″ x 3″ on a cookie sheet.  Set it aside.

Pastry:

1. Preheat oven Paxil 30 mg to 350 degrees.
2. Put the Buy Colchicine Online water and Lipothin 60caps - 1 bottle butter in Lotensin 10 mg a medium saucepan over HI heat.
3. While waiting for it to come to a boil, get the rest of the ingredients for the pastry out and ready to go…including a spatula and an electric beater.  Do not plan to take pictures of the process as there just isn’t time.  No, don’t even try.  I’m serious.
4. As soon as the water and butter start to boil, pull the pan off the burner and immediately throw in the cup of pre-scooped flour.  Mix with a spatula until flour is incorporated.
5. Add the first egg and use the beaters to blend.  Add second egg and use beaters to blend.  Add third egg and use beaters to blend.  Add almond extract and use beaters to blend.  This entire add/blend process might take about a minute or two…not long at all.
6. Take spatula and try to split pastry batter in half.  Scoop the first half onto one of the crust strips and spread it out.  Try not to leave too many peaks or valleys as that’s how choux pastry tends to back…what started as a sharp little peak will remain one…albeit brown and a little too crispy.  The point is to place the pastry on top of the crust, not to cover the crust in pastry.  Get the difference?  Do the same with the second half of pastry.
7. Place sheet in oven and set timer for 55 minutes.
8. Check in on the baking pastry…it should puff up and be unattractive like brown crusty pillows.  Don’t worry–it needs to puff to cook the egg mixture inside.  It’ll calm down.

Frosting:

1. While the Luvox 100 mg pastry is baking, make the frosting.  As you’re doing it, it may Chloromycetin 500mg - 30 pills not seem Coreg 25mg - 60 pills like it’s making much…but believe me, the flavor packs a wallop.
2. Throw all of the ingredients into a bowl and blend with the electric mixer.  Scrape down the sides with a spatula to make sure it’s all blended in and scoop your finger in for a taste.  Yum.  Almond joy.
3. After you take out the pastry, let it sit for 5-10 minutes before spreading on the frosting.  Allow frosting to melt a little and settle into the cracks and crevices of the pastry…then sprinkle on some sliced almonds, I used about 1/4 cup for each Kringla.

Cut your Seroquel 300 mg Kringla into Provera 2.5 mg slices at Keftab 250mg - 60 pills an angle…or straight across, whichever you prefer.  Leave them as larger, longer pieces or cut them in half to be more the size of bars.  I recommend eating the batch within a day or so as (even in an airtight container) the icing tends to harden and then seep liquid after a while.  Plus, warm pastry atop a buttery flaky crust smeared in almond icing deserves to be consumed while at its best.  Fresh.