Category: Heritage Recipes

I've been meaning to tackle the challenge of Dakota Kuchen for awhile now but my day job kept me busy all Fall.

Was glad to have a few quiet days over the holidays to finally test my grandmother's recipe.

What is Dakota Kuchen?

Well kuchen just means 'cake' in German so really it could mean any kind of cake generally speaking. But Dakota Kuchen refers to a specialty of the region made by German Russians - a pie-shaped pastry with a sweet yeast dough and fruit mixed into a custard with a little crumble on top.

There are variations like sugar kuchen with a crusted sugar coating similar to a coffee cake, or 'kase-kuchen' which uses cottage cheese to make the custard for a softer cheesecake like dessert (sounds weird but tastes good!).

The fruit custard variety is the most common and well-recognized. All varieties have simple, common ingredients as these were made in times and areas that had access to mostly just basic staples.

...continue reading "Dakota Kuchen"

Hiya Everybody! I've been on a little unplanned hiatus....although it was the kind of adventure you don't want to have.

September marked the first complete year of the Dakota Pharmgirl blog and I had big plans for an anniversary article! Now here we are about a week before Halloween. That was not the plan!

Here's what was supposed to happen and how it got derailed.

...continue reading "Anniversary Interruptis"

What kind of good Dakota girl doesn't know how to make sauerkraut and nifla??
This one didn't until a couple months ago, but I've got it down now and am ready to share!

Just like my previous post about kekle (kuechle), our family apparently goes for the simplified spellings of these words........so we spell it 'nifla'....others spell it 'knoephla' or 'knipfla'.....potayto potahto.....the point is that it is carb heaven.

I don't think its possible to have lived in North Dakota and never eaten sauerkraut and nifla or had a soothing cup of nifla soup...so good. Ya, you betcha. There's probably something wrong with your prairie genes if you don't like it......just saying.

However, at their age, the kids love the nifla, not so much the sauerkraut. So for now, I make them a 'nifla and bacon' version to go alongside my 'nifla and sauerkraut' version. I usually don't cater to their dislikes but more sauerkraut for me so I'm ok with it. Bacon solves everything.

So here's the recipe - if you've never tried it, give it a whirl.........it tastes even better as it gets colder outside!

...continue reading "Sauerkraut and ‘Nifla’"

Since this is my first post, why not start with one of my favorite heritage recipes?

I'm talking about Kekle ('KEE Cleh') which is how my family spelled it, but you may see it spelled as Kuechle or some other variation. This is 'Grandma Werner's" recipe (my dad's mom) which my mother continues to make when family gathers. In fact, we just devoured several batches as my sisters and I gathered our families at Mom and Dad's over the 4th of July.

If you snooze you lose! They go fast.

...continue reading "Kekle: An Old Twist on the Donut"