Analysis of Krumkake Recipe
Krumkake is a thin, crunchy, circular cookie, that is baked on an iron and shaped into a cylinder or cone when it is still hot. If the Krumkake is cooled down too much and then rolled, it will crack and crumble, thus losing its unique identity and food shape. With Barb at my side, the recipe was a breeze to concoct given its very basic ingredients and few steps. We initially experienced difficulties attempting to figure out at what heat the batter needed to be cooked to produce consistently and uniformly browned discs that were then quickly rolled. This is not particularly surprising given that we were using my mother’s (Karen) flat electric stovetop oven. The iron my grandmother possesses has been handed down for several generations and is made to be fixated upon a traditional burner given its raised circular stand that allows for easy rotation of the iron from side to side. After finding the correct temperature, my grandmother handed over the task to me to produce golden, crispy krumkake. Together we baked for nearly two hours on a double batch of the original recipe with each krumkake taking about 40 second from batter to cylinder/cone shape. We produced both cylinders and cones using an unconventional family tradition as well as the typical tool that is commonly used. We produced cylinders using the hacked off end of an old broomstick that my great grandmother used in place of the more traditional rolling cone. The very broomstick can be seen in the image associated with the audio file of my interview with Barbara and a traditional cone can be found in the first image of this recipe section. Sometimes I would pour too little batter and create an oval 4/5 the size of the iron or too much batter that would ooze over the side of the iron, slip through between the iron and the circular stand and promptly catch fire. These micro fires generated several chuckles and scowls from both Barbara and Karen. Fresh out of batter and satisfied with the number of krumkake produced, we let the iron cool and proceeded to munch on our experiment (although I had been “tasting” some of the batter and previously failed attempts).
For myself, I had never previously heard of krumkake before my mother mentioned it as a family recipe that had been regularly served until more recent years. Even my mother had not prepared the dish since her childhood when Barb would make all the kids roll the discs as she feverously labored over the hot stove (trust me it gets hot after two hours!). Barbara had much more to say about the significance of the dish in her lifetime. She grew up making it with her mother every Christmas season and continued to do so until her children lost interest and she could no longer make the dish on her own. The recipe has however stood the test of time as the original recipe card is in pristine condition at Barbara’s home. Moving beyond our personal experience making the dish, I will explore the history behind the making of krumkake and its perseverance to the present day.
Krumkake’s history starts with the evolving form of the iron used in making the seasonal delight. The iteration of the iron exhibits the modifications in American household cooking technology during the nineteenth and twentieth Century. People in America, still to this day make krumkake during Christmas time, which reveals how important this tradition is to Norwegian-Americans and is a sign of cultural preservation well into the twenty-first Century.
Krumkake was first made over an open fire, well before stovetop-type technology entered the cooking environment. To cook krumkake over an open fire a special type of iron, of which krumkake are exclusively made, was used that is much different from what it is today. This krumkake iron had long handles which were called reins. [1] These handles ensured that the cook never had to approach the fire close enough to cause any harm to their hands. Compared to the iron today, the original iron was heavy and hard to use. The primitive cooking methods required that the iron be taken away from the heat source to remove the cookie and pour in more batter, whereas current irons need not be removed from the heat source. Then, in the 1890s the Alfred Andresen Company, based out of Minneapolis, MN created a cooking iron that fit on the stove range of a cast-iron stove that was developed around the time. This move drastically increased the efficiency of making krumkake as the large reins were removed and the irons were placed upon a circular stand that would fit on a stove burner. Not only this, but the reduction in weight also allowed for the cookies to become slightly larger as well as cook faster due to the newfound lack of requiring to remove the iron from the heat source. The final phase of iron development came along with gas and electric stoves created in the early twentieth century. The circular base was heightened to allow for the iron to be rotated over the burner. The first electric iron was created in 1918 and was even more advantageous due to the ability of the iron to produce heat on both sides of the cookie, thus increasing production speed. [2] The advancement of cooking technology has helped to assure krumkake’s perseverance into the foreseeable future.
Krumkake is a Norwegian cookie that has been traditionally made during the Christmas season. Norwegian immigrants brought krumkake along in their culinary repertoire as they settled around the United Stated in the mid-nineteenth Century. Since then, individual families, church groups, and ethnic organizations have helped to keep the tradition going strong while retaining almost perfect consistency of the recipe. The same basic four ingredients have stood the test of time, which are sugar, butter, flower, and eggs. In referencing the various type of Christmas cookies Scandinavians makes, Hoover, Kaplan, and Moore note that, “Norwegian cookies come in many distinctive shapes, but all have a rich, buttery texture and are available in every home”.[3] One can deduce that decoration and shape play a pertinent role in differentiating food items with very similar tastes. This can be exhibited by the variety of shapes and techniques used in baking the various kinds of cookies, for example flower and star shapes, crimped edges, diamond shapes, and stacked cakes. Specifically, due to krumkake’s everlasting nature and the pride Norwegians put into their traditional foodways, Emily Pfotenhauer has gone so far as to consider the food a folk art.[4] This is because there is such a large emphasis on decoration, it is handmade, represents the ethnicity, and has continued its retention of form across time. The krumkake irons have always had decorative designs on the inside of the iron that is meant to be transferred over to the finished product. The designs usually represented similar Norwegian folk art like decorative woodcarving or rosemaling, which include stylized leaves, scrolls, and flowers in a circular orientation.
Krumkake continues to be prepared annually, to this day, due in large part to Norwegian-American identity and the conservation of culture and tradition in today’s heterogeneous ethnic environment. When the Norwegians first started to immigrate to the United States of America in 1825, large pockets of Norwegians began to congregate first in Chicago and then spread out to other Midwestern states including, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Ultimately, the largest immigrant ethnicity isolated themselves from outside influence by preserving their language and cultural identity brought over from Norway. Because of this isolation, the Norwegians contributed to the long-term maintenance of cultural values and traditions, like food for example. The end result is a continued interest in all things Norwegians brought over by the immigrants nearly two hundred years ago. Naturally, krumkake was kept nearly unchanged except for the improvement of the tools required to make the sweet treat. Krumkake in particular is a delightful dish that is both extremely easy to make and rather tasty given its basic ingredients.
[1] Emily K. Pfotenhauer, "Food as Cultural Expression: The Norwegian Krumkake," Repast: Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor XXI, no. 2 (2005): 6.
[2] Ibid. p 22.
[3] Marjorie Hoover, Anne Kaplan, and Willard Moore, The Minnesota Ethnic Food Book. (Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986), 114.
[4] Emily K. Pfotenhauer, "Food as Cultural Expression: The Norwegian Krumkake," Repast: Quarterly Publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor XXI, no. 2 (2005): 6.
