In our third installment of "Five days of yum" we feature delectable Scandanavian treats just like grandma used to make!
by Kelli Bowen
Christmas seemed to always have two commonalities growing up in my midwestern Norwegian family: plenty of arguments and plenty of treats. My favorite treat as a child(because lefse is a STAPLE not a treat) was rosettes. They’re sugary. They’re messy. They’re so very good. This year Hubby and I are all about keeping traditions alive that we cherished growing up, so we are teaching our kids how to make these foods and treats that we remember having and making when we were growing up. Today’s mission: rosettes.
The recipe is super simple: 2 eggs beat with a tablespoon of sugar and a 1/4 tsp of salt. Then add a cup of milk and a cup of flour. Mix everything together until there are no lumps. We sift the flour into the rest of the batter because that just makes the job a little bit easier. Rosette batter is a similar consistency to pancake batter.
Heat lard in a cast-iron skillet for frying. You want the oil to be in that 340-360 area. If it isn’t hot enough, the rosettes will be more doughy and less crispy. While the oil is reaching the correct temperature, have the irons in the oil preheating. Hot irons are another integral part to getting rosettes to turn out correctly.
Dip the hot iron into the batter and then put the batter into the lard. The dough will expand while frying and fall off the iron, unless you’ve gotten batter on top of the iron, then it will cook around the iron, so you’ll have to chisel/cut it off to free the rosette after frying.
Turn the hot rosette onto a paper towel to cool for a few seconds and then dip into sugar. The real challenge is frying enough that there are some left once people come by and steal/eat them.
I’ve found with all of these traditional Scandinavian foods, you should just plan to lose 25-50% of the batter to trying to get your form perfect. When it comes to lefse, krumkake, or rosettes, I’ve never only made one batch of…any of them. I burn through part of the first batch trying to get my timing and temperatures right and then have the method down correctly just in time to run out of batter.
Miss E and I tackled rosettes this afternoon. I hadn’t made them for a few years and this may have been the first time I showed Miss E. I think she has some kind of ancestral-heritage-baking-super-power because she caught on quickly and then was at a pro level the rest of the day. As a parent, you allow your children to “help” sometimes, knowing full-well that it’s going to be a chaotic mess and make things take longer but you do it for the experience. Miss E has hit the age, or level, that she now is a asset to have on the baking team. It is a great corner to turn as a parent. She did the same with lefse this year, she’s a great baking partner, and she ENJOYS being in the kitchen making these traditional goodies.
Hubby joined us for the last rosette batch today. We ended up making 4 batches all together and he mentioned how Miss E’s great grandmothers were probably smiling down from Heaven knowing that their great granddaughter was keeping the baking traditions alive and doing such a phenomenal job with it. She smiled and said that was pretty cool…at least that’s what I think he said, I couldn’t hear over the crunching.
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (10 and 7) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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