Make It Mondays: Kropsua

The day of making things. *****

When I was a kid, my mother made a treat for us that she called Yorkshire Pudding.

It was not Yorkshire Pudding.

Sure, it had pretty much the same ingredients as Yorkshire Pudding. Flour, milk, eggs…

But this was sweet and we didn't eat it with roast beef. We had it as a dessert or a snack.

She didn’t make it often in spite of its simplicity.

I once asked her for the recipe.

“Oh mix up some flour and some sugar and..”

“But how much flour and sugar?”

“I don’t know. I never measure anything. You eyeball it.”

Thanks Mom.

I suspect that a lot of people who can’t cook come from mothers who never measure anything and just add a little of this and a little of that. They measure in pinches and fingers and eyeballs.

My approach to teaching my kids to cook was different. I opened up a cook book, said “here you go”, and walked away.

It seems to have worked because they can all cook well enough not to starve.

I forgot about the “Yorkshire pudding” that wasn’t and I raised my kids and never made it because I didn’t know how much flour and sugar and my eyeballs were terrible measuring cups.

And then Mom died and the secret died with her.

A few months ago I wondered if I might be able to find it on the internet. But how when I didn’t know the actual name of it?

And then it occurred to me that it might be Finnish. After all, even though she wasn’t Finnish, she lived around Finnish people. Ontario, Canada where she grew up, has quite a few Finnish communities. At least two of her three husbands (including my dad) was Finnish.

She seems to have liked cold and emotionally distant men.

And no that’s not a slam against Finns. They’re proud of the fact that they’re cold and emotionally distant. They have memes bragging about it. They wear t-shirts with cold and unapproachable slogans. They carry around coffee mugs saying that they don't like people.

Couple my paternal Finnish heritage with my maternal English

stiff upper lip and I too might be considered cold and emotionally distant. Except by those who see me as a drama queen which apparently all my children do - and a friend who gave me drama queen gifts although she claimed it was because I was involved in theatre.

Anyway, my mother learned some cooking from Finns. I grew up with Finnish and Swedish foods. And then there were other foods that I won’t mention here because this is a happy post.

So I looked and found Finnish pancakes or Kropsua - which I have no idea how to pronounce because my father did not teach me Finnish and now it’s too late because Finnish is an impossible language to learn.

Could this Kropsua be it? It certainly looked like it.

And so I tried it out. It tasted similar to the treat my mother made although not as sweet.

Am I convinced it’s the same thing? I think it’s a good bet since it’s a popular dish.

So here we go. The recipe for Kropsua complete with measurements. Note, there are lot of various recipes out there and I’ve played with the one I found. The original had twice as much butter as what I’ve put here. So you can try it with twice as much butter but be sure and put something under your baking dish or you'll set your oven on fire.

Kropsua

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

In 8x11 baking dish put in 1/4 cup of butter. Put dish in oven when it’s ready and time it for about 5 minutes to melt the butter. You want the dish hot. So this is not the time to melt your butter in the microwave. Melt it in the dish in the oven. And wait until the oven is pre-heated.

Meanwhile, in mixing bowl…

2 cups of milk (you could also substitute 2/3 of milk powder and 2 cups of water)

1 cup of white flour - ha Mom! Measured flour!

2 eggs

Sugar. Now you can do whatever you want here. Oh, don’t yell at me. This is one case where you can eyeball it. You can add as little as 2 tablespoons or half a cup. It depends on how sweet you want it. I remember it as sweet.

1/2 tsp salt.

If you want, you can add vanilla or any other flavored extract.

Thoroughly mix.

The oven is beeping! Take dish out and add melted butter to mixture - be careful dish is HOT.

Thoroughly mix and then put mixture in hot baking dish.

Place in oven. DO NOT FORGET YOUR OVEN MITTS!. It’s so easy to forget that the baking dish is HOT.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes. It’s different every time. I have no idea why. You want it golden brown.

When it comes out of the oven it will be all puffy. It will sink. Do not panic or break down in hysterics.

The texture will be kind of custardy and will become more solid as it cools. Frankly I don’t remember it as being custardy, but that’s the way mine turns out. I've tried cooking it longer but then it gets tough.

You can serve it plain, with sprinkled sugar, or fresh fruit, or cook up some frozen fruit with some sugar until you get a sort of syrup.

Here it is, hot out of the oven, with the fresh blackberries I picked from my yard. Today I had it with fresh peaches and sprinkled brown sugar. Leftovers are good cold or nuked in the microwave.

You could even make this dish without sugar and top it with something savory.

And likely there will be a Finnish person who will say “that’s not Kropsua - this is Kropsua” and then they would say that they know the real Kropsua and they would be right because it’s that kind of dish. And I’m working from the internet and a vague memory. If someone has a better Kropsua recipe, let me know. I will not be upset and call you nasty Finnish names. I don't know any.