Kirsten's Swedish Rice Porridge

Which might sound a little unusual, but is actually quite good!

Comfort food hits the spot any time of year, but warm porridge has been a winter favorite since we learned how to cook with fire. I've recently rediscovered the joys of oatmeal, but I'll fully admit, I'd never heard of someone making rice porridge for breakfast before. Cream of wheat, grits, sure, but not something that basically sounded kind of like a warm rice pudding.

Not that I've ever actually eaten a lot of rice pudding before.

Still, with the good luck I've been having recently with authentic American Girl recipes, I was hoping this would be a stress free, fun way to spend a snow day. A couple speedbumps later, and I'm ready to share the results with you! 

Kirsten's Swedish Pancakes

Not your average pancake!

Almost every culture has some version of a pancake, whether they be soft and puffy, or thin and eggy. They're a perfect vessel for almost anything, from jelly to meat to cheese to savory spreads, and everything else in between, which means you can enjoy them almost any time of day or night!

Swedish pancakes - or pannkakor - are yet another dish with a slightly obscure history. Although they or similar dishes have probably been enjoyed by Swedish families since ancient times, the first reference to them in text comes from the 1500's, and as it isn't a recipe, we aren't too sure what kind of pancake this was, exactly.

The ones featured in Kirsten's Cook Book are fried, and usually eaten on Tuesdays for dessert after a dinner of pea soup. Originally, frying the pancakes was a tricky business because before wood stoves, doing this over an open fire meant you were at a pretty a high risk of burning yourself! Once you were less likely to give yourself third degree burns making dessert, the dish got more and more popular, and probably would have been something the Larsons brought with them to America to remind them of home.

Kirsten's Pepparkakor

Rediscovering an old favorite!

There is a debate going on in my house about this recipe: my mother swears we've made this exact one before, as in the recipe that's printed in Kirsten's Cook Book. She says when I was in kindergarten, she made these cookies for my class during our curriculum about different cultures and cultural practices around the world because my teacher was Swedish, and because of Kirsten, I was kind of representing Sweden. I'm virtually certain that we've only owned a copy of Kirsten's Cook Book since last year, considering I don't remember any of the recipes or pictures inside of it from my childhood and we definitely do not have another copy of it floating around the house. Even if we did at one point, why would we have ever gotten rid of it?

Either way, despite not being Swedish, we have known of pepparkakor for quite a long time, and as a fan of spiced cookies and cakes, I've been eager to break out the recipe for this blog for a while. I've had a couple near misses and actual flops with official American Girl recipes before, but I think I can pretty safely say this one is a winner. It makes quite a lot of cookies even if you're using a big cookie cutter, it's a straight forward recipe, and the end product just tastes good.

Kirsten's Hassleback Potatoes

A quick way to really spice up a potato!

I have been sitting on this port for an embarrassingly long time. I actually made this neat Swedish side dish about two months ago, but every time I sit down to try and put my thoughts on paper (or on the computer, as it were), I just didn't feel like it. Don't get me wrong, these were a tasty side dish I definitely wouldn't mind making again, but the magic was kind of missing, here.

Admittedly, that might have to do with the fact that our microwave broke in the middle of making it - don't worry, it's since been replaced - so the final touch was sort of missing from this particular culinary adventure. For all this and more, keep reading!