Suga Kuga

This is the BIG one. The ONE. The only dessert recipe I've really practically made up all by myself. Well its based on something I had heard about you see. Back in the 80's when dessert pizzas started to come into fashion in my hometown my mom was intrigued. Seemed my grandmother had been making them for AGES. Back on the farm they would of course having baking day. (See any Laura Ingalls Wilder novel for further explanation.) At the end of her baking she'd take a bit of her bread dough, roll it out flat, pour on fresh cream, and sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon. Into the oven and in a little bit there was a lovely german pastry! They called it suga kuga or sugar cake.

This isn't any delicate pastry! It's a pick it up and shove it in your mouth compulsively type of pastry! You need a pizza cutter or scissors to cut the stuff apart!

I developed this recipe after grandma had passed and while my mother said it really wasn't quite like her mother's she never turned down a piece of it.

Shall we kuga?

First you'll need a little dough . . . okay this is a lot of dough. I couldn't make a kuga for the neighbors and not make one for us! There'd be insurrection. It'd be like Egypt, live right here in Missouri! I have no riot gear or tear gas! I only have threats of bedtime. Of course, you could use my bread dough recipe (Be warned, my recipe makes enough for two kugas!) but you can make perfectly fine kuga from frozen dough or even from those dry packages of pizza dough mix.  I make it with pizza crust mix all the time! I just follow the directions and add a couple of tablespoons of sugar to it since it's generally so savory.

Grease up a cookie sheet. I'm using a butter wrapper in honor of grandma . . . what size sheet you ask? Well any old size will do. This one is actually a little too small for my taste yet it still worked. You could even line the pan with parchment or nonstick foil if you like.

Throw the dough in the greased pan and . . .

spread 'em! Or spread it I guess . . .

Spread it as far as it'll go or until you run out of pan!

This one spread out further! It's nice if there's a little ridge of dough on the side. Helps keep the liquidy stuff in. Though I've never really seen it spread out of the pan in anyway that made it inedible . . .

Pick your poison! Uhm, dairy product. Kuga is an excellent way to get rid of extraneous leftover dairy products you have residing in your fridge! I have about a cup of good plain yogurt in here. That would be fine for one kuga!

Look! Cream cheese I bought on sale at Christmas! Hey it expires tomorrow so we're all good! This would be fine for a kuga too!

I decided to mix 'em together so there'd be shared goodness on each one. Now you've got to taste it and add enough sugar to make it palatable for you and yours. Between cream cheese and yogurt I ended up using about 1/4 cup per kuga.

We'll need some egg in there to make sure it firms up nicely in the oven. It's like we're making a cheesecake on bread!

Now for some vanilla!

Mmm! You want about a cup and a half of dairy goodness for a kuga.

Help it go all the way to the edge! When I'm pouring it I"m always convinced it's going to go all over and underneath and everything will be ruined but it doesn't. It seems to adhere to the dough. They're meant for each other!

Now for some applesauce! Applesauce isn't set in stone. You could use any soft and tender fruit. We won't discuss what you did to make it soft and tender either!

Nice large dollops! Now be better than me and swirl them in a little. I just left mine all rising out of the custard in mountainous form. Guess what. They stayed that way! Not that anyone here is complaining. We're going to use camouflage next.

Now grab the BEST cinnamon in the world. Well actually it's the best cassia in the world. Americans think cassia is cinnamon because of marketing. I think we're getting a much tastier product and it's cheaper to boot! Want to come over for a cinnamon tasting? I usually keep 2 or 3 around, it's what I do in my spare time . . .

See! The sprinkled cinnamon makes it look better! I love sprinkles!

I was feeling insecure about the pieces of unadorned dough on the edges so I sprinkled a little sugar on them. Then I stuck the cake or pastry or pizza or whatever the heck it is in a 350 deg F. oven.

Thirty minutes later it was poofed and golden! The thinner one was no longer giggly so I went ahead and took it out. The thicker one needed about 5 more minutes to firm up.

Look at the goodness!

I like to add a little glaze because my family's palate is a bit sweeter than my mother's was. I forgot to take pictures of me glazing it because I was fighting off the hoarde as they came home from school.

Oh my! The crust is like a good piece of bread, chewy and yeasty and brown on the bottom. It's almost like a roll spread with cheesecake and apple pie!

Its all crispy on the edges too!

Chewy, crispy, creamy, sweet, and tangy all in one little square of goodness. Okay, it's a large square of goodness but if I made it too small I'd have to have multiples . . .



Suga Kuga

dough for a 12 inch pizza*
1 cup of sour dairy such as yogurt, cream cheese, sour cream or cottage cheese
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup sugar (to taste)
1 cup of applesauce
cinnamon

Glaze options
A. 1/2 cup of "canned" frosting melted in microwave.
B. Mix 1 cup of powdered sugar with a few tablespoons of milk or cream until you get a spoonable consistency

Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Spread dough on greased cookie sheet. It should be 1/4 to 1/3 inch thick. Mix dairy, egg, vanilla and sugar together. If you're using something firm like cream cheese you may need to thin it out with some milk. You want to end up with around 1 1/2 cup of dairy mixture. Pour onto crust. Distribute spoonfuls of applesauce over kuga. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon. Bake until custard mixture isn't jiggly. This will take 20-30 minutes depending on how thin you made things! Cool and then fling glaze across kuga.

*any yeast dough will do. The frozen loaves of bread in your grocer's freezer case work just fine. The prepackaged pizza crust mixes are great if you follow package instructions and just add a few tablespoons of sugar to them.

South Western Egg Casserole

We had a pancake dinner last night at church and it was suggested that people bring breakfast like sides to accompany the pancakes. So since I could remain relatively anonymous I decided to try something different.

 . . . if you can't experiment on your brothers and sisters in Christ who can you experiment on?

I wanted something relatively plain. Something a child could scrape the top off of and eat. Something without bread or cheese or meat. I've got friends and family members who don't eat any of these things and they all seem to want to come to dinner at once!

If there's no bread I want it filled out a little anyway so I chopped up some new potatoes I had leftover from another meal. They were raw so I threw them in a pot with some cold water and a generous amount of salt. By the time they came to a boil they only needed about 5 more minutes of cooking time.

While the taters were boiling I buttered a 9X13 dish. Do you save your butter wrappers for this? My grandma always did. Of course, butter in wrappers was a lovely new fangled invention to my grandmother! They had their own cow. Evidently you are the milkman in central South Dakota in the 30's.

Potatoes are tender! Drain them and throw them in the bottom of the dish. Mine had some water clinging to them so I let them sit uncovered for a minute or two. Soggy potatoes are no good! The salt water should of soaked into them and flavored them nicely. As soon as they're dry looking you can cover them up with foil or a lid.


Chop up some red bell peppers too! They'll add a touch of sweetness to our dish.

I sliced up some mushrooms. I love a good meaty delicious mushroom! They're not very meaty at this point so we need to meatify them!

Heat some butter in a skillet. When butter browns it forms all sorts of lovely nutty flavors! You can make really delicious dishes based almost entirely on browned butter, lemon and salt.

Throw the mushrooms in and throw in a little salt. Just a tad to help them give up their moisture. At first it'll seem like they've soaked up all the butter and nothing else is happening but eventually . . .

They'll release their lovely mushroom juice and start to brown! I threw a touch of black pepper in these. Plus a really tiny minced clove of garlic and the smallest sprig of fresh thyme from the garden. After I threw the thyme in it occurred to me that a 1/4 tsp of cumin powder would of been more south westerny but heck I really like thyme in mushrooms.

When the mushrooms are all shrunken bites of meaty deliciousness take them out of the pan and put them in a bowl. Oh look! We have fond. We're going to have to do something with that later.

Throw the peppers in. I just want to wilt them a little. No salt for these babies. I only cooked them for a minute. I didn't want raw peppers on my casserole. If your pan is hot enough they might get a little char on them.

Take the peppers out and put them in a bowl like the mushrooms. Look at all that brown goodness in that pan! That is flavor! We've gotta retrieve that. Pour in half a cup of dry vermouth or any other dry white wine.

It should bubble and spit at you some! Scrape all the bits off the bottom and get them boiling in the wine. Go ahead and turn the heat off and set the pan of goodness aside. Mind you, if you taste this stuff it probably won't taste very good to you. It's sort of bitter and vinegary but acid is one of those tastes that balance out a dish!

Let's get crackin'

and pourin'

and saltin'

and seasonin', if you can't find dried ground chipotle peppers where you're at you could use some of the canned ones chopped up finely. This was convenient though.

Mix all of those things up really well . . .

. . . and pour it over your potatoes. Bake it for 30 minutes in a 375 deg F oven. Now if your potatoes were still pretty steamy hot this might be done in 25 minutes. If you were working with cold potatoes and had put this casserole in the refrigerator overnight I imagine it could take more than 60 minutes to get this cooked.

Go ahead and add your mushrooms and peppers to your egg dish while its hot and they'll warm right up! I also added some chopped fresh cilantro but for some weird reason neglected to take a picture of it! I personally think a little sliced green onion would be delicious on here or even inside with the potatoes!

The custard is firm with just enough salt to make the eggs a star. The chipotle pepper gave that hint of smokiness that us Midwesterners LOVE with eggs. The mushrooms were lovely rich chunks of umami flavor. The peppers were sweet, moist, and made the casserole stand out with pretty color. The cilantro added a vegetal bitterness and aroma that's usually only offered in classic french herb omelets.

I will admit my casserole was neglected a little because it didn't look like your average egg casserole but everybody who tasted it really liked it.

Or . . . at least . . . that's what they said to me.

I really liked it. I think I've finally found an egg casserole I can serve to my family!

South Western Egg Casserole

1 1/2 lbs red potatoes, 1/2 inch dice
1 red pepper, sliced into bite size pieces
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
1 Tbsp butter
pinch of fresh thyme or cumin powder
1 clove of garlic minced
1/2 cup dry vermouth (any dry white wine will do)
12 eggs
1 pt. half and half
1 tsp salt
1/8-1/4 tsp chipotle pepper
1/2 cup cilantro leaves, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 deg F.

Cover potatoes with cold salted water. Bring to a boil and cook till tender, drain. Place potatoes in a buttered 9X13 inch baking dish.

Heat butter in 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Add mushrooms and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Add thyme or cumin and minced garlic. Saute until all moisture has disappeared from pan and mushrooms appear golden brown. Remove from pan and hold in a bowl. Add bell pepper to pan and saute until wilted, approximately 1 minute. Remove peppers from pan. Deglaze pan with wine, scraping up fond from bottom of the pan. Turn heat off and allow liquid to remain in pan.

Mix eggs, half and half, salt, and chipotle peppers until completely mixed. Whisk in wine. Pour over potatoes and bake around 30 minutes.

Garnish with sauteed mushrooms, peppers, and chopped cilantro.