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.