Apricot Dumplings

It was fairly hot the past week here in Saskatoon and I was thinking about summer dishes that we would eat back home. First thought was a dish that involved cherries and I asked my mother for the recipe. However, I wasn’t yet settled on that one so I kept thinking and finally thought of Apricot Dumplings. My grandmother used to make them but I mostly remember them from visits to my aunt in Austria. It’s one of those dishes that I associate with a certain person and that is stuck with me forever.

Apricot Dumplings are a dish in themselves and are served for lunch in Austria (or at least in my family). It is a bit odd for Canadians I think to only have a sweet lunch. (We also make pancakes for lunch – German Pancakes that is.) Though I was a bit concerned about the outcome and if my family would like it, I boldly went ahead with the plan. Thanks to mom I had  the recipe, though it was a bit vague. My grandmothers had and have a tendency to go by approximates. The German phrase for that would be “Pi mal Daumen”, e.g. “Pi times your thumb.” Yeah, so helpful!

Ingredients:

– 1 kg potatoes
– 300g – 350g flour
– 2 eggs
– 50g butter
– dash of salt

You will also need:

– Apricots (plums, cherries, whatever you like)
– bread crumbs
– butter
– sugar/sugar cubes

Lets start with the potato dough. You can either peel, cut and boil the potatoes or you make potatoes in their jacket. Either way, you will end up with cooked potatoes that have to mashed and finely as possible. Clumps in the dough are not so nice. Make sure they are cool enough so you can mix with your hands. Add the flour, eggs, butter and salt and knead until you have a dough that you can roll in to a roll.

Tip 1: I am not sure if I had too many potatoes, if the eggs were too big or if the flour is different, but I had to add more flour than the recipe states. If you have the same problem, add tbsp. of flour until the dough doesn’t stick anymore.

Once the dough is in a roll you can work on your apricots. Cut them open but make sure you don’t cut them in half. Remove the pit and put aside. When you are finished with all, cut of slices of dough and pat them to form a round piece. Take one apricot, place a sugar cube inside (or spoon some sugar into them) and place the apricot in the middle. Then fold the dough over it and make a ball. Set aside.

After the apricots were used I switched to cherries.

Tip 2: Make about 6 at a time and cook them before you continue.

Boil a pot of water and place about 6 dumplings in the water. They will fall to the bottom, make sure they do not bake to the bottom. Cook for 12 min or until they float on the surface. Remove from the pot and place in a bowl to cool.

Melt some butter in a frying pan and add bread crumbs, toss them until they are golden-brown. Then serve the dumplings and sprinkle bread crumbs and, if desired, additional sugar over the cut open dumplings. Two dumpling for and adult seemed a reasonable lunch.

Tip 3: My Canadian family added some maple syrup to their dumplings and seemed to enjoy that a lot. Try it!

Happy Summer!