My Grandmother has a recipe for something I’ve never seen anywhere else - and I bet you’ve never heard of it either. It’s a pastry, made with sour cream, that we used to eat at breakfast time when we were kids. It’s called ice kipfel - but there’s no ice, or even icing, involved. It’s a layered, knotted collection of dough, served warm and dipped in sugar right before you eat it. She says it was invented in Germany. It sure sounds German?
I can’t find any record of it anywhere. I’ve googled it; searched Pinterest for it; tried to guess other names for it; searched for the ingredients… nothing. It seems there isn’t another person in the whole world who makes ice kipfel.
My Grandma turned ninety this year and she still churns these things out. When we all get together we eat them by the dozen. What will happen when she’s not around to make them anymore?
This reality hit me a few years ago while sitting on the deck at our family cottage in Saskatchewan - eating ice kipfel, of course, fresh from the oven.
I wonder what the recipe even looks like? I thought. I asked my Grandma to show it to me. Her response: “Show what?”
There wasn’t a recipe. She just knew how to make it, and that was that.
As it turns out, one of us grandkids had tried to write it down, just as my Grandma had dictated, decades prior. She dug out an old scrap of paper to show me. It wasn’t all that helpful. We always knew she basically just kind-of winged it, but this part was especially vague:
– Fold and twist, then bake at 350 for 20 minutes.
Fold and twist.
Fold and twist.
Simple!
Yeah, right. I’ve been trying to do that fold-and-twist for years. It’s harder than it looks, especially if you have no one to show you. It might actually defy the laws of physics. But it gave me an idea.
I’ve made a career out of film because I love to tell stories. I love people, I love memories, I love the way video lets you capture moments in time where photos fall short. It’s the sounds of voices, the movements of hands, the wrinkles around eyes. So why not just film my Grandmother doing that clever “fold-and-twist”? Even if I can’t get it right, one of my kids will surely figure it out!
That was the very first Memory Kitchen Film, and that’s how all of this started.
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family recipe video?
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