peanut butter ball perfection

When wedding planning, the mom and I concluded: the best option for little wedding gifts were Hershey Kisses wrapped in black fabric, tied with a green bow. Guests could enjoy the sweet before, after or never during the reception and the only work we’d have to do was purchase the buggers and their wrapping. We’d wrap them the day before the wedding and presto change-o, DECORATIONS!

Peanut butter balls are round, delicate, peanut-butter infused rice krispe treats the size of a 3-D quarter dipped in chocolate of milk or dark varieties.  They require multiple steps of working, waiting and freezing as well as about a hundred hours to complete. I’ve only helped make them once or twice, for fear the sheer mass of work and time required would prevent me from enjoying the morsels in the future.  

My mom and aunts insist they’re a Christmastime only treat. They take sooo long, they say. Perhaps the you-can’t-have-it nature adds to the flavor, but every time my mom would call and ask what I wanted her to cook for upcoming holidays or family gatherings, skip the casseroles mom, "peanut butter balls" was always my answer. I’d plead for them at Christmas, after Christmas and the entire duration of North Dakota winters -- six months in some cases. 

Sometimes mom made scotcheroos or peanut butter balls in a pan, but the result was never the same. Peanut butter balls cannot be reproduced. They must be creamy peanut butter, rice krispes and in golf-ball form. Impostors need not apply.

So since I have a knack for raising my mother’s blood pressure, I called her one morning and told her I wanted peanut butter balls at my wedding instead of Hershey Kisses. This is sure to rattle her cage, I thought to myself, laughing. Three hundred peanut butter balls at a June wedding. Preposterous. 

Who told you, she asked when I called.

Wha??? What do you mean who told me?

Aunt Bev and I were going to surprise you, she said. Why would we give Hershey Kisses at your wedding when we could serve your favorite candy instead?

Apparently, my cage would receive the rattling. 

Uhhhh.... because Hershey Kisses are easier, cheaper and WAY less time-consuming.... I said. 

Yeah, but they’re also boring, she said. Peanut butter balls are... just more you.

Like I said before, mothers are ALWAYS right.

And with aunties, cousins and a grandmother already volunteering, I did none of the work save taste-testing. They always give me the tough jobs...

I’m not entirely sure how the day of Ryan-Anderson wedding peanut-butter-ball making progressed suffice it to say a sweet the size of my face emerged upon the bridal table. 

Note the chocolaty wonder and its proportion to my facial features.

Apparently, my Aunt Mary “can dip anything.”

I have no doubt. She also makes a mean devils egg. 

I’m not sure how long those ladies worked and if it was proportionate to the number of hours spent conversing about Longaberger baskets, but the peanut butter balls passed my test. My only fear was consuming one too many and not fitting in my wedding dress. 

If I dropped one and melted chocolate stained the soft white fabric however, that was no matter. Like my mom said, it’s just more me. 

choke me for my chokecherry

In my attempts to be a good little country girl, I force myself to try new things: food included. It’s very difficult.

One of the foods I recommend is southeastern North Dakotan at worst and regional at best. So I’m sorry to make your mouth water, but you likely won’t find this at your grocery stores. I don’t know if the treat just isn’t as popular in Manchester, Iowa or Tuscon, Ariz., or if maybe the gods who listen when you pray just don’t love you as much as they love me, but if I could choose a way to die, I’d pick drowning. In chokecherry jelly.

Now, I’ve tasted delicious regional treats before. I even posted an e-mail I wrote about my kuchen-baking-and-ultimately-dropping experience last year.

And while kuchens and knoephlas and lefses and sauerkraut can be tasty, I’d say chokecherry jelly tops both Billboard’s Adult Contemporary and its chart of Hip Hop/R&B.

Take, for instance, the day Cowboy and I made pancakes with chokecherry syrup. The story is, Cowboy’s grandmother attempted to make chokecherry jelly, but when it didn’t set correctly, she jarred it anyway and called it syrup.

She did me a favor.

Basically, I got a chokecherry REJECT and yet I still knelt before the jar, faced Mecca, painted blood around my door and offered my first-born son in hopes that this Manna from heaven would rain on me forever. Screw water, send me some chokecherry.

So naturally, the side dish to any syrup is pancakes. And since I no longer believe in grocery shopping, I had zero pancake mix in my cupboard.

No bother.

I may have lost my faith in Leever’s Supervalue, but cook books: they have me singing HALLELUJAH.

So I plucked my latest used-bookstore purchase, dusted its cover and turned to page 44, Oatmeal Pancakes.

The directions say this recipe should yield four servings for a total of nine pancakes, but they obviously weren't feeding cowboys. I was. So my recipe fed two. And it yielded five pancakes: one mini, four large and one super-sized.

The recipe book calls for this:

* 1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

* 1/4 cup whole wheat four

* 1 T sugar

* 1 tsp. baking powder

* 1/2 tsp. baking soda

* 1/2 tsp. salt

* 3/4 cup buttermilk

* 1/4 cup skim milk

* 2 egg whites

* 2 T canola or soybean oil

Since I would never purchase something as expiration date-y as buttermilk, I used all skim instead. And since I’d never heard of soybean oil, I used olive. (It’s what I had. Don’t judge).

So my recipe looked like this:

* 1/2 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

* 1/4 cup whole wheat four

* 1 T sugar

* 1 tsp. baking powder

* 1/2 tsp. baking soda

* 1/2 tsp. salt

* 3/4 cup buttermilk

* 1/4 ONE cup skim milk

* 2 egg whites

* 2 T canola or soybean OLIVE oil

If I don’t mention here that while I was the pancake mixer, Cowboy was the pancake flipper, he’d forever refuse worming my fish hooks. And that punishment, I just cannot bear.

So there.

He flipped pancakes. And he didn’t burn them. While wearing an apron. And singing Shania Twain's "Man... I feel like a woman."

What resulted was something I should have photographed, because likely, the Guinness Book of World Records would have included it in its registry of best pancakes in the WHOLE. WIDE. WORLD. That’s how good they were.

Now, I don’t write this to torture you (too much). And, I’m sure you’re Amazon.com-ing “chokecherry jelly” right now. Perhaps, by some act of contrition, you can purchase a jar of your own. Well, you can. But likely, it’s no better than Kool-Aid, Pop Tarts or some other cardboard-boxed rendition of homemade goodness that never compares to fresh-squeezed orange juice or grandma’s baked biscuits.

That, and 11 ounces costs $8.99. EIGHT NINETY-NINE. I can guarantee North Dakotans aren’t paying 9 bucks for chokecherry anything, unless you can use it to bait fish.

So, if you live outside the Upper Plains region and are willing to profess your undying affection for me in 500 words or less, I will send you some. Don’t expect the straight from the stove stuff I’ve got, yours will be from the store. But it will be the homemade stuff, sold in stores, if you know what I mean.

P.S.: Careful what you write. It may will show up on this blog.

Now wipe the drool off your face and get back to work :)

kuchen again

I originally wrote this in October 2008 as an e-mail to my family.

For the 14 months I've lived here, I've heard, smelled and tasted various German dishes I never knew existed throughout my 23 years as a member of the blank, blank, and blankity blank families (no names, no creepers).

In North Dakota, the food pyramid has seven food groups instead of six. The seventh consists of fatty, creamy, buttery desserts and dishes baked with the sole purpose of keeping warn in the winter. See: knoephla (pronounced neff-la) soup.

On Tuesday, Leslie, a friend from our server days who shares a love of travel and a hate of idiot men, and I gathered our spatulas and borrowed rolling pins and headed for the hills of Jamestown High School where we could feel our thighs thicken before we'd even entered the room. If you guessed we were there to learn, you'd be correct. Two 20-somethings signed up for a cooking class along with mothers, grandmothers and married women intent on finding us husbands. In true Katie-fashion, Leslie and I were the only women sans-engagement bands there.

Naturally, we were the only women sans-culinary skills as well.

The class we'd signed up for was a $15 kuchen (coo-gin, like begin but without the be-) baking class offered by the local Career and Technology Center. Kuchen is a German dessert made with pie-like crust, custard and various kinds of filling including peach, blueberry, apple and the most popular: prune and cottage cheese.

The first order of business was the rolling of the dough which, after the teacher did it, seemed simple. She lied.

My first problem was getting the grapefruit-sized lump to stop adhering to my rolling pin despite my shaking it like a fly swatter in an attempt to get it off.

Flour Kaite, one woman whispered. I know, I lied.

Soon, my crust was as flat as Christina Aguilera in her "Genie in a Bottle" days but like unlike most small-chested women, my dough had curves. Not the round, circular, 360 degrees ones like the crusts of my classmates, but rather, mine had curves similar to that of a two-handled ping-pong paddle.

Despite this, I kept rolling along thinking sooner or later, it all would even out. I was wrong.

Better just to start a fresh with yours, the teacher said, without bothering to lower her voice. The other students looked at me like Katie Couric looked at Sarah Palin, "What's WRONG with you?" they thought. "You'll NEVER get married rolling dough like that."

Awesome.

So after some extra help by both the teacher AND the woman standing to my right, finally my crust was ready for its tin. This job I could do. I folded my crust in half and kneaded it in place without any extra assistance. Soon, it was time for prune layering and oven baking.

When the teacher removed my masterpiece, she even marveled at its perfection all the way to the kuchen cooling counter a home-ec station west. Soon, my classmates' faces of pity turned to jealously, but I slapped their hands. Take my kuchen and yours'll be in your face, I hissed.

When the kuchens were cool and the class over, Leslie and I bagged our treats and posed for a photo. My perfect kuchen would make a perfect framed picture. The only problem was, I dropped it.

That's right.

The most beautiful kuchen in the class, and likely the whole world, was suddenly lumpy, uneven and pathetic.

But like the culinary expert I am, I patched her up, wiped her clean and took my kuchen to work the next day where Germans from as far away as the advertising department marveled at its greatness.

So, who wants to visit?