Heritage Food: Kuchen

Crust

 Having recently fallen in love with the smell of dough rising and the feel on my hands, it's about time I made kuchen myself, especially since I'm trying to introduce what I call heritage foods to my son. 

Never heard of kuchen?  Most Kansans aren't familiar with it, either.  It's supposedly a German coffeecake and consists of a doughy crust made with yeast, filling of either fruit or cheese, and a sweet custard on top.  My mom would make it for Christmas, Easter, and many times in between.  I remember her even buying frozen bread dough and cutting out some of the sugar to make it healthier. 

Making the custard with Rum Babas in the background.

This is rhubarb.  Please excuse me not color-correcting this. 

I used the recipe for the dough and custard that was in my sister's married family's cookbook.  This makes six or more crusts.  Since the intent of this post is mostly to share what I ate growing up, I'm not going to write out a step-by-step process on how to make it.  Luckily, I had some rhubarb in the freezer and used the Streeter Centennial Cookbook to make that filling.  It consists of 3 cups cut-up rhubarb, 1-1/2 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/3 cup cold water, and 1 tablespoon of vanilla.  The rhubarb filling went on two of the crusts, and I used blueberry pie filling for two others.  The last two pies were made with a cottage cheese filling.



Dough:

1/2 c. warm water.                          2 tsp. salt
2   packages yeast                           2 eggs
1-1/2 c. lukewarm water                 1/2 c. shortening (I use butter)
1/2 c. sugar (or honey)                    7-8 c. flour


Custard:
1 c. cream
1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Put in saucepan until thickened.  Add cinnamon.














In case you wondered if my son liked it, the answer is no.  He's 2 years old.  It has more than two ingredients touching each other.