You know those days when you do so many things so outside your normal routine that it feels like you’ve lived a week in the space of a waking?
One of those was that John and I, on a lark, drove up to Burlingame today. He drove; I wound a ball of Malabrigo Rios he’d picked out.
Okay, back up a little.
When I was ten and my family was doing that long drive circling the entire country with a little of Mexico (one afternoon) and Canada (several weeks) thrown in, Maryland to California and around and back that summer, one of the things we apparently did (I don’t remember it) was that we stopped in a Danish bakery in Racine, Wisconsin. (Mom and Dad, correct me if it goes further back than that.) Kringle? What’s that? …OH!
The end result is that my folks have ordered kringle from that bakery every Christmas for four decades, through a change in generation and ownership quite awhile ago. The bakery does them in a racetrack oval, rather than the traditional pretzel-ish shape, and the things cover an entire cookie sheet: flaky dough rolled in butter to almost phyllo layers, filled with cooked-down fresh fruit or cinnamon pecan. It takes them three days to make them, and for many years you had to order by Halloween for the holiday season or you were plain out of luck.
We carried on the tradition here too about every other year or so, and a few years ago when we did, something was…different. I checked the ingredients. When did they start cutting corners and putting in hydrogenated fat for part of the butter?
I googled for other bakers; Racine has become famous for kringles over the years.
I asked about the hydrogenated fat issue.
I struck out.
Kringles are a splurge in money and calories, and if they weren’t going to do it right, there was no point. Besides, Michelle can’t eat them anymore anyway.
But they are our tradition. And Michelle’s not going to be home yet at my birthday. So with rationalizations in hand, this year I went looking again. One bakery in Illinois looked promising. One in Solvang quite surprised me–my friend John from Stitches and his wife own the Village Spinning and Weaving shop in Solvang in, judging by the pictures and the addresses, the same building! Small world.
And I found Copenhagen Bakery up in Burlingame, certainly within reach. Hey. Why not try it out?
And so John and I braved the rain and set out on an adventure. We did call ahead to make sure there would actually be one there.
They make the traditional pretzel shape, the traditional almond-paste filling. Only. (At least that they call by that name.)Â I guess our fruit-filled oval ones were like chow mein in San Francisco: changed/reinvented by immigrants after they landed in the States. I explained to the woman at Copenhagen why we were experimenting and trying out their kringle and I asked if they put any hydrogenated fats in it?
She was horrified. No!
This evening, I finally closed the box to keep the three of us from finishing off the entire pastry in one day.
As for the yarn? John had said he needed me to go buy him a hat, and I was surprised and amused and countered that we had a ton of hats right here. Some Assembly Required. (An amused, *MOM*.) And so he chose the Azules colorway.
He didn’t really want me to post his picture with the hat in progress stuck on his head for measuring, four needle ends waving around his face.
But it is done. He has his hat. And we have a kringle source.