Baked Kneophla: Bacon, Cream and Potatoes. What More Do You Want?

1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. milk
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3-4 peeled & cubed potatoes
1 lb. bacon
1/2 c. diced onion
1 pt. whipping cream

Make a stiff dough using the egg, salt, milk & flour. Put potatoes in boiling water; add kneophla (dough) into the boiling water too (bite-sized pieces about an inch or so), cook until potatoes are soft; drain well. Meanwhile, brown onion. Cut in 1-inch pieces of bacon, brown to desired crispiness; drain well. Put all the ingredients in 9x13-inch pan. Pour cream over the top. Top with browned bread crumbs if desired. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


Snow. We have it. This is the view from my bedroom window. It's much nicer than this view. That's from my bathroom window. You know what this weather makes me want? Hot gobs of bacon and cream. Fortunately a Bakespace buddy came though with the perfect recipe. This one comes from Kayla over there, she got it from her German great-aunt. It's some serious comfort food. Dumplings (kneophla, however you pronounce that), potatoes, a little onion, bacon and cream. Baked. That's it. How good does that sound? I think the only change I would make to this recipe is seasoning the dumplings a bit, maybe even with just a little pepper. But you can always grind some pepper over it at the end, so it's not even that big a deal. So, let's do this thing, shall we?

First you need to get your taters going. Peeled and cubed, in water. I know you are supposed to start potatoes in boiling water, but I almost never do and they always come out fine. Anyway, once that's going you need to whip up the kneophla dough. Mix together the flour, salt, milk and egg till it's a stiff dough. I just scooped up dollops of it with the fork and scraped them off into the boiling potatoes. They wound up being fairly big, but whatever. They were good. Now, while that's cooking brown up your sweet, sweet bacon. It took me an unreasonable amount of time to cook a pound of bacon, but man, was it worth it. I need to find a faster way I think. Maybe the oven. Also brown up your onion. I did it in a little leftover bacon grease, because, well, why not? Yes, that pic is from another post. I thought I had gotten a decent picture of the browning onion, but they were all blurry. Hey, this is one of the reasons I keep all these pics. Anyway, once the potatoes are cooked you want to drain them. I figured the kneophla were done since they were all floaty. Now mix everything together in a pan. The original calls for a 9x13, but I wanted to see how well it froze so I did two 8x8s. I'll update this post with the freezing experiments results when I defrost it. Now cover it with cream. I found it helpful to laugh manically, kind of like a 50's era mad scientist, while doing this. Seemed to make everything come together better. Next you just toss it in a 350 degree oven for an hour. It comes out looking all fantastic and delicious. Kayla says some people top it with bread crumbs, but I liked the browned potatoes and dumplings so I'm glad I didn't. There you go kids, baked kneophla. Not even a little healthy, but unbearably good.

Adults Only: The Best Hot Chocolate Ever

Recently one of my favorite bloggers, La Fuji Mama, did a series of posts on hot chocolate. It got me thinking. I like hot chocolate. It's good. Deep, huh? So I decided to make some myself. I used a basic formula: quality chocolate, milk, sugar and I added a little something extra. Baileys. Baileys rules. This is one of the reasons this isn't for kids. It came out very, very good. I think I put on five pounds just looking at it, but it was worth it. So, here is what I did.

First, I used good chocolate, like I mentioned. I happen to be fond of Lindt 70%. If you wanted to do this you could use whatever you like, but this gave it a really deep, rich chocolate flavor. This is the other reason this isn't for kids, not that many kids like dark chocolate. I chopped it up pretty small then heated up some milk over very low heat. I only had 2% on hand, but I found a way to fix that, which I will get to later. I added about two tablespoons of sugar and whisked it till it dissolved. Now, Fuji Mama says you should add your hot milk to the chocolate, but I added the chocolate to the pan of milk. I think that you add the milk to the chocolate so it doesn't risk scorching, but I was standing by with the whisk so nothing was getting scorched. At this point I thought "2% my ass" and added some cream. I mean, cmon. If you're going to go this far how can you not go further? Then I whisked it some more. Then I added the Baileys. About a quarter cup or so. Again, why mess around? A little whipped cream and there it is. The best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was like drinking a mug of dark chocolate. Just a little sweet and as rich as you can handle. My girlfriend didn't care for it, way too dark for her. She only likes milk chocolate. But my dad would have loved it. Well, without the Baileys. He doesn't get down like that. I strongly encourage you all to make some, changed to your tastes. It's just the best.