Plum Dumplings

Note from Author Genevieve Davis: I took this down from Grandma in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Fanni guessed she used 1 cup of flour, but in reality, it’s more like 4 cups of flour.

Makes 2 dozen or more.

• 6 medium [2 to 3 lbs] white Wisconsin potatoes, boiled
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• 1 – 1 ½ tsp salt
• 4 cups of flour
• 2 sticks of butter
• breadcrumbs – best if homemade from Kaiser rolls

1. Wash and boil potatoes. You can leave the skins on.
2. Cool potatoes. Put them through a ricer, which gives you a nice, uniform mashed potato. Alternatively, you can peel the potatoes and put them into a food processor and buzz.
3. Add beaten eggs and salt. Gradually add flour until you have a dough you can knead. As far as dough consistency goes, it should be firm, but not as stiff as bread dough. The best thing to do is to make a trial dumpling and cook it.3. Flour your hands and the bread board and knead the dough briefly until smooth.
4. Keeping your hands and bread board floured, shape into one long roll, about the width of a rolling pin, and cut into pieces about 2” in length with a table knife.
5. Flatten out each 2” piece and lightly dust both sides with flour. Then press a plum into a piece of dough, making sure the plum is completely covered. Then dust the ball with flour.
6. Cook the dumplings in rapidly boiling salted water for about 10 minutes until they rise to the top. Watch out when you drain them that they don’t fall apart!
7. Brown bread crumbs in a frying pan in lots of butter, so they are in clumps. You have to watch the bread crumbs brown, because otherwise they will burn. After you drain each dumpling for just a few minutes, roll it in the bread crumbs, while the dumplings are still soft on the outside.
8. Keep the dumplings warm in the oven at about 150 degrees. Keep them lightly covered plate until they are all ready to serve.
9. Serve with cinnamon and granulated sugar at the table in separate containers. Count the pits and see how many you ate!