Croatian Crescent Rolls {Around the World in 12 Dishes}
It’s time again for my monthly post for “Around the World in 12 Dishes,” the series in which each month participating bloggers travel the world with their kids by cooking a dish from another country and perhaps reading a book, doing a craft, or learning fun facts about it.
Bolstered by my success at making Portuguese Milk Rolls, I decided to try making crescent rolls (klipici) from Croatia. While they weren’t quite the roaring success of the milk rolls (partly because of my own distracted cooking), they still were delicious and fun to make.
I won’t repeat the recipe here, because I really want you to visit my friend’s lovely blog to read the original recipe. But I’ll just note for those of you converting from metric that the 1 kg of flour she calls for is 8 cups! I opted to do a half batch instead, which was plenty for our little family, even with Monkey and I downing several as soon as they came out of the oven.
As usual, the dough didn’t rise for me like I’m sure it would for anyone else, but it rose enough to make the dough workable. It was so fun rolling the little triangles into crescents!
My main mistake was that I forgot about the egg wash. Completely. It would have added wonderful flavor plus given them that golden glow. Without it they did look a bit lackluster, but luckily they still tasted great (though I did keep wondering, What if? Wouldn’t they taste even better…?)
Ready for the Oven
My second (lesser) mistake was to forget to buy any cool toppings. So again, the principal taste of the rolls wasn’t affected, but it did take away from the overall presentation.
In any case, we have been enjoying them for breakfast, and even with my oversights, I like them well enough to give them another try sometime – this time with the egg wash!
It has been a busy month (when is it not?), so we didn’t do a craft this time, but I did find out about a couple of famous Croatians I thought would be of interest to my little scientist:
Nikola Tesla (remember the band?) is well known for his work with electricity and developed the Tesla coil, which became widely used in radio and television sets. He even has a scientific unit (the “tesla”) named after him!
Andrija Mohorovicic is less well known but significant to my Monkey for his work on the behavior of seismic waves and a method for locating earthquake epicenters.
Source: Cultures of the World: Croatia, Robert Cooper, 2000, New York.
Check out the other participating blogs to see what they have been cooking up:
Adventures In Mommydom, Afterschool for Smarty Pants, All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Maroc Mama, Creative World of Varya, Glittering Muffins, Kid World Citizen, Mermaids’ Makings, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Mommy Talks.
If you try a dish from Croatia, we’d love to hear about it! And don’t forget to download this month’s placemat and passport! You can also link up your dish or craft here to share your post on all the participating blogs:
-8 Comments-
Brilliant, its just the egg wash that gives them that colour. Next time you wont forget, and try adding inside ham and cheese. You can also freeze them and they still taste good
Great tips! Thanks, SJ!
I’ll have to try this out with my son. We love making international dishes and love trying new things. I like SJ’s advice about adding ham and cheese. Great idea about freezing them! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Shana! Hope you enjoy them!
My lack of getting a post up in May shows how organized I am for Croatia this month. I keep putting it off thinking I might get a craft done, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Ticia, this happens to me almost every month! I wish I had time to do more crafts for these, but unfortunately this usually doesn’t happen.
Croatian recipes seem to be challenging for all of us! You did great! I think maybe it’s the conversion of the measurements, as well as all the detailed steps of foods we are not used to. But wow, it made me appreciate their cooking so much! You guys did an amazing job!
Thank you, Ang! Yes, I found these recipes particularly challenging, but it was fun to do. I think you’re right that it’s hard to do a recipe for a food you’re not familiar with, as it’s hard to tell when you’re on the right track!