Posted by Bruce Bilmes and Sue Boyle
, November 25, 2008 11:11
Roadfood.com is, of course, the place to find the finest in America’s regional specialties, created by America’s culinary folk artists. Many of us plan our vacations around visits to Roadfood eateries. But did you know that a surprisingly large number of these Roadfooderies will deliver their specialties to your door? Today we begin a series called 20 Days, 20 Gifts: A Merry Roadfood Christmas. Between the 12 days of Christmas and the eight nights of Hanukkah, we’ll even have all you interfaith couples fully covered!
Every day for the next 20 days we’ll highlight a choice Roadfood-themed item, and let you know how you can make someone on your gift list very happy! Each of the items we showcase will make wonderful holiday gifts, and can also help make for an extra-festive holiday table for you and your guests. So lets get started with Gift Idea #1:
What better way to begin our 20 Days, 20 Gifts series than to feature the pastry with the Christmas name! Kringle is the specialty of the Danish-American city of Racine, WI. So just what is this thing called kringle? As you can see in the buffetbuster photo above, it is an oval pastry. What’s not visible, however, is just how buttery and flaky this foot-and-a-half-wide pastry is. Kringles can be filled with fruit or nuts, or sweet cheese or chocolate, but the most popular flavor is pecan, with good reason. A pecan kringle is one of America’s great breakfast pastries! Kringle is best served warm, with a pot of coffee. If your experience with Danish pastries is limited to the dry, bready things they serve at morning office meetings, accompanied by Bunn-O-Matic coffee, then you are in for a real treat. Kringle would be most welcome on a Christmas morning.
Racine’s kringle bakeries are well-equipped for shipping kringle to customers all over the country. They freeze beautifully too. But keep in mind that these are local bakeries with limited capacity, so there’s a limit to the number of holiday orders they can satisfy. It’s best to plan as far ahead as possible, preferably before December 1st, so you don’t get shut out. Bendtsen’s Bakery (Roadfood.com review) is one of our favorite kringle bakeries. They are ordinarily set up for Internet orders but around the holidays arrangements must be made by phone only (262-633-0365). An order of three kringles, with ground shipping, will run about $39, but air shipping is probably a better idea (freshness!). Kringle and air will run about $56 through Bendtsen’s.
