raspberries and pierogies

 

on wednesday i had a full day of food!  michael and i woke up early to go raspberry picking at rosby's, then we went to yoga and then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening MAKING PIEROGIES!!  really, we spent hours making them.  well actually i made most of them because michael had taken over making the dough and rolling it out while i filled filled filled the pierogies.  it was a long day.  i plan on using these raspberries for my cupcakes this weekend... a vanilla cupcake filled with mint cream and topped with raspberry mousse.  i also froze my extra raspberries to make sure at least for the next couple months that i will have local raspberries for my cupcakes!  i froze the perfect ones special for garnish.  if you haven't made it to rosby's this season you should really try to make it out soon.  their website says that the season goes until the end of october.  it's just a good way to spend your morning!

so after all of the raspberry freezing and canning was done, we made the pierogies.  we made 3 kinds:  jalapeno cheddar potato, cheddar potato, and bacon and kraut.  we used two kinds of cheddar, an aged australian and a regular run of the mill orange cheddar.  the pierogies are for sunday, which is michael's oktoberfest birthday party.  we made pierogies last year for the same themed party and ended up making the same mistake this year except not as extreme.  for some reason we always end up with a ton of extra filling and have to make 3-5 extra batches of dough to deal with all of it.  while i can't complain about having extra pierogies to last through the winter, i was pretty tired around 10 p.m. and wanted to give up on the filling.  so my only advice if you try to make pierogies is that you really only need 3 lbs of potatoes and not the 5 lbs the recipe usually calls for.  

 

pierogi dough recipe

2 1/2 cups flour

2 eggs (mix before adding)
1 tsp salt
1/2 - 3/4 cup "potato" water  (add in little at time)

Let dough rest 1/2 hour or so before your roll it out

this recipe comes from my mom.  every christmas my aunt makes pierogies and i look forward to it every year.  the "potato" water is the water you boiled the potatoes in, but normal water will work too.  make sure the dough is a little sticky when you are done with it because you are going to be adding a lot of flour as you roll it out so you want it to be sticky.

as for the filling, just mash 3-5 lbs of potatoes.. we used russets... and add the normal butter and milk you would use to make your mashed potatoes.... then add about 3 cups of cheddar cheese or more or less to your liking.  we didn't measure this out.  we used a lot though as you can see from the above picture.  then once you are done incorporating the cheese, split the potato mash in half and mix about 2-3 tablespoons of chopped jalapeno to one half of the potato mixture.

for the kraut, michael just fried up 4 slices of bacon and then added a pound of kraut in the same pan and continued to cook it all together.

when making the pierogies, we used a round cookie cutter and kept a glass of water to seal the pierogies together once folded in half.  sorry these directions are so vague, we just really did it off the top of our heads.  it's not hard i promise.