Ice Kipfel - Grandma's Specialty

Just Fold & Twist....

My Grandma Ellie has a recipe for something I’ve never seen anywhere else - and I bet you’ve never heard of it either. 

It’s a pastry, made with sour cream, that we used to eat at breakfast time when we were kids. 

It’s called ice kipfel - but there’s no ice, or even icing, involved. It’s a layered, knotted collection of dough, served warm and dipped in sugar right before you eat it. 

She says it was invented in Germany. I suppose she’s probably right. There’s a lot of twisted dough things there.

Here’s the thing: I can’t find any record of it anywhere. I’ve googled it; searched Pinterest for it; tried to guess other names for it; searched for the ingredients… nothing. 

It seems there isn’t another person in the whole world who makes ice kiffel.

My Grandma turned ninety this year and she still churns these things out. There’s always a ziplock bag of them on the counter by the toaster…and usually a back up in the freezer for when the boy cousins arrive. They’re everyone’s favourite and I get a warm feeling inside now just thinking about them.

What will happen when she’s not around to make them anymore?

This reality hit me a few years ago while sitting on the deck at our family cottage in Saskatchewan, Canada - eating ice kiffel, of course.

I wonder what the recipe even looks like? I thought. I asked my Grandma to show it to me. Her response: “Show what?”

There wasn’t a recipe. She just knew how to make it, and that was that.

As it turns out, one of us grandkids had tried to write it down, just as my Grandma had dictated, decades prior. She dug out an old scrap of paper to show me. It wasn’t all that helpful. We always knew she basically just kind-of winged it, but this part was especially vague:

– Fold and twist, then bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Fold and twist.

Fold and twist. 

Simple!

Yeah, right. Look at that picture… would yours look like that after “folding and twisting?” I’ve been trying to do that fold-and-twist for years. It’s harder than it looks, especially if you have no one to show you. It might actually defy the laws of physics. 

But this is when everything changed. 

I’ve made a career out of film because I love to tell stories. I love people, I love memories, I love the way video lets you capture moments in time where photos fall short. It’s the sounds of voices, the movements of hands, the wrinkles around eyes. 

So why not just film my Grandmother doing that clever “fold-and-twist”?

So I did.

When I finished the video and shared it with my Aunties and family, I started getting emails and phone calls from them all!

“I have tears rolling down my face!” 

“This is just...HER, you’ve captured her wonderful essence forever. I can only imagine watching this when she’s gone, it’ll be like she’s right here with us still.”

Through sniffles and tears of joy, it occurred to me that this was about so much more than filming recipes, and “making films ‘cause that’s what I do.” It’s about giving an incredible gift to my family, and to future generations of my family.

Since then, I’ve been around in circles trying to determine what to do with these videos. I’ve made a few more since then, and given some as gifts to friends and their families, I’ve made a course trying to teach people how to do it themselves (check that out here if you’re interested.) But I just haven’t hit a stride with it all.

I dream of a global food family committed to sharing and remembering recipes, stories and culture that would otherwise be lost. I hope you’ll join me.