The last time I had Nagymama Jolán’s
gőzgombóc was at her Rákoskert cabin back in 1967. She made it with apricots, not with plums and we
ate it with sugared ground walnuts instead of ground poppy seeds. She would pick
a bowl of apricots and send us older kids to the store for freshly ground walnuts.
The store was a good 2-3 km away and by the time we trudged home stopping along
the way to pick wild flowers and sampling wild szeder, two pots of steaming
gőzgombóc was waiting for us. Many years after Nagymama crossed the
rainbow bridge, I tried getting the recipe from my mother and from various
aunts, I even contacted a cousin I thought would know, after all she grew up
with Nagymama… but no luck.
The story doesn’t end there. I now have an obsession with gőzgombóc. None of the online recipes come
close to Nagymama’s gőzgombóc so as soon as the apricots ripen I start “thinking”
about it. By the end of the apricot season Jim will be offering apricots to the
neighbors, even to passers-by. At one
point he would say, would it be possible to freeze those for another day? This
past summer’s efforts may not have solved my gőzgombóc problem, but I made
sufficient improvements to the recipe to write it down. If perfecting krémes
took me 10 years, who knows how long this will take?
STEAM DUMPLING
2 cups flour
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup very soft butter
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp yeast
1/2 cup rich Greek yogurt
8 apricots
2 tsp sugar
Cinnamon
1 Tbsp melted butter
1 cup walnuts, finely ground
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup sugar
- Combine flour, eggs, egg yolk, very soft butter, sugar, yeast Greek yogurt.
- Beat the dough for several minutes until very, very elastic.
- Shape into a ball.
- Place on lightly floured surface and sprinkle flour on the top.
- Cover with a large bowl and let it rise for an hour.
- Meanwhile wash the apricots and remove the stems.
- Slice into each apricot without cutting and carefully remove the stones.
- When the dough has risen, punch it down and divide dough into eight parts.
- Roll into balls and flatten down by the hand.
- Place an apricot on every flatted dough circle.
- Spoon 1/4 tsp of sugar and a small dash of cinnamon inside the apricots.
- Close up the dough around the apricots and form them into balls.
- Use a larger steamer pot or rig up to pots as in the picture.
- Add cold water to the lower pot, not touching the insert.
- Spray the insert with cooking spray and arrange the dumplings inside.
- Brush the tops with melted butter.
- Cover with lid and bring the water to the boil.
- Reduce heat to a simmer and steam the dumplings for 25 minutes.
- Meanwhile grind the walnuts very fine in the food processor or in a small coffee grinder.
- Combine it with 1/3 cup of sugar.
- Serve the dumplings with the walnut mixture.
One of my earlier efforts with Olivia back in 2010
