Sweet Potato Lompe & Lefse

Total Time: 1 day. Initial prep takes 30 minutes and then needs to chill for 8 hours-overnight. Cooking time is about 30 minutes.

Yield: serves about 5. These lefse/lompe keep well though and can be frozen.

Ingredients:

• 2lbs sweet potatoes

• ½ stick butter (2 ounces)

• ½ cup heavy cream

• 2 tablespoons sugar

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 ½ - 2 cups all-purpose flour

Recipe (Part One):

1. Peel those potatoes and put them in a pot. Fill the potato pot with water, potatoes should be fully covered, bring water to a boil and let the potatoes boil until they’re easily pierced with a fork. If your potatoes are different sizes then remove them one-by-one as they finish.

2. Put the boiled potatoes flat on a plate so they can dry & cool as you prepare your other ingredients.

3. Melt the butter and measure out the heavy cream, sugar, and salt. THE FLOUR IS FOR LATER. DO NOT MEASURE OUT ANY FLOUR AT THIS POINT.

4. Using a cheese grater, or a potato ricer if you have one, grate your potatoes into a bowl.

5. Add the melted butter, heavy cream, sugar, and salt to the grated sweet potatoes. Using a rubber spatula, thoroughly mix together all the ingredients.

6. Place the sweet potato batter in your fridge uncovered for at least 8 hours. The batter can also be left overnight. You want the batter to dry out which is why you don’t cover it. If you’re letting the batter dry/chill for the minimum of 8 hours then I’d suggest using a larger, shallow bowl so that the batter can better dry out.

Recipe (Part Two):

1. Prepare your workspace and prep the ingredients that you’ll be serving the lefse/lompe with. The lefse/lompe cook real quick! Clear off some counter space that’s close to your stovetop so you can easily transfer the rolled-out dough to your skillet/frying pan.

2. Heat your skillet to medium heat and let heat, ungreased, as you prepare your dough. I used a cast iron skillet but a frying pan will work just fine.

3. Measure out the 2 cups of flour and begin kneading, about ½ cup at a time, into the sweet potato batter. The drier that your sweet potato batter is, the less flour you’ll need to use. I left my batter in the fridge for about 8 hours and needed to use the whole two cups (plus more to flour my workspace). I’m assuming that you’ll need to use maybe 1 ½ cups if you let your batter dry overnight.

4. Continue kneading the dough, and adding flour if needed, until you have a nice ball of orange dough. See pictures below.

5. Cut the dough ball into quarters. Take each quarter and cut into thirds. Roll each of those thirds into a nice, even ball. You should have 12 orange balls ready to roll out.

6. Now you’re going to multitask so if you’re not good at that, find a friend to help you with this next & final step. Roll out a dough ball to be as thin as possible without breaking it. Using your hands, or a rolling pin, transfer the rolled out dough to the heated skillet. Let cook for 30 seconds - 1 minute and then flip. The lefse/lompe is ready to flip when you see small air bubbles on the top and speckled brown on the bottom. Just like a pancake. Adjust the heat on your skillet accordingly.

7. If you’re good at multitasking, then you can roll out the remaining dough balls one-by-one as you let them cook one-by-one. These cook quite quickly though so if you have an eager helper then let one person roll out the dough and have one person monitor the skillet. Team work makes the dream work.

8. Place the cooked lefse/lompe onto a plate until all are finished and ready to serve.

Recipe (Part Three):

1. Ask yourself, how am I serving these delicious, orange things? They can be served sweetly with butter, cinnamon, sugar, syrup, maybe some whipped cream, and then the proper name for the dish is lefse. They can also be served to be savory and are typically wrapped around a hotdog and are then called lompe. I tried both.

2. I made lompe for dinner and went for a “Seattle Dog” style arrangement. I took the cooked sweet potato leaf, smeared cream cheese on it, put a cooked Field Roast sausage on it with some sauerkraut, rolled it up, and topped it with some spicy mustard and green onion. It was good but the Field Roast kind of dominated the dish (as it tends to do since it’s a very flavorful weiner). Next time, I’m going to use a regular vegetarian frankfurter.

3. I made lefse for breakfast and I could have eaten 10 because it was so easy to assemble and truly delicious. I spread some butter on the sweet potato leaf and then sprinkled a little cinnamon and sugar on top of the butter and then rolled it all up and just ate it out of my hand.

4. The ways you could serve this sweet potato leafs/lefse/lompe/lumpa are endless. My husband is going to make a quesadilla out of them for lunch. I want to make a wrap out of them. I also just ate one totally plain. I gave ½ of one to my dog.

5. However you served them, enjoy and cheers!

My husband and I just moved to Helena, Montana and we brought A LOT of sweet potatoes with us from the farmers’ market gig we were working in Seattle. Some sweet potatoes didn’t survive the freezing snow storm we endured to get here but we still have too many sweet potatoes on our hands. I have a collection of cookbooks that I regularly flip through, or read in bed as I’m trying to go to bed, and most of the books are vintage and surprisingly void of sweet potato recipes. It’s almost like the sweet potato is some *~modern~* invention so instead I look for potato recipes and then adjust in the ways I can. I found this Potato Lefse recipe from the Baking with Julia cookbook that was written by Dorie Greenspan in 1996. The recipes are based on the PBS series hosted by Julia Child aka my hero. What a woman! In the book, Dorie doesn’t go into the origin of the Lefse and spells Lompe, Lumpa. According to google, the correct spelling is Lompe and this is a dish originating from Norway. Just FYI. When it comes to creating recipes I like to find something from a book that inspires me, gives me some pointers, and helps me grow as a baker, but then I like to adjust lots of things because I know what I like/might not have all the ingredients/want to make it my own. So this recipe is a Julie/Dorie/Shea hybrid creation I guess and I hope you all enjoy it. Let me know how you made it your own and how you served it!