After supper tonight I had one of those whoooosh flashbacks to my childhood and decided to make “Melkkos”. It probably directly translates from Afrikaans as “Milk food”..
All I know is that it is the comfort food that comfort food would have eaten if comfort food could eat. Or something 🙂
I only had a vague recollection of how to make it so I dug out my MIL’s 1973 Kook en Geniet (that iconic book of Afrikaans cooking) . I have lots of memories of eating this as a child and specifically remember once when we had a power failure in Durban my Mom confused ground cloves for ground cinnamon in the dark and it tasted horrible over my favourite dish!
My Mom’s recipe involved rubbing butter into flour, but I found a much easier recipe that I tweaked:
- 1l milk
- 1tbsp butter
- 1 cup flour
- 1/4 cup castor sugar
- pinch of salt
Heat the milk and butter either on the stove or microwave. Meanwhile, mix the castor sugar, flour and salt. When the milk is hot, pour about a cup into the flour mixture, stir very well (I used the hand blender) making sure there are no lumps and pour the flour mixture into the milk mixture.
Stick back on the stove/microwave and let it boil for about 3-5 minutes until thick-ish and creamy, stirring often (once again, I used the hand blender for this).
Pour into bowls and sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon to taste over. It took a whopping 15 minutes to make and was better than I remember it. (Sorry Mom!)
What was your childhood comfort food?
Here’s a pic of the kids’ bowls, they loved it!
Oh yum!
Oh wow! I’m bookmarking this site on the bookmarks tab! I also have a recipe for melkkos, but it’s a rather labour-intensive one compared to yours…
Thank you!
Pleasure, thanks for popping in!
Sounds delicious and just the job for this kind of weather! Have a great weekend. ss
Thank you Sharon, same to you and thank you for the support.
Amazing one of our favs too and also kook en geniet!!! We love it on cold nights. Have you done “souskluitjies” yet? With soup very lekke!
Souskluitjies? Will give it a bash!
Kook en Geniet, ours has lost it’s spine and back cover 🙁 So Mom managed to get a new version/copy, but its somehow not the same and we use the old, much loved one instead 🙂
Lol, that book has almost all the important basic recipes in that you would ever need.
I thought I have placed a comment here? I think I am the only person in SA that can not stand melkkos. I think it is the texture thing that puts me off.
What about the texture puts you off? This one isn’t lumpy like the original one 🙂
My childhood comfort food was sago. Baked in the oven. Divine!
Will try your melkkos. Thanks for blogging this. Had never ever even heard about it before you mentioned it on FB the other day.x
I love it, my Mom’s used to to be clumpy according to the original recipe, I much prefer the smooth version.