- Region
- Africa
- First record
- 1652 · Renaissance & print
- Fold
- Ball
- Cooked
- Boiled/steamed
- Dough
- Wheat dough
- Made with
- Flour, egg, baking powder
- Cooked
- Boiled/steamed
- Served
- Cinnamon-sugar syrup or custard
- Size
- About 4 cm across
Field notes
History
Dutch kluitjies at the Cape, 1652. Popular until mid-20th c. A 1937 SA cookbook gave dumplings a whole chapter (Cooksister). Also "Duitse kluitjies" (after Dampfnudel).
Make it
Souskluitjies (cinnamon sauce dumplings)
Ingredients for 4
Dumplings
Cooking liquid
Cinnamon sugar
Sauce
To serve
Method
- Mix the cinnamon and sugar for the cinnamon sugar and set aside.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and rub in the cold butter until it looks like fine crumbs.
- Beat the egg with the milk and stir it into the flour to make a soft, sticky batter. Do not overmix.
- Bring the water, butter and salt to a boil in a wide pot that has a tight lid.
- Drop heaped teaspoons of batter into the boiling liquid, dipping the spoon in the hot water each time. Leave room for them to swell.
- Cover tightly, lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cook without lifting the lid until puffed and cooked through. · timer 12 min
- Lift the dumplings into a warm dish with a slotted spoon, scattering cinnamon sugar between the layers. Cook any remaining batter the same way.
- Measure about 400 ml of the cooking liquid back into the pot, add half the remaining cinnamon sugar and the butter and boil until syrupy. Thicken with custard powder mixed to a paste with a little cold water if you like. · timer 5 min
- Pour the hot sauce over the dumplings, sprinkle with the last of the cinnamon sugar and let stand a few minutes before serving. · timer 5 min
Notes. Souskluitjies means "sauce dumplings" in Afrikaans. Writers link them to the Dutch and German dumplings that arrived at the Cape from 1652; they were a cheap, everyday pudding through the Depression and remain a winter comfort dessert. Recipes vary a lot: some cook the dumplings in milk, some bake them in a covered dish of cinnamon syrup (gebakte souskluitjies), and some richer versions add brandy or sherry, vinegar or cloves to the sauce. The key rule across sources is not to lift the lid while they cook, or they sink and turn heavy. Cake flour is the South African standard; plain flour works.
Written for the atlas from several sources, cross-checked: Souskluitjies (cinnamon dumplings) revisited, Jeanne Horak (Cooksister); Souskluitjies, Marinda Kook; Outydse souskluitjies, Lekker Resepte. Not yet kitchen-tested.
Where
From Afrikaner, South Africa.
Pin · Cape Town
Evidence
Reasonably sure. Reference works agree, but we have not yet found a dated or primary source.
The grade comes from the project's source report and has not yet been checked source by source. How grading works.
This entry is drawn from the World Dumpling Atlas, §6.23, the project's source report. Its grade, S secondary consensus, says how far that has been checked against a primary source.
Family F
