The Dakotas

North and South Dakota became part of the United States on the same day.  The foods associated with them are largely German in origin.   We couldn't find any official state foods affiliated with North Dakota, but there is a particular soup called Knoephla (I believe pronounced 'nifla') soup that is very popular.  A restaurant named Kroll's is mentioned frequently for it's knoephla soup, along with many grandmothers :-).

We combined a few recipes to make our soup.   It is basically a chicken-potato soup with dumplings (knoephla).   The knoephla are very easy to make - the dough is made from flour, salt, egg and water.   It is cut into small balls and either cooked in the soup broth or separately in salted water.   I can see how it could become a favorite soup if you grew up on it. However, we didn't.  We thought it was ok, but nothing remarkable.

Kuchen is the official state dessert of South Dakota.   The word kuchen means cake in German, and there are many, many varieties of it.   We found references to a South Dakota state recipe for apple kuchen.  However it wasn't on a state of South Dakota website, so I'm not sure how official it is.   It is the recipe that we made though.   The kuchen was basically shortbread cookie dough, with a thin layer of cheesecake mixture and then a top layer of apples sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.   I cut the recipe in half since it was huge, and I had to adjust the crust ingredients a bit (it was in serious need of more flour).  In the end it came out really well.