Kugel for Cindy

By orchidgirl1979

For the last few weeks my friend Cindy has been mentioning how much she wants Kugel. Alas, none of her family members like the dish, and she did not want to make the entire recipe for herself.

Tuesday, thanks to Veteran's Day, I was off work and decided to make Kugel for Cindy. Kugel, for those of you who don't know, is a Jewish dish that combines cooked egg noodles with cottage cheese, sour cream, eggs, and sugar. Never having made the dish (I know...I'm a terrible Jew...I don't keep kosher, I don't fast on Yom Kippur, etc, etc.), I found a simple recipe here and decided to use it as a template, changing a few things (of course!).

Ingredients

• 24 ounces egg noodles
• 2 cups cottage cheese
• 3 eggs
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1 stick butter, melted
• 2 cups sour cream
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• a pinch cinnamon
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup cranberries
• zest of 1 mandarin

Preparation

Step 1

1. Preheat the oven to 350F and grease two baking dishes (I used one 9x13 and one 8" round).
2. In a large pot cook the noodles; drain.
3. In a food processor pulse the cottage cheese until it reaches consistency of ricotta...speaking of which, you could probably just use ricotta to begin with, but I would definitely use the full fat variety.
4. Whisk the eggs with sugar, add butter, cottage cheese, sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon.
5. Combine 2/3 of noodles and 2/3 of cottage cheese mixture with raisins and pour into 9x13 dish.
6. Combine the rest of the noodles and cottage cheese mixture with cranberries and mandarin zest and pour into the round dish.
7. Bake for 30 min.