Making this simple meal always brings me back to my childhood. My own kids like it too, so I guess it’ll remind them of their days growing up as well. This meal is great for breakfast, but we often eat it for after school lunch. While making those little hedgehogs doesn’t take long, it’s still longer than I would like at 6:30am. So when I make them for breakfast it has to be either weekend or I use frozen ones.

Needless to say, I always make many of them and freeze what we don’t cook right away. It takes literally just minutes to boil them – perfect for early mornings.

This meal consists of three ingredients. Yes, you read it right! And the best part – all of us have all the needed products in our pantries and refrigerators. Making them takes around 20 minutes, but it is well worth it.

In terms of nutrition, the hedgehogs are probably not on the very top of the list, but they fill kids up and keep them full for a while. Nutrisystem, on which I have been for a good while, would not consider this meal super healthy, but it’s made from scratch from simple ingredients and has no sugar, so it’s great for kids in my book of parenting.

Let’s take a look at this simple miracle:

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons of cottage cheese or sour cream
• 1 cup of water
• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• Salt for boiling

Take a medium size bowl and combine all the ingredients, except salt. That goes into water for boiling at the end. I like to put cottage cheese or sour cream, a cup of water, and a cup of flour first.

Then, when I start kneading the dough with hands, I keep adding another cup of flour slowly. This way I know if the dough is getting too firm and I don’t need the entire amount of flour.

After kneading in the bowl for a while, you should have a soft dough ball, which can then be moved to a floured surface for easier kneading work. The original recipe doesn’t require cottage cheese or sour cream at all, but these products make hedgehogs softer. I use cottage cheese because I go to European farmer’s market quite often, but you will be fine with either sour cream, farmer’s cheese, or cottage cheese.

While I visit the farmer’s market myself, I often use Instacart for my regular grocery shopping. Their personal shoppers go to all the stores I usually shop at and keep my kitchen stocked without me going to those COVID-19 infected stores. I love this service and plan to remain loyal to Instacart even after the pandemic is over, if that ever happens.

You can consider the dough ready when it’s firm and doesn’t stick to your hands. In my case it happens after one cup of water and two cups of flour.

Next step is to divide the dough in egg size balls.

Then take each ball and stretch it as much as you can, rolling between hands until it becomes about 1 cm in diameter. Finally, take a knife and cut those long dough sausages into small pieces.

Take each piece, flatten between your fingers and gently roll over the inner side of fine grate to form those dull needles on the backs of each hedgehog.

And that’s it, you are done!

Cook what you need in salted boiling water for about 3 minutes after they float to the surface and serve with butter and sour cream.

Put the rest on a plate or cutting board and freeze for future use.

Enjoy and spoil kids with these instead of various mac & cheeses.