Ingredients:
- 500g starchy potatoes
- 1 egg
- 1 cup flour + more for working with the dough
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 8 plums RIPE and preferably small but all sizes will work
- 8 sugar cubes or granulated sugar
- Cinnamon
- butter for coating the dumplings
Putting it all together:
Make the dough:
Peel the potatoes, chop them into evenly-sized chunks and cook until fork-tender, about 15-20 minutes.
While the potatoes are still warm, press them through a potato ricer or mash them with a potato masher. Let the potatoes cool before adding the other ingredients (warm potatoes will absorb more flour making your dumplings tough).
Add flour, egg, and salt to the potatoes. Stir the ingredients with a spoon until roughly combined, then knead the dough with your hands until you have a ball of dough. Don't overwork the dough – it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth.
Transfer the dough to a wooden board/silicone rolling mat sprinkled with flour. The dough will be a little bit sticky but try to not add more flour or the dough may end up too tough.
Prepare plums:
Cut all the plums almost in half, remove the stones, place 1 sugar cube and a pinch of cinnamon in the place of the stone. Press both sides of the plum together.
Shape dumplings:
Divide the dough into 8 parts (if you have medium-sized plums) using a knife or a bench scraper.
Flour your hands. Take one part of the dough and flatten it into a disk. Place one plum in the middle. Wrap the dough around the plum. Pinch the seam well so it won’t open while cooking. Roll between your palms so you have a ball of dough.
Place all the dumplings on a well-floured board.
Cook knedle:
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer (the water should not boil rapidly!). Gently lower 4-5 knedle on a spoon into the water (a large and wide pot is preferred – you can add about 6-7 knedle to a wide and large pot, try not to add too many at once or the temperature of the water will drop too much and your dumplings will leak).
After a minute or so, stir the dumplings gently with a wooden spoon to make sure they're not sticking to the bottom of the pot.
When they float to the surface, cook them for 4 minutes. The cooking time may depend on the size of the dumplings. If you're not sure how long to cook them, you can test cook just 1 dumpling.
Remove the cooked dumplings from the water with a slotted spoon and transfer to a plate.
Drizzle with melted butter to prevent the dumplings from sticking to each other.
Repeat with the remaining dumplings.