Swedish Oatmeal Cookies (Havrekakor)

This is a family favorite and a quintessential Swedish cookie.  They have become a specialty of my son Oscar who made his first pocket money by baking a few batches, packing them into little bags and selling them around the neighborhood on his bicycle.

They are simple to make and irresistible, being neither too rich nor too sweet.  Unlike American oatmeal cookies, these are light and crunchy.  A batch of these cookies are easily eaten in a day, okay, in an hour, by my family!

About 40 small cookies

250 grams butter

3 dl sugar

1 egg

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ dl oatmeal

2 dl raisins

5 dl flour

Heat the oven to 200 C or 400F .  
Cream the butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer until it is light and fluffy.  Add the eggs and the baking powder and continue to mix a further two minutes.  Add in the flour and sugar bit by bit until it is just combined.  Finally, add the raisins and oatmeal and combine with a wooden spoon. 

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and measure out heaping teaspoons of dough, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie to allow them to spread.  Bake in the oven for about 8 minutes until golden.

Brown Sugar Shortbread

Homemade shortbread is something different from the dry, crumbly stuff that you can buy in the store.  Eaten warm out of the oven, the shortbread is dense but slightly sticky to the bite.  Here I have replaced the regular sugar with brown sugar, which gives the cookie a caramel flavor. A dusting of cinnamon on the top adds intrigue without taking away from the main event.  

16 tablespoons (225 grams) butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar or demarra sugar

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Pre-heat the oven to 325F (160C) degrees.  Butter a 9-inch spring-form pan.

In a bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until light, fluffy and pale yellow, about 1 to 2 minutes.  Add the brown sugar and mix on a medium speed until combined and fluffy, about a minute.  Add the flour and salt and mix on a low speed until incorporated.

Scrape the mixture into the prepared springform pan and smooth the mixture with the back of a spoon into the bottom of the ban, making sure that it is tucked neatly on the edges of the pan and that it is smooth and even.  You can use the bottom of a glass or ramekin to press the dough down and smooth it out.

Combine granulated sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and then sprinkle evenly over the top of the shortbread.  Using a knife, score the shortbread into 12 wedges.

Place the pan onto a baking sheet, to contain any excess butter that may drip while the shortbread is cooking, and bake until the shortbread is golden brown and firm at the edges, but slightly soft in the center, about 55 to 60 minutes.  Take out of the oven and remove the sides of the spring-form pan.  Let the shortbread cool for 10 minutes and then slide onto a cutting board and cut into wedges based on the existing lines.  Let cool.

Snickerdoodles

One of my first cooking memories is of baking cookies with my mother.  Once every couple of weeks, she would tell me to go choose a cookie recipe from the cookbook and we would bake whatever I chose.  There were sugar cookies encrusted with nuts, chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and a few times, we even made our own doughnuts.  These cookie journeys with my mother inspired my love of cooking.

I think cookies feature highly in the fantasies of all American children and as an adult, I still crave a warm cookie right out of the oven with a cold glass of milk.  Snickerdoodles are a classic cookie, simple and delicious. These cookies fulfill all my cookie criteria, crisp and cinnamony on the outside and soft and chewy inside, and they go perfectly with that glass of ice cold milk.  My boys love to help roll the cookies and dip them in the cinnamon topping.

Makes about 30 large cookies

Cookie Dough:

1 cup (225 grams) butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon light corn syrup or honey

2 ½ teaspoons vanilla

3 ½ cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

 

Topping:

5 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoon cinnamon

In a large bowl, cream butter until fluffy.  Add sugar and beat until combined.  Add eggs, corn syrup and vanilla and mix together.   Mix together the dry ingredients and then beat into egg and sugar mixture.  The mixture will look dry and crumbly but will easily form a big ball.Mix together topping ingredients in a small bowl.

Take walnut sized portions of the dough and roll into a ball with your hands.  Roll the cookies into the topping mixture until it is evenly coated.  Place the balls on a cookie sheet.  Resist the temptation to press the balls down.  They will expand while they are baking.

Bake at 375ºF on an ungreased cookie sheet about 2 ½ inches apart for 10 to 12 inches until the cookies have spread out and they are golden brown. 

P.S. If you have left-over cinnamon sugar, save it to use on cinnamon toast....

Christmas Cookies: Pepparkakor

I love the holidays.  I love the crisp cold air, the festive lights and displays in store windows, the happy smiles of children, and sipping hot chocolate with marshmallows in front of a fire.  Put some mint schnapps in the hot chocolate, and life is even better! I also love holiday traditions, which is probably because I grew up in a house without any holiday traditions.  When I was old enough to care, this seemed to me a great freedom.  One year for Christmas dinner we might have a ham, another year a goose.  Or we might just go out to a Chinese restaurant instead.  We experimented and we had a lot of fun.  I pitied my friends who had to have the same boring ham every year.

On the other hand, my parents didn’t really care about Christmas or the holidays.  While my brother and I were children, they went through the motions.  They decorated a tree, perpetuated the Santa Claus myth, and we woke up to wrapped presents under the tree.  But as I got older, it was always me who decorated the tree and me who planned the Christmas dinner menu.  On the last year before I moved away to University, it seemed I was the only one who cared at all.  No one had made any Christmas preparations, bought a tree, or decorated the house.   The day before Christmas, I went out to get a tree, which was kind of ragged and sad looking being one of the only three left in the tree lot.  I decorated it all by myself.  Everyone laughed when they saw the tree; it was so scraggly and forlorn.

Perhaps this is why, when I had my own children, I was determined to have things for them to look forward to, to create that magical Christmas spirit that they would enjoy, not just as children but as adults also.  So my husband and I have made our own traditions.   Fun traditions.  One of our favorite traditions is making cookies to decorate our tree.  When our first son, Gustaf, was just two years old, inspired by a magazine cover, I decided to make some cookies and hang them on a tree.  I made stars, snowflakes, and gingerbread boys.  Since I was the only one decorating, they were decorated with only white frosting in delicate curlicues with an occasional silver dragee.  They were elegant and looked fabulous on the tree. 

Peter was inspired by my efforts and made a batch of the Christmas cookies of his childhood, a ginger cookie and insisted that I buy a pig cookie cutter, which is a traditional Swedish shape. My white decorations looked fabulous on those, also. 

When the children were very small, they loved these cookies, so much so, that we had to keep a vigilant eye on the tree to make sure that the cookies stayed on through Christmas.  We let them eat one cookie each on the days leading up to Christmas, and then we let them go at it when Christmas was through.

 

When the children got a bit older, they were not content to let me decorate the cookies by myself, they wanted to help.  I can confess that the first year that they decorated; I let them eat their creations and only hung up my own.  But the next year, they were old enough to notice that I wasn’t hanging up their cookies and insisted that theirs be up there too.  So, I hung up their cookies, with their blobs of frosting and off-kilter smears.  When the cookies were all hung, I realized that even the worst decorated cookie, artistically speaking, still looked great.  All the colors just blurred into a happy, comforting, delicious looking tree.  When the boys were 4 and 7, I asked them what was their favorite thing about Christmas, expecting the answer to be the presents, but both boys said without hesitation, “Decorating the Christmas cookies!”  They still love it and so do I. Here is the recipe for Swedish pepparkakor, a spiced ginger cookie.

2 dl sugar

1 dl water

1 dl light syrup

125 grams butter

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

½ tablespoon ground cardamom

½ tablespoon ground cloves

½ tablespoon ground dried bitter orange peel (pomeransskal)*

1 teaspoon ground ginger

Grated zest of one orange

7 dl (about 375 grams) of all purpose flour

½ tablespoon baking soda

Cut the butter in pieces and put in a large bowl.  Measure out all the spices and put them in the bowl with the butter.

Combine sugar, water, and syrup in a saucepan and heat on the stove until it reaches a rolling boil.  

Pour the hot sugar mixture over the butter and stir until the butter is melted.  Let the mixture cool until room temperature.  Mix in the flour and baking soda to form a loose dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough sit in the refrigerator overnight (or longer).  The dough will firm up as it sits.

When ready to bake, take a small portion of the dough and knead a bit.  Roll out the dough on a floured board and use cookie cutters to cut into whatever shape is desired.  You can use a thin spatula to help you lift up the cut cookies.  Lay the cookies on a buttered baking sheet or a sheet with parchment paper.  Bake in an oven 180 C (350 F) for about 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the cookie.  Keep an eye on the first batch to see when it is done because these cookies are easy to burn.

You can garnish the cookies with almond halves, if you like.  Press the halves firmly into the dough before baking.

*Pomeransskal, dried bitter orange peel, is readily sold in Swedish stores.  If you cannot find this, you can increase the amount of fresh orange zest or omit it all together.