Category: TABLE OF CONTENTS CATEGORIES

The categories used in the TOC of Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World

SWEDISH DRÖMMAR (DREAMS), Quite Possibly The Most Unique Cookie We Know

The cookie made with hartshorn that defies all description except one: “OMG, these are so good!”

This is a great cookie.

You have never tasted anything like this cookie. Not ever. Anywhere.

If you ask 30 different people to help you find words that describe it, you will get this answer from well over 20, and the ones who don’t say it out loud will be thinking it: “What the heck…?!” Think. Think. Think. “No, I really can’t.”

The flavor isn’t that hard. Remove the textural component and it’s a straight, generously sweet, vanilla cookie flavor. But that texture is wild! There are only two kinds of people in the world. Those who have eaten Drömmar before, and those who have not met anything remotely like it.

I have personally tested and (mostly) published more than 300 different cookies, each with multiple batches to get them right, and that’s without considering variations on the theme. I wouldn’t have believed it possible to create a cookie that reminded me of nothing. But there it is. Drömmar are unique.

NOTE FROM KATE: The only baked sweet remotely similar to Drömmar harkens back to a tea shop sweet I used to favor in Prague as a child. My grandpa would take me to a bakery where a display livened up the cooler case. He would order a cup of strong coffee, but never anything to eat. Instead, he enjoyed watching my pint-sized self sit up straight in a chair, fancy in my good dress and hair bows, drinking over-sweetened tea from a cup like a proper little lady. And I, of course, was the one who got to order a dessert.

This was often a confection called “rakvicka.” The English translation is a coffin or a casket. The not-quite-a-cookie mass was composed of whipped egg yolks and sugar, baked in rectangular, casket-like mold. The casket would puff up to leave a hollow interior. and was served with a squiggle of optional whipped cream.

Breaking a casket with a teaspoon and tasting a fragment was a fabulous sugar bomb experience, with the sugar converted into a friable structural element. It fell apart as soon as it hit the mouth. Eating the Drömmar is a messy proposition, but not as bad as the one time when I tried to bite off a corner of a casket and had the confection explode in my hand.

Enjoy this cookie – it’s unique, intriguing, and its playful nature will bring a smile to your face.

Click here if you only want the recipe without the discussion.

How Can We Describe That Which Can’t Be Described?

Just look at that texture!

Those 30 testers and I had a lot of fun coming up with “sort of like this except…” possibilities. It wouldn’t be fair to you if I left without even trying, right? Here are the best of the bunch:

  • “Imagine cotton candy that tastes like a sweet vanilla cookie, but is crispy, crunchy, and actually a little filling.”
  • “Sweet, ephemeral, crispy/crunchy goodness that vanishes inside your mouth.”
  • “Sugary air shaped into a cookie, but it doesn’t leave you empty.”
  • “You could call them ‘clouds’ just as easily as ‘dreams.’ If clouds were crunchy, crumbly, and delicious.”
  • “How about the child of a dried meringue who married a funnel cake?” To which came the answer: “No! I like meringues, but no meringue ever dreamed of being this crunchy, and these have too much substance even though they vanish in your mouth.”
  • “They taste like vanilla and sugar. After that?… Uhm… Errr… Well… How about…? Gee, this is hard!”

Do you know the story about six blind men who fought over how to describe an elephant? The one by the ear said, “An elephant is like a carpet!” The one by the leg said, “No, an elephant is like a tree!” The one by the tail insisted that both were wrong. “An elephant is like a rope!” “No, it’s like a wall!” said the one on the side. “You mean a great, big snake!” answered the sixth man feeling at the trunk.

So it is with all those descriptions of Drömmar. Every description is true, yet none capture the whole experience.

An Overview Of The Recipe

This is drop cookie, the easiest of them all to form, and the dough is so easy to make that traditionalists will simply pull out a mixing bowl and a fork. No kidding. I only used a mixer because my arm has been protesting the idea of typing on a laptop actually held in my lap. [Lesson learned. Don’t do it.] It adds up to this: First, mix the softened butter with sugar and vanilla sugar until it’s more or less smooth. No creaming required (see below). Second, mix in the oil (and vanilla extract if you go that route) bit by bit until you once again have an even texture (again, see below). Then mix in your dry sifted-together flour and hartshorn (see below). You are done. Go ahead and bake.

[A NOTE FROM SCOTT: True story about how bulletproof the formula really is. I started by normalizing 11 recipes I found online to a dough based on 1 stick of butter, and then targeting the average of those fairly consistent amounts. I must have gotten my math wrong, because the first batch produced more of a dough paste than a pasty dough. But here’s the thing. Other than leaving oil on the fingers, that first batch tasted crispy, sugary, vanilla-y, and altogether delicious. The current recipe has exactly twice as much flour as that first one. Can you name another recipe that will work even if you blunder by using half (half!) the amount of flour you should have?]

Taste one and you’ll know in an instant why they have the name “Dreams.”

A Water-Free Dough

This dough contains basically no water except the little bit that’s inside the butter, the microscopic amount that’s produced in the leavening process, and the equally microscopic level contained in dry flour. That changes things in a few key ways.

  • The dough is the next best thing to gluten free.

Wheat flour contains two proteins called glutenin and gliadin. Add water and those two will combine into gluten. Kneading hastens that process, and also makes the gluten bits combine into the long strands that bakers try to control. Remove the water and there’s no way to make any gluten.

Since this dough has no water, and the flour grains get coated in fat anyway, there is basically no gluten at all except at trace level. We can’t call it “gluten free” because a testing lab would definitely find some molecules here and there, but it’s entirely fair to say it’s the “next best thing to gluten free.” This cookies should be quite safe if you really are sensitive to gluten and not to other parts of the flour. Or not, if your reaction has more to do with the grain than the gluten.

Not an option for this recipe. You MUST use hartshorn, and NOT baking soda or powder.
  • Baking soda and baking powder (sodium bicarbonate products) will not work. I recently did a lot of research on this to figure out why. It comes down to the chemistry differences between the mechanism by which ammonium carbonate (hartshorn) breaks down versus the reaction chain for sodium bicarbonate (the active ingredient in baking soda and powder).

Hartshorn creates lift through “thermal decomposition” alone. Apply any level of heat above 96-99° F (36-37° C), basically the same as body temperature, and the ammonium carbonate will break down into two gases (ammonia and CO2) plus a molecule of water. The reaction continues and gets faster as the oven temperature rises, until there’s finally nothing left. Both gases contribute to lift as they expand out through the dough.

Sodium bicarbonate begins to break down at a significantly higher temperature (180° F = 80° C), and results in CO2 + water + a chemical called sodium carbonate (not bicarbonate). Sodium carbonate is a potent base, which is why goods containing high levels of baking soda can taste soapy and bitter. Recipes solve this by adding an acid into the dough to create a secondary reaction (chemical, not thermal decomposition) that produces yet more CO2 and water.

That’s all well and good except for one thing: that chemical reaction between base and acid will not occur in the absence of enough water for the two to travel around and find each other. This is why baking powder stays stable in your pantry. It may contain both a base and an acid, but they’re both bone dry.

Since this dough has no water to speak of, the sodium bicarbonate will go through thermal breakdown, but the sodium carbonate result will end up stranded in your final product, producing that nasty, soapy, aftertaste. Yes, there will be some dry acid too if you used baking powder, but they will be sitting there side by side instead of reacting.

That Makes Hartshorn An Essential Part Of The Recipe

Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium bicarbonate reacts where baking soda and powder won’t (in this cookie), and it’s also responsible for the unique, micro-honeycomb texture that makes these cookies so special. This ancient leavening agent has become an obscure ingredient for normal households, but it is readily available online, in bakery supply stores, and even in craft stores like Michael’s. [If you live in Pittsburgh we can recommend Make A Cake on Rochester Rd.]

We’ve always used the LorAnn brand but that’s only because it’s the most common one around. Ammonium bicarbonate is a pure chemical compound and thus identical regardless of source.

NOTE FROM KATE: Hartshorn, which used to be called sal ammoniac, has a long and twisted history. First imported by Venetian traders in 12th century, its Egyptian manufacturing process was a closely guarded secret. It took five hundred years before European alchemists and scientists figured out how to make the stuff from antlers (“hart” is an antique name for male deer).

Note that there are several ammonia salts with similar chemical properties. Deer antlers were preferred for baking use on the old belief that particular parts of the animal parts will provide a stronger medical benefit. Hooves, skin, etc. were used elsewhere. My research suggests that burning them n the presence of lime yielded what we now know as ordinary smelling salts (though hartshorn will serve just fine in that role too). The Egyptians actually used heated animal dung to extract their ammonia product.

Our vegetarian friends will be relieved to find that no animal parts need to be used. Modern ammonium salts are all factory made from commonly available chemicals. Although, knowing how the Egyptians made them inspires me to test the process, come Spring, in our fire pit. I am sure our neighbors won’t even notice… And there’s no way it could be as bad as when I tried to brain-tan a deer hide in a garbage can on our driveway.

Sifting is MANDATORY

Modern baking soda and baking powder products tend to be clump-free, which makes sifting much less important. Not so for hartshorn. Our little jar started out as a powder when we bought it last year, but as of today it’s such a solid block that I’m forced to chip pieces off. Heaven help any tongue that meets one of those chips! That makes it vital for any user to either grate/pound it back into a powder, or else dissolve it in water before use.

You don’t want to add water to this particular dough (see above), which leaves only the reduce-to-powder option. I have done this in two different ways: by pounding in our mortar and pestle, and by pressing/scraping it through our fine mesh strainer (a/k/a sieve). Both seem to work equally well.

Mixing Your Butter Does Not Mean You Should Cream It

“Creaming” is the process of beating butter for several minutes until it turns white and fluffy from tiny air bubbles you’ve mixed in. It’s probably the most common first step out there for cookie making. This recipe asks you to mix your butter and sugar, not cream them together. Remember, we’re trying to replicate mixing with a fork. Machines are just too convenient to bother with that, but that result is your target. Forks do not cream your butter. All they do is mix.

Another Trick: Add Your Oil Bit By Bit

There is just as much oil in the dough as butter. Add it in at least two stages. Pouring all the oil in at once makes it harder to get everything smooth.

Salt?

I added an unnoticeable bit of salt to the recipe sugar because experience has taught us that even sugar bomb cookies work better that way. Feel free to leave it out.

Vanilla Extract?

Every Swedish recipe I found specified the use of vanilla sugar, not extract. It seems to be a regularly available product over there, and it makes extra sense to use it because it adds no moisture (see above).

Vanilla sugar can be hard to find here in the U.S., but vanilla extract is everywhere. And while it is indeed wet, the recipe calls for only a teaspoon, and most of that liquid is alcohol rather than water. So if you have vanilla sugar, use it. Extract will work fine if you don’t.

CONCLUSION

Do you, like us, have a little bottle of baker’s ammonia tucked away in the pantry for the next time you want to make Springerle or crackers? If so, make this cookie! Add exclamation points as needed to make you believe me about that. Drömmar are unique. Drömmar are delicious. Drömmar are universally popular. And Drömmar will make you a better baker after you take the time to go back and figure out how such a weird, amazing, and awe inspiring cookie really works.

Enjoy!

AFTERWORD

I posted this recipe in our Facebook group. This follow up came a little later from a fine baker who was intrigued enough to give them a try:

I am not obsessed with Drömmar. LOL

But lying in bed thinking about the meltaway character of some favorite shortbread, I decided to try the secret ingredient in those in the Drömmar: rice flour.

I replaced just under a third of the flour with rice flour, or ⅔ cup of the total 2½ cup called for. This made a noticeable difference in the texture to enhance that lovely melt-in-your-mouth feeling.

Other adjustments: used almond oil instead of canola, baking them without refrigerating the dough since i had plenty of time, lowered baking temperature to 285°F, and extended baking time to about 28 minutes total (rotating pans).

This is such a lovely recipe, so easy, quick, and fun to play around with.

It ain’t just us, folks. Think of a straightforward, delicious, and buttery shortbread… and then twist it by creating this fantastically unique texture. How could it be anything but “lovely?”

WELSH CURRANT COOKIES a/k/a CAKES, Fresh From The… Griddle?

Cookie, pancake or both? Who cares when they’re just plain good?

I’ve got some money to bet! You either (a) know and love Welsh Currant Cookies/Cakes, or (b) have only the vaguest impression that such a thing exists. We fell in the latter category. Yes, I have a number of friends who chimed in with, “Oh, you’ve got to research currant cookies!” So we knew they existed. But I’d honestly never tasted one until we got into the recipe testing.

You may now put us in category #1. They’re wonderful.

NOTE FROM KATE: When this intriguing cookie came up for trials, I was of two minds about it. First, leaves were falling and we were carving pumpkins. For most people, October 31st is just Halloween, cosumes, and candy bars. The holiday originated as Samhain, a Celtic New Year. One Samhain tradition is thanking the warm part of the year for its bounty, and greeting the cold hibernation with its hunting season. Traditional offerings include bannocks, biscuits, or, indeed, cookies. I was all in favor of this concept: we would try a recipe and I would have some genuine griddle cookies to share with the garden.

And yet… pan and griddle means oil. Have I mentioned that we fry have not researched a single fried cookie because I loathe even the idea of the cleanup? If you’re like me, fear not. The amount of butter or oil is minimal, and these curiously enticing cookies are well worth the effort.

The brits have a wonderful word that catches the essential appeal of Welsh Currant Cookies/Cakes: they are moreish. It means they’re one of those foods that don’t taste “special,” but trigger that mysterious need to just keep noshing until there is nothing left in range. Simple, tasty, accessible, and fun.

“But are they a cookie or a pancake?” That’s a whole other debate. They have one foot firmly planted on each side of the line. Thus their assignment into our category for Not Quite A Cookies. Another perfect description.

As always, click here to jump to the recipe without any discussion.

Currants?

Linguistically, yes. Biologically? No.

To a naturalist “currants” means one of two species in the genus Ribes, both of which produce small, round berries that look like itty bitty grapes (which are in the unrelated genus Vitus). There’s Ribes rubrum, which can be red, pink, or white (my favorites are the classic reds), and then there’s Ribes nigrum, the black currant species favored by our daughters. Kate’s favorite would be Ribes uva-crispa a/k/a Gooseberries.

Red currants have that classic sweet/tart flavor profile you find in currant jam. The black ones have a unique, musky flavor. Gooseberries are sort of like a sour blueberry with the size and texture of a very firm grape. All three are delicious once you acquire the taste. Heck, we grow them all in our yard! But they’re only good when eaten fresh or turned into some kind of jam, preserves, or compote.

HISTORICAL NOTE: America has a fascinating history of actively destroying these crops. It happened because currants and gooseberries are required species for the spread of blister rust, a fungal disease capable of wiping out entire forests of white pine. White pines were a major U.S. natural resource in the early 20th century, so both state and federal authorities felt compelled to fight it off. The easiest solution? Eradicate the vector. And so they did. Currants and gooseberries disappeared from American soil for many decades, and are only now making a comeback due to the fact that resistant white pines have evolved to take over the forests. Mostly. Ribes of all kinds are still illegal in Maine and several other states.

Getting back to the point, culinary “currants” are not currants at all. They are miniature grapes that dry into extra small raisins, which are then sold under names such as “Corinthian grapes,”Zante raisins,” and “Zante currants.”

ANOTHER HISTORICAL NOTE: Those names have their own history worth reading about. The grape varietal originated in Greece and became a significant export crop. The main shipping point was the city of Corinth, a major seaport in the country’s northeast. The actual farms were, and largely still are, located in the Greek southwest, on an island called Zakynthos f/k/a Zante. Hence the descriptive words Corinthian and Zante. The name “currants” gets used because the berries aren’t much bigger than actual currants.

Those miniature raisins are what the recipe refers to. We’ve never had a problem finding them in any large supermarket.

The supermarket brand works just fine

Getting at the “dough”

Research showed surprising consistency in the ingredients and amounts. The dough contains (by weight):

  • 3 parts flour;
  • 1½ parts butter, lard, or shortening (which you can stretch to 2 parts if you want);
  • 1 part sugar;
  • 1 part Zante currants (see above);
  • 1 part egg combined with dairy (buttermilk, soured milk, yogurt, whole milk, etc.); and
  • A surprising amount of baking powder, with some nutmeg and grated orange zest to tie it all together.

Yes, there are some bakers who view the orange zest as an option rather than a requirement, and I’m sure that most of them are perfectly nice people, but in this case they are wrong. You’ll see. ‘Nuff said.

Those proportions vary a bit from recipe to recipe, but never by enough to change the basic pattern in a fundamental way. It’s so consistent that I now believe old country Grandmas passed the recipe down more or less as follows: “Use these proportions and then vary according to taste.”

If it’s good enough for Grandma, it is good enough for you and me.

The method varies more than the ingredients. Our recipe adopts the most common, cut-in-the-butter approach. Almost as many recipes use a creaming method, and more than a few call for melted fat. We didn’t bother to try them all because the message is clear. Pick whatever method you want so long as it gives you a rollable dough.

Yes, that’s right: a dough. Pancake batter has much, much more liquid in it than what you use to make Welsh Currant Cookies. It really does feel and act like a cookie dough, albeit one with too much leavening to yield a normal cookie texture.

Roll to ¼” thick, and cut out rounds or other basic shapes

The dough holds its shape surprisingly well, but you want to stick with basic shapes nevertheless. We tried making a few animal shapes in addition to rounds, hearts, stars, and the like. The problems occurred halfway through the cooking process, when we had to flip each cookie/cake over. The animals inevitably lost their heads, tails, and/or legs. Feel free to try, but we will stick to the basics.

Cook on a skillet or griddle

Up to now we’ve had cookie technique in making the dough; cookie technique in the rolling; and more cookie technique in the cutting. From here on it looks much more like a pancake. Heat a skillet or griddle over a medium-low flame just like you would for pancakes, butter/oil it as you would for pancakes, and then cook the cut-outs as if they were miniature pancakes; i.e., until both sides are a light, golden brown. The exact timing will vary tremendously because of tiny factors ranging from the color and weight of your pan/griddle, to the thickness of your cookie and the fraction by which your flame leans toward medium- or low heat. You’ll be fine if you exercise a bit of touch and cooking experience, especially since (a) the ones that go too far will still taste great, and (b) a dusting of powdered sugar will cover all sins.

What you get will taste like a raisiny, not-too-sweet cookie with the texture of a pancake. Absolutely delicious, and incredibly moreish.

NOTE FROM KATE: Just like with pancakes and crepes, griddle cookies take its own bit of practice. A few of my observations are as follows:

  1. SIZE MATTERS: Both of the pan, and of the cookie. Every pan holds heat differently, and a larger and thicker cookie will require more time.
  2. CONTROL YOUR HEAT: A relative of the pie crust, the raw cookie will soften if left waiting in the hot kitchen for too long. Pop the sheet in the fridge between pan-batches in order to retain cookie shapes. As the cookies hit the pan, they will want to set, not burn. They will warm up and turn flaccid. For an easy and cooperative flip-over, use a tool the width of the cookie (offset spatula works well) and make sure its bottom is set. It will be darker than you think it should be.
  3. ENJOY THE PROCESS. This is a very zen, in-the-moment activity as compared to more precise baking. Imperfections happen. Eat them.
Note the inside texture. Just like a very firm pancake.

Shelf Life

Even moreish cookies end up having leftovers now that our nest is emptying out. We stored those leftovers in an open bowl, an airtight container on the counter, and an airtight container in the fridge. None were as good on Day 2 as they’d been on Day 1, but they didn’t actually go stale. They just went meh. And they stayed at that same level of meh day, after day, after day. More than that, meh turned right back into yum as soon as we refreshed the cookie/cakes on a pan/griddle or through a few seconds in the microwave.

LAB REPORT FROM KATE: Side-by-side testing has shown that a fresh-made and frozen cookie, when brought to room temperature, will taste just as good upon thawing as a fresh-made cookie cooled to room temperature. Furthermore, these cookies don’t go stale as much as they simply dry out. Older ones are just fine with coffee or tea as-is, or you can revive them with a judicious 5-15 second microwave burst.

So the moral of the story is this: Welsh Currant Cookies keep like pancakes. They change very quickly, but they also store extremely well, especially when frozen, and will taste basically as good as new once you get them warm again.

Conclusion

How good is this “cookie?” We have a local diner near our house called Pamela’s (one of a Pittsburgh chain). They are famous for their hotcakes. The owners were even invited to the White House to make brunch for the first family! They are also good people we like enough to treat as our go-to place for a diner breakfast.

I’ve already stopped by with samples and a recipe, and will almost be surprised if they don’t leap at the chance to add Welsh Currant Cakes to the menu after doing some testing of their own. So my bottom line answer is this. They are good enough that some of you readers will bless this article for a great many years to come, and your heirs for that much longer.

Enjoy!

CANADIAN ARMY MOLASSES COOKIES, A Classic WWII Recipe

The Canadian soldier’s secret trading weapon

Who’da thunk it? Soldiers like to trade amongst themselves, particularly when different groups have different supplies. In World War II the U.S. GI’s were the source for chocolate and smokes. The English always had tea. And the Canadians? They marched into the trading wars armed with cookies that no one else could match – the ones you’ll see below.

Click Here if you only want the recipe without the discussion

The basic recipe comes from the 1946 Canadian Army Cook’s Manual, as published in the Canadian Government website. All we did was test it, which turned out to matter because the volume-to-weight ratios on that page are a little bit off. Following the weights yields a thick drop cookie dough, while the volume measurements (cups) give you a very soft slice-and-bake result. We went with the second one because the instructions specifically mention slicing off pieces before baking. Our version below has corrected weights according to our tried and true conversion tables. Please note, however, that some ingredients (particularly flour) can vary a lot depending on both grind and protein content.

NOTE FROM KATE: When I tested this recipe, I used the scale with an expectation of tidy, slice-and-bake logs. I got a goopy mess of a drop cookie dough, and a discussion ensued along the lines of “You know, this cookie has a HUGE proportion of molasses!” Scott did some recalculating, et voila! The next try yielded slice and bake logs. The cookies bake and taste the same, but I prefer the tidy handling of the logs. It makes for an easier cleanup.

We made only two changes aside from that tweak. (1) The original recipe calls for sour milk, which we successfully replaced with both buttermilk and with fresh milk soured in the kitchen by adding some vinegar/lemon (a standard workaround). Yogurt ought to work too, though we haven’t tested it. And (2) We added raisins and extra spices as optional ingredients. Those might be too expensive for army-level production, but they do yield a tastier result for home cooks making dozens instead of thousands.

So what does it taste like? We found a few dozen tasters for this recipe and got a pretty standard reaction: “Entirely inoffensive with a finger on the scale toward good.” Call it a universal 6 out of 10, with no one going higher than an 8 or lower than a 4. They’d also be a 6 if you had a 1-10 scale from savory to sweet. Add the optional raisins and both scores go up by a notch. Extra spices push it up another.

NOTE FROM KATE: I admit to being spoiled by molasses cookies that bite back. You know, the memorable ones, loaded with spices from the obvious cinnamon to the expensive cardamom, with pepper and ginger for good measure. This is not that kind of a cookie. This is like a mild dish from a famously spicy cuisine. It’s still delicious but it defies your expectations.

People who like spicy cookies will notice a certain lack in this one, while mild food eaters should be thrilled to have a cookie that goes well with both coffee and tea. The restraint on the spice end of things was likely a result of not only preference, but also economy. Spices are expensive, and that matters once you multiply their cost by making enough for the entire Canadian army!

Soft or crunchy?

It’s entirely a matter of baking time and personal taste. Kate prefers these with a bit of residual chew. Scott likes them better when crispy. Choose for yourself. 15-20 minutes gives you one or the other, with all the stages in between.

NOTE FROM KATE: Despite my chew preference, I find that even dry cookies, which sat out for a few days, tasted good! Surprisingly, they didn’t go stale, and they had a nice crisp. Even though the low spice level took me aback at first, this eminently practical cookie grew on me and has now become a part of my “easy and travels well” repertoire!

Enjoy!

MAPLE SANDWICH COOKIES, Pure Autumnal Goodness

Maple shortbread sandwiched around a not-too-sweet maple buttercream.

Alfajores: the legendary South American cookie of childhood formed from two tender, shortbread wafers that sandwich a rich caramel (dulce de leche) filling. Add a bit of maple flavor to the shortbread part, replace the filling with a rich maple buttercream, and you get a cookie that’s just as good, and almost equally loved across its range in North America.

Exceptionally pretty, and featuring a deep sweetness that hovers right on the line of “children adore it” and “adults can too,” this regional specialty is going to find its way into your repertoire and simply won’t leave once you see the children in your life squealing with glee. Just be aware that no child on the planet can resist snitching a few from a low lying jar, which means you’ll have to carefully be looking in another direct.

Perhaps with a plate of your while sipping nice cup of tee or coffee.

A NOTE FROM KATE: The cookie itself isn’t particularly sweet without the filling, which is a bit too sweet for my personal taste. Now, to be fair, this filling grew on me with every tweak. Still, my European alter-ego would like to point out that you don’t have to use all the sugar in the buttercream recipe.

I do agree that Maple Sandwich Cookies are a lovely addition to the fall repertoire, sans “pumpkin spice,” and make an enticing visual statement for both kids, and kids at heart.

Click here if you only want the recipe without the discussion

A few years back we published a wonderful recipe for easy Maple Drop Cookies. This is the upscale, extra pretty version: tender, maple flavored cookies sandwiched around an intensely maple filling. What could go wrong?

The answer proved to be nothing, though it did take a little bit of fidgeting to get the details just, exactly right.

The Cookie Part

Shortbread cookies a/k/a butter cookies mostly follow a standard set of proportions. Here’s a alphabetical list of examples normalized to the same two sticks of butter in this recipe:

Testing showed that we liked this cookie just a bit more tender than a standard Butter Jelly, but it was a close call. Feel free to substitute the specified mix of flour (2½ cups) and starch (½ cup) for a straight 2¾ cups of flour.

As to thickness, keep them thin if you want to make sandwich cookies and a little more robust if you want to skip the filling. Just remember to increase the baking time too! Thicker cookies need to bake longer, especially with doughs like this with a decent amount of starch. Starches stay pasty on the tongue until the inside gets hot enough to break down. The magic temperatures are about 130° for tapioca, 140° for potato starch, and 145° for cornstarch. We prefer tapioca because you can’t exactly probe your cookies with an instant read thermometer. The lower degradation temperature to provides an extra safety margin against pastiness. Note: We have no trouble finding affordable tapioca starch at any good Asian grocery.

The cookies are done when the edges begin to brown, which also means the bottoms will be what the pros call GBD (Golden Brown & Delicious). Those toasty notes pair exceptionally well with the maple and vanilla flavors inside the cookie itself.

NOTE FROM KATE: The GBD bottoms work just fine for thin-rolled cookies. IMHO, I wouldn’t mind getting the thicker, molded-pattern ones a bit toastier. Giving them an extra minute or two will make sure that all the starch is properly degraded by heat. This is especially important when you place a tray of molded cookies in the fridge. In fact, I think a slight hint of darker, well-toasted edge would play well against the sweet buttercream filling.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: I completely agree. And for those who don’t know, refrigerating molded cookies can help to keep the pictures clear.

Next up: fancy touches, which turned out to be a lot of fun. This kind of shortbread holds its shape exceptionally well. They’re perfect for really fine cutouts on the sandwich caps, and even for patterns stamped into the dough. Have a look!

FWIW, we had more success stamping the dough first and then cutting it out. It would have been an ideal situation for using a patterned pin if we had one.

NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie holds its stamp well, but it didn’t do as well with very deep, molded cavities. It won’t be as forgiving as gingerbread, so make sure the dough is at a pleasantly cool temperature. You will also want to clean your molds between every stamping (we have a bowl of oil with a toothbrush, a bowl of starch with a powder brush, and a skewer on duty between each stamping.) For this cookie, it worked well to lightly dust the dough as well as the lightly-oiled mold. The type of your mold will also make a difference. Unlike with a hand-carved wooden mold or stamp, a laser-cut mold with sharp-angled features tends to cut all the way through the dough when pressed too hard. Use a gentle hand. In a larger production situation, I would roll the dough directly on the parchment, stamp the shapes, cut the rounds, and then remove the excess for reuse.

The Filling

Our standard buttercream filling uses half a stick of butter to three cups of powdered sugar, with whatever flavors you want added in. It’s dead reliable, thick enough to hold its shape, easy to thin as desired with a bit of milk or other liquid, and the heat characteristics are easy to understand. Butter gets soft at around 65° F (18° C), and so do these fillings.

In this case we started by simply adding in some maple syrup as the liquid. The texture was spot on, but the syrup made the filling a lot too sweet and a little too loose . Solution for the first: reduce the amount of syrup and add in some maple extract. [See Note below] This came close, but still edged over the line into the too-sweet-for-grownups realm.

Have three standard solutions for something that’s a bit too sweet: add salt, add acid, or add something bitter. Salt came first. I upped the amount from a healthy pinch all the way to ¾ tsp. That did the trick for me, but Kate said she could taste it. ⅔ tsp. proved to be the [ahem] sweet spot.

But the filling was still awfully sweet, and toed right up to the children-only line! It needed some extra help. Lemon didn’t seem to fit, so I decided to whisk in a tablespoon of cream cheese. Perfect! The extra mass tightened the filling that essential bit, and the mild acidity was enough to bring the sweetness under control.

TECHNICAL NOTE: Our go-to means of adding bitterness are molasses (also acidic), coffee, and chocolate. The molasses was tempting, but in the end we worried that it would have tried to steal the scene instead of playing a supporting role. [Additional Note: That observation all but demands a comment about molasses being a ham, but three decades of marital wisdom suggests that I might not get away with it. So never mind.]

NOTE FROM KATE: He thought he got away with it. That’s…kind of adorable, and really sweet! Just like these cookies!

Concerning Maple Syrup…

“Pancake syrup” is basically corn syrup with coloring and maple extract. I have nothing against that on some philosophical level, but it would substitute for extract rather than syrup in baked goods. All the cookies we make use real maple syrup.

But that doesn’t end the story, because real maple syrup comes in several grades that basically correspond to the time of year it’s tapped out of the tree. Think of it as analogous to the change from veal to beef, or lamb to mutton: the syrup becomes progressively darker and more intense as the season moves on. We would have loved to try some extra-dark syrup in these cookies, with less extract, but simply don’t have access. If you do, please do, and let us know the results.

Note that syrup “grades” don’t really help because it is an industry term. The only law on point comes from the USDA’s Grade A vs. Processing Grade vs. Substandard. You and I never see anything but Grade A according to that definition.

The industry used to divide the color/flavor lines using the same letter grades with different meanings, going from lightest (Grade A) to darkest (Grade C), but that made consumers perceive the darker colors as inferior. As of this writing the industry has adopted color descriptions instead of grades. Vermont’s industry page describes them like this:

  • Golden color with delicate taste
  • Amber color with rich taste
  • Dark color with robust taste [used in this testing]; and
  • Very Dark color with strong taste.

The Canadians follow suit, though they often grade by “colour” instead of “color;” except when marketing to the U.S.

Storage

Unfilled cookies should keep for a solid week in a cookie tin or other airtight container. Freeze for longer storage.

Filled cookies, and unused filling, will start to get soft if kept above 60° F (18° C), which equates to a chilly room. We prefer to use the refrigerator for convenience, but take extra air to have an airtight container lest the filling absorb flavor from some garlicky pasta in the bowl next door.

I believe the filled cookies can also be frozen, but haven’t tested it yet.

CONCLUSION

That’s a lot of detail, but it all adds up to common sense for any experienced baker. The recipe is for a simple, maple flavored shortbread, and an even simpler maple buttercream. Put the two together and you have maple nirvana. There’s a whole lot worse you can find in this world of ours. And very little that tastes a whole lot better.

P.S. We had some filling left over from the photo shoot, and a few Gingerbread cookies from another project. I combined the two on a lark and… Goodness Gracious and My Oh My! This maple filling loves, Loves, LOVES to be paired with spice cookies! It’s so good that I may well sneak some onto this year’s extravaganza tray. Make an extra batch of Ginger Snaps without the sugar crust, combine with the maple filling… Oh yes. This could definitely be a thing.

Enjoy!

ANZAC BISCUITS (a/k/a COOKIES), The Down Under Cookie Of Home

The national cookie of Australia and New Zealand; a perfect combination of oatmeal cookie with just the right amount of coconut

Anzac Day is the Down Under holiday of remembrance to honor “the contribution and suffering of all who have served or died in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations” as part of the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Squish the U.S. Veterans and Memorial Days into one and you’ll have something close to the importance of Anzac Day: a big deal when every school will close, but not quite up to the 4th of July.

The holiday occurs every April 25th in honor of the men lost in the disastrous WWI invasion of Gallipoli, an event also tied to both of the cookie’s [ahem] biscuit’s contending origin stories. The first goes like this: “These were the cookies that mothers and wives tinned up and mailed to their soldier in the field. Isn’t that romantic?” The second says, “These were the cookies sold by the million at post-war fundraisers to raise money for the boys who came home. Could anything be a better symbol of the love and loyalty that isn’t romantic?” I personally suspect the true answer is “both. The recipe predates the war and was indeed sent overseas, but it boomed in the aftermath when something – anything! – just had to be done.

NOTE FROM KATE: The mention of “our boys” may sound old-fashioned in a world where women comprise close to a fifth of enlisted personnel – the number depends on the country (I checked only US, Australia, New Zealand, and Ukraine.) However, did you know that in WW1, well over 2,000 Australian women served overseas? These biscuits didn’t go out only to our boys but to our girls too, and the holiday expressly covers everyone who served, not only those who saw combat. Cheers!

Origins aside, Anzac Biscuits (the British Commonwealth word for “cookies”) have become more firmly entrenched as an Anzac Day treat than they ever were as one for the actual troops, and by now have stretched far beyond the bounds of a single holiday. This is the national biscuit of both the Aussies and the Kiwis, and the “why” couldn’t be any more clear. They’re flat out delicious. They’re simple. They are an ideal treat to make with kids. The proportions multiply like a charm if you want to feed a whole corps instead of the neighborhood bake sale. And the recipe is as close to bulletproof as we’ve ever seen, as witnessed by the fact that even an unfortunate testing mistake turned out so well that we’ve made it an official variation down at the end.

How to describe them… Take a good, solid oatmeal cookie and then give it an elusive hint of coconut that macaroon lovers will adore, and even I (a notorious hater of Demon Hair) can enjoy.

It’s one ace biscuit mate. That’s “a darned good cookie” to you Yanks.

Click here if you only want the recipe without the discussion.

First things first. This cookie is simple, tasty, friendly, lasts well, and is both easy and fun even for bakers who can barely see over the counter. It’s an easy, everyday cookie, not an elegant one, and certainly not extravagant. Don’t lose sight of that essence as I go down all the niggling little details and questions we had to address.

  • “Lyle’s Golden Syrup” does not mean “Go and buy a special ingredient”

Golden syrup is a product used across the British Commonwealth in much the same way as Karo corn syrup here in the U.S. They behave exactly the same in baking. The only difference is taste. Corn syrup has an all but invisible, vaguely vanilla flavor, while the British product has a pronounced butterscotch/caramel vibe. We ordered a bottle online as part of our research, for something like twice the cost of cheap, supermarket corn syrup. We enjoyed it too, much more than we expected. It’s a fun thing to try if you want to recreate the genuine Australian flavor. But only if authenticity is your goal.

The true spirit of the cookie has more to do with the flavor of childhood than the flavor of golden syrup, and that memory changes with where you grew up. So ask yourself this. What would remind my boy in the army of Home? Honey? Molasses? Maple Syrup? That taste will give your lad (and your little helpers) the true experience of an Anzac cookie even if it would seem a little off for your visiting friend from Sydney. Still good, but not quite right.

The substitution is simple. A 50/50 mix of corn syrup and maple syrup produces a very similar intensity of flavor. Just add them to the melting butter in place of the Lyle’s, and proceed.

  • “Rolled Oats” is all you need to know.

Do some online research and you will find recipes that stress the importance of using “quick oats” versus “old fashioned oats.” We’re here to tell you it makes no material difference. Use what you have on hand.

The two products aren’t all that different in any event. Rolled oats are made by steaming whole oat seeds (“groats”) and then rolling them flat between two steel cylinders while they are soft. They are then dried, packaged, shipped, and sold. Quick oats are made the exact same way but with cylinders aligned a little closer together to squish the groats that much flatter. It reduces the cooking time on a stovetop. It matters not at all in a cookie. Or at least not in this one.

The amount of oats is as flexible as the rest of this recipe. The basic formula here is 1 cup flour to 1 cup sweetened flake coconut, to 1 cup sugar, to slightly more than ½ cup of melted butter, to X cups of rolled oats. X varies from 1 cup to 2 cups depending on who you ask. We settled on 1½ cups. Do as ye will, they all worked fine and were not very easy to distinguish.

NOTE: “Steel cut oats” a/k/a “pinhead oats” are toasted groats cut into thirds to provide a nicer mouthfeel. I love eating them, but it’s a much bigger production that requires you to put them up to soak on the night before cooking. Steel cut oats would not work as a substitute in this recipe.

  • There is one weird instruction we still don’t understand

Every recipe we found included a fairly hefty amount of baking soda that has all its lift removed before it goes into the cookie. Some of the recipes mix it with boiling water, which makes it foam up before you add it into with the melted butter and syrup. Others mix it in cold water, and then add the slurry into the pot of still-hot butter and syrup, which makes that foam up instead. [We went with the second because it’s just spectacular enough to delight everyone’s inner child]. Either way, this initial treatment means the baking soda adds basically nothing in terms of lift. So what’s going on?

Theory one was an old trick of using water to dissolve any potential clumps of leavening agent that sifting couldn’t handle, and also ensure the most even distribution possible. But even distribution can’t be the answer in this case because (a) modern baking soda products do not clump, (b) every recipe writer in the world knows enough to specify cold water if you want to make a slurry, and (c) even those who don’t know that rule in advance would get the idea pretty darned quickly once they watched their leavening power fizzle away before the dough ever had a chance to come together.

Could it be a typo, with some particular writer making a mistake? Nope. The same instruction appears in every recipe, including the most up to date ones.

Our current theory has to do with the fact that more alkaline doughs brown a bit better and deeper. And it’s true that Anzac Biscuits have a particularly GBD (chef speak for “golden brown and delicious”) bottom. But even that has some issues, because why go to all that effort for such a relatively minor result?

So it’s still a question without an answer. But do it anyway. It really is fun to watch, and there’s probably a reason even if we haven’t figured it out yet.

  • The cookies have an amazing flavor balance that works just as well if you play around with the basic concept.

I made a mistake in my first test run. I doubled the amount of butter. Doh! Rookie blunder. The result is the cookie you see on the left:

I think I like them even better. It’s basically a lace cookie with lovely bits of oatmeal, scented by a perfect amount of coconut. #Yum.

We added the salt

We’ve yet to see salt in any recipe from a native Aussie or Kiwi. That said, we greatly preferred the cookies with an invisible bit of seasoning to bring the other flavors out. It’s a modern trick, but one so good that we could not leave it out of the actual recipe

The baking temperatures and times vary a lot, but even this seems to make very little difference

Do some reading and you’ll find many recipes that carefully specify a “medium” oven (350° F = 175° C) for 10-12 minutes. Others are just as clear about using a “moderately low” oven (325° F = 163° C) for 15-20 minutes, with a third group insisting on a “gentle” oven (300° F = 150° C) for 20-25 minutes.

We tested all three. The differences among the three were subtle to say the least. We made a careful side by side comparison of the fresh, same-day cookies and found that (a) the 350° result was hint more crispy, (b) the 325° cookies were right in the middle, and (c) the 300° oven made something that was a little more chewy if you squinted real hard and insisted on finding a difference. All those distinctions more or less vanished overnight. What can I say? Bulletproof.

NOTE FROM KATE: This is a very “moreish” cookie, so when I wanted to nibble the next day, I went after the “ruined” batch that mistakenly cooked at 300° for only 18 minutes. They were, after all, too tender to ship on the day of baking. An obvious failure… right? Not so. Their texture came together overnight into a wonderful, chewy texture. Two days later, even these were hard to tell apart from all the others.

P.S. A gentle hint: try nibbling your cookie with a square of dark chocolate in your other hand.

And if you want a truly authentic recipe:

It took some searching, but we did find a native Australian to use as a sounding board. An extremely generous native, who spent way more time on the back and forth than she probably expected, and even shared her favorite, classic recipe from Australian Women’s Weekly. You can recreate that recipe by using ours with only 1 cup of rolled oats, no salt, and applying a baking time of 20 minutes in a “moderately low” oven (325° F = 163° C). But you want to hear something funny? The magazine’s most current, “best ever” recipe has tweaked the recipe in a couple of ways, and now uses a baking time of 12 minutes at 180° C (355° F).

Why be consistent when you’re already bulletproof?

CONCLUSION:

We get asked for recipe recommendations on a fairly regular basis. It always follows the same general pattern. “We have XYZ going on next [date], and I’d like to bake some cookies. What would you suggest?”

We now have more than 300 carefully tested cookie recipes from all over the world, so it’s not that easy to give a straightforward answer, and we end up asking a series of questions in return. “What are your favorite flavors?” “Who is your audience, and what would he/she/they like best?” “What kind of vibe are you looking for?” “How much time/expertise do you have to put into the project?”

The most common scenario looks something like this. “Oh, I just like plain old cookies. Same for [audience]. I’m just looking for something easy, that we wouldn’t already know. And I’d love to bake them with my [child of choice] when we meet next [date].” I’d be hard pressed at this point to recommend anything other than Anzac Biscuits. They are all of that, and have a great story as well.

Enjoy!

SPICED CHOCOLATE DROP COOKIES – A Master Recipe For Infinite Delights

Turn your favorite chocolate-and-spice bars into exquisite cookies

“Infinite Temptation” may make more sense in the title than “Infinite Delights.” The testing began with a Chocolate Black Pepper cookie, and the batch looked good as it came out of the oven. Thirteen nice, hefty, 2½” pieces. I tasted one, and liked it. A lot! So I duly brought them out to my beloved, and left them there on a plate so she could try one too. Then I went off do some work on another project.

I strolled back in about 30 minutes later. There were 4 cookies left on the plate. Our pup had been with me in the office. Kate had been left alone with the plate, parked on the sofa with her laptop.

13-1 = 12. 12-4 = the sort of math that wise old husbands forgot how to do a great many years ago. Make that wise and generous husbands, since I immediately ate three more and was kind enough to leave her the last.

Batch #2 got made when we hosted a dinner for our daughter and niece. Miranda had the will power to resist, thanks to a bit too much spice for her taste. Amanda? Amanda ate so many that I don’t have the heart to rat her out in public. Let’s just say that we now have testimony to how well the cookies go with a glass of wine, and with a glass of water, straight out of hand when no one seems to be looking, and with coffee too.

Get it? Got it? Good. These really are all of that; as simple as can be, absurdly rich, and with just enough of a twist to always be unique.

NOTE FROM KATE: One whole pound of chocolate, divided into only four dozen cookies. That’s a lot of antioxidants per cookie! So these aren’t just delicious, they are a regular health food! [Yay! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!]

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe without the process.

The Cookie Part

This is a fairly standard drop cookie, so there’s no need to bore you with the chemistry. Go look at a regular Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Subtract ¼ cup (1¾ oz = 50 g) of flour, and replace it with half a pound (8 oz = 225 g) of melted chocolate. Bing, bang, boom, you’ve got it. The chocolate adds back the structure you lost by removing that bit of flour.

Add another half pound of chopped chocolate (or really good chips), the spice du jour, and you’re done. The only tricky part comes with the baking time. It’s easy to overbake a cookie this dark, and doing means sharing chocolate essence with the air, so we limited the baking time just to be on the safe side. 10-11 minutes instead of the more normal 10-12.

Just make sure to use a good chocolate. There is a full pound of chocolate in every batch. The flavor comes through, and cheap chocolate will show.

NOTE FROM KATE – ABOUT CHOCOLATE: Some of you might’ve seen articles about chocolate with elevated heavy metal levels. Long story short: which risk factor do you want to go with on a given occasion: chocolate or chardonnay?

Development

Chocolate is great. Chocolate is awesome. But the special part here comes from the spice.

Please note that I didn’t actually create this cookie. We publish heritage cookies not mind numbingly good original creations. That said, the accusation has been made and so I feel the need to defend my process.

I began the project looking to highlight a black pepper cookie. Think about it: all those spice snaps, with flavors ranging from across the map, and yet almost no one remembers to try the one spice that’s in basically every kitchen across the breadth of Western civilization. It couldn’t be right… and it wasn’t. Examples abound. And I may get back to them idea later on. But the thought of chocolate black pepper cookies could not be resisted, and thus I went a little sideways.

A Google search for the term “chocolate spice cookies” comes back with a bit more than 68 million results! Italian recipes lead the way, but U.S. versions (like this one) aren’t far behind. There’s one from South Africa with just black pepper… there are a few based on Mexican chocolate… Viennese chocolate pepper cookies (a roll out)… It doesn’t end. This isn’t an original idea, just my version of one that every baker across the world has thought about from time to time.

So what did I do? (A) I elected to go with a U.S.-style drop cookie, and (B) I made it so good that all the other 67,999,999 are stuck with trying to come in second.

NOTE FROM KATE – ON FLOUR: We had a batch where we ran out of AP flour (11.7% gluten) and ended up using pizza flour (14% gluten) for about a quarter of the required amount. Those cookies didn’t spread. They had so much more structural integrity that if you made a little pyramid, it would probably look like a little mountain upon baking. The cookies in the photos are made with regular AP flour, and they did spread some but not very much. This begs the question, would a softer flour yield a more traditional cookie with more spread? Would substituting some starch for 10% of the flour do the trick? If you try it, let us know on our eponymous FaceBook group.

FYI, there was nothing wrong with the pyramidal cookies went came to taste. Their centers remained soft and may even have held on to moisture better. High levels of either cocoa or chocolate will suck moisture out of any baked good, and this is a great example of the phenomenon.

The Spice Part

The first test batch stuck with black pepper. Four teaspoons of it! The result was superb, but it did push right up against that line between “right” and “too much.” The recipe accordingly says 3-4 now. But the big Aha! moment came when we realized that black pepper was just the tip of this particular iceberg.

Go out to your favorite chocolate shop and you’ll find a whole shelf of well spiced options. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon. Chocolate flavored with cinnamon and chili (the Mexican chocolate profile). Chocolate flavored with cayenne, garam masala, ginger, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, gingerbread mix… It’s endless! I mentioned this to Kate and her eyes lit up with an evil gleam.

Every single one of those would work in this recipe. Just compare the potency of your chosen spice to the designated 3-4 tsp. of black pepper in this master recipe, and keep notes so that Version B will be perfect. Bing, bang, boom.

NOTE FROM KATE: I prefer more spice. The cookie doesn’t have to bite back, but higher spice level helps the flavor linger. The pepper version is warming and makes you raise an eyebrow in surprise (use fresh-ground for best effect.) The cinnamon-chipotle one is familiar, with a long and warm finish. Cardamom alone didn’t have the same bite, but the high floral notes carried beautifully, and I plan to see how that spice would play well with black or spicy pepper or to attain an extended note.

One whole recipe gives you approximately 1,200 grams of dough. I divided it into four bowls with 300 grams each, rounding them off to get even weights. (The exact amount of each batch will vary depending how much dough you use for “quality control,” how hard you pack your brown sugar, the size of your eggs, etc.). Then I added proportionate amounts of spices, getting 15 cookies of each per cookie sheet. Label your baking parchment so you know which is which. These are mystery cookies. They all look the same, the first bite keeps you guessing, but by the second bite you know.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: That might even be a fun game. Make several versions with different spices, and then let the party figure out what’s what...

Let us know your favorites so we can give them a try. I might even get to try a few myself before the invisible cookie gremlins get hold of the dozen I left on the plate. Deaf, dumb and blind, thy name is husband of 30+ years.

Enjoy!

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KRUMKAKE – Norway’s Light and Crispy Waffle Cookie

Delicate, spice scented cones: a treat for all seasons

Krumkake are one of those cookies that keep improving with every new batch you try. I can’t honestly say we’ve mastered it yet – which is a little scary when you realize they’ve gotten nothing but rave reviews from guests, spouse, and even a certain stubborn daughter on a low sugar kick who only gave it a taste because Dad did a comic begging routine. (And who then had somewhere between two and several more in order to decide that strawberries were her favorite berry inside. And then had to be restrained to save some for her sister who was out of town. But admittedly had the good grace to only laugh and agree when confronted with this description).

In other words, the Krumkaker we’re already making are Good with a capital G and are still getting better as our skill improves. They are as much fun to serve and eat as any other cookie we know, and have the potential to be even better than all that once we start to explore all the ideas for a filling beyond berries and cream.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus who lives up by the North Pole, and travels south every year – making his first stop in Norway to get his allotment of Krumkake.

Click here if you only want the final recipe without lessons learned.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: WHAT IS A “KRUMKAKE”?

Krumkake (Krumkaker in the plural) is a light, crisp, Norwegian waffle cookie made as follows:

  1. Start with an unleavened batter made from melted butter, eggs, flour, and sugar,
  2. Season it with vanilla and cardamom,
  3. Use a special waffle iron to make wafer thin cookies,
  4. Form those wafers into cones or tubes while hot, and then
  5. Serve with a filling such as the classic whipped cream and berries.

Whoever makes the thinnest, lightest, crispiest Krumkake wins. Sounds simple, right? And it is, except for hidden subtleties in every one of those five basic points.

About #1, why do they need to be unleavened? Especially when a bit of baking powder ought to make them that much lighter?

Krumkake irons aren’t quite the same as pizzelle irons. The space between the two halves is noticeably thinner; enough so that any puff from the baking powder would be squeezed out by the brute force of pressing the top and bottom. You’d think people would try it anyway, but I failed to find a single recipe that reinforced the batter with baking powder.

OTOH, every recipe requires a fairly generous portion of starch to lighten the flour, and that serves a similar purpose.

For #2, why be so specific about vanilla and cardamom? Aren’t people allowed to play around?

This is the one that’s going to get me in trouble. Our Internet friend Libby is the finest Krumkake baker we know – the culmination of at least three generations of tradition, with 30+ years of expertise. She has faced and conquered every challenge that Krumkake can present… and she makes her Krumkake with vanilla and almond extract alone. No cardamom in sight. [NOTE: She has subsequently admitted to using ground mace in half of her batter, which may perhaps be blamed on her roots being Swedish instead of Norwegian.]

I stand by my guns nevertheless for at least three reasons:

  • Every native Norwegian recipe I could find specified cardamom, usually with a grudging note that some people prefer nutmeg (or mace, I guess).
  • Scandinavian bakers are as free with their use of cardamom as Americans are with cinnamon. It’s a cultural trait, and I wanted to produce an Old Country recipe rather than an American adaptation.
  • My family really liked how that delicate, background spice enhanced the berries.

So cardamom it is. That is the norm, and doing without is the variation.

On #3, why do I need to spend extra money on a new device? Can’t I use my pizzelle iron instead?

Yeeessss… you can, so long as you understand that your final result won’t be as thin as it should be, won’t shape as cleanly, and will therefore be tasty but not “right.” FWIW, we tested this with a certain amount of diligence because (a) I am nothing if not cheap, and (b) my beloved wasn’t exactly fond of adding yet another large, single purpose tool. I wanted to find a different answer, but the darned wafers just wouldn’t cooperate. I ended up with tasty shards and crumbs, not pretty cones or tubes.

Thoroughly daunted, I went back to consult with Libby about this (consulted, not whined, no matter what she says). She replied with an electronic shrug. “I’m afraid you can’t get around it. Krumkake are supposed to be super thin, and pizzelle irons have too much space between the plates. I give them an extra squeeze even in my Krumkake iron just to be sure. But don’t worry about the extra machine. It won’t be a once-per-year waste. I use my Krumkake iron all year long to make crackers.”

Crackers? Okay, that works… And it’s hard to ignore the voice of experience when that’s why you’re asking for help in the first place. So I bit the bullet, searched around for a deal, and found one right away. Brand new irons retail for around $45.00 as of the end of 2022. That’s well within a household budget no matter what, but an hour of additional searching found me a technically used iron, still in its unopened box, for half that price even after accounting for the cost of shipping. $23.00. So I made the purchase, and discovered that Libby was 100% right. The Krumkake wafers really do come off the iron significantly thinner, and it really does make a difference in the final product.

The electric Krumkake Baker from Cucina Pro

That search came with a side benefit too. We bought a standard electric iron, and it works great, but now I learned that traditional stovetop versions are still being sold as well! How cool is this?

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is image.png
An old fashioned stovetop Krumkake iron from Nordic Ware.

Krumkake recipes existed long before electrical power, and you can actually reproduce that experience if you choose. “Heritage” indeed!

For heaven’s sake, #4 has to be excessive. I like flat pizzelles just fine and I’m perfectly willing to have “topping” instead of “filling.” Why go to the hassle of burning my fingertips to form these into shapes?

Let’s start with the name. “Kake” means cake or cookie, and “krum” translates to ‘curved’ or ‘crooked’; so Krumkaker are by definition “curved cookies.” Cones are the most traditional shape, with tubes close behind, but I couldn’t find a single recipe where the author left them flat. Our casualties irregular results used for taste testing confirm that wafers taste just fine, but you won’t be getting the full experience, and it will matter once you get to the final touches. More on that below.

Okay, Let me have it. What’s the big deal behind requirement #5? I eat my pizzelles plain. Why not Krumkake?

This is actually the most important piece of the puzzle!

We had plenty of “irregular results” as Kate and I struggled with portioning, timing, shaping, and my desire to somehow make this work with a pizzelle machine. Casualties = nibbling. And the nibbling proved, beyond any doubt, that straight Krumkaker are… inoffensive. Nothing wrong with them, just ho hum. Uninspiring. Even disappointing, to be totally honest. Pizzelles have character. Stroopwafels incorporate a caramel filling the gods use to enhance their ambrosia. These Krumkake fragments had neither.

So you can imagine my surprise at the startled cries of delight that came from the other room as guests and family went in to try them out. “Well, they’re certainly pretty enough… Ssshhhhpritz! (From the can of whipped cream)… And oooh, berries. I think I’ll try… Oh. Good. Lord. Jim, you’ve got to come here! You’re missing out on the good stuff! These things are amazing!”

Maybe I ought to try one too… And yes, that was when the penny dropped.

Plain, unfilled Krumkaker are like a light, crispy, and extra fun version of that plain cake underneath a Strawberry Shortcake. [Yawn] Everything changes when you add the cream and berries. Hody hum to holy cow in one quick instant.

That, my friends, is the frame you need to complete the picture. Krumkaker, like Cat Tongues, are a platform rather than a standalone cookie. They aren’t complete until they are filled. But trust me on this. Once they are completed, you will be H.A.P.P.Y.

NAILING DOWN THE RECIPE

Recipes for the Krumkaker shells. I did a great deal of research for this recipe because it’s so well loved in Scandinavian tradition, and found that the recipes all followed the same basic pattern. First you mix together eggs and sugar until the sugar dissolves; then you add in melted (and cooled) butter; then you stir in some flour mixed with starch (potato, corn, etc.); and then you thin the batter as needed to get to a consistency somewhere between an extra-thick cream and an extra-light pancake batter. The recipes only differ in their proportion of eggs, sugar, butter, and shortened flour, and those group loosely into three basic categories:

  1. Recipes made 1-2 eggs, standard flour, and a lot of whole milk, half and half, or cream.
  2. Libby’s recipe, which uses 3 eggs, shortens the flour with a lot of starch (1 cup and ½ cup respectively), has a small amount of sugar (½ cup), and then thins the result with water.
  3. The recipe that came with our machine (the most common by far), which starts with 4 eggs, flour with just a little bit of starch (1½ cups and 2 tbsp.), a full cup of sugar, and then thins the already looser result with your choice of water, milk, etc.

We tested all three. The first one disappointed. It came out as a nice, thick batter but cooked up a little tough. In the ideal world I would have gone back to test this again later on, because it probably suffered from both our lack of technique and my insistence on trying to a pizzelle iron. I never did, however, because the egg-heavy recipes ended up working so well. Thus I won’t call this approach a “failure,” just an alternative that got abandoned early on.

Libby’s 3-egg recipe worked, but had two issues I felt compelled to refine. First, it wasn’t quite sweet enough for our admittedly American taste, and second, it kept thickening up into something that could barely be called a batter at all. Adding water would thin it out for 10-20 minutes, and then it would thicken up yet again. Fixable issues, beyond any doubt, but first I wanted to try the 4-egg recipe since it promised to be both thinner and sweeter.

This one worked quite well. Yes, it was a little on the sweet side. And yes, it still needed some extra liquid. But it wasn’t over the top sweet, and it needed less liquid than Libby’s. A compromise between the 3- and 4-egg approaches looked like an obvious way to go. Or would have if my itch to experiment hadn’t intervened.

COOKIE NERD MOMENT

The Unwise Diversion

I know from general baking principles that egg yolks tend to add structure and cakiness to baked goods, while egg whites make things a little drier and crispier. Whipping the eggs/whites also makes things lighter and crispier. And weren’t “light” and “crispy” the very targets we were after? So logic said the path toward an Ultimate Krumkake might actually lie in separating the eggs and playing around with longer mixing times, rather than fussing with the ingredients alone. “Most innnterestink…” says he in a cartoon Dr. Freud voice.

But here’s the thing. Our work isn’t really about finding the Ultimate Version. We’re after the Best Traditional Version that can be made with standard U.S. ingredients and materials. All of which forbade something as radical as separating eggs… unless I could dig up traditional versions that followed the same logic.

Eyes aglow I went back to my research, and found [crickets]. The deeper I looked, the clearer it became. Krumkake is an ancient treat that Grandma’s grandmother made by whisking whole eggs and sugar with a fork until the sugar dissolved, adding shortened flour, and then thinning with liquid. That evolved over time to make use of better tools, but only because they achieve the same result a little quicker. Chefy variations and techniques? Not a one to be found.

The batter part came together quickly after that. I added some extra starch for tenderness, cut back on the sugar by a few tablespoons, et voila. This was the recipe that went out for an initial public test, and yielded all those rave reviews. Could I make it even better? What if I…

Sometimes it’s good to have a wife. (Okay, okay: most times.) Kate looked at me and said, “Perfection is overrated. These aren’t just ‘good enough,’ they are good enough that I want to call over company just to show them off, and get them out of the house where I won’t be tempted any more. Leave well enough alone.” So be it.

The recipe down below still tends to thicken up over time, but only by a little, and isn’t that just as true of pancake and crepe batters? It’s the nature of the beast. Consider it a trick of the trade.

Finding the ideal Krumkake filling.

There is no such thing. End of story.

The simplest, most basic filling is berries or preserves served with whipped cream. Lingonberries or cloudberries if you’re in Scandinavia; and something like fresh strawberries here in the U.S. But that is just the starting point.

Novel fillings are a significant part of the Krumkake tradition. Ice cream? Yes, and I can personally attest to how well they go with a little Häagen-Dazs coffee. Custards and thickened creams? Yes. Berries or jam alone? Yes. Other fruit, be it cooked, raw, preserved, fresh, northern, or tropical? All of the above. Pudding, mousse, caramel drizzles, chocolate dips, meringues, etc. ad infinitum? Ditto.

If tradition limits the shell to a basic approach, that same tradition says that only a baker who lacks inspiration (or has demanding family members) would trot out the same kind of filling every time. Krumkake must be filled with something. That’s a fact. But “something” is about as specific as it gets.

Just keep the fragility factor in mind as you ponder what to use. Super thin, crispy-but-tender shells are going to shatter in your hands somewhere between bites one and two. There’s no way around it. When (not if) that happens, there’s nothing to do but laugh, catch the crumbs, and then lick your fingers. We can’t recommend the use of any filling where that would present a problem. After that, anything goes.

FORMING KRUMKAKE CONES

The batter before it gets thinned with water or milk
Thinned Krumkake batter at the right consistency
Not dark enough yet
Still not dark enough
Ready to roll
And now we’re done! The kitchen towel was used as a “glove” to cut down on singed fingertips. Note the wooden cone mold at the top.

I don’t know what to tell you. The only advice I can give is both obvious and doesn’t offer a whole lot of help.

  1. Thy Fingers Shalt Get Singed. The wafers can only be shaped when they’re piping hot, which makes the ouchies are unavoidable.
  2. Wearing a glove will help. Same with rolling on a clean towel, which can double as a pseudo-glove for handling. But it’s going to happen. Just remember that you’re doing it for love, and be creative with how you curse.
  3. A good, solid cone mold makes everything easier. Those tools exist for a reason, and they work. There is a tool good enough to solve all problems (pictured below), but at that point you’re talking about something used for industrial production.
  4. Kate likes to keep a bowl of cold water standing by to cool her fingertips. (NOTE FROM SCOTT: Being a big, tough, manly man I obviously scorn such sensible comforts). [NOTE FROM KATE: And use a manly biker glove instead].
  5. But the bottom line is simple: nothing will ever replace experience. Experience makes you quicker and more efficient, and turns the race against ouchies into a private challenge rather than a looming threat. Nothing replaces experience.

All of which explains why war stories are so big a part of the Krumkake experience, both for the rueful memories and the times you cut loose with some [ahem] appropriate words, not realizing who was standing right behind you.

NOTE FROM KATE: We had a lot of fun with this recipe, and it’s easier than it sounds. In this, it reminds me of macarons: You end up learning a new technique, and you will make some misshapen, too-light, or too-dark pieces. But they will still taste pretty good, and by the end of your first batch, you’ll find you are making very respectable cones.

We engaged in all kinds of foolishness before Scott ordered that wooden cone shape. We tried a cardboard roll shaped into a horn and covered in aluminum foils (an epic fail – you really need to press on the ‘seam’ where the edges of your cone meet.) We tried bovine horns, carved and uncarved (a remnant of an old hobby – I don’t carve anymore.) That sparked a promise of how good it could be, if we only had a straight horn. Like, y’know, one made of wood for the purpose. The gloves were a massive overkill. You don’t need to touch the hot wafer except for that one edge, and you can do it through a clean tea towel. [SCOTT RESPECTFULLY DISAGREES. There is no such thing as overkill when it comes to tools. If you’re going to make a thing, why not make it from stainless steel?]

Filling the horns is a lot of fun. You will eventually want to start making your cream (or cream-based fillings) ahead to keep in the fridge. The spray cans are fun but inelegant. The higher end approach is to stabilize your cream with gelatin and powdered sugar. Here’s what I did, and it worked like a charm:

  • 1 cup of cream
  • 1 tsp. powdered gelatin
  • 2-4 tbsp. hot water
  • 1-4 tbsp powdered sugar.
  • Bloom the gelatin in hot water, let it cool, and then add it into half-whipped cream. Finish whipping until you get soft peaks.

We served this in disposable pastry bags, with jam and pre-sliced berries on the side. [Sigh] It was wonderful. Several berries, in fact, so people could create their own combinations. Every one was delicious, and our guests enjoyed competing for whose would be best. Oh yes – remember to serve with extra napkins on the side. Trust me on this.

Another view of the molding tool and some Krumkake I made using it. $8.00, and worth every penny
A commercial waffle forming tool. Ouchy free, but $40 instead of $8, and not so easy to store

Or you can get really traditional…

The glove was a great idea despite Kate’s rolling of the eyes. The natural horns? Not so much. The lack of a handle made them hard to, well, handle, and the curve made forming them slower, which increased the ouchy factor.

CONCLUSION

Enough with the ouchies! War stories, remember? They’re a part of the fun. But the best part of all is this:

Krumkake are so good, and so much fun, that they are going on our short list for favorite desserts to make whenever guests come by. Not just for the holidays either, but all year round. The whole experience adds up to a solid “10.” Your guests and loved ones even get to play with their food! What could be better than that?

ISCHLER COOKIES – The Blessed Union of Linzer Tarts and Sachertorte

Dense nutty shortbread with an apricot filling and chocolate coating. What’s not to love?

“There is a tide in the affairs of bakers. Which, taken at the flood, leads to cookies of legend.”

Williamnot Shakesthepan, ‘Julius Eater’

The bakers of Imperial Austria were always good, but immortality escaped them until the creation of a series of desserts in the 1800’s. Yes, Linzer Tarts date back to at least the 1600’s. But nailing it? Pre- and post-French Revolution. One example is Sachertorte, created in 1832; a dense, extremely chocolatey layer cake with a generous amount of apricot jam on the inside. Ischler Cookies are another.

This particular cookie was created for Emperor Franz Joseph I in 1849 at the spa town of Bad Ischl. Look with care and you’ll see a marriage of the first two; the buttery, nutty, Linzer shortbread sharing the stage with apricot filling and dark chocolate counterpoints.

Exquisite.

As always, skip to the bottom if you are only here for the recipe. Most of this article concerns the choices we made to get there.

MORE A “PROFILE” THAN A “RECIPE”

A search for “Ischler Cookies Recipe” yields somewhere in the area of 2,000 recipes in English alone, and another 10,000 in German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and any number of other languages. Plus books, of course. I’ve scanned maybe a hundred in all, with close study of several dozen, and all the work done on ours. On that authority I feel confident about the [lack of a] target definition:

  1. A sandwich cookie made from a tender, nut-heavy shortbread;
  2. An apricot filling, which often gets varied in the name of creativity;
  3. And a densely chocolate element, which can take any form that human ingenuity can contrive.

This cookie has been around for more than 170 years, and the recipe now has all but infinite variations. If you insist, I will admit to a belief that the original cookie used a lot of hazelnuts, had an apricot filling, and was enrobed in chocolate, but that is based purely on inference and guesswork. Why hazelnuts? Because it pairs so very well with chocolate. Why enrobed instead of sandwiched? Well, if I was a pastry chef, and I wanted to impress an Emperor, that would be my default.

Sensible? Yes. A statement of fact? Not exactly.

So here’s the bottom line. Our version of this recipe is as good as any, better than most, and is 100%, capital-R Right. But that doesn’t mean that other recipes are capital-letter Wrong. They aren’t. We’re looking at a flavor profile, not a fixed recipe. Everything is “right” so long as it has the nutty shortbread, jam filling, and distinct hit of chocolate.

THE NUTTY SHORTBREAD

I spent years refining the proportions in my nutty Linzer Tart dough to perfection, and there is no reason to mess with success for this one. Here is the basic formula:

  • ≈ 1 cup (7 oz = 185 g) of fine nut meal, ideally from gently toasted nuts;
  • 2 sticks (1 cup = 8 oz = 225 g) of butter;
  • 2 cups (10 oz = 185 g) of flour;
  • One large or XL egg yolk;
  • A small amount of baking powder; and
  • A healthy pinch (¼ tsp.) of salt.

Tests pushed us to add an extra half cup of flour to the dough, plus a little beyond that for oily walnuts, but that’s basically where we ended up.

What Nuts To Use? Any. Most modern American recipes tend toward almonds as the nut of choice. Modern recipes from Austria tend to use hazelnuts (filberts). The Hungarians often favor walnuts. Kate and I usually recommend a mix of nuts, but it had to be tested. We did so. And the result was clear: It doesn’t really matter.

NOTE FROM KATE: I figure the preferred nut may have also been a function of availability. The Hungarian versions favor walnuts, which they grow locally. In Bohemia (and I believe Austria) you can find hazelnuts bushes growing prolifically near every village, much to the delight of both youngsters and squirrels. So they make more sense for where I grew up. That said, the 1924 Sandtnerova cookbook uses almonds for almost everything, including her version of Ischler Cookies, and Austria sat in the middle of all these trade routes during Imperial times. Thus the Bad Ischl bakers would have had ready access to all three.

The photos in this post vary from examples that are pure walnut through pure hazelnut, 2:1 hazelnuts and almonds, and 3:1 hazelnuts and walnuts. They look the same, and while a devoted taster can tell one from the other (especially when the nuts are toasted), every variation was just as delicious as the last. So choose what you wish according to personal taste, budget, and pantry.

“What about oddball nuts like pecans, peanuts, macadamia, etc.?” Yes, that’s valid too. Look at the definition! “Nut meal” it says, and that is all it means. You’ll just be making another of those infinite and delicious variations. The only change is the obvious one: walnuts and other oilier nuts create a looser dough, which you’ll need to compensate for by adding some extra flour during the rolling phase. (NOTE FROM KATE: Macadamias would be interesting. They are the oiliest nut in existence and would produce a very short dough. I can already taste a Hawaiian take on the Ischler, with a tropical jam filling and a white chocolate coating on top!)

What Texture of Nuts? This one is more defined. Use nut meal nut flour, without any significant chunks of the sort you’d want if we used the word “chopped.” Yes, many people prefer to have little pops of crunchy nuts in their cookies. And yes, it adds some texture while also being convenient. After all, that is what you can get from a food processor. It just isn’t capital-R Right, because food processors did not exist in 1849. Bakers used table mounted grinders instead. Kate’s Grandma Kandler had one that looked a lot like this:

Image shows a 1930’s version from the Czech company Porkert

(NOTE FROM KATE: Scott has this part only half right. Grandma used one like this for poppy seed, and only occasionally for walnuts (which she used in her zimtsterne-like meringue sticks). She didn’t have a nut grinder for hazelnuts or the oh-so-rare almonds. Those she ground on the Czech equivalent of a box grater, one nut at a time, while listening to the radio and cursing. That works fine if you use the small slicing openings, but it’s laborious and does a job on your manicure.

You might ask, “Why didn’t she have the menfolk do it?” The answer is twofold: 1. The menfolk were busy pounding regular sugar into powdered sugar using a brass mortar and pestle. 2. She didn’t trust the menfolk not to eat the nuts. They were hard to obtain during the product shortages of the communist era, and she often had to visit numerous stores with hours-long lines just to get two small baggies of hazelnuts. For a great tool we can use now, keep reading.)

We have gotten by for 30 years with a much smaller and more familiar device:

Image shows the Oxo Rotary Grater, often used for Parmesan cheese but just as effective with nuts.

Both of those grinders inhale whole nuts and breathe out either fine shreds or powder, depending on which grating blade you insert. They do not produce “chopped” nuts. Thus we believe that (a) nut meal is almost certainly the texture used in the 1849 version of this cookie; (b) it’s a texture we prefer to eat; and therefore (c) it is the texture this recipe recommends. [NOTE: Almond flour and meal have started to become available in U.S. markets. Hazelnut and walnut meal are a lot harder to find, at least in 2022.]

As for chocolate inside the dough… see below.

Can I add some spice to the dough? Absolutely! Linzer Tarts have a hint of spice, and these can too. Just be judicious. Ischler Tarts have a strong, three-legged theme that every good recipe needs to balance; nutty shortbread, chocolate, and jam. Spices that enhance this balance do nothing but help. Spices that add a fourth layer will throw things awry. We didn’t do a whole lot of experimenting along these lines, but experience suggests that the best approach would focus on a spice that works with your central nuts. E.g., walnuts love to pair with ground cloves and coffee; vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg pair to perfection with hazelnuts; almonds get along cinnamon or an oddball spice like pepper.

THE APRICOT FILLING

Yes, apricot. We defunded the cookie police before publishing this article, so no one’s going to arrest you for using something else. There are, however, a number of reasons to start with this particular fruit:

  • Apricot and chocolate are a classic Austrian combination, as shown by the much loved Sachertorte;
  • Raspberry has its own cookie in Linzer Tarts; and
  • All accounts seem to agree that the original, 1859 recipe did indeed use apricot and not any other fruit.

QED.

Apricot cookie fillings come in two basic versions. The first is slow-cooked puree or compote a/k/a apricot butter, povidla, lekvar, etc. We prefer these fillings for recipes that bake the filling, but with this one – filled after the fact – we recommend the easier route; a modified apricot jam.

Jam fillings present two issues, both of which are easy to solve. #1 is excess moisture that can soak into the cookies and limit their lifespan. #2 is availability, since our stores only carry “apricot preserves,” and that product has enough chunks to detract from your ideal result.

Cookies made with unstrained preserves. See how the bits of fruit hold the two halves apart? It doesn’t hurt the taste at all, but it’s less perfect than what you can do with only a little more effort.
Same cookies, same presentation, but without the chunks of fruit.

We prefer this cookie with a smooth jam instead, and ideally one that’s just a little drier. You can address both concerns by (a) heating preserves until loose, (b) pushing the hot goo through a sieve, and then (c) spiking it with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice or apricot brandy for that certain je ne sais quoi. Apricot perfection with just the texture you want.

I did try to sieve the jam without preheating, hoping to avoid the danger of handling something so hot. Alas, even a coarse sieve wouldn’t do the job. Preserves are just too hefty, and it did nothing about the moisture concern. Thus you are hereby warned about the danger, and we recommend doing it anyway.

THE CHOCOLATE

Yes, a chocolate component is essential. That is what separates this cookie from being a mere variation on Linzer Tarts. Same genus; different species.

What kind of chocolate? That is a matter of some debate. Look at those 12,000 recipes on line and you’ll see that different bakers try to incorporate the chocolate element in every possible way. And I do mean every. We found recipes based on:

  1. Grated or melted chocolate mixed into the dough. This produces a wonderful cookie on its own merits, and it’s the simplest approach. The drawback? It doesn’t have the same ‘Wow’ factor as a chocolate filling or topping, and it adds flavor without texture.
  2. Cocoa powder mixed into the dough. Again, it’s a wonderful cookie on its own, but it lacks in both Wowness and mouthfeel.
  3. A chocolate ganache filling paired with the apricot filling. This is the most common solution in American recipes because it’s simple, tasty, has a great mouthfeel, and is easy to pack. The drawback? It looks good but not great, and too much of either layer will make your filling squirt out the sides.
  4. A ring of chocolate ganache filling with the apricot placed inside. This is a neater variant on #2, because the piping process enforces exactly the sort of filling-discipline you need. The downside? “Piping” is #1, because many people find it fussy and hard. Visual appeal comes in again as #2. There’s nothing wrong with looking at chocolate, but seeing the jam adds a flash of appealing color. #3, I think it messes too much with the balance of flavors, though Kate disagrees. (NOTE FROM KATE: I have a higher tolerance for bitter than Scott, and find the ring of darker chocolate ganache very pleasant. This is especially true for when used with the sweeter chocolate fondant icing – see below. Also, YMMV.)
  5. Chocolate ganache spread or piped over the top. A great compromise, but the ganache can look a little messy if you don’t pay attention, and it makes for a very sticky top. There’s no way at all you could hope to pack it in a tin. Right idea; wrong solution.
  6. Chocolate buttercream cake frosting piped on top. Think of these sandwich cookies as a tiny cupcake made from shortbread instead of batter. Now go ahead and frost that cupcake. Taste: check. Texture: check. Appearance: check. The drawbacks? (A) It moves us away from “cookie” and into “confection,” (B) no one could even dream of packing them in a tin, and (C) there are better answers yet to come.
  7. A chocolate glaze. Looks fine and packs like a charm, but glazes never have the desired mouthfeel, and almost always lack something on the flavor side too.
  8. Melted chocolate a/k/a why get weird? Alas, but the texture is wrong. The cookies wants a coating that feels dry to the fingers, but gives way to the teeth without any effort. The ‘snap’ of actual chocolate turns from asset to issue in this particular case.
  9. Chocolate melted with butter, and then either poured over the top or used as a dip. This is an ideal solution for taste, appearance, and texture, but it also softens at room temperature, which makes it a mess to eat and impossible to ship unless you heroically cut a piece of parchment as protection.
  10. Coverture a/k/a chocolate melted with extra cocoa butter, used as either a coating or a dip. Ding! This is the best solution of all… if you keep cocoa butter on hand, or have access to specialty stores that sell ready made coverture. If you don’t…
  11. A pourable chocolate fondant used as either a coating or a dip. Ding ding! We have finally arrived at our #1 solution for everyday pantries! Looks perfect; thick enough to give an ideal, luscious mouthfeel; dries enough to pack in a tin without worry; and the flavor is exactly as you want, since it can be varied to taste. It’s even pretty easy… or would prove to be after we figured it out.
Want chocolate icing that flows over your cookies, settles into a coating with some heft, is dry to the touch, but melts in your mouth? Pourable fondant is where it’s at.

THE ICING ODYSSEY

You may find this hard to believe, but we really did try every one of the first nine approaches (other than the frosting). See this parallel article on coverture and pourable fondant. Which one do we recommend? It’s chocolate, people! Chocolate wrapped around rich, nutty shortbread that encases a lively hit of bright apricot filling! Don’t stress. This is the very definition of a no-lose situation.

If you keep cocoa butter on hand, go with coverture. If you don’t, whip up a pourable chocolate fondant.

“But should I pour the coating over? Dip the cookies in? Cover only part of the cookies? Apply decorative stripes or some such?

[Sigh] Do what you prefer. We happened to be testing these just in time for Thanksgiving, which led to an extended family vote in favor of coating only the tops with as smooth a layer as possible. Hence the photos. But we can promise that all the others work too. Once again, you cannot lose, so do not stress.

CONCLUSION

Ischler Cookies can hold their own on any cookie tray in the world. They really are that good, and that full of history and heritage.

Are they actually better than all the other cookies in the world? Well, that one’s up to you. They call it taste for a reason, and I cannot speak for yours any more than you can speak for mine. But I can promise you this. Wise men and women will do a lot of careful tasting and re-tasting before reaching any decision.

“I better have just one more to be sure…”

A FEW FINAL NOTES

On storage:

  1. The dough freezes as well as any other so long as you seal it in plastic wrap or an equivalent.
  2. Baked halves keep as well as any others. Just remember that they are fragile, and do best in an airtight container like a cookie tin.
  3. Baked and coated halves freeze well too, but coverture can sometimes develop a whitish bloom (which doesn’t alter the taste, but does detract from their beauty). Fondant made with actual chocolate can do that too, but less so. Fondant made with only cocoa powder doesn’t mind freezing at all.
  4. Filled cookies freeze ‘okay,’ but not ‘well’ because the added moisture of the jam creates a number of potential problems. Better to freeze before filling.

On lifespan:

Ischler Cookies are a little hard if eaten right after they’re filled; remain perfect for up to a week if kept in a tin; and then go downhill.

That’s about it. Enjoy!

The Companion Article On Chocolate Coverture And Pourable Fondant

POURABLE FONDANT AND COVERTURE – the ideal cookie coatings

All we’ve learned on how to make cookie coatings with texture, thicker than icing but thinner than frosting, which are also safe for shipping

Up until now we’ve been happy to use either a thin chocolate glaze, a ganache filling/frosting, or a coating made from actual chocolate melted with butter. Ischler Cookies, a chocolate coated sandwich with nutty shortbread and apricot jam, wanted that chocolate/butter coating, but had to dry into something that could be packed in a tin without heroic efforts like cutting out custom sized bits of parchment paper.

We have now (finally!) found two answers to the dilemma. The first is coverture, which is essentially a chocolate coating made with cocoa butter instead of regular butter. This has a higher melting temperature and won’t lead to sticky hands until you get toward body temperatures. Think of chocolate bars and you’ll have it.

The problem with coverture? It’s very hard to find in a store, and impossible to make at home unless you keep cocoa butter in the pantry. Most people don’t.

That leaves fondant. You may know this better in the rollable form that people drape over cakes. But did you also know about pourable fondant, the version used for petit fours and the like? It creates an icing that’s almost indistinguishable from coverture from both the visual and textural perspectives. It’s just a good bit sweeter and less chocolaty inside the mouth. An ideal compromise for anyone who wants to stick with standard pantry ingredients.

Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World does include a basic pourable fondant recipe, but we never really dug into the subject to understand how and why it works. Until now. Enjoy!

NOTE FROM KATE: APPLICATION TRICKS. If you have great many cookies and a lot of fondant, by all means use a screen and pour over it, as described above. However, this requires extra sheets, space, and materials. We tested it, and it works. I personally find that dipping a cookie in while holding it yields an excellent result, without having to make coating, and is better suited to the average home kitchen. The only downside is chocolate on your fingers. But I have an answer! To keep having from washing your hands, or fighting the constant temptation to lick your fingers, try using a thin, snug glove! It sure worked for me and my work moved faster. Also, I had absolutely no desire to lick my glove!

P.S. THE HOT WATER TRICK. Our experiments on chocolate coatings led to a wonderful trick:

  • The Problem: Chocolate icings begin to harden as soon as they cool, and it often takes a bit too much time to get all your individual cookies dipped or poured.
  • The Solution: Duh. Keep your icing warm enough to prevent it from cooling too fast. But how?
  • The Method: You have a bowl of molten coating. Fill a slightly larger bowl with hot water, and place your bowl of icing inside. The hot water will keep the icing warm for twice as long, leaving you all the time you need to work.

POPPY SEED FILLING – with a few examples of cookies and other desserts

“Caviar!” chorus Kate and Daughter #1. “How nice,” say Scott and Daughter #2.

Part 1 of this extra long article addressed Poppy Seed Drop Cookies and Roll-Outs. This article covers our work on a Heritage Poppy Seed Filling worthy of the name, and a number of other heritage treats that don’t quite make it as “cookies.”

As always, skip to the bottom if you only want the recipe. Or to the middle if you want a couple of great cookie recipes to use as a vehicle.

POPPY SEED FILLING

NOTE FROM KATE: We took a while ironing the kinks out of this one because I have some serious opinions about poppy seed. It’s fabulous! In fact, I started eating poppy young. My paternal grandparents had a summer farm house well outside of Prague. The crops grown around it varied every year, depending on what the state farm’s agronomer decided to grow. One year we had peas (which the kids plundered, using the dry peas in spit guns to devastating effect.) The field next to it grew poppies. The frothy sea of white blossoms faded into blue-green marbles, which soon turned into poppy heads. We kids liked to pick them. We would take our poppy heads into the hay loft, pull out our pocket knives, dig out the white seeds in their slightly bitter white sap, and eat it.

When our grandparents found out, they just shook their heads. Grandma Stoy said, “Don’t eat that. It will make you sleepy, and if you eat too much you’ll grow stupid.”

“That’s how opium is made,” Grandpa Stoy said. “And morphine, for surgeries.” We got a whole lecture on the pharmacological importance of poppies. We were also warned not to make opium (addictive, illegal) while Grandma let it slip that she had seen it used to pacify teething babies. “They used to simmer green poppy heads in milk,” she said. “Then they’d wrap soft bread in a linen handkerchief, tie it off, and soak it in the poppy milk. The baby would suck on it, and go to sleep.”

And here you thought I wouldn’t share any heritage information. This is first-hand research!

The drop cookies came together quickly even though I (we’re back to Scott) had to start with some creative baking. This Poppy Seed Filling? Not so much.

You’d think otherwise, because it is incredibly popular and used in inumerable ways. This is the stuff that goes inside Poppy Seed Hamantaschen, Poppy Seed Kolache, Hungarian Poppy Seed Rolls, the swirls inside of Poppy Seed Cakes and Poppy Seed Breads… and on, and on, and on. There should be recipes out there by the dozen. And there are. But in the end it took both experience, failure, and some understanding of the basic chemistry before we could get it capital-R Right.

  • Problem #1: Poppy Seeds have a bitter edge that’s part of their appeal. But old poppy seeds get bitter in an unpleasant way, and the bitter edge becomes a stabbing blade if you go from “ground” to “pulverized.” I now believe this happens because the seeds, like many other seeds and nuts, are full of oil. Let the oil age, and it goes rancid; i.e., becomes unpleasant. Pulverize the seeds too far in a blender, and the increased surface area of the particles gives the oil a greater opportunity to oxidize, turning harsh in the same way you see with extra virgin olive oil.

Solution 1a: Buy your poppy seeds fresh, and store them in the freezer until you’re ready to use them. This goes double for ground poppy seeds, where the oils are no longer protected by the hulls. [NOTE FROM KATE: A week at room temperature is enough to render ground poppy seeds “less than fresh.” Double that and they will turn bitter. Grandma Kandler always ground them fresh right before use. If you buy them ground to order, as we do, I suggest you make your filling right away, label it, and freeze it.]

Solution 1b: Keep the blender problem in mind, and don’t blithely turn it on for a minute or two. There is “not enough,” but there is also “too much.” The baker’s job is to find the perfect compromise. Mixing whole and ground can also help. [See below].

Solution 1c: If poppy seed flavor lies in the oils, then one should be able to extract those oils into either dairy products or alcohol. And you can! Include some cooking/soaking-in-milk time as part of the recipe. This will even out the flavor, prevent it from going rancid anywhere near as fast, and will also hydrate the whole seeds [see below].

Caviar for Kate
  • Problem #2: Many sources argue that whole poppy seeds provide some desirable pop in a filling. On the other hand, they can get annoying very fast when you end up with a mouthful of grit; and they get extra gritty when a little dried out. Turning it around, ground poppy seeds release more flavor and also smooth things out, but can make the filling a little too dense, shorten its shelf life, and remove all the pop instead of just some. [NOTE FROM KATE: YMMV on cooking them whole, and I have been as open-minded about it as I could be. Yes, they do soften over time, but even the 50/50 ground:whole compromise left me irritated about the whole seeds’ texture. Let your preference be your guide.]

Solution 2a: Start from a mix of ground and whole. Fact is, blenders are not the best tool for grinding poppy seeds. There are actual mills you can buy for just that specialized purpose.

Photo from Happy-Mills.com

We buy our poppy seeds in bulk from our inestimably awesome local coffee roaster. They have just such a tool, and will grind on site as requested. Thus it takes us exactly zero effort to order two half bags instead of one big one, with the first half ground and the second half whole. Highly recommended.

The founder, Mr. John Prestogeorge. A gentleman through and through.

Solution 2b: In theory, poppy seeds swell as you cook them in a liquid, and eventually will swell enough to burst. Think of rice, or some other grain like quinoa. They do just the same. Cooking a little longer will make them swell that much more. The technical challenge here is not allowing the mixture go above the barest of a simmer for more than a few minutes. Boiling will turn them bitter for sure. And with a mixture as viscous as a poppy seed filling, reaching a boil is almost a foregone conclusion. You could put the whole mix into a sous vide for a few hours, and that might work quite well, but we haven’t tried it.

Solution 2c: If you go through the whole process and the filling still feels gritty, swirl a pat or two of softened butter into the warm filling. It’s just like finishing a sauce. The butter adds mouthfeel way out of proportion to the amount you use.

Caviar for Miranda, the eldest daughter
  • Problem #3: Poppy seeds alone are… meh. They come into their own when mixed with some kind of fruit. This is why you almost always see lemon-poppy goods rather than poppy playing a solo tune.

Solution 3a: Include some concentrated fruit flavor (a/k/a honey, jam, preserves, and the like) as one of the sweeteners. This isn’t some secret trick! At least 90% of the recipes out there will include both honey and some kind of jam. The most common ones are povidla (prune butter/filling) and its apricot equivalent lekvar. [N.B. The names are from different languages, and actually mean the same thing: cooked, jam-like fruit filling used in baked goods. Thus the Czechs have both prune povidla and apricot povidla, just as the Hungarians have both apricot and prune lekvar. I use the one name for a prune version and the other for apricot for the sake of reader clarity despite the fact that I know it is linguistically misleading.] But any good fruit preserve will do if that’s the flavor you want to pair! Strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, grape… they’ll all work well and give you a customized “other” to claim as your own.

[NOTE FROM KATE: If you don’t have a jar of prune butter handy, soak two or three prunes with your liquid of choice. The flavor will spread and even out when you the blend the two into filling.]

Solution 3b: I know, I know. ‘But fruit preserves usually include undesirable seeds and/or lumpy bits of pulp! What do I do about those?’ Simple enough. Heat the “jam” until it’s thin, and then push it through a sieve by pressing down hard with a rubber spatula or spoon. The seeds and irredeemable pulp will be left behind, while the rest will get broken down to the point where it no longer matters.

Solution 3c: And yes, mixing sweeteners even more will only increase the complexity. Our recipe uses plain sugar (to ensure the poppy seeds stay front and center), honey (to round everything out), and also choice-of-jam to transform it from ordinary into special.

Solution 3d: Poppy seeds adore fruits of all kinds, but their One True Love is lemon. Don’t fight it. We add some zest into our filling just because it’s part of what everyone thinks of as “poppy seed flavor.” Vanilla also works but we consider that to be more of an optional extra touch.

“Poppy seeds? How nice. Couldn’t we do something with chocolate?” At least according to Scott and Lee (daughter #2)

Final problem: How do you use this wonderful filling now that it’s made and waiting?

THE LAST AND FINAL NOTE FROM KATE: My feelings run strong about this one! I view whole poppy seeds in my filling much like Scott’s opinion on coconut (remember how he called it “Demon Hair” in our Heritage Cookies Alfajores recipe?) Poppy seed filling should be smooth enough not to feel gritty, and should never leave dark seeds between your teeth. If you’re baking for me, use only ground seeds OR blend it after cooking. Remember that, as a rule of thumb, every 10 degrees Centigrade will double the rate of a chemical reaction. Oxidation of the popp yseed oil is just another chemical reaction. Thus, the bitterness will be directly proportional to the combination of time and temperature in the presence of oxygen. (Since the size of our kitchen excludes the installation of a temperature-controlled, nitrogen-atmosphere reaction kettle, we need to plod on like it was 1899.) ANYHOW, you can use fresh-ground poppy seed and gently simmer it, and freeze it. OR, you can pre-soak whole poppy seeds overnight in warm water, strain, gently simmer them, and then blend it till smooth; but only once it has cooled some. (Remember: every degree you shave off helps to slow down the oxidative process.)

And don’t forget the balance flavors? Yes about lemon zest and juice. And yes about some jam. But dry spices have a place too. Clove is lovely in moderation and, not coincidentally, rounds out the flavor in a way that keeps the bitter notes under control.

MY FAVORITE QUICK USE: Eat 3 spoonfuls in the morning while waiting for your coffee to brew. [Note From Scott: I support this. See above for Grandma’s wisdom about teething babies. It works just as well for other dispositions. And now I will run…]

FILLED POPPY SEED COOKIES

Start with a classic filled cookie from any nation starting with Turkey, Greece, and the Balkan states in the south, on up through Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia in the north. Poppy Seed Filling gets used every bit as often as fruit fillings, nut fillings, and sweet cheese fillings. Here are two examples from our original Heritage Cookies of the Old and new World collection.

Served at every Purim feast, Hamantaschen are even more common than
Queen Esther Cookies. They are actually named for Haman,
the villain of that holiday story.

That’s just two examples. Poppy Seed Filling has as much versatility as anything else in the repertoire.

OTHER POPPY SEED DESSERTS

But that isn’t the end of the story. Poppy-centric desserts abound, and several deserve some special mention. No, they aren’t “cookies,” nor even Not-Quite-A-Cookies. So why talk about them at all? Because the treats I’m about to describe are immensely popular, carry great cultural significance, and often fill the same role as a cookie on many a holiday table. No actual recipes, because that would be a step too far, but honorable and honored mention? Absolutely.

Hungarian Poppy Seed Rolls. These look a bit like jelly rolls or roulades, but those are made by rolling up filling inside a yellow cake or meringue layer. Poppy- and Nut Rolls start with a soft, well sweetened, yeast bread dough. After that it’s just the same. Roll the dough out into a rectangle, let it rise, then spread it all over with a thick layer of Poppy Seed (or Sweet Walnut) Filling, leaving only enough room on the sides to account for the filling that’s bound to squish out. Roll the dough up around the filling very, very gently to make a giant roll, and then bake. When it’s done, cut into slices for both easy eating and to display the spiral pattern on the inside.

Lithuanian Poppy-Bread Holiday Nuggets (“Kūčiukai”). There are websites out there that characterize Kūčiukai and its derivatives, as a “cookie”. It isn’t. Kūčiukai are a straightforward, moderately sweet yeast bread stuffed to the gills with whole and/or ground poppy seeds. Roll the dough out into a thin sausages maybe ½” (1-1½ cm) thick; cut them into ¾” (2 cm) pieces; bake until fully done and even a little crispy; and then serve them in a big bowl for the Christmas feast.

Ancient baltic tradition uses Kūčiukai in several ways, ranging from something like cereal floated in a bowl of sweet poppy seed milk, to croutons in a bowl of thickened fruit soup (the most common name is “Kissel”). And, of course, as the object of snitch-and-snack raids by both the young and the young at heart.

That’s why some people call this a “cookie” to begin with? Consider this:

  • Kūčiukai served in sweet poppy milk or Kissel serve as sweet endings to the feast… just like cookies in the more western nations.
  • Kūčiukai are bait for tiny hands… just like western “cookies.”
  • And Kūčiukai are all but mandatory for the holiday gathering… again, just like the things we’d all describe as “proper” cookies.
  • Plus there is no other category in which you could put Kūčiukai from the pure translation point of view, because other cultures have no equivalent.

So Kūčiukai may not be a “cookie” for our purposes, but they 100% deserve to be mentioned in the same breath.

Poppy Seed Cakes, like the Czech “Makovec”. This is an extremely popular dessert often served on a cookie tray during the holidays, but it’s actually a moderately dense cake cut into 3-bite pieces. Recipes vary from a Yellow Cake base, to a White Cake base, oftentimes a Pound Cake base, and sometimes even an Angel Cake base; but cake it is. Fill that batter with an absurd amount of poppy seeds (whole and/or ground), and you’re pretty much done except for gilding-the-lily touches like a sharp lemon icing.

CONCLUSION

There are two types of people in the world: those who adore poppy seeds, and those who barely give them a second thought. That’s a pretty good average. People all over the world make cookies out of them too. But if you are a true devotee, the filling is where it’s at. This is the recipe that hooks ’em in and keeps ’em coming back.

Enjoy!