An utterly delicious cookie from Scandinavia suitable for bakers of all skill levels.
There’s a cookie-baker archetype that goes like this: People are always popping in and out, and every time they do s/he whips up a quick batch of cookies and… And a secondary archetype for the young baker: S/he will get an urge, and vanish into the kitchen on his/her own to whip of a quick batch of…
In America those are almost always Chocolate Chip Cookies. In Australia and New Zealand it’s Anzac Cookies. In Scandinavia it’s these utterly addictive, 30 minute start-to-snarf treats that vary in infinite ways according to the jam in your fridge. I defy any human to see a plate and fail to take one on the way past.
Scandinavian bakers have a trick they use for a whole series of homey cookies: form the dough into long logs, bake until done, and then snip the slump logs into elegant strips. The word “snittar” means pieces that have been snipped, cut, or sliced out. The cookie names vary according to the flavor. Kolasnittar for caramel snips; Chokladsnittar for cocoa snips; Jordgubbsnittar for strawberry snips; Kardemummasnittar for cardamom snips; etc. Marmeladsnittar would mean any cookie of this type made with jam. The online translations almost always use “cuts” or “slices,” but we thought “snips” captured the image best in colloquial English.
Strawberry is the most traditional jam in Scandinavia. Americans tend toward raspberry. We loved apricot. Anything will do. And best of all? Every variation earns its own name! So you can fill a book with “different” recipes simply by changing from one jam to another, or by adding an ingredient to the dough. Or you could in Sweden. We’re stuck with English. Drat.
This is the most basic recipe for all the “snittar” group; a light, vaguely crispy, addictively perfect butter cookie from which you can create all those thousands of variations.
Tricks Of The Trade
There really aren’t any, more’s the shame. I would feel much safer if there were. But here are a few observations to help explain the big picture.
Speaking Bakerese, this is a simple creaming method cookie. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, flavor, and then work in the flour and baking powder.
The recipe calls for slightly less flour than roll-and-cut cookies because it’s designed to slump and spread a bit in the oven. Which, of course, makes them taste extra light and buttery.
One recipe makes four logs the length of a standard baking tray. It’s hard to divide because of the single egg, but the dough can be wrapped and frozen for another day.
Do not press in a deep channel, or your cookies will be so thin in the middle that they’ll break in that spot. You want a nice, lengthwise dent to keep the jam oriented. No more.
Don’t use too much jam. Scott usually argues that more jam in cookie is that much more delicious. Kate prefers scarcity. In this case she’s right. The butter cookie is the star, and the jam is an accent.
Let the cookies set on the baking tray for a few minutes in order to set up, and then slice while warm. A bench scraper works every bit as well as a knife for this, and maybe better.
Diagonal slices look a little more elegant.
NOTE FROM KATE: regarding the jam amount, I applied the apricot jam using a piping bag, whilst Scott used a spoonfor the strawberry jam. [FROM SCOTT: My apologies. We’ve been watching too many British mysteries] You can see them both in the photo above. Honestly? I like his better. That thin line doesn’t spread as wildly, and makes it look like I tried too hard. Which I did. Go wild!
(The bowl below isn’t precision pottery, either. I made it, a beginner’s effort, and I allowed it to slump on the wheel to see what happens. If I can get away with making pottery that has “character,” the same goes for these cookies! ) And now I want to try them with a poppyseed filling. Poor Scott, that’s so not his thing.
Enjoy!
ONE FINAL NOTE: Please don’t blame us for what happens as these cookies migrate from house to hips, and platter to paunch. These are a Class One Addictive Substance! You have been warned!
A perfect year-round, super fast cookie for all ages and tastes.
It’s funny how the simplest cookies can be the ones that drive you batty. Scott’s been trying to nail down Tuiles for so long that it’s become a family joke. Oatmeal wafers have been another bane. Until now. These aren’t thin enough to call a proper “wafer” – hence the name “thins” – but they are simple, easy to play with, and utterly delicious. A true year-round cookie rather than something fancy for the holidays.
There isn’t a whole lot more to say beyond “make this cookie, and make it often.”Oat Thins are a classic, relatively bulletproof treat from Scandinavia that is more equivalent to an everyday Chocolate Chip Cookie than any of the fancier Christmas treats.
It’s nailed. Enjoy.
NOTE FROM KATE: I had nothing to do with the baking of this cookie…but I played with the chocolate. The neatest way is to load your melted chocolate into a pastry bag, snip off the tip so you get a thin stream, and make parallel lines across the entire sheet at once. Then stripe them sideways to form the diamonds. To easily make sandwiches, snip the bag opening a little larger, squirt, and squish. As much as I like these with chocolate, I absolutely adore the hit of buttery flavors when these cookies are still slightly warm and pliable!
The most interesting part came when Scott broke the recipe down to put in one of his all-cookie ratio tables. Would you believe that Swedish Oatmeal Thins turn out to be all but identical to our recipe for the deep south’s famous recipe for Benne a/k/a Sesame Wafers? Talk about parallel development!
We’ve now tested the cookies plain, drizzled with chocolate, and sandwiched into a serious, four-bite, chocolate oatmeal sandwich. Every one of those was fantastic. A ten out of ten for good, old fashioned yumminess. The texture is crisp, and stays that way. The flavor has that irresistible caramel/vanilla/oatmeal essence we’ve searched for over the years. And both of those features stay that way over time. What more could you want?
As for ease… wow. This is one of the fastest and simplest cookies we’ve ever come across. No exaggeration: Scott decided to race the clock for our final test batch. He put the oven on to preheat toward 350°, and then hurried to put the dough together and set up the trays.
Ready… set… go. Melt butter; measure out the dry ingredients; stir in the butter; and then stir in the vanilla and egg. Dough done, oven at only 275°. Form balls of dough, array on the trays, and… oven at 337°. The cookies were ready to bake before the oven could finish preheating!
That, my friends, is a cookie that comes together fast. Dump, stir, scoop with a spoon, form into balls, and bake.
Imagine the esthetic behind Danish Modern furniture: minimal, sleek, efficient, elegant, useful, classically beautiful, and easy to customize. Now take that esthetic and design a cookie to match. We’ve got you covered.
Click here for the recipe without the discussion
Minimalist: Six ingredients: nuts, butter, sugar, salt, an egg, and baking powder. No more, no less.
Sleek and Efficient: Beat it all together, divide into balls, and bake. There’s no flour to hydrate, and thus no actual need to chill in advance (though I will admit it makes the dough less sticky).
Elegant: How about we kick up the baking temperature to ensure a golden brown, extra-toasty bottom that enhances the basic nut flavor? Clever! And let’s add just enough baking powder to keep the cookie from ever feeling dense or pasty.
Useful: Unexpected guests? Need a moment of self-reward? I’ve yet to meet a cookie that freezes better, and they’re delicious right out of the chill chest.
Classically Beautiful: This is the girl next door of Cookieville, and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t love the type.
Easy to Customize: Want your cookie textured and noshable? Done. Use ground nuts, and remember to bar your door against the likes of my wife. Want something firm but soft, like a shoulder to rest on? Grate the nuts to meal, and do not bar your door because I may be dropping by for a surprise inspection. Want to go all out, and make something that melts on the tongue like almost-liquid flavor? Pulse the grated meal all the way down to flour. Or play with a different nut. Or a mix of nuts. Or… You get the idea.
(A NOTE FROM KATE: I would like to point out that aside from being naturally gluten-free, this cookie is, with the exception of sugar, a “whole food.” Nuts are good for you, eggs are good for you… and why say no to just a bit of sugar? In fact, I predict that cookies such as these will become a new health food trend!)
NOTES ON PROCESS AND PROCEDURE
There isn’t much to say. This really is as simple as it sounds.
(NOTE FROM KATE: To be fair, I did find that the pre-roasted hazelnuts were just a bit too hard for the rotary grinder. Husband + food processor = easy solution.
Do I really need to roast the nuts…? For heaven’s sake, most stores sell them pre-roasted! But if you bought fresh, unroasted nuts, the answer is yes. Roasting develops the hazelnut flavor, which is what you’re after in the first place. Cookies made with raw nuts will work just fine, but the same can be said of furniture no one’s bothered to varnish.
“I’m so confused? Where do I get ground nuts? Or hazelnut meal? Or hazelnut flour? Who carries that?” [Sigh] Start with whole nuts. Then:
For ground, put them in a food processor and pulse until you arrive at rough, finely pebbled, ground-nut sand; i.e., the stage right before they start to turn into nut butter. Remember to scrape the sides of the food processor bowl as you go in order to (a) release any fine particles, and (b) check see if you are getting too close to the nut-butter stage.
For nut meal, pull out a rotary grater with a middle-fine wheel. Put the nuts in and proceed until you have a light and fluffy meal. Food process coarsely if you need to break down the whole nuts first.
For nut flour, pulse the grated nut-meal a few times in the food processor.
Besides, this ability to customize is part of the fun! Some recipes have no room for wiggle. This recipe has wiggle room built into its bones, which is nothing but a plus if your family is anything like ours.
Kate has a strong preference for using ground nuts. She considers that the purest example of what hazelnuts really are, and a nice change from all the shortbreads of the world that melt in the mouth without thought. Yours truly is a softaholic. “Melt in the mouth” is a good thing for me, though I will grant that this cookie benefits from the rustic appeal of nut meal rather than whole scale flour.
In a pastry shop, for elegant tea time nibbles? Okay, now we’re back to proper nut flour, probably with each cookie halved in size for the sake of proper, lace linen daintiness.
You cannot lose. It’s all about how you choose to win on this particular day, for this particular situation. Asset, not hurdle.
(NOTE FROM KATE: I enjoyed the coarser texture of the machine-ground nuts for its rustic appeal. They look good, and the one hazelnut reserved for the top is very cute, albeit a bit fussy to position nose-up. I admit, however, that fine-textured hazelnut drops would be just as lovely, yet… slightly different.
Here is some good tricks to keep in mind:
We don’t use cookie scoops (not enough room in the drawers), so I like to weigh a few dough balls until I have the size right. It keeps a consistent result every time.
When forming, give each ball a gentle squish with the heel of your hand to prevent rolling, and garnish with one hazelnut each. These nuts have a pointy “nose,” which I like to aim in the same direction every time.
If you want a fine nut meal, start with raw nuts, then toast the flour on a cookie sheet in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 4 minutes. Pull out, stir gently, then toast for another few minutes until its scent JUST begins to develop.
Unroasted nuts blanch better, so you will have tidier nut toppers. I tried blanching store-bought roasted nuts and almonds, but to my surprise, the skins wouldn’t slip off!
The big note from Scott? At some point you are going to make the dough and then wonder, “Maybe I should add in some vanilla, or spice, or a tough of extract…” You can, and it will be good, but do us a favor and try it straight up the first time. Lilies look best before they’re gilded.
In all honesty, I very seriously considered a preemptive addition of vanilla before our first test batch. After all, vanilla and hazelnut have a historic love affair, and the dough didn’t have as big a flavor hit as I imagined it would. She Who Must Be Heeded prevailed on me not to, and I’m glad to say she was right. The high temperature oven triggers a lot of browning on the bottoms, which adds the exact thing I had been missing.
CONCLUSION
These really are the Danish Modern of cookie baking. Minimal, sleek, efficient, elegant, easy to customize, and absolutely luscious. Plain old cookies just don’t get any better.
We often discover something new and exciting as we experiment when odd or exotic recipes appear on the radar. We expected no less with this one. “Crackers?” It had to be a European version of those crispy, crunchy Mediterranean tea cookies. Right?
Nope. These taste like a standard sugar cookie, and earned their name by mirroring the appearance and texture of a classic saltine a/k/a soda cracker. They are eminently snackable too. Dangerously so. Each piece is so small that you will find yourself innocently popping five or ten at a sitting, which actually adds up to more than that regular sized sugar cookie you would have been able to resist.
Unique, fascinating, and familiar all at once. How cool is that?
The Mediterranean recipes both start with oil. The older versions of this recipe start with lard or shortening. Seems like an obvious connection, right? The only unusual thing was the math. All the classic Ammonia a/k/a Hartshorn Cookie recipes ended up with a really odd amount of fat when normalized to a reasonable amount of flour. A bit more than three tablespoons. At the same time, the flour measurements got weird if we tried to normalize things from the fat or sugar point of view.
Version 1.0
I decided to plan out my first test recipe by weight since the numbers weren’t that far off. 100 grams of lard, 100 grams of sugar, and 250 grams of flour. 1 to 1 to 2½, spread over two baking sheets. The result? Extraordinarily thin crackers that tasted like a cookie, but with a very distinct flavor from the fat. They were also a little greasy.
NOTE FROM KATE: They were a fun kind of greasy! Sometimes, using an animal fat you already have saved from a roast can give this kind of a cookie a very interesting character. Flaky tenderness and a hint of other flavors add to the gustatory experience. I like knowing that you’re eating a natural product and not a highly processed shortening. Scott will disparage that from time to time as “virtue points,” but they matter to me.
Fair enough. 250 grams of flour equals 1¾ cups of flour. The next batch would increase the flour to an even two cups. That would take care of the greasiness. The sugar level was about right. But what about that very lard-heavy flavor? What could I do for people who prefer something less distinctive and more common? Shortening, yes… but the flavor wasn’t loud enough to do with a totally neutral fat. So why not clarified butter?
How much butter would I need? Butter is about 16-18% water… Assume that’s been cooked that off, and account for a little more weight from the milk solids… And you end up with…
Son. Of. A. [cough]! You end up with exactly 4 ounces, dead on the nose. And what is 4 ounces? Exactly one standard stick of butter, or and even ½ cup.
And was I wasting effort and cleaning time by assuming the recipe called for two baking sheets? I had carefully rotated the pans midway through because thin dough and high heat are a bad combination. But even so we ended up with one tray browned more on the top, and the other tray more on the bottom. Annoying. And there was an awful lot of room around the dough on each tray, so…
Version 2.0
(A) Clarified butter instead of lard. (B) A little more flour. (C) Roll it all out to fit on a single sheet pan, and see if it’s still thin enough to be a “cracker.” (D) Adjust the cooking time to account for the extra thickness, and having only one pan in the oven.
This is how they come out of the oven. See the uneven break by the bottom right? That’s what happens if you merely cut the lines without giving the wheel/blade a little wiggle to add an extra hint of separation.
This experiment told us (almost) everything we needed to know.
I had the proportions nailed. The dough was easy to make, easy to handle, and just plain worked.
This amount of dough rolls out thin – something on the order of ⅛” when all is said and done – but that’s still a big difference from “roll until you can roll no more.” The final result ended up being just under 3/16“, which definitely gave more of a cookie vibe than a cracker.
The flavor changed radically. Lard notes versus butter notes were extremely clear when we tasted them side by side.
The butter version does indeed taste standard. Just like a sugar cookie. But is there anything easier to vary than a sugar cookie? Tea, chai, cinnamon, other spices, herbs… This is clearly a cookie that bakers can play with to an all but infinite extent.
Those darned lines aren’t always clean enough when the cookie comes out of the oven.
Thick indeed! These come off as more “cookie” than “cracker.” Note how the lack of docking adds to that.
This cookie was, quite honestly, good enough to publish. But we weren’t done just yet! Could we customize this into a true illusion cookie with a taste that would complement a cookie tray instead of just fitting right in with so many other tastealikes?
Digression: Revisiting The Ratio Of Ingredients
Remember how odd the ingredient list seemed at the start of this project? And how the fat didn’t work out evenly until we figured out that it equaled a 4 oz. stick of butter that’s been clarified? But the overall ratios still didn’t work out to even numbers by weight, as experience taught they should in such an old recipe?
But now, with some extra flour and a more limited amount of fat… Aha! These changes created something very close to a 1:1:3 ratio of fat:sugar:flour. Gotcha!
Version 3.0 (see below) established our preference for a little less in the way of both fat and sugar, and that is what the recipe now says, but we have no doubt how Grandma taught the recipe by that ratio back in the day.
Version 3.0
Use the 1:1:3 ratio of ingredients;
Add some bacon fat in place of butter (we ended up with 2 tablespoons after I rendered four slices in a pan);
Roll out two trays as thin as possible, and only bake one at a time;
Dock the dough to make the final product look more like a saltine; and
Move some of the sugar from the inside to a sprinkling on top that would mimic the salt on an actual cracker.
The result? Have a look!
[Shakes head]. I don’t know how I missed it, but this is a marvelous illusion cookie. It actually fooled our real life daughter when she stopped in to visit! That docking made a much bigger difference than I ever imagined.
We could taste the bacon, but only because we knew it was there. The bacon also added a healthy hit of extra salt that we both enjoyed – enough to bump the basic salt level in the recipe up from ¼ to ½ teaspoon (though we might revert to the reduced amount if we work with salty bacon fat again). I even enjoyed sprinkling the tops with a little bit of extra salt to enhance the effect. It now appears as an option in the recipe. Here, among friends, I will admit to recommending that option because it makes the cookie taste more distinctive. But that’s taste, not tradition.
IMPORTANT NOTE: We also learned, to our chagrin, that simply marking the lines with a fluted wheel isn’t enough. We lost several “crackers” because they baked together too firmly, and wouldn’t snap along the lines. Even more than we did with the thick cookie (see photo above).
LESSON LEARNED: Don’t just mark those lines; mark them clearly and emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel or blade to be on the safe side. You need the pieces to bake together in order to have that crackerish center show, but you also need the separations clean enough to be sure they will break evenly.
The only other adjustments came down to fine tuning the ratio. Hark! Can you hear your great-great Grandma speaking from the beyond? “It’s a simple ratio dear. Three parts flour, to one part sugar, and one part lard. But here’s the secret… They taste even better if you take back a spoonful of the sugar and fat.”
Grandma is great. Grandma is wise. Listen to your great-great Grandma.
Conclusion
This is one of those cookies where we started out thinking “A,” only to discover it was really a “B.” This is not one of those cracker-crisp Mediterranean tea cookies. It’s more like a good, cracker-crisp sugar cookie designed to create a convincing, extremely snackable illusion.
NOTE FROM KATE: Be careful with these – they are quite more-ish! The texture is a lot of fun. You will easily snack on five cookies when you would’ve said a “no, thank you” to a similar cookie in its one-piece form.
Here’s a summary of the lessons learned:
The dough follows a 1:1:3 ratio of fat to sugar to flour, with a spoonful taken back from the first two.
The cookie changes in wonderful ways if you mix and match different fats in place of the clarified butter. We tried them with lard alone, butter alone, and butter mixed with bacon fat. The last was the best, partly because we liked the extra salt.
The illusion part matters, so roll the dough out super thin, take the time to dock them with a fork, and sprinkle on a bit of sugar to fully recreate the saltine look. Sprinkling on some kosher salt will also help the illusion, and has the side effect of making the cookie taste more distinctive.
Maintain an even thickness. Smeared edges cook faster than rolled centers.
Mark the dividing lines emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel/blade to add some room. The helps the “crackers” to separate cleanly.
Just don’t separate them too much, because those broken-open sides show off the crackerish interior, which is both pretty and useful for the illusion.
Bake only one tray at a time, and spin the tray just after the estimated halfway point. Two trays won’t cook evenly, and oven hot spots really show.
The bake is done when the top turns cracker-tan brown. Go by that, not the designated baking time.
Hartshorn is mandatory. Baking soda/powder yield a standard cookie texture.
All in all? A very successful experiment, and a cookie we will gladly add to the repertoire. Especially if we want something more on the snackable side than a proper dessert, or there’s someone coming over who’d be fun to fool…
Happy New Year to all! This will be a relatively short article because all the tips and tricks were so important they’ve ended up in the recipe itself. Twenty of them! More or less. There isn’t a lot for me to add.
NOTE FROM KATE: This would be an absolutely wicked technical bake if they ever appear in the Great British Baking Show a/k/a Bakeoff! With their even, delightfully puffed-up loops toasted golden and their intriguing crunch, they are well worth the learning curve.
Here’s the bottom line: Kringla look exactly like a salted pretzel and have soft middles right after baking. From Day 2 on, they turn into an extremely light, ultra-crisp, crunchy sugar “cookie” with moderate sweetness and an innocent flavor that no one can dislike.
Kringle sorta-kinda work with baking powder or soda, but they turn into something special when you use baker’s ammonia a/k/a hartshorn instead. The texture changes from (A) absurdly puffy when fresh and a little tough as they age, into (B) puffy with a pleasant, crispy crust when fresh and wonderfully crunchy as they age. See this article for the underlying reasons. We can’t say they aren’t worth making if you use the more common leavening agents. The illusion still works, and there’s nothing wrong with the flavor. But they will definitely be better if you make them with hartshorn.
Shaping Pretzels Is A P.I.T.A. – If You Are Me
Kate had almost no problems, because she’s an artist with a good 3-D imagination. I end up staring at the darned things and trying to remember, “Was it one twist or two? And then the ends go where…?”
It’s all covered in the recipe itself, but aside from native talent (or lack thereof), the shaping hurdles are all pretty basic and built into the nature of the cookie:
It’s a very soft and sticky dough. But everything will work out fine if you roll each piece in flour before forming, and work with floured fingers.
Move the rolled out “snakes” onto your parchment before turning them into pretzel shapes. They’re so soft that scooping and moving will inevitably distort your work.
Use very skinny “snakes” and leave a huge amount of room in the loops – enough that they look sort of scrawny and pathetic before they hit the oven. Kringla expand by at least 400% percent as they bake, meaning each of those little arms will end up being four times (4x) as thick by the time they are done. Rest assured: all that empty space will vanish.
Keep the pretzels far apart on the trays for the same reason.
NOTE FROM KATE: If you’ve never made a pretzel, I recommend practicing with a piece of thick twine or shoe string. You will want to make a single shape while using up the entire length of 8- 10″. Try various shapes, and try to join the rope under an existing loop. If you can’t, pinch the dough together so that it’s the same thickness everywhere (Thinner portions will darken too much.) The final product is as solid as the dough is fussy. This dough would be suitable for making hearts, flowers, linear animal shapes, or whatever else you fancy.
The Final Touch Decorations Are Easy, But Have Some Sneaky Hazards
Kringla taste perfectly fine. They are friendly, inoffensive, mildly sweet, and basically pleasant to one and all. For a stronger impression, add more freshly ground nutmeg or cardamom. For an even safer flavor, add some extra lemon zest. Either way, this cookie isn’t really about the flavor. It’s the shape that makes them special. The shape, and the illusion of being a salted pretzel instead of a sweet treat.
NOTE FROM KATE: I could be wrong on this, but I perceive hartshorn-leavened cookies as less flavorful than their baking soda/baking powder equivalents. So far we aren’t sure whether it’s just me, or because the extra puff essentially dilutes the spice level per bite. Adjust spice level as you see fit.
That salted pretzel illusion comes from brushing the pretzels with melted butter and then sprinkling the tops with pearl sugar to imitate the salt. The recipe goes over it all in detail, but that process has two basic challenges to overcome. (A) The dough is so soft that brushing it with melted butter can distort those shapes you just spent so much work on; and (B), the oven temperature is hot enough to melt any loose sugar crystals, which can lead to black caramel tainting the bottom of your cookies.
You can fix both problems by baking the pretzels until they are almost done, pulling them out of the oven to be decorated, and then returning them to the oven to finish. That, alas, is both fussy and time consuming. Thus it makes sense to brush and decorate before baking… which means you need to compensate for those two problems.
There is no concrete, surefire answer. It’s just one of those things you need to know about, and do what you can to prevent. See the recipe for various tips, tricks, and hacks you might want to use.
The Pretzel Bottoms Try To Get Out Of Control
Start with an extremely light dough, rolled very thin, and heavily leavened so it will expand by four or even five times in the oven. Add in a very hot oven to brown the top and provide extra crispness to the crust.
What do you get? A cookie that can easily burn on the bottom before the tops are done, even without factoring in any caramel from melted sugar.
Knowing the problem gets you about 50% of the way toward fixing it. Again, please consult the recipe for our tips, tricks, and hacks to forestall that. But I may as well close this article by listing them here as well, because several are very clever if I do say so myself:
You can bake one sheet at a time, on a middle or upper rack of the oven. Oven heat comes from the bottom and collects toward the top, so this will make sure you have consistent air flow while maximizing the heat around your crust rather than on your bottoms. Just remember that one sheet in the oven tends to cook faster than two.
You can use the convection setting on your oven to achieve the same effect. Just remember to turn the oven down by 25° F (about 15° C).
If you use two pans, remember to rotate them halfway through. Bottom to top, while also spinning them back to front.
You can insulate the cookie bottoms by using a silicone mat instead of parchment paper.
You can also insulate the bottoms by using a doubled baking tray.
NOTE FROM KATE: We have a convection oven but we seldom turn the fan on because all our Volume 1 recipes started out in a previous one. Keeping a traditional oven setting helps us compare new recipes connected to our older bakes. If you use a convection oven, reduce the temperature by 25°F and keep an eye on your bake time. Every oven is different.
Conclusion
Please don’t let all the nits and notes discourage you from trying this fun and culturally important little cookie. Yes there are hurdles, but they’re more in the nature of “heads up” warnings about pitfalls to be avoided. They aren’t actual barriers, let alone walls, and the rewards are more than worth the effort. Kringla are fun! Just look at them:
Hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia a/k/a ammonium carbonate a/k/a smelling salts is an old frenemy we recently studied in more detail. This was the chemical leavening agent from antiquity through medieval times and on into the 19th century, when it got replaced in most recipes by baking soda and powder. Why? Because it’s also known as “smelling salts,” and smells so foul that you can’t even nibble on dough samples before they bake. Not that I would ever do such a thing, but rumor has reached my ears… [Ahem]. The smell disappears during baking, but still. Who wants a product like that in their pantry where a spill can make your cat box seem friendly?
NOTE FROM KATE: You will only taste-test this dough once. At which point you will also spit the dough into the sink and reach for a glass of water. Yuck! The baked cookies, though, are as lovely and welcoming as they are versatile. Even better, they hold a basic shape and provide a lily-white canvas for any decorating ambitions.
In today’s age hartshorn has become a specialty leavener. And yet it is still around because it produces a different kind of rise than baking soda/powder; a lighter, crispier, more even texture that’s essential to recipes like Springerle, Swedish Drömmar, fine-featured molded gingerbreads, and texture-first specialties like Hungarian Kvircedli and Ammonia Crackers. Hartshorn has its flaws, but the upside can be spectacular.
Enter this cookie: Polish Ammonia Cookies (“CiasteczkaAmoniaczki”), which I hereby rechristen as Vanilla Puffs to reflect the remarkable effect of their magic ingredient. Plus variations like Peppermint Puffs, Anise Puffs, Lemon Puffs, etc. “Puffs” being the key word because that’s the closest I can come to describing the texture: a shatteringly crisp, sugary crust around an inside so pillowy and puffy that they have a universal appeal. Most cookies will have a few, recalcitrant protesters who just don’t get it. Everybody likes Ammonia Cookies. They may only be your third-favorite on the tray, but I can 100% guarantee they’ll be gone at least as fast as the ones you would choose for yourself.
Try this cookie and you will never again wonder why serious bakers remain willing to put up with hartshorn’s challenges. The cost is worth the payoff.
The Dough is Rough-Puff Pastry (A Flaky Cookie) In Disguise!
Want a laugh? I went through the whole recipe testing process on these with the niggling feeling that I knew the recipe from somewhere, even though I’ve never made anything like it. The penny dropped around five minutes ago.
The niggling finally got bad enough for me to run back to Volume I for a scan of the ratio tables at the start of each chapter. And sure enough, there it was. The proportions of flour, butter, sour cream, and sugar are an all but perfect match to flaky cookies made from our Faux Puff Pastry recipe (a/k/a “rough puff”). The only real differences are the handling and the addition of a massive amount of hartshorn.
You make rough-puff dough by cutting butter into a combination of flour and a small amount of sugar, in order to achieve the “pebbly” texture of a piecrust with extra-large butter chunks. Then, instead of cutting it finer, as you would for that piecrust, you roll the dough out in a few “envelope turns” before finally rolling-and-cutting your cookie shapes. It’s a minor P.I.T.A., yes, but much easier than the major P.I.T.A. of traditional puff pastry.
This dough? Just cut the butter down to piecrust-texture in a food processor, include a generous amount of hartshorn, and presto! Something that tastes like puff pastry, and has a crispy outside, but has the pillowy interior you can only achieve with baker’s ammonia.
Peppermint trees. See the contrast of crispy crust to center puff?
The Sugar Crust
Stark white from the sugar crust, and just as good as they are pretty
There’s a pretty well established pattern for flaky cookies of all types:
Palmiers a/k/a Elephant Ears? Roll out some puff pastry (or other flaky-cookie dough), coat it generously with cinnamon sugar, roll it back into a tube like a jelly roll a/k/a roulade, and then slice-and-bake.
Dutch Krakelingen? Cut off strips of that same dough, roll in cinnamon sugar, and then shape them into pretzels before baking.
Rugelach? Do the jelly roll thing with a layer inside made from a fruit-and-nut filling, and then coat with cinnamon sugar before baking.
Goose Feet a/k/a “Gusine Tlapki”? Roll, sprinkle with spice-sugar (not necessarily cinnamon), and then cut out large circles which you fold into quarters.
Kolache? Roll, cut out squares, dab with fruit filling, fold up two corners, and then sprinkle with plain sugar.
Get it? Ammonia Cookies aren’t any different except you (a) can readily flavor the dough, and (b) can roll-and-cut any shape of cookie, and (c) should, not just can, coat the outside in sugar alone. The snowy, extra-crunchy outer crust is part of the experience.
We did test cinnamon sugar in case you’re wondering, and it works perfectly well, but it also standardizes the whole experience. Both Kate and I preferred these with sugar alone.
The Baking and Fumigation Times
The flaky cookies listed above typically bake at 350° F (175° C) for about 15 minutes, give or take according to thickness. Ammonia Cookies work a little better if you cook them at the same temperature for only 12-13 minutes. The shorter baking time helps to preserve that pillowy interior, whereas the flaky cookies want to emphasize their crispness.
The combination of a moist dough and a shorter baking time can cause a problem, however: a residual whiff of ammonia left over in the baked cookies, even after they cool. It usually isn’t all that strong, and it only happens about 75% of the time, but that’s still an issue you need to keep in mind.
The solution couldn’t be easier. Leave the baked cookies out for an hour or two. That should be all it takes for the dissolved ammonia gas to dissipate into the air. If they were really bad? Still simple. Wait a little longer.
Hartshorn giveth, and hartshorn taketh away.
The Cut Outs
Ammonia cookies work with almost any basic shape, but expand too much for anything with features. I tested stars, hearts, circles, a mushroom shape, fluted ovals, snowmen, and a Christmas ornament shape. Everything worked except the ornaments, snowman, and the fluted ovals. Those could still be recognized by someone who knew what they were supposed to be, but they lost the outside details that make them more than just shapes.
Anise hearts and peppermint trees. “High note” flavors show particularly well in this cookie.
Feel Free To Customize!
Do some research on cookies made with hartshorn and these basic proportions. You will quickly find several much loved variations. These include:
Peppermint Ammonia Cookies (add in peppermint oil), which are very popular in the American Midwest, and generally attributed to German immigrants;
Anise Ammonia Cookies (add in anise oil), same thing with what seems to be inspiration as much as tradition;
Ginger Ammonia Cookies (add in a generous amount of dried ginger), with some optional extras for those who want to try a popular Slovak variation.
We tested all of the above, and they all worked just as well as the standard vanilla version. I’ve no reason to believe other spices wouldn’t be just as good. These may be my new favorite when it comes to featuring one particular flavor.
FWIW, our 2024 Christmas tray is going to include the Peppermint version because we have nothing else even close to that flavor profile, and I may throw in a few vanilla ones too. Not that a spice version will find any protesters. Hmmm…
Can You Simply Put The Sugar In The Dough?
We tried it, and the answer is “Yes.” The cookie works fine. But we really like the showy, snowy white crust that comes from following the recipe, and it enhances that wonderful contrast between the inside and outside. The most I would actually recommend is the addition of something to show an inside flavor. Perhaps some anise seeds, or some bits of peppermint-green sugar.
Those flavored versions carry a significant odor, but who wants to eat the cookie I just sniffed and then put back on the tray?
Sour Cream? Is That Traditional?
Is it fair to answer that with a “Yes, but…?” Sour cream per se has been around for most of human history. After all, the root definition is nothing more than fermented cream. Some say it traces back to the Mongol hordes that made kumiss from mare’s milk, but I personally find that hard to believe. Not because the Mongols didn’t do just that, and helped to spread the idea. I just doubt that no one in human history came up with such an obvious idea before that. It certainly predates the arrival of Europeans in the new world.
I won’t speculate about the reasons, but research shows that sour cream has always been more common in central and Eastern Europe than over by the Atlantic. This enters into the history with the great migrations of Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Germans, etc. into the U.S. from the mid 1800’s on. They brought sour cream with them, where it met the rising force of the Industrial Revolution and morphed.
What had been a hand crafted, fairly regional staple became an industrially produced, properly pasteurized dairy product sold in every market across the land. Dips made with sour cream became a capital-T Thing. Baked potatoes began to look naked without it. Mexicans used it every bit as much. And it became a common, if relatively minor ingredient in the baking repertoire of the North American continent. At which point it traveled back to Europe, and began to expand in the old world too.
You will note that we call this a Polish cookie (“amoniaczki”), because that seems to be ground central for where it is enjoyed in Europe, and was such a major part of the immigrant population that filled the American midwest, where this cookie centers in North America. So… did the original European version use sour cream, or was it a case of American ingenuity improving on the original, which then made its way back to Poland along with industrial production?
I cannot answer that. I can only confirm that European variants using eggs instead of sour cream are easy to find; that we tested them; and that sour cream is definitely the way to go. It just works better.
Can I use Baking Powder or Soda For Convenience?
We liked this cookie so much that I felt compelled to test this, and the answer is, “Only if you must.” Texture is major part of this cookie’s appeal. The baking powder ones looked okay, and tasted fine, but they simply weren’t the same. The almost-crispy crust diminished down to a mere sugar-crust, and the exciting fluff-honeycomb interior became a standard, soft one.
Would we make them in a pinch using baking powder or soda? Hmmm. I suppose we might. Particularly if we wanted a softer cookie with a distinctly clear peppermint or anise note. But to be honest, we would only do it as a giveaway cookie because now that we’ve had the real thing, they would be too disappointing for either of us to really enjoy.
Conclusion
This is a fun cookie. Kate got a bit old grin on her face at the first bite, and said “It tastes like a hug!” I had to agree. But it’s not a hug from your Grandma, or spouse, or parent, or child. Nor anyone else you deeply love. Those have too much emotional freight. Ammonia Cookies are a hug from that friend you’re meeting for lunch, or one of your daughter’s little playmates.
Simple, companionable, and yet somehow special at the same time – from both a baker’s perspective, and a human one. And that’s just the vanilla version. The cookie’s flexibility as a base for other and custom creations only makes it that much better.
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.
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?”
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.
Krumkake (Krumkaker in the plural) is a light, crisp, Norwegian waffle cookie made as follows:
Start with an unleavened batter made from melted butter, eggs, flour, and sugar,
Season it with vanilla and cardamom,
Use a special waffle iron to make wafer thin cookies,
Form those wafers into cones or tubes while hot, and then
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.
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?
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:
Recipes made 1-2 eggs, standard flour, and a lot of whole milk, half and half, or cream.
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.
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.
Thy Fingers Shalt Get Singed. The wafers can only be shaped when they’re piping hot, which makes the ouchies are unavoidable.
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.
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.
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].
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?
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
