Two Norwegian Girls share the Scandinavian Christmas tradition

The Scandinavian Christmas tradition is filled with an extensive assortment of cakes and cookies. With just butter, sugar, eggs, flour and some spices, an elegant variety of treats is created. The recipes are sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate, but the outcomes are always delicious. There are seven types of Norwegian Christmas cookies.

Norwegian Christmas cookies fall into three types: baked (like Berlinerkranse, sandbakkeles and pepperkaker), cooked on irons (like krumkaker and goro) and fried (like fattigmann, smultringer, and rosettes).

The American Lutheran Church women gather together every November to make krumkake, sandbakkeles, rosettes, and lefse. These delicacies will be for sale at the annual Norwegian Meatball Dinner and Bazaar at the American Lutheran Church on November 18, 2018.

Sandbakkelse or sand tarts are made of flour, butter, eggs, sugar, almond extract, and sometimes cardamom. After the dough is mixed and cooled, it is pressed into fluted tins, After ten minutes in the oven, the cookies are popped out of the hot tins. In 1845 a recipe for sandbakkeles appeared in a Norwegian cookbook, but they were not popular like krumkake until later in the 19th century. Sandbakkeles required fine flour, which was not yet widely available. Emigrants took their tins and recipes across the ocean, where sandbakkeles are an "old-country" Christmas tradition for many Norwegian-Americans. Here is the recipe I use. It is from Gurene Skoyen and was published in the local recipe book the Pleasant View club ladies put together in 1962 for the North Country.

Sandbakkeles

2 cups sugar, 2 cups butter, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. almond extract, 4 ½ cups flour. Cream butter and sugar, add well beaten eggs and extract. Stir in flour. Mix until it becomes a firm dough. Press into sandbakkele tins. Bake at 350 until light brown. Take out of oven and pop out of tins.

Krumkaker, another old classic cookie in Norway, is a variation of waffles, and is known for its pretty patterns due to the special irons it is baked in. Each iron can have a different pattern based on where in Norway you are. They can be old fashioned (many Norwegian families have had them in their family for generations) or more modern in style. You can find them in most pantries in Norway at Christmas time.

Krumkaker recipe

3 eggs, 3/4 cup sugar, ½ cup melted butter, 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 cup + 2 Tbsp flour, Cardamom is optional.

Beat eggs until thick. Add sugar gradually and add flavoring. Fold in salted butter and flour alternately, ending with flour. Put 1 teaspoon of batter on iron, when slightly brown on edges remove with spatula and roll on wooden cone.

Rosettes are a thin, cookie-like deep-fried pastry of Scandinavian origin. They are very delicate and absolutely delicious cookies that have been a treat for many generations. Rosettes recipes have been passed down for generations of Americans with Scandinavian ancestry.

Rosettes

Mix together 2 eggs, slightly beaten, 1 tbsp. sugar. Add 1 cup milk. Sift and measure 1 cup flour with ¼ tsp. salt. Add to egg mixture. Add 1 tsp. vanilla. Fry in oil (400"). Drain and dust with powdered sugar or granulated sugar.

Lefse

20 pounds of red potatoes- boiled with salt and riced. While hot add 2 pounds of butter. Add 2 cups of cream. Chill. Mix 2 cups of potatoes with ½ cup of flour. Measure with ½ cup. Roll on lightly floured board with covered lefse pin. Fry on lefse griddle.