22 Thursday Dec 2011
Tags
snow, snowflakes, sunrise, Trondheim, winter, winter solstice
Sunrise, 9:30 am Trondheim, Norway. Getting big fat heavy snowflakes this morning!
Posted by Jess in Norway | Filed under Trondheim, winter
21 Wednesday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, cookies
Tags
baking, christmas, christmas decorations, cookies, norwegian christmas, norwegian christmas cookies, potetmelstopper, Recipes
*sigh*
I’m still trying to get the hang of the Norwegian language, and from time to time a misunderstood word or phrase bites me in the ass, especially when it comes to cooking. Oops.
So for my next Norwegian Christmas cookie, Yngve wanted me to make “potetmelstopper,” which he says means something along the lines of potato flour “tops” or something like that. They are interesting little cookies I had never baked before- and I baked them when he wasn’t here, so my question about one particular ingredient went unasked.
Basically, these things contain nothing more than butter, potetmel (potato starch) sugar, an egg and a little bit of regular flour. Few ingredients means easy and Jessica can’t screw it up, right? (not exactly. See my coconut macaroon disaster.)
Here is where I went (sort of) wrong. I took the recipe from here- the recipe reads as follows:
Potetmelstopper
250 gr margarine (but I used regular butter)
250 gr (farin) sugar
500 gr potato starch
125 gr white flour
1 egg
5 ts vanilla sugar
The translation difficulty came with the “farin” sugar. I had no clue what that was. I always thought sugar was “sukker.” So I went digging through my baking stuff to see if any of the packages had something that said “farin” on it- the regular white sugar didn’t- it just said “fin sukker.” But then I picked up a package of Norwegian brown sugar and THAT said “brun farin” on it. “AHA” thought I, “certainly this is farin.” No. It wasn’t. Apparently, farin is just another word for sugar, probably a little old fashioned and not used much anymore. *sigh*
I should have known better, because the directions begin with “beat butter and sugar white” AND the picture on that blog of the potetmelstopper shows them as being white in color. I should have just gone with my gut on this one.
however.
All is not lost. Yngve tasted them and said that they are good, just that the brown sugar imparts a slightly different flavor than the white would. He thinks I should make them again with white sugar if I plan on giving them away on Christmas. I think he just wants to have all the brown sugar ones to eat himself.
They are tasty.
They are a weird little cookie- they are dry and crumbly, but when you bite into the cookie, it just melts in your mouth. I think its the potato starch that gives it such an interesting texture. If you can’t find potato starch, you might be able to use corn starch instead, but don’t hold me to that because I have no clue if it would work.
If you’re going to make them, this is how to do it:
Combine the potato starch and white flour in a bowl. (and the vanilla sugar if you’re using it) Beat the (white) sugar and the butter until white and fluffy. Beat in your egg, (and I added about a teaspoon of vanilla at this point since I was out of vanilla sugar) then mix in the dry ingredients.
:( I actually didn't have quite enough brown sugar so I used a little white, too. Boo on me for not figuring this out. :P
The dough should be stiff, like a peanut butter cookie dough- but of course white, not brown, like mine!
I scooped up tablespoonfuls of the dough, rolled them into balls and placed them on a baking sheet. These don’t spread a whole lot, but they do spread a little, so don’t place them too close to each other.
19 Monday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim
Tags
christmas, christmas decorations, christmas paper craft, christmas tree, diy, julemarked, nidaros, norwegian christmas, Trondheim
Just a quickie post as I’ve been super busy preparing for the upcoming Christmas festivities… I have more cookies to share, so stay tuned throughout the week.
This weekend Yngve and I went to the Julemarked (Christmas market) in Trondheim, paid a visit to Nidaros Cathedral and also cut and decorated our Christmas tree. Here are some photo highlights from the weekend!
Julebukk (Christmas Goat) made of straw. This guy went home with me!
The Christmas Market has lots of little stalls with handmade crafts
This wasn't for sale. :(
For our Christmas tree, we didn’t have loads of money to spend on Christmas decorations, so I made quite a few of them. I made a number of felt ornaments and a paper chain with red and white paper, and Yngve and I made a few paper hearts. Also, I thinly sliced an orange and dried the slices in the oven. The orange slices are one of my favorites because the light just shines through them so prettily, they look like little stained glass windows. My other favorites are the little tiny mushroom ornaments I found at a store that make my tree look like it has been infested with fungi. :P
Also, I think the little Norwegian flag garland is adorable. (I looked all over the city for those, and finally found ONE tiny package. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for more.)
I have NO idea why it looks like it's leaning!
pretty :)
mini julebukk!
This paper snowflake was so easy to make!
My pretty bird from the ornament exchange I participated in this year!
paper hearts are so cute :)
making the paper chain made me feel like a kid again
A homemade felt mushroom to go with the little mushrooms
All in all, I think my tree turned out nice. I was a little worried that it would look a bit spartan, but I think it looks great. I also like that so much of the tree is homemade and that my favorite ornaments cost the least to make!
I’ll be back this week with more holiday baking!
15 Thursday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, crafts
Tags
christmas, christmas decorations, christmas paper craft, crafts, diy christmas drafts, handmade christmas decorations, norwegian christmas
Hi guys!
I’m publishing my first ever craft tutorial! This was inspired by the necessity of making a lot of Christmas decorations this year instead of buying them. I was bumming around reading How About Orange, a really nice little crafty blog, when I saw these Catherine Holm inspired votives. (Catherine Holm was an enamelware designer here in Norway- you can find her stuff everywhere in thrift stores and antique places. I think Yngve’s mom has an old pot or two by her)
Anyway, I thought it was quite the clever idea to make her own votive holders, and I got to thinking about how I could apply it to Christmas. I ended up with some cute little things I’d like to share with you!
Also, I’ve just created a facebook page for Nutsville In Norway. If you enjoy reading my blog, don’t forget to “like” me using the link on the bar to the right!
You can see the entire tutorial here.
14 Wednesday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, cookies
Tags
alice's restaurant, baking, christmas, christmas cookies, macaroons, norwegian christmas, norwegian christmas cookies
Soooooo…
I had been working on a post most of the day to share with you detailing my fabulous coconut macaroons illustrated with twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was. (kudos to you if you get that reference)
However.
It appears as though I have been defeated in the kitchen by a little bit of coconut, some sugar, eggs, and a couple other minor ingredients.
For some unexplained reason, instead of having nice, thick macaroons… I am left with something akin to a coconut cookie. (also I kind of forgot about them in the oven and they got a little over browned *cough*)
The evidence:
The alleged Macaroon BEFORE entering the oven...
AFTER entering the oven hellfire...
Yngve has started calling them: Flat-caroons. Har har.
A photographic illustration of how the macaroons should have looked compared with the reality.
So. Anyone have any ideas for why the hell my macaroons spread out like a friggin cookie? I’m gonna do a little research and see what I can figure out and then revisit them.
I shall prevail!
P.S My apologies to Arlo Guthrie
13 Tuesday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, Cooking, wonderful times
Tags
baking, celebrating the winter solstice, christmas, lussekatter, norwegian christmas, saint lucia, saint lucy, solstice celebrations, winter solstice
Night walks with a heavy step
Round yard and hearth,
As the sun departs from earth,
Shadows are brooding.
There in our dark house,
Walking with lit candles,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
Night walks grand, yet silent,
Now hear its gentle wings,
In every room so hushed,
Whispering like wings.
Look, at our threshold stands,
White-clad with light in her hair,
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
Darkness shall take flight soon,
From earth’s valleys.
So she speaks a
Wonderful Word to us:
A new day will rise again
From the rosy sky…
Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!
Back before we kept the Gregorian Calender, it was held that December 13th was longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice. Adoption of the new calender in 1582 changed dates around, and now the winter solstice is a little later. (December 21 to 23) Traditions surrounding Christmas time are deeply rooted in pre-Christian solstice celebrations and persist even today, especially in Scandinavia. St. Lucia day is one of those traditions rooted in early pagan ritual, but later overtaken by Christianity.
Living in Scandinavia, one can understand why celebrating the winter solstice was important. In a region that has what is known in Norwegian as “mørketid” or, “dark time”- the winter solstice is the pinnacle of the long nights and short days. In Trondheim, which thankfully does not experience polar night (for us, the 21st and 22nd of December will be sunrise at 10:04 and sunset at 14:29, for a total of 4 hours and 24 minutes of day.) it isn’t quite so bad as living in Finnmark, for example, where at midwinter there is only twilight, visible for but a short period around noon.
Winter solstice means it’s over. The darkness has reached its peak- the light is returning- slowly, yes- it’s still winter yet, but the light is coming back.
Saint Lucy's Day (Lucia) procession. Sweden, 2007. Photo by Fredrik Magnusson, courtesy of Wikipedia commons.
Saint Lucia day is a pleasant combination of Christian and secular celebrations of the returning light. It’s a bit more popular in Sweden than in Norway, but Yngve and I decided to celebrate it anyway.
We decided to make the traditional Lucia buns, called “lussekatter” (lucifers cat?!) in Norwegian- they are a somewhat sweet bread, colored with saffron. The buns are a (rather abstract) representation of a cat, which apparently the devil is afraid of. They are colored yellow with saffron, representative of light to drive away the darkness. (So I guess thats a double whammy for the devil- he’s driven away by the cats AND the light.)
They are also pretty tasty.
Yngve and I made them together last night and enjoyed them this morning with hot chocolate. The recipe is adapted from “saffron bread” in Stor Kokebok, which suggested shaping the bread into various forms such as crescents- so I felt it would lend itself well to lussekatter.
The stores were sold out of saffron (there’s a lot of that going around lately!) but Yngve managed to get me one .5 gram package. I wanted the buns to have a bright yellow color though, so I added a heaping teaspoon of turmeric to assist in that endeavor. (the turmeric really doesn’t alter the flavor much, promise.)
ground saffron
Isn’t that a pretty color? Yngve helped me roll out and shape the dough. We made them in the traditional shape, and even made a couple “double” ones. (I still don’t see how they look much like cats.) We added the traditional raisin in the middle of each curled section.
We then covered them in plastic and let them rise 15 minutes…
Before brushing them with an egg wash…
And baking them a lovely golden color.
Then Yngve made us some delicious hot chocolate this morning (which we had in our festive Christmas cups!)
and we ate lussekatter
to warm and cheer us from the gloomy winter and to celebrate that soon the darkness will be retreating and the sun will shine again.
**I have added the recipe for lussekatter here if you would like to make them, too.
12 Monday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, Norwegian Christmas Cookies
I made some Christmassy votive holders today! Maybe I'll do a tutorial.
Yngve and I traveled to my mother-in-law’s yesterday to pick out our Christmas tree and to bake cookies.
Every year around Christmas I go over to her place and we make some sort of cookie together. The last two years we made Goro, but this year she wanted to make Fattigmann.
Besides krumkake, fattigmann are probably one of the more well known Norwegian cookies, they appear in several of my vintage cookbooks- even ones that aren’t Scandinavian in origin. There’s a reason for that- they are hella addictive, and for good reason.
“Fattigmann” means “poor man”- but I’m pretty sure it’s not because they are poor man’s cookies- its more likely because baking them will make you poorer. Or would, in a time when things like cream and eggs were much more expensive.
Stor kokebok has three recipes for fattigmannsbakkels- the first calls for 1/2 liter of cream and 30 (THIRTY!!) egg yolks. Even more modern recipes call for anywhere between 5-10 egg yolks and quite a bit of cream. Yowzers. Imagine how much that might have cost 150 years ago?
The recipes for fattigmann are easy to find, and are pretty standard. The US organization “Sons of Norway” has a recipe on their website, here.
As the recipe calls for the dough to be made the day before and allowed to stand overnight in a cool place, Yngve’s mom made the dough on Saturday and we came over and baked on Sunday.
I found the dough to be really difficult to work with, but that might have been my inexperience. Apparently, you are supposed to add as little flour as possible when rolling to keep the cookies light and tender. I had trouble keeping the dough from sticking when I first tried rolling them out.
I eventually succumbed to the sin of adding what was probably too much flour, but it made them so much easier to roll out and to be honest, I couldn’t really tell the difference in taste between those and the ones with less flour- but maybe that’s a result of my unrefined palette.
I really sucked at cutting them out into an even diamond shape. oops. I guess that comes with experience- but I suppose perfect or imperfect, they all taste the same. (Yngve’s mom said: “The men will eat them no matter how they look, it is us women who are obsessed with making them just so, and only for ourselves.”)
Anyway, so after you cut them out, you stick one of the diamond tips through the slit in the center, then drop them into hot fat to fry.
We used delfiafett, which is solid coconut fat and is used here quite often around Christmas for various cookies, cakes and “confekt.”
They are crisp like a cookie, not soft like a doughnut. Like many Norwegian “cookies” they are less sweet than what is common in America, but a bit richer.
They are ridiculously good, and it is really hard to eat just one. (and really bad for my weight loss progress.) We brought a huge tin of them home with us to go with the krumkaker and goro (and the other 5 cookies I’m about to make).
However, I have decided to be unusually clever and remove the cookies from temptation. (because you’re not supposed to be eating them before Christmas, anyway) In our apartment building we have a great big cellar that is divided up into compartments to which every apartment is assigned one. Our apartment building is older, so we have shelves that I presume were probably used for canned goods and preserves at one time as well as a big box for storing potatoes. It is cold down there, so I have packaged all the cookies (and those awesome rum balls) into boxes and stored them on the shelves in the cellar.
I am entirely too lazy to dig around to find the keys to the cellar, then go all the way down there and unlock all the doors to get to our little compartment just to dig out a krumkake. Even if they ARE that good. Its nice and cool down there and it isn’t damp, so they’ll keep just fine.
As I make the rest of my Norwegian Christmas cookies, I’ll put them in tins and stick ‘em down there on the shelf- out of my sticky little fingers and in safekeeping to give as gifts. (I can’t give them away if they’re all in my belly now can I?)
I’ll be back tomorrow, but not with another Christmas cookie recipe- that will have to wait until Thursday when I make Bordstabels. Tomorrow’s post is a bit of a surprise, so you’ll just have to wait. (hint: it IS indeed something edible.)
10 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, Norwegian Christmas Cookies
put up some cute little snowflake lights in the window tonight!
I have been a busy bee the last couple days! Yesterday I made some ridiculously good rum balls, today the husband and I were all over town buying Christmassy things to decorate with- including a cute little vintage-style Christmas tree stand for our Christmas tree. I also got the second of the seven Norwegian Christmas cookies done, but we’ll get to those in a moment.
First, let me tell you about those fabulous rum balls.
I’m sure most of you are familiar with Rum Balls. If you are not, they are a sort of confection made from crushed cookies, cocoa powder, nuts, and a binder (usually a thick syrup of some kind- it can be corn syrup or golden syrup or even honey) and then doused with spirits of some variety. They aren’t baked or cooked in any way, so they keep their alcohol flavor quite well.
They were crazy popular in the US during the 1960′s, and have sort of held on as a Christmas staple- albeit a slightly dated one. I hadn’t had (or thought of) rum balls in ages, but I came across a recipe for them in one of my vintage cookbooks that got me thinking about them.
The cookbook is called “Charleston Receipts” and is a compilation of recipes compiled by the Junior League of Charleston in 1950. (Which, strangely enough, I found at a Salvation Army store here in Trondheim! You never know what you’ll find if you just look!) You can actually still buy the cookbook from the Charleston Junior League here. (Actually, I just checked and they’re currently out of stock for this one! Check back later I suppose or maybe you can get one used on Amazon or something- its a really neat cookbook.)
Anyway, the recipe in Charleston Receipts is actually called “Whiskey Cookies” and contains some fairly southern ingredients, like pecans and dark corn syrup, aka Karo syrup, which I call the maple syrup of the south. *snicker* So I got to thinking- why couldn’t I make rum balls out of more regional Norwegian ingredients? Make ‘em sort of like rum balls with a twist?
So, that’s just what I did.
Instead of using the standard vanilla wafer common to most rum ball recipes, I bought a little container of Pepperkake cookies (Norwegian cookies similar to gingerbread cookies, but a bit lighter in color) I used those as the base.
Pepperkaker
I then used toasted almonds as the nut ingredient since almonds are used in SO many Norwegian recipes. They are crazy over almonds here.
Instead of rum or whiskey I used some brandy because that’s what I had. So I guess technically, they’re brandy balls, not rum balls, but that just sounds stupid so, whatever.
Traditionally, American rum balls tend to be just rolled in plain ol powdered sugar. While I tend to sort of like traditional presentation, I sort of feel like this makes them look a little dated. You see the little powdered sugar covered things on the holiday table and you’re just like
“oh.
rumballs.
again.”
*sigh*
So I thought I’d mix it up a little. Make rum balls a little exciting, you know- make you go
“oh hey!
what is that amazing looking confection there on your holiday table, friend?
rum balls?
No way!
They look way too fabulous to be rum balls!”
See? Way better than the usual.
I mean, rum balls taste good, they should look just as pretty as they taste, shouldn’t they?
So after I had made them, I coated them in five different coatings.
First, I dipped some in plain milk chocolate with some little chocolate sprinkles on top
Then, I rolled some in cocoa powder
Then, because I couldn’t help sticking with tradition a little bit, powdered sugar
Then, I crushed some leftover pepperkake into dust and rolled some in those. I really like the golden effect it has.
Lastly, my favorite. I also dipped this one in chocolate, but I piped a little swirl on top in white chocolate and added a little silver dragée for added flair. Also, I bought some little mini confection papers and put each rum ball inside one. Those little touches really made them seem a lot more special and less boring than a standard rum ball.
They looked especially pretty put into a little tin, packaged up to be taken to someone as a gift.
Now, if you’d like the recipe and detailed instructions on how I made these, you can click here, or find the recipe in the recipe bar at the top of the page.
whew.
This is going to be a long one, guys.
Alright, lets get on with why you’re really here… Norwegian cookies, right?
Today I made Goro, another type of pressed cookie. Yngve says Goro means “well off” which we suppose is because of the amount of rich ingredients in these cookies. They contain eggs, heavy cream and lots and lots and lots of butter. I reckon if you were able to afford the ingredients to make these, you must have been “well off.”
Instead of a batter poured into an iron, you make a dough which you cut out and place into the iron. They also crisp up as they cool, and despite also being flavored with cardamom, they have a completely different texture than krumkaker. They’re almost like crackers- but with the slightest hint of sweetness. They sort of remind me a little bit of shortbread cookies. Like krumkaker, they are traditionally made with an iron that is heated on the stove, but since I have a ceramic cook top that isn’t so conducive to such things, I’ve borrowed my mother in laws electric iron instead.
yet another beautiful design
My old Norwegian cookbook strangely is devoid of a recipe for Goro, so my recipe came from a Christmas edition of a weekly ladies magazine published here. You can find recipes for Goro easily online, there is one from about.com here that looks similar to the one I made.
The dough is a little tricky to work with as it needs to be chilled so it can be properly rolled out, but it can’t be too cold or else it will be too hard to roll. There is a delicate balance you have to walk between too firm and too soft. You have to work in small amounts so your dough doesn’t get too warm. These were a little bit different from the ones I made last year with my mother in law- we used an old recipe from one of her mothers cookbooks and her old iron with an absolutely gorgeous design on it. The consistency of the dough was different and the old iron makes really thin crackers as opposed to the more modern ones that make them much thicker.
You should cut out a piece of paper to match the size of your goro iron before getting started, you will need this to use as a template for cutting the rolled out dough.
Also, I put the trimmings back in the bowl and combined some of the trimmings with the new dough- that way I’m not re-rolling out just the trimmings that have extra flour and everything added, which changes the consistency and flavor. Its better to add some trimmings to the new dough so everything evens out a bit in the end.
Anyway, just place your cut out dough into the iron and close the lid:
Then, when they have cooked to a nice golden color like so:
you want to trim any rough edges off (nibbles for the cook!) and cut the crackers along the “seams.” Do this as soon as they come off the iron- like krumkaker, they crisp as they cool. If you wait they’ll be too brittle to trim and will break.
Now we have goro!
Continue the process until you’ve run out of dough and you are left with a mile-high stack of goro.
good thing I didn't decide to do a triple batch of these, eh?
This can be fairly monotonous and time consuming (it took about 2 hours for me to bake them all) so I suggest cranking up some awesome Christmas tunes and dancing in the kitchen while you wait for each one to bake.
Also, it is nice to have something tasty to drink after all that baking and dancing. If you are a kid in Norway, you eagerly await the sale of “julebrus” or, “Christmas Soda” each year. If you are an adult, you buy them to re-live your childhood in each nostalgic sip. I had one along with my baking tonight. It tastes a little bit like A&W cream soda.
Righto, thats that for Cookie number two! Tomorrow we’re headed to my mother in laws for some more Christmas fun. We’ll be making Fattigmans Bakkels, a deep fried (omg the calories!) cookie type thing. I’ll be sure to try and document the process as best as possible!
Hope you enjoyed this one too, see yall again soon.
09 Friday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011, Norwegian Christmas Cookies
Christmas Cookies Photo by Till Westermayer from Freiburg, Germany (Cookies III), via Wikimedia Commons
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again.
I love Christmas.
As a child, my parents worked really hard to make Christmas special. They spent a lot of time planning and saving to make sure that Christmas would be just-so for my sister and I. I seriously believed in Santa until I was 12, in 6th grade.
To this day, Christmas holds a very special place for me. I still feel the magic at this time of year. It comes from the cold air and the warm lights from candles, the fireplace or lights on the tree. I love how everything just sparkles and glows this time of year. I have so many special memories from Christmas time- I’ve never been cynical or jaded about how the holiday spirit has been ruined by commercialization and all that crap. I think it is what you make of it.
Besides decorating the Christmas tree, one of my favorite things was baking cookies with my mom. I’m sure somehow my love for cooking can be found to have its origins somewhere in those days- standing next to mom, helping her crack eggs into a bowl, watching her mix up the ingredients, getting to lick the spoon. We didn’t have that many cookie cutters, but I distinctly remember a reindeer, a bell and a christmas tree. My mom would let us cut the cookies and my sister and I would sprinkle them with colored sugars and other little decorations. Those were the best sugar cookies ever. Not too sweet and perfectly crisp- they were sublime with a glass of milk. If I recall correctly, Santa seemed to like them, too.
This year I wont be going home to bake cookies with my mom, drink eggnog with dad or watch Will Ferrell’s “Elf” with my sister. We’ve spent the last two Christmases in the US and we had a lengthy vacation there this summer. It’s only fair we have a Norwegian Christmas. I understand this, but it doesn’t keep me from being a little blue about it. This is my first ever Christmas away from home.
I’ve decided, though, to use this experience as an opportunity for my husband and I to create our own traditions together. Maybe once I master some of these new cookies, one day I’ll have a kid of my own standing next to me, cracking eggs into the bowl, watching me mix the ingredients and licking the spoon.
I’ve mentioned Norwegian Christmas cookies briefly once before. There is a tradition here of baking the “7 sorts” of cookies- but nobody can say exactly what those 7 sorts are. It seems to vary greatly depending on region, family tradition, and personal taste. I mentioned that Yngve and I decided on “our” 7 sorts, selected mostly out of both our personal preferences. I’ll be sharing each of those recipes with you as I bake them in the next weeks leading up to Christmas. I’ll also share some American recipes with everyone, so there should be quite a mix!
I decided to begin with Krumkake in my baking extravaganza for no reason other than I already had all the ingredients on hand to make them. For most of the Norwegian recipes (with the exception of Goro, which I’ll be making next) I’ll be using “Stor Kokebok” (Big cookbook) by Henriette Schønberg Erken, 19th edition, 1949. (they added color photos…oooOOOOoooo) The first edition of this book was published in 1914, and I understand it was an immensely popular cookbook. This particular copy belonged to Yngves farmor (paternal grandmother) and is full of her own little notes and recipes scrawled on the back of old store receipts. I adore it.
This book has no less than five recipes for Krumkaker. (“Krum” in Norwegian means curled, or rolled, so krumkaker translates to mean “curled cakes” or “rolled cakes”- you’ll see why in a moment) I went with recipe number three- it was the most basic of them all, and it was flavored with cardamom, a spice used quite often in Scandinavian baking.
I’m a cardamom convert. Its aroma is all at once spicy, but sort of sweet. It lends itself to baking so well, I don’t know why it isn’t as traditional in baked goods as cinnamon. Try a little in your pancake or waffle batter. It gives it a deliciously warm, exotic flavor and fills the room with a heavenly scent.
Anyway, back to krumkaker! Here is the recipe straight from the book. I’ve done my best to convert ingredients to standard US measurements, and I’ll translate the text. If you are interested in baking these you will need some special tools you’ll see more of below.
Here’s the recipe, translated:
Beat the egg and sugar a half a hour (we have electric mixers now, so it isn’t necessary to go that long. I beat mine until the eggs went a paler yellow and had thickened) mix with the ground cardamom, the melted, cooled butter (I melted the butter, then set it aside while I beat the eggs and sugar. It doesn’t need to cool completely of course, you just don’t want it boiling when you add it to the mix) water and the sifted flour. Cook as thin as possible in a krumkake iron, curl over a stick or a cookie curler.
Simple. Basically, you’re just making really thin waffles. Sort of.
If you’re going to make these outside of Scandinavia, you’re going to need to find a krumkake iron. In the US, you can purchase them from Nordic Ware. I got one of those as a wedding gift this summer, but was unable to bring it back with me, so its waiting forlornly in my storage unit for me to come and use it. Instead, Yngves dad gave me this old vintage electric krumkake iron that was his moms- but they had taken it to the hytta (sort of like a winter cabin) and never used it there so it got passed to me.
Despite my ugly avocado green paint, I still work quite beautifully.
The inside of the iron has a beautiful little scrolled pattern on it which will be impressed upon the cookie when its been baked.
Now isn’t that just pretty?
In addition, you’ll need a “kakekrummer” or a “cookie curler”- that looks like this:
You actually don’t specifically have to have one of these- Yngves mom just uses the handle of a wooden spoon. I just think they make it a little less likely you have to handle them much with your fingers- even with my asbestos fingers, these things were pretty hot.
This was the first time I ever made these- I had to idea what I was doing or what to expect. Initially I just put some of the batter in the iron and shut the lid.
My very first krumkake! Its a little over-browned, but hey! First one!
I soon discovered that made them too thick and the batter didn’t spread out very evenly. I ended up doing almost an entire batch that way- none of them were really very pretty, and I only had 18 cookies. Nowhere near enough for Yngve and I, his parents and brother and any other friends I might want to give the gift of delicious cookies to this year.
Soooooooo in a moment of insanity, I mixed up a TRIPLE batch of batter and set to work.
I ended up spooning a little batter onto the iron, then using the back of my spoon, I quickly, but gently, spread it out over the whole thing then shut the lid. That got me consistently near-perfect krumkaker.
"curling" the cookie around the wooden do-hickey. The cookies will be soft when they come from the iron, but you have to work quickly to roll them as they crisp when they cool.
So about that triple batch I thought was a good idea to make up… since I was using way less batter per cookie when I spooned it on and spread it out… that meant more cookies per batch and more time per batch…
like 3.5 hours later…
I had LOTS of krumkaker!
This was after I had packaged half into tins to take to my mother in law!
So needless to say, I don’t think I need to worry so much about not having enough of these to go ’round. Yngve and I will keep the “ugly” ones from the first batch, and I’ll be giving the prettier ones to friends and family.
I really enjoyed making these, they tasted AWESOME.
Next I’ll be making Goro, another pressed cookie that requires a special iron.
Looking forward to sharing those too, and I hope you enjoyed the first Christmas cookie installment!
P.S. I really should do something about the less than stellar lighting in the kitchen!
08 Thursday Dec 2011
Posted in Christmas 2011
Tags
Betty Botter bought some butter, but, she said, the butter’s bitter; if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter, but a bit of better butter will make my batter better. So she bought a bit of butter better than her bitter butter, and she put it in her batter and the batter was not bitter. So ’twas better Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter.
Actually, I lied. That isn’t an “ode” it’s an alliteration- but that’s beside the point!
Around these here parts lately I haven’t had a problem with bitter butter, I’ve had a problem with NO butter.
Norway has been experiencing a butter shortage.
At Christmas.
When people want to bake friggin’ cookies.
Now, there are all sorts of folks here in Norge standing about pointing fingers about whose fault it is and the reasons for why. This isn’t a political blog, so I’ll just pretend I don’t care who is to blame. (*coughthenorweigangovernmentcough*)
Anyway, what I did care about was the measly two tablespoons of butter in my fridge and the fact that every. single. store. has been sold out of butter for nigh on 3 weeks. Serious.
There are old folks here saying it was easier to get butter in WWII with strict rationing.
Gah.
So, whats a girl to do? A girl who has a desire to make the 7 types of Norwegian Christmas cookies in addition to some American Christmas cookies- plus who needs butter for everyday cooking consumption? Well, if you live close enough, you go to Sweden.
Swedish Flag- photo courtesy of Wikipedia commons
Ah, Sweden.
The place that is almost like Norway, except they have better roads and cheaper food.
And beer.
And tobacco products.
Luckily for me, there is a FREE bus that travels from Trondheim to the Swedish border, daily. Monday-Saturday. Free.
FREE.
So, today I hopped aboard the butter bus to Sweden with two of my friends. We left the city around 9:30, got to Sweden at about 11, the bus driver told us we had an hour to shop, and shop we did.
I headed straight for the dairy aisle and filled my little hand basket with 4 kilos (about 8 pounds) of delicious Swedish butter. I froze most of it, but have left some in the fridge for baking the next two days.
mmmmm... butter.
In addition to my precious, precious butter, I also purchased some “hel salt gurka,” which are whole salted pickles, kind of like dill pickles. They remind me a bit of claussen pickles, only smaller. Norwegian pickles are like sweet pickles. I miss salty kosher dill pickles from home, and these are the closest I’ve gotten.
I also got a couple packages of whole, unsliced bacon (over half the price less than here!) and some chicken breast (also less) and some salami and chocolate for Christmas and some parmesan cheese.
My Swedish booty, arg!
Anyway, I’m pretty darn pleased with my loot and I’m relieved that I finally got some butter. Now, to get started on those Christmas cookies!!
Stay tuned, yall- The Christmas cookie extravaganza begins tomorrow!
