![]() The raising agent is good ol’ baking soda, so they puff up, expand, and then collapse, which is a process that makes for very crisp cookies. You then brush what looks like mega-cookies with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar and chopped nuts, and bake. Easy! No oddly-named Norwegian cake devices needed, no cutters, no piping, no chilling overnight, and no layering of icing or jam. You divide the dough into six sausages, then shape each just be pressing them down with your fingers. Cream butter and sugar and add in the rest of the ingredients. The method for making these is really very simple. Clearly getting that syv slags kaker spread ready for guests is a serious business to the good burghers of Oslo, Bergen and Trondheim! Butter shortages were triggered due to heavy rains affecting grazing pastures earlier in the year, leading to a nightmare world of illicit butter smuggling, Swedish stores along the border jacking up butter prices, and a Danish TV show running a butter emergency telethon to get 4,000 packs of butter to desperate Norwegians. The Norwegian Christmas diet apparently involves quite a lot of butter, but back in 20 those hardy Nordic folk lived through the smør-panik (“butter panic”). In my research for this recipe, I did find something that made me chuckle (which, to keep banging the same drum, we do need right now!). Who knows – perhaps I’ll get round to them in 2021? Among the “plenty more” are mainly the ones that need to be fried rather than baked, and I’ve still not managed to overcome my aversion to deep-frying things at home. I’ve made a few different ones over the years – serinakaker, krumkaker, berlinerkranser, sirupsnipper – but there are still plenty more to try. Busy Norwegians try to do out-do each other by making seven different type of cookies to offer their guests over the festive period. These are part of the Norwegian tradition of syv slags kaker. So I’d wager this is not quite the ideal time to start resolving to give up cookies in 2021… It is looking like the New Year will see us heading to Lockdown III and the closure of schools. Everyone is facing the next wave of coronavirus in their own way in London everything except essential retail is closed, hospitality is take-out only, and we’re limited to meeting one friend outside in the park. Christmas might be drawing to an end for this year, but we’re still in the middle of winter, and we need those little moments of comfort to keep us going, especially this winter. They are thin, crisp, and by turns buttery, caramelised and lightly spiced. These cookies are very easy to make, and they might just be about to become your new favourite accompaniment to morning coffee. Today’s recipe is the complete opposite of that. ![]() This year I’ve done a few recipes which are complex, take a lot of time, or need specialist equipment. There was lots of imagination at play when someone came up with that name. These ones are called brune pinner or “brown sticks”. Land of mountains, forest, fjords and a seemly endless supply of cookie recipes. For this year’s tenth festive bake, we’ve gone back to Norway.
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