Danish Christmas Cookies

For my first Christmas in Denmark, I decided to embrace several Danish Christmas traditions. Ben and I bought an advent candle to count down the days until Christmas and we are planning on opening our gifts on the evening of the 24th, after dancing around the Christmas tree. I also thought it would be fun to step outside my comfort zone and bake some traditional Danish Christmas cookies along with a few of my favourites. Along with the help of a couple of lovely ladies from my Danish classes, and some Christmas 'spirits', we attempted to make the following list of cookies:

• Gingerbread men (not Danish)
• Shortbread (not Danish)
• Pebbernødder (Danish)
  
• Jødekager (Danish - translates into Jew cake)
  
• Finsk brød (while this translates to 'Finnish Bread', my Finnish cookie co-creator tells me they are a traditional Danish cookie and not Finnish at all)
• Vanillekranse

Cookie 1: Gingerbread men
It turns out that Denmark is missing one of the key ingredients to making gingerbread men: Molasses! I visited three large stores one day in the hopes of buying the necessary ingredient...but was not successful. Finally, I decided to purchase something called Mørk Sirop (dark sirop) as a substitute. It was no where near as dark and thick as molasses, but really what could I lose at this point.


The gingerbread dough was slightly more crumbly than normal; I for one blame the lack of molasses. In the end, the dough ended up rolling out and the cookies looked pretty good when I put them in the over. However, when they came out of the oven they tasted nothing like gingerbread and were as hard as hockey pucks. So into the garbage went my double batch of gingerbread. And for those of you who are planning on visiting next year, and are not afraid to travel with molasses in your suitcase....please bring me some!


Cookie 2: Shortbread
I have always loved my mom's shortbread but have never made it myself. I used the recipe on the Joy of Baking website to make this very yummy batch. I ended up having the same problem as the gingerbread though in that the dough was far crumblier than normal. I have heard that cooking at different altitudes can affect the cooking time and the consistency of the dough, so maybe Copenhagen is located in an area that requires more liquid to be added to the mixture? Copenhagen, in general, is very dry compared to Vancouver. After the dough set in the fridge, it was impossible to roll out. The only way we could get it into cookie form was to scrunch them into finger looking rolls and place them on cookie sheets. When they emerged from the over, they were still quite crumbly....but very tasty! To make sure they held together, we decided to cover them in chocolate. In the end, this was one of my favourite cookies this year. I unfortunately do not have a picture of the shortbread, but here is a picture of the baking table.


Cookie 3: Pebbernødder
These bite sized, spiced cookies are sold at all the grocery stores. The ones we made, again from a recipe we found online, turned out exactly like the store bought ones. While there were quite successful, they are not my personal favourite. I prefer soft cookies as opposed to crunchy ones.

Here are the pebbernødder beside the jødekager.

Cookie 4: Jødekager
For the Jødekager we used a recipe we found on line. This was one of the cookies that actuall appeared to turn out at the dough stage (ie: not too crumbly). Perhaps this is because it is a Danish recipe, and not a North American recipe being baked in Denmark. This was basically a sugar cookie that is covered in brown sugar, almonds and cinnamon before being baked.


Cookie 5: Finsk Brød
I would like to mention here that our Sunday afternoon cookie baking session was complemented by some 'Christmas refreshments'. We started off with Baileys coffees, moved onto glogg and finished off with a bottle of champagne (thanks J!). This may be another reason why our cookies did not turn out as good as expected, and a reason why I forgot to take pictures of some of the cookies. Finsk brød are another sugar cookie, covered with almonds and rock sugar and baked. Unfortunately I do not have a picture of them, so instead here is a picture of J doing the mixing of the Finsk brød.

Cookie 6: Vanillekranse
We found the recipe for the vanillekranse cookies in the Mormors Mad cookbook i bought in August. Unfortunately for us, we did not look at the recipe before starting to make them, and only realized after the fact that the dough was supposed to sit in the fridge for 24 hours before making the cookies. Again, we thought, what the heck! These cookies are filled with almonds and vanilla and are, in my opinion, the tastiest Danish cookie we made. The dough is supposed to be set on the cookie sheets in wreath forms. Once we put the cookies in the oven, we realized the importance of letting the dough set....our beautiful wreath formed cookies turned into a tray sized, rectangular cookie. We cut them into square shaped forms once we took them out of the oven and albeit the poor form, they tasted quite good (they were Ben's favourite).

This is what they looked like before the oven.

Ultimately, we all had a great time making the cookies. It really helped me get into the Christmas spirit. I think the cookies turned out better than I thought too. Ben took a couple trays into work and they were gobbled up immediately by his coworkers (even his Danish coworkers who grew up on these cookies thought they tasted good).