Scandahoovian goodies.....

It all started when I saw these things at Donna's (Peg's mom) house. "What are these?", "They're for making sun buckles" (I thought that was what was said). Turns out they are sand bakkels, a scandinavian cookie. Donna said she had not made them for years cause the dough is stiff to mix and there's lots of pressing dough into tins....


So I announced that I was going to be on vacation as of 12/14, so we made a plan to make some of these things on December 17th. You can see how messy I was with mixing the dough, got some flour in the toaster!! We ended up making two batches and Donna was right, it took some doing to mix that stuff.


Here's a better shot of the mixing. I had done a search on Scroogle and found lots of different recipes, but we used the one from Donna'a old cookbook. Here is a typical list of ingredients:
1 c. shortening (1/2 butter)
1 c. sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. almond extract
2 1/2 c. flour


Here are some tins needing refilling, and some ready to go. The idea is to press the dough into the tins thinnly and evenly. Just thick enough to hold together while baking and removing from tins.


A batch ready to go into the oven. They need to bake 8-10 minutes, until they start to turn tan. Kind of like making pie crust. We tried putting brown sugar in the second batch and we think they tasted better??


Here's a batch just out of the tins. You need to let them cool a little before "banging them out of the tins", other wise they break and then sag a little in shape.




We ended up with a fine tin full of 'sand bakkels', which were then stored in the garage where no one would notice them. These will be appreciated by Peg's siblings, who know how good they are. I'm sure the bakkels will disappear in short order on Christmas eve.....

I gotta go, Carlo