I did find similar recipes online that called cookies like mine "Danish wedding cookies." My mother and her sisters all agreed that in addition to Christmas, smør bullar was on the table at wedding receptions and fiftieth wedding anniversary celebrations, "special occasions where you would have special Scandinavian cookies," my mother said. Did my Danish great-grandmother borrow a recipe from another immigrant to the Skagit Valley and make it her own? Plenty of other cultures have something similar, all called cakes: Mexican Wedding Cakes, Russian Teacakes and Greek kourambiedes are variations, made with walnuts or almonds, a hint of cinnamon or brandy. Like vanilla cookies, Finnish bread cookies, and many more, the base of many of the cookies is butter, flavor and nuts, which we in Denmark call småkager, meaning small cakes," Hahnemann responded. "I have looked into the matter, and I have not been able to find a cookie recipe with that name, but a lot of recipes are similar. I wished I had some recipe on yellowing paper, hand-written in Danish by my great-great-grandmother, but the closest thing I had was the recipe submitted by my grandmother to her church cookbook back in 1949. Like any proper food historian, she asked to see the original recipe. My Danish friends told me they've never seen such a cookie.ĭetermined to track down the true origins of my favorite Christmas cookie, I decided to turn to Trine Hahnemann, Danish chef and author of several cookbooks, including Scandinavian Christmas. (And it turns out that the word bullar actually means 'buns' in Swedish, and doesn't seem to exist in Danish). Now, imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that " smør bullar" in modern-day Scandinavia aren't cookies at all, but pinwheel bread rolls. I've been making impeccable smør bullar ever since. As you form the dough into balls, the warmth of your hands will soften the butter just enough to make the dough stick together," Dawn explained. "What do you think could have happened?" I asked. The author's grandmother, Ruth Wilkinson, and the 1949 church cookbook where the family recipe appears. Instead of a cookie that crumbled in my mouth, my tooth nearly did. Soon it came together and I had perfectly formed balls that baked up beautifully - into cookies that were stone hard. The dough had seemed like a powdery mess, so I added a teaspoon of water. When I attempted my first batch, I was in my twenties, living far from home and feeling nostalgic. My mother first made it as a teenager, when my Grandma Ruth became ill and the household duties passed to her as the eldest daughter. Learning to make smør bullar is a rite of passage for the women in my family. After the Christmas dinner, the table is cleared and reset with large bowls of lemon or rice pudding and tiered trays of cookies that always, always include smør bullar. 24, we trek north from Seattle to a family gathering at my aunt's house in the Skagit Valley. My mother's family continues to follow the Danish tradition of a special meal and present-opening on Christmas Eve. With its fertile farmland and many waters, Washington State's Skagit Valley drew many rural Scandinavian immigrants in the late 1800s, including my own great-great-grandparents who, naturally, kept cows and opened a creamery. This year, The Salt is celebrating the stories behind those traditions. Scandinavia is a land of cold winters and heart-warming (literally) Christmas food and drink traditions. Danes are famous farmers, with a history of dairy farming that dates back to the Viking days. Today, however, it seems logical to me that a Danish cookie would be called butter ball. I remember feeling confused as a kid, and even a little disappointed, when my mother explained that smør was Danish for butter and the literal translation was 'butter balls'. Round, white and powdery - can it be a coincidence that the way my Scandinavian-American relatives pronounce (mis-pronounce, surely) the name, it even sounds like "snowball(er)?" Small spheres of butter, flour, powdered sugar and nuts, dusted with more powdered sugar for good measure, these cookies are the flavor of Christmas for everyone in my extended family. My favorite of all the Danish desserts is smør bullar. Largely ignoring the English and Scottish bits of our heritage, we fill our Christmas table with treats such as crumbly Danish cookies and piquant pickled herring. But at Christmastime, we feel 100 percent Scandinavian.
My mother's side of the family is half Danish and my father's side half Norwegian.
Appearing on Christmas tables and at winter weddings, smør bullar cookies evoke powdery snowballs.
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