Finnish flower cookie with cardamom and gooseberry jam
Up in Scandinavian you should be careful when you eat pastries, cookies or bread. I found a delicious looking giant pretzel in a bakery shop and took a big bite. I thought I had bitten into a piece of soap! I managed to fish the culprit out of my mouth and it was a whole black cardamom seed….. Cardamom is a very popular spice in Scandinavia. This queen of all spices (pepper is king!) is originally from Kerala in India. The British and the Dutch brought the spice back in their ships and the Vikings took the beautiful green pods further up north. I like the distinct taste of cardamom, but can appreciate it more when it is ground up. This Finnish flower cookie with cardamom and gooseberry is my take on the classic Finnish recipe of the Lusikkaleivat teaspoon cookie . The two go really well together. Be careful when you stack and fill these cookies because the cookies crumble and break easily.
Finnish cardamom and gooseberry flower cookies
Voor about 30 cookies
200 grams of unsalted butter
400 grams of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamom
150 gram sugar
7 grams of vanilla sugar or 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence
about 100 grams of gooseberry jam or jelly for the filling
Melt the butter in a saucepan and boil it for about 5-7 minutes on medium fire until the solids turn nutty brown. Keep stirring and take care not to burn the butter, because that tastes horrible. Take from the stove and leave to cool for a while.
Mix the flour with the the baking powder, the salt, the cardamom, the sugar and the vanilla. Mix everything through the cooled butter and shape into a ball. Press the dough into a disc, wrap in cling film and leave to rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
Cover a baking tray with baking paper and preheat the oven to 175° C (350 ° F) . Cut flowers out of the dough with a cookie cutter. Make sure to make an even amount of cookies. Cut holes in the middle of half of the cookies with a small round cookie cutter, an apple corer. You can also use a sharp knife.
Bake the cookies 12-15 min. until they are ligthtly browned. Take them out of the oven and leave them to cool of on the tray. Spread some jam on the bottom side of every other cookie and stick the other cookie on top.
This post is also available in: Dutch
