Supposedly Norwegian or Swedish (see note*, below), Kringla are a soft, pillowy cookie shaped into a pretzel or figure-8. See also Kringla II, a similar recipe.
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
Directions
- Cream together butter and sugar, then stir in egg and vanilla.
- In separate bowl, sift together remaining dry ingredients.
- Add alternately to creamed mixture, buttermilk and sifted ingredients.
- When finished mixing, place bowl in refrigerator, covering the bowl with plastic wrap. Chill 8 hours. You can reduce to 2-4 hours by turning the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, covering it, and forming a flat disc. The dough will be very sticky and it needs to chill very well to be able to be handled.
- Preheat oven to 350F and grease a baking sheet or line with parchment paper.
- Form walnut-sized chunks of dough into pencil shapes (about 8 to 10 inches long, and a bit thicker than a pencil). Shape pencils into figure eights, handling the dough as little as possible.
- Bake on prepared baking sheets for 8-10 minutes or until just barely golden (they should remain very light in color). They need to be a bit under-baked compared to most cookies in order to retain their softness, but some people prefer them slightly more done.
Notes
- * Kringla cookies are practically unknown in Norway/Sweden today! They are family traditions for many North Americans of Swedish and Norwegian descent, but they are not, today, a Scandinavian tradition. This was confirmed to me by a Norwegian cultural historian, a Norwegian chef and a couple of Norwegian foodies (who were all mystified by Americans insisting that this Kringla is a Norwegian national culinary treasure while they themselves have never seen it in Norway), and my Swedish cousin. Ask them if they know what a Kringla is and they will say yes…but ask them to describe what that is and they will be describing something much different than this cookie. The words Kringle and Kringla (in Norse and Swedish respectively) refer to the shape, and usually a savory pretzel, not a cookie. Sukkerkringler look somewhat similar in photos but it is a yeast dough topped with sugar. Smålandskringlor looks quite similar, but using hartshorn (bakers ammonia) instead of baking soda, they are a crispy cookie baked until well browned, and most recipes I found used rye flour.
A few possibilities exist:
– That Kringla cookies are indeed from some local region of Norway or Sweden, but they only became popular once reaching the US, and they (mostly) died out in Scandinavia or at the very least, never reached widespread popularity there.
– Kringla were something else and for various reasons changed over time in the USA, for example baking with baking soda instead of hartshorn will yield a softer cookie
– That Kringla cookies were developed in the USA by recent immigrants from Scandinavia
There is no way to really know!
If you want a Norwegian cookie that is traditional in Norway today , try Krumkake, Berlinerkranser, Fattigmann, Goro, Peperkaker.