Swedish Cookies

This isn’t really a recipe. It’s more of a memory.

But I hear you complain about the long story before the ingredients, so here!

  • Pie Crust Scraps
  • Softened or melted butter
  • Cinnamon Sugar

Preheat oven to 400 deg, if you are baking pie shells, or 375 for pies. Make up your pie crusts. Set aside the scraps.

Handle the scraps as little as possible to keep them from getting tough, but squish them together in a ball. Roll them out fairly thin, and cut with cookie cutter, can that has had both ends cut off and cleaned, or just with a knife. This isn’t a picky or elegant recipe. Place cookies on ungreased cookie sheet.

Brush cookies with butter, sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 8-10 minutes until puffed and slightly golden brown at edges.

Let cool and serve.

We used to make these on baking days. I will deliberately make too much pie crust in order to have them. They are not too sweet, and go beautifully with tea.

But why are they called Swedish cookies? I don’t know. I remember an older lady teaching Mom and us girls to make them while we lived in Alaska. That’s what she called them.

I just know they bring me back to that cabin in the woods when I eat them, flaky little tastes of good times we had baking, learning, and staying warm by the stove when it was seventy below zero outdoors. It was part of a childhood that had no room for waste, in an adulthood where I could manage without using every scrap. It still feels wrong, and eating these is not exactly a sacrifice!


Comments

6 responses to “Swedish Cookies”

  1. Except for the lack of a leavening agent, they are close to being snickerdoodles. Maybe that means sugar cookie is Sweden

  2. I like the octopus ink.

    1. I do to! My friend Jonna makes these bags.

  3. John in Philly Avatar
    John in Philly

    I can almost smell the cinnamon, and they do look great.

    And the bag started this thought.
    If a octopus hosted an internet talk show, would it be a cephalopod cast?

    I think a cephalopod themed material would look great for a sandbag doorstop, and it would be a fairly straightforward sewing project.

  4. When I make snickerdoodles, I mix three parts cinnamon with one part allspice, and then mix that with an equal amount of sugar.
    I encountered the cinnamon/allspice mix used to dust the top of a ricotta cheese pie, found it works nicely for dusting on top of rice pudding, and then snickerdoodles.
    It would probably work just fine in the Swedish cookies, too

  5. My mom did this with leftover pie crust scraps, too. But she’d just use a knife and cut them into odd triangles. Once I had a whole extra store-bought crust and I made these instead of another pie. Good stuff. And oh, the memories.