Chokladsnittar (Swedish Chocolate Cookies)

Once a week my friends in Bergen gather for Trashy Tuesday to watch reality tv together. It’s a perfect opportunity for a weekday catchup, and it’s also a perfect opportunity for me to test out new recipes. Often it takes me a few tries to perfect the recipe I want to publish, and it’s always extra helpful to have feedback from other people. This week I decided to make chokladsnittar, sliced Swedish chocolate cookies decorated with pearl sugar. And the feedback was good!

Chokladsnittar are sort of like thin brownies, with crispy edges and a soft center. There’s no egg in the chokladsnittar dough, so these cookies are definitely more fudgy than cakey. The dough also comes together incredibly quickly, so these are easy cookies to whip up when you’re short on time but still want to make something a bit elevated.

Swedish pearl sugar

Chokladsnittar are decorated with Swedish pearl sugar, which is made of compressed sugar crystals that form large opaque white sugar pieces. Swedes love decorating their baked goods with pearl sugar – you’ve probably seen it on various Swedish sweet buns. We have pearl sugar in Norway as well, but Norwegian pearl sugar is clear instead of white.

If you don’t have pearl sugar you can always decorate your chokladsnittar with sprinkles instead, or leave them bare. Or you can make your own diy pearl sugar!

You can make your own pearl sugar by combining 125 g (1 cup) powdered sugar with 2 teaspoons of water. Stir the sugar and water together and then press it into a solid ball. Then grate the ball into pieces on a cheese grater. Spread the sugar pieces on a baking sheet and let them harden in an oven for about 10 minutes at 110°C (230°F). You don’t need to be too exact here – in fact you could simply leave the sugar in the oven for about ten minutes as the oven preheats for baking the chokladsnittar.

Chokladsnittar

The dough will be a lot easier to mix together if you let the butter soften at room temperature first. I mix it with a wooden spoon first and then switch to my hands to bring it into a ball. Then divide the ball in half and roll out two long sausages.

Then simply flatten the sausages with your hands. The shape doesn’t matter too much here as you’ll be cutting the cookies into thin slices anyway.

I try to do quite a light egg wash so that the pearl sugar doesn’t dissolve in the egg (this can happen if you’re using homemade pearl sugar). You can also let the egg sit on top of the dough for a couple of minutes before adding the pearl sugar.

I bake these for exactly 15 minutes, but baking times can vary a bit depending on your oven. Then I let the cookie lengths cool for a couple minutes before slicing them up. They are easier to cut when they’re still warm though, so don’t wait too long to cut them. You can use a pizza/pastry cutter or a knife.

You can switch the recipe from US measurements to metric by clicking from “US Customary” to “Metric” under Ingredients.