Norwegian Cardamom Cookies

Norwegians love to use cardamom in baking, especially in sweet buns like cinnamon buns, solskinsboller, and Norwegian school bread (skolebrød). But you’ll also see cardamom used sometimes in Norwegian cookies like krumkaker, or these simple cardamom butter cookies that I made over the weekend.

These Norwegian cardamom cookies are basic and perfect with an afternoon cup of tea. They also happen to be very easy to make. Though I feel I should also mention that these aren’t actually my favorite cardamom cookies. Personally I prefer these Swedish sliced cardamom cookies, which are soft and fudgy – quite different from these cardamom butter cookies.

The only tricky part about making these cardamom cookies might be getting your hands on cardamom seeds for these cookies, as pre ground cardamom has very little flavor. I use seeds from green cardamom pods and grind them down with a mortar and pestle.

To make the dough, bring all the ingredients together in a bowl, first mixing with a wooden spoon and then switching to your hands at the end.

Then roll the dough into a thick sausage. You’ll be slicing the cookies from the sausage and they don’t really spread much in the oven, so make the sausage about as thick as you want the cookies to be round.

After refrigerating the dough, roll it in cardamom and sugar. While doing this you can also keep rolling to ensure that the dough is as round as possible.

Then slice the dough into about fifteen slices and spread them out on a baking sheet. You can use your hands to reshape the cookies if they look a little lopsided. Bake until the edges are golden.

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