How many sorts this year?

It’s a common question in the advent of Christmas. People are of course asking how many sorts of cookies were baked before Christmas. It’s the pride of every household to make as many as they can and preferably having to redo a few since they were too delicious.

This sort of home baking before Christmas is a tradition from the early 1900’s when ingredients became accessible and ovens became a thing in every home. If you want to get into something a bit older, try out Laufabrauð – Icelandic Leaf bread.

What sorts do you ask?

There is a plethora of sorts to be baked. Ranging from usual suspects like gingerbread cookies, all sorts of chocolate cookies, and Sarah Bernhardt cookies are a big thing, to perhaps more obscure cookies like anise cookies, vanilla rings and Serina cookies (named “Jewish cookies” in Icelandic!). Then there is…

Liquorice Meringue Tops

Our research suggests that while meringue tops have been made from the ’60s (probably longer, but we can’t find any evidence (too lazy)), adding liquorice to them seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon. The earliest mention of it in newspapers is from 2001
Liquorice, of course, a classic flavour the Nordics invented and acquired to wand off other people from stealing their food. However the liquorice in liquorice tops isn’t the very bitter and hard type but soft and sweet kind, preferably covered in chocolate for good measure. The texture has to be right for the Tops to be… top notch. It has to have a brittle or crispy exterior with a chewy middle. 

If you’re not a fan of liquorice at all, and we get that, you can substitute it with chocolate, hard caramel or just whatever you think might work.

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites (around 150 gr.) at room temp.
• 200 gr brown sugar.
• 150 gr chocolate callets or roughly chopped.
• 150 gr ‘filling’ – liquorice would be the Icelandic choice, hard caramel, more chocolate!

Method:

1. Combine egg whites with brown sugar and whisk vigorously into stiff peaks. 
2. Fold in the chocolate and your ‘filling’
3. Using 2 teaspoons place dollops onto baking sheets
4. Bake at 150 c° for 20 minutes in a fan assisted oven. The fan will cheer you on.
5. Take’em out, try not to eat them all in one sitting. 
6. Eat them all in one sitting. 

– Your beautiful friends from Iceland