locusimperium:
A few years ago, when I was living in the housing co-op and looking for a quick cookie recipe, I came across a blog post for something called âNorwegian Christmas butter squares.â Iâd never found anything like it before: it created rich, buttery and chewy cookies, like a vastly superior version of the holiday sugar cookies Iâd eaten growing up. About a year ago I went looking for the recipe again, and failed to find it. The blog had been taken down, and it sent me into momentary panic.Â
Luckily, I remembered enough to find it on the Wayback Machine, and quickly copied it into a file that Iâve saved ever since. I probably make these cookies about once a month, and they last about five days around my voracious husband - theyâre fantastic with a cup of bitter coffee or tea. Iâm skeptical that there is something distinctively Norwegian about these cookies, but they do seem like the perfect thing to eat on a cold day.Â
Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 egg 1 cup sugar 2 cups flour 1 tsp vanilla œ tsp salt Turbinado/ Raw Sugar for dusting
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Chill a 9x13âł baking pan in the freezer. Do not grease the pan.
Using a mixer, blend the butter, egg, sugar, and salt together until it is creamy. Â Add the flour and vanilla and mix using your hands until the mixture holds together in large clumps. If it seems overly soft, add a little extra flour.Â
Using your hands, press the dough out onto the chilled and ungreased baking sheet until it is even and Œ inch thick.  Dust the top of the cookies evenly with raw sugar.
Bake at 400 degrees until the edges turn a golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Remove from the oven. Let cool for about five minutes before cutting the cooked dough into squares. Remove the squares from the warm pan using a spatula.
So I tried this recipe.
And it is GREAT.
It basically makes the platonic ideal of commercial sugar cookies, only in bar form. When I give them to people (which I do a lot, because this is one of those simple recipes where the results seem very impressive), I just tell them theyâre sugar cookie bars.
Life hack: add white chocolate chips and sea salt
I made these today for the equinox with sea salt caramel chips and they are simply amazing. Letâs see how long they last with six people in the house!
