Advent and the lead up to Christmas in Iceland is a time for baking, as it is elsewhere. Here though there is a very special tradition of baking smákökur, small cakes or cookies. Not just one type but as many as you possibly can. The question isn´t have you baked your smákökur this year yet, it´s how many types have you baked and which ones? I don´t know how many there are, perhaps as many recipes as there are for cookies around the world but I spent this December being offered new and exciting cookies at work and at Óli´s family home and thoroughly enjoyed this cultural adventure. Some of the cookies must have origins abroad and some feel very Icelandic, with cinnamon taste. Rúsínukökur are one of my favourites and piparkökur are one of Óli´s so I include them here. Have a look here for some others (in Icelandic).
Rúsínukökur
225g plain flour, 200g butter or margarine, 180g porridge oats, 220g chopped raisins (we minced then in a .. well.. of course, a mincer), 460g sugar, 2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 eggs
Mix everything to together except the raisins. Add raisins to mix. Let the dough stand in the fridge for a day and bake the day after. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment (no need to butter baking sheet). Roll the dough into small balls about an inch (2.5 cm approx... in weight, 20g dough balls are big, 15 to 20g is fine) in diameter and place on baking sheet leaving a lot of space between them because they completely flatten out when cooked. Bake for 9 minutes at 200 degrees C.
Piparkökur
500g plain flour, 500g soft dark brown sugar, 250g soft butter or margarine, 2 eggs, 5 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 2 teaspoons of ginger, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, half a teaspoon of pepper.
Mix everything together into a dough. It will feel grainy because of the sugar but that´s ok. If you can get caster sugar this would be better. Roll the dough into cylinder 3-4 cm in diameter and wrap in clingfilm. It needs to be in the fridge for at least a few hours so best to do this the day before. Slice the dough into 1 to 1.5cm slices. Bake for 9-11 minutes at 200 degrees C. We baked ours for 8.5 minutes and after that they got too dark underneath. Óli says this makes enough to fill a standard-sized Mum cookie box. This means little to me and Óli´s Mum is a busy and wonderful cook and has what appears to be an infinite number of cookie boxes of all sizes. Let´s say this makes plenty. Apparently though we are doubling the recipe next year.. 2 of everything.
Hogmanay or New Year´s Eve is a frenzy of explosions and fire in Iceland. The battery begins around the 27th of December and continues until around the end of January. Áramót itself is hard to describe.. explosions all around in built up areas. I was reminded of live TV broadcasts from war zones. A lovely old couple appeared on the TV news to say that they had phoned the emergency services to ask when the explosions would end but the police couldn´t help, so they filled a flask with coffee and hid in the their bathroom which had no windows until around 3am. Þór did the same.. we put his cage in the bath. I enjoyed it though was rather alarmed at the proximity to houses, cars, people. The boys bought a big cake called Katla for me .. so I got to see an eruption of Katla. Thankfully nobody was hurt. The fireworks picture above was taken close to midnight, but we started the evening by going to an bonfire where children were playing with rockets, then went to Óli´s uncle´s house where they set up a last hot air balloon. There was a wild west feeling to the street full of boys of all ages wielding flares and explosive devices and spoking cigars and drinking beer. Icelanders are mad (madly fun) and strangely there are still some of them alive to set the night sky alight and perhaps a few unwary obstacles that don´t run away fast enough.
