Christmas gingerbread sandwich cookies

Mömmukökur (Mother's Cookies)

My mother only makes these gingerbread cookies before Christmas, but they are excellent at any time of the year. When I was little, I thought it was my mother's own recipe.

Different people have different ways of making mömmukökur. My mom makes them quite thin and bakes them until they are a rich ginger colour and crisp to bite into. Others make thicker, light ginger-coloured cookies that soften quickly once the icing is on. My mom allows them to stand until completely cooled and then puts them in tins for storage. This is to ensure that they will stay crisp. Then, just before Christmas - usually on Þorláksmessa (December 23rd) - the five of us (my parents, my brother and his partner, and I) get together and stick the cookies together two by two with vanilla butter icing, to make sandwiches.

Recipe:

125 g butter/margarine
250 g golden syrup
125 g sugar
1 egg
500 g flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 portion butter icing

Melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup over low heat and mix well. Allow the mixture to cool,
then stir in the egg and mix well. Mix together flour, baking soda and ginger separately, then add the syrup mixture, stir until mixed, turn out onto a table and knead until you have a smooth dough. 

Store the dough in a refrigerator overnight. Flatten out with a rolling pin until very thin and cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a glass. 

 

 Bake at 200°C, until the cookies area a proper gingerbread colour. Cool completely before icing.

The best way to ice the cookies is to put the vanilla butter icing in an icing bag and use that to put dollops of icing in the centre of every second cookie. You will figure out in no time how much to use on each cookie.

Notes: 

  • While it is possible to re-roll the dough once you have cut out as many cookies as you can, in my family we just take the cut-offs and bake them as well. Then when we have finished making the sandwiches, we sit down with the cut-offs and the remainder of the icing and scoop out icing with the cut-offs and enjoy them with cold milk.
  • Do not use this recipe to make gingerbread houses – this type of gingerbread is too fragile for that.

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