Finnish Aunt Hanna’s Cookies

As I was reviewing my posts from the month of February the other day, I noticed an interesting–and unexpected–pattern: All the recipes were for savory dishes. As someone whose lifelong culinary proclivities have bent slightly more on the side of baking than cooking, seeing such an across-the-board trend came as a surprise. I’m seeking to change that today with a recipe I briefly mentioned back in January: Finnish Aunt Hanna’s Cookies. These cookies come together easily and would be perfect with an afternoon cup of tea. Enjoy, and I’ll be back with more savory and sweet recipes soon!

Finnish Buttery “Aunt Hanna’s” Cookies (Hannatädinkakut)
Adapted from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book by Beatrice Ojakangas

1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup whipping cream
Sliced almonds or almond halves, for decoration

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare your baking sheets by covering them with parchment paper. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until combined. In a separate bowl, stir together flour and baking powder, and gradually add the flour mixture to the butter and sugar. Add the cream and keep mixing until the dough comes together and stiffens. At this point, you can proceed if the dough is workable, otherwise chill for a little while.

To form the cookies, roll a teaspoon of dough into small bowls and place on the baking sheets, spacing them about an inch and a half apart. Gently press a few almond slices or a halved almond onto the top of each cookie, and bake until the cookies have set and barely started to turn golden. Allow to cool; the original recipe calls for cooling on the baking pan, but I removed mine to a wire baking rack immediately to keep the bottoms from browning too much.