Every Christmas and other holiday, danish butter cookies in their distinctive round blue tin comes out. I defy anyone to say they don’t like these beauties.

So I was reading how Molly from orangette made them. Anyone who regularly reads food blogs will appreciate that orangette isn’t just a food blog with recipes, it’s a full-on foodie experience. Anyway, I was intrigued with the recipe, which was from the December 2008 edition of Gourmet and apparently is one passed down through several generations.

I used scaled down proportions, because I didn’t need so many. It’s easy for me to get the authentic Danish Lurpak butter; I generally use Anchor but Lurpak is only slightly more expensive, and probably worth it to follow the recipe. The American convention of using cups instead of weight fazed me a little, but I’ve converted it.

8oz butter
1/3 cup sugar, or around 3oz
2 cups plain flour, or around 12oz
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 small egg, for eggwash
sugar for sprinkling — the recipe calls for sanding sugar, I just used demerara

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then the recipe says beat the flour and baking soda in using the electric whisk, which…is an invitation for having flour flying everywhere. I folded the dry ingredients in using the more trusty spoon spatula method, only when mostly combined then I whisked the mixture till it was like crumbs.

Work the dough between 2 sheets of clingfilm, then roll out to a rectangle. I found that folding the clingfilms so they form the rectangular shape made rolling much easier, and the dough kept to the shape. Chill in the fridge for at least 30mins.

Remove the top sheet of the clingfilm and cut into 1” squares. This was the shape I liked most, and the easiest to work with. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle the demerara sugar.

Bake at 160C for 15mins. I found it needed an extra 5 mins to get really pale golden brown, I guess it’s my oven. Anyway, watch them till they get pale golden. Cool for 5mins then transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes around 50 cookies.

 

Okay, mine don’t look as pretty as the blue-tinned danish cookies. In fact they look kinda like sad shortbread, and very difficult to photograph (as warned by orangette). But man, they taste decadent.