Ask an Icelander about Advent and the conversation soon turns to baking. Somewhere between the first candle and Christmas Eve, kitchens fill with butter, sugar and the smell of warm spice, and tins of small cookies start stacking up on the counter.
These are jólasmákökur, Christmas cookies, and they have been part of the Icelandic holiday since the 19th century. Many early recipes came from Denmark, and plenty still carry Danish fingerprints, but over time they have become firmly Icelandic.
Below are seven of the classics, from simple butter rounds to the elegant sörur, plus a full recipe for the liquorice meringues almost every family seems to make.
How Icelanders bake for Christmas
Families tend to talk about how many sortir, or kinds, they bake. Six kinds is a common goal, and keen bakers have been known to go as high as twelve, filling tin after tin in the weeks before Christmas.
Traditional recipes lean on butter, flour and sugar, the ingredients that were reliably available through long winters. Newer favourites, such as meringues with chocolate and liquorice, sit happily alongside the old ones.
The cookies are served with coffee when friends drop by in December, and they are part of the wider spread of festive food. For the bigger picture of the holiday table, see our guide to Icelandic Christmas food and traditions.
Piparkökur: spiced ginger cookies
Piparkökur are thin, crisp spice cookies flavoured with ginger, cinnamon and cloves. The dough is rolled out and cut into hearts, stars and little figures, and many families decorate them with white icing.
They are a natural cookie for children to help with. Rolling, cutting and decorating a batch together is an easy way to start the season at home.
Mömmukökur: syrup cookies with vanilla cream
Mömmukökur, "mum's cookies", are sometimes called mömmukossar, "mum's kisses". The dough is made by warming butter, sugar and golden syrup together, then working in flour, ginger, cinnamon and baking soda.
It rests in the fridge overnight before being rolled out and cut into rounds. Once baked and cooled, pairs of cookies are sandwiched together with a soft vanilla buttercream, which softens them slightly as they sit in the tin.
Spesíur: simple butter cookies
Spesíur are proof that a short ingredient list can be enough. A typical recipe uses only butter, icing sugar and flour, kneaded into a dough that is rolled into logs and chilled overnight.
The next day the logs are sliced into rounds about 7 mm thick and baked at around 180°C for roughly 10 minutes. Many bakers press a chocolate button on top, which melts just enough to set into a glossy dot.
Gyðingakökur: thin almond and sugar rounds
Gyðingakökur translates as "Jewish cookies". According to the Icelandic food writer Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir, they got the name because they were originally made and sold by Jewish bakers, and Denmark has a very similar cookie called jødekager.
Traditional versions are made with butter, sugar, flour, egg and cardamom, and are raised with hjartarsalt, the baker's ammonia that gives old Nordic cookies their light, crisp snap. The dough is rolled very thin and cut into rounds with a glass.
Each round is brushed with egg white and covered with chopped almonds mixed with sugar. They bake for about 10 minutes at 190°C and should come out pale, with only a hint of colour at the edges.
Sörur: the showpiece of the season
Sörur are named after the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. The story goes that pastry chefs in Copenhagen created them in her honour around 1900, and the cookie travelled through the Nordic countries before settling in Iceland.
They are more like tiny cakes than cookies. A chewy almond meringue base is topped with a coffee and cocoa buttercream, chilled until firm, then dipped in melted dark chocolate.
Making them takes most of a day, so plenty of people buy sörur from friends or local bakers rather than making their own. If you want a project with a similar feel, the layered Vínarterta prune cake is another festive bake with a long history.
Lakkrístoppar: liquorice meringue tops
Lakkrístoppar are small meringues studded with chopped chocolate and chocolate-coated liquorice. Plain meringue tops have been around for decades; adding liquorice appears to be a newer twist that only became widespread around the turn of the millennium.
They are now one of the most loved Icelandic cookies of the season. The goal is a crisp, brittle outside and a soft, chewy middle, with sweet liquorice rather than the hard, salty kind.
Marens-kornflexkökur: cornflake meringues
These chocolate and cornflake meringues are close cousins of lakkrístoppar. Egg whites are whisked with sugar until stiff, then crushed cornflakes, chopped dark chocolate and vanilla are folded through.
A typical batch uses 2 egg whites, 100 g sugar, 35 g crushed cornflakes and 50 g chopped dark chocolate, baked at 150°C for 15 to 20 minutes. A drizzle of extra melted chocolate over the cooled cookies is a popular finish.
Recipe: lakkrístoppar at home
This version follows the standard Icelandic proportions. It makes roughly 80 small tops, depending on the size of your spoon.
Prep 20 minutes · Bake about 20 minutes per tray
- 3 egg whites (about 150 g), at room temperature
- 200 g light brown sugar
- 150 g milk chocolate, finely chopped
- 150 g chocolate-coated liquorice bits (lakkrískurl), or soft liquorice chopped small
- Heat the oven to 150°C (300°F) and line two baking trays with baking paper.
- Whisk the egg whites in a clean, dry bowl until they hold soft peaks, then add the brown sugar and keep whisking until the meringue is very stiff and glossy. This can take close to 10 minutes with a hand mixer.
- Fold in the chocolate and liquorice gently with a spatula, turning rather than stirring so the meringue keeps its air.
- Drop teaspoon-sized mounds onto the trays, leaving a little space between them.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the tops feel dry and crisp. Let them cool completely on the tray before lifting them off.
If you cannot find chocolate-coated liquorice, chopped soft liquorice works, and some bakers swap in caramel pieces or extra chocolate instead.
Which cookies to start with
If you are new to Icelandic Christmas baking, spesíur and lakkrístoppar are the friendliest place to begin. Neither needs special equipment beyond a mixer, and both use ingredients you can find in most supermarkets.
Piparkökur and mömmukökur come next. They take a little more planning because of the resting time, but the method is simple, and piparkökur in particular keep well in a tin.
Leave gyðingakökur and sörur for when you have a free afternoon. Gyðingakökur need patient, thin rolling, and sörur involve three separate stages, but they are the cookies people remember.
Planning a Christmas baking day
Start with the doughs that need time. Mömmukökur and spesíur both rest overnight, so mix them the day before and bake them first, since they need a hotter oven than the meringues.
Meringue cookies like lakkrístoppar and the cornflake version go in last, at a lower temperature. Keep their egg yolks, too, because sörur buttercream uses yolks while the base uses whites.
Store each kind in its own airtight tin so the crisp ones, such as gyðingakökur, stay crisp. Sörur are the exception: because of the buttercream, they are usually kept in the fridge or freezer until serving.
If you are building a full holiday spread, the thin, patterned laufabrauð leaf bread is the other great Advent baking tradition, often made together as a family in an afternoon.
About Sigrún Ólafsdóttir
Sigrún grew up baking rúgbrauð with her grandmother in Akureyri and has spent the last decade collecting recipes from kitchens all over Iceland. She writes Icelandic MAT's recipes, one dish at a time.