Every December, Norwegian kitchens fill with the smell of hot butter and cardamom, and a small hinged iron comes out of the cupboard. Within minutes it turns out paper-thin, patterned wafers that get rolled into cones while they are still too hot to touch comfortably.
These are krumkaker, crisp Norwegian cookies and one of the most popular Christmas cookies in Norway. Filled with cloudberry cream or simply eaten plain with coffee, they are one of the prettiest things you can bake in December.
Here we bake them in the classic Norwegian way, and look at how they sit alongside the Icelandic Christmas baking that fills this site at the same time of year.
What krumkaker are
The name says it all. Krum means curved or bent, and kake means cake, so a krumkake is literally a curved cake. The batter is baked in a decorated iron that presses a fine pattern into both sides, and the cookie comes out roughly 1.5 mm thick.
While it is hot, the wafer is soft and bendable. Within seconds it starts to set, so it has to be rolled straight away, usually around a wooden cone, the handle of a wooden spoon, or draped over an upturned glass to make a little bowl.
Once cool, a krumkake is light, crisp and shatters at the first bite. The flavour is simple: butter, sugar and egg, with a gentle lift from ground cardamom.
Krumkaker are also a much-loved Christmas treat among Norwegian Americans, especially in the Upper Midwest, where many families still bake them from recipes brought over generations ago.
A cookie with a long history
Iron-baked cookies are the oldest of the Norwegian Christmas cookies. According to the Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon, the first decorated cake irons came to Norway from Holland in the 1600s, and their motifs were religious, much like the irons used to bake communion wafers.
Over time the flat iron-baked wafers turned into rolled cones and cups. Many old irons carry leafy acanthus patterns, the same kind of ornament you see in Norwegian rosemaling and embroidery.
Krumkaker share their roots with goro, another iron-baked cookie, and with strull, a close relative that is often made without eggs and rolled into a straight tube instead of a cone.
Krumkaker and the seven kinds
Norwegian Christmas has a famous rule of thumb: bake syv slag, seven kinds of cookies. Families argue happily about which seven count, but krumkaker turn up on most lists.
An old guideline was to balance the plate across cooking methods. Some cookies are baked in irons, some are fried in fat, and some are baked in the oven. In a survey quoted by Store norske leksikon, the seven most associated with the tradition were smultringer, fattigmann, sandkaker, sirupssnipper, berlinerkranser, goro and krumkaker.
Iceland has its own version of this December baking marathon. Many Icelandic families bake several kinds of smákökur, the Icelandic Christmas cookies, during Advent, so a tin of krumkaker sits very comfortably next to them on a Nordic holiday table.
The krumkake iron
You do need a special iron for real krumkaker. A waffle iron will not work, because the cookie has to be very thin and evenly pressed.
There are two main types. Stovetop irons are cast metal, hinged, and sit on a ring over the burner. You flip them halfway through baking so both sides brown evenly. Electric krumkake makers work like a small sandwich press and bake both sides at once, which makes them easier for beginners.
Most irons come with a wooden cone roller. If yours did not, the handle of a thick wooden spoon works fine, and a small glass or teacup turned upside down makes bowl-shaped krumkaker for filling with cream and berries.
The same family of Nordic irons also produces soft heart-shaped waffles. If you enjoy this kind of baking, try our Norwegian waffles and Icelandic vöfflur on a slower weekend morning.
Ingredients for about 25 krumkaker
This is the classic Norwegian proportion used by many standard recipes, including the one from the Norwegian food site MatPrat. It uses equal weights of sugar, butter and flour.
- 4 eggs
- 200 g sugar (about 1 cup)
- 200 g butter, melted and cooled slightly (about 7 oz)
- 200 g plain flour (about 1 2/3 cups)
- ½ teaspoon ground cardamom
A handy rule from Norwegian home bakers: weigh your eggs, then use the same weight of sugar, butter and flour. Three eggs weighing 180 g, for example, would take 180 g of each.
Cardamom is traditional but optional. Some families use a little vanilla sugar instead.
How to make krumkaker
Whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale, thick and fluffy. This is the Norwegian eggedosis stage, and it takes a few minutes with an electric mixer.
Stir in the melted, slightly cooled butter. Sift the flour and cardamom over the bowl and fold everything together gently with a spatula until the batter is smooth with no lumps.
Let the batter rest for about 15 minutes. If it has thickened too much afterwards, stir in a couple of tablespoons of water so it spreads easily in the iron.
Heat the krumkake iron well. Put a heaped teaspoon of batter in the centre of the iron, close it, and bake until the cookie is pale golden. On a stovetop iron, turn it over halfway. Keep the heat moderate, because these brown quickly and burn just as fast.
Lift the cookie off with a thin spatula or knife and roll it around the cone straight away. Hold it for a few seconds until it sets, then slide it off and let it cool on a rack while you bake the next one.
Tips for crisp, unbroken cones
The first one or two cookies are often uneven while the iron settles to the right heat, so do not judge the batch by them.
Have your cone or glass ready before the first cookie comes out. If you hesitate, the wafer sets flat and will crack when you try to bend it.
Many bakers find it easier to make a large batch in two rounds of batter, because a big bowl tends to thicken as it sits.
Store the cooled krumkaker in an airtight tin. A metal cookie tin is best for keeping them crisp. Fill them only just before serving, or the cream will soften the shell.
How to serve krumkaker
The most Norwegian way is with multekrem, softly whipped cream folded with cloudberries or cloudberry jam. Spoon or pipe it into the cones right before they go to the table.
Plain whipped cream with jam or fresh berries works too, and so does a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which turns a krumkake into a very elegant ice cream cone.
Plenty of people skip the filling altogether and eat them plain with a cup of coffee, the way most Christmas cookies are enjoyed in both Norway and Iceland.
If you are planning a full Nordic holiday spread, our guide to Icelandic Christmas food and traditions covers the rest of the table, from the Christmas Eve main course to laufabrauð, the patterned leaf bread.
A small tradition worth starting
Krumkaker take a little practice and a dedicated iron, but once you find your rhythm they come together quickly. One bowl of batter gives you a tin full of delicate, patterned cones.
Bake a batch this December, fill a few with cream on Christmas Eve, and keep the rest for coffee through the holidays. They are crisp, buttery, a little fragile, and very hard to stop eating.
Cover photo: "Krumkaker" by Jonathunder, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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.