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Cookies - the Scandinavian KindBefore the advent of the home freezer, housewives lived under a sword of Damocles. They were required to have something freshly baked on hand to offer their friends, perhaps some pastry in the cupboard, a cake in the refrigerator, and certainly several kinds of baked goods stashed away in a tin box. Now, the freezer has gone a long way toward making their plight easier by allowing them to do much of their baking well in advance of the arrival of their guests. Unexpected company has done more than anything else to bring baking to a high art in Scandinavia. There are no baked goods anywhere else quite so good. They are what such things should be - crisp enough to snap without crumbling, yet so delicately constituted that they all but dissolve and trickle away in the mouth. Some of their crispness can be attributed directly to the amount of butter used in Scandinavian baking, but credit must also be given to a mysterious ingredient called salt of hartshorn. This predates baking powder as a rising agent by several centuries, and once was made from the antlers of a deer, hence its name.
The gathering place The webmaster was fortunate enough to be a guest at the table depicted above. Scandinavian hospitality is something bordering on the mystical, impossible to explain, but it warms the heart in the present and long after. I say it again: There are no baked goods anywhere else quite so good. They are what such things should be - crisp enough to snap without crumbling, yet so delicately constituted that they all but dissolve and trickle away in the mouth.
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