A while back I wrote a very short, sharp update about my adventures in pastry school. Unfortunately, time ran away from me and I have yet to go into further detail about my classes and what I learned during my diploma course.
One thing that was covered quickly was the traditional Swedish kolasnitt (or caramel cookie), made from a very simple cookie dough that is baked whole, then sliced into individual cookies whilst still warm.
The special texture of the original cookies was not quite replicated, but I was quite happy with the taste. And I think they make a nice alternative for those who don’t eat sugar or dairy.
Try dipping the cooled cookies (to halfway) in your favourite super-dark, vegan chocolate for an extra special treat!
VEGAN, SUGAR-FREE SWEDISH CARAMEL COOKIES
Makes approximately 40
100 ml birch sugar*
100 g vegan butter** (such as Earth Balance)
1 tsp organic vanilla powder
4 tsp rice malt syrup (I used PureHarvest)
200 ml plain organic flour
1 tsp baking powder
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius (fan).
- Whisk vegan butter and birch sugar until it fluffy and slightly porous. Add vanilla powder and syrup. Fold through flour and baking powder and combine quickly with your hands to form a dough.
- Divide dough into quarters.
- Using your hands, form 1/4 of the dough into a rough rectangular shape on a baking paper-lined tray. Place another sheet of baking paper over the dough and, using a rolling pin, flatten the rectangular shape out to be approximately 15cm long by 10 cm wide.
- Pop the tray in the oven and bake dough for approximately 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and, with a long, sharp knife, immediately slice cookies on an angle (on average, mine worked out to be around 1.5 cm wide by 9-10 cm long). - Repeat the process with the remaining portions of dough.
Christmas baking: Sugar-free Swedish Caramel Cookies, Poh Ling Yeow’s Chewy Choc-chip Cookies and Snowflake Stamped Cut-out Cookies… something for everyone!
If you celebrated Christmas, I hope you had a fabulous one, filled with love and good food!
<3 MM xx
*I should mention that I rarely bake with butter substitutes or birch sugar these days, but I have a packet of birch sugar left from older baking experiments, and in cases such as this, I feel it can be a useful alternative to refined, white sugar.
**Regarding vegan butter substitutes, I tend to prefer coconut or nut based alternatives to anything heavily processed/refined, but if they are to be used (for the sake of effective baking chemistry), I always try to stick with the non-GMO, zero trans fat and organic alternatives.
