Wafer-thin embossed cookies rolled into cones, sometimes filled with whipped cream — Norway's Christmas cookie of patience.
Krumkake (literally 'curved cake') is a Norwegian Christmas cookie with centuries of tradition, often traced back to the Viking age — a wafer-thin batter of butter, sugar and egg, scented with cardamom or vanilla, pressed in a hot iron with an ornate embossed pattern, then immediately rolled around a wooden cone while still pliable. Cooled, they're crisp and ornate, eaten plain, dusted with sugar, or filled with cloudberry cream (multekrem). The decorative iron is etched with Norwegian folk motifs like scrolls and rosemaling, and the dedicated krumkakejern is often a generational kitchen heirloom. It is counted among the traditional 'seven sorts' (syv slag) of Norwegian Christmas baking.
Crisp, paper-thin, with raised diamond or floral patterns from the iron. Snap one with the fingers — fragile as a Pringle but with butter-cardamom flavor — and dip into whipped cream and cloudberries if you're feeling fancy.
The iron must be over 200°C — colder and the batter doesn't crisp, hotter and it scorches. The cookie is hot enough that the immediate roll-around-a-cone happens while gluten and sugar are still malleable. Cool ten seconds and it shatters.
Variations
Norwegian-traditional eats them plain or with butter, keeping the austerity of festive baking; Scandinavian-American homes fill the cones with whipped cream, cloudberries or lingonberry — homeland keeps austerity, diaspora adds filling.
On the Palate
Where Krumkake sits in the Norwegian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4
How it's made
5 steps · 42 min active + 18 min waiting
- 112 min
Whisk 3 eggs with 150g sugar until pale. Add 100g melted butter, 100ml cream, 1 tsp cardamom, ½ tsp vanilla.
- 212 min
Sift in 150g flour; whisk smooth. Rest 30 min.
- 312 min
Heat a krumkake iron over medium heat (or use an electric krumkake maker). Drop 1 tbsp batter on the lower plate, close, cook 30-45 seconds per side until pale gold.
Watch outThe iron has to be properly hot — a drop of batter should hiss on contact; pull each cookie at pale gold, one shade past cream, not brown.
- 412 min
Open carefully; immediately wrap the hot cookie around a wooden cone (use a kitchen towel to handle). Hold 10 seconds; slip off and set aside to crisp.
Watch outRoll it around the cone the second it comes off — it's still soft and bends easily; wait even ten seconds and it turns brittle and shatters.
- 512 min
Repeat until batter is used. Store airtight. Fill cones with whipped cream and lingonberries at serving — only just before, or the cones soften.
Watch outFill only at the moment of serving — cream sitting in the cone softens the crisp shell within minutes.
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