Norwegian Sour Cream Cookies

Here it is! My Great Grandma Melby's recipe for sour cream cookies! Great Grandma Melby was from Norway. She and Great Grandpa Melby came to the US when my grandfather was a very young boy.

Necessity is the mother of invention they say. And this seems to hold true for many recipes as well. To my understanding, in earlier times, people (whether from this country or not) tried to use every ounce of everything to avoid waste and to be thrifty. Bread pudding was created as a way to use stale bread. I believe the strong spices in India and Southern Creole cooking were originally used to mask the fact that the meat or fish was not exactly on the fresh side and didn't have the best smell or flavor.

So these cookies are made with SOUR cream. Not Knudsen sour cream. No dollop of Daisy but cream that is no longer good. It is sour and putrid smelling and often thickens and has little clumpy things. It is really disgusting actually! I often don't tell people what is in them until they take a taste. WARNING! If you are pregnant, proceed with caution. I personally didn't have morning sickness when pregnant but if a smell was really really bad... it could send me over the edge. This may just do it to you.

These cookies are so good though that I save my bad cream for months just to make them. I don't use it if it has gotten at all solid or yellow or has any growth of any kind. Doesn't this all sound just SO yummy and appetizing?

The recipe is quite simple actually.
1/3 cup butter (softened)
2/3 cup sugar
1 beaten egg (I rarely bother to beat it first)
1/3 cup SOUR cream (NOT commercial sour cream but cream or heavy cream that has gone sour/bad)
1 tsp vanilla
1 2/3 cups sifted flour (I don't think I've sifted flour since I was in high school)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt

Mix together your wet ingredients (top 5 above) until smooth. Then add the dry ingredients (bottom 4). You know the drill.

Drop onto un-greased cookie sheet. Then dip the bottom of a glass into your bowl of cookie dough or smear a little dough on the glass. Dip the glass into cinnamon sugar.

Cinnamon sugar is made with a few tablespoons of sugar and about 1/2 tablespoon ground cinnamon.

With the glass coated in sugar, lightly tap down each ball of dough on the sheet. Continue with remaining dough. I sometimes use a spoon and sprinkle just a little more cinnamon sugar on each one as well.

Bake for 10 minutes in a 400° oven.

Voila! There you have your sour cream cookies! Note, I don't pay much attention to time when baking. All ovens cook differently too. I prefer these cookies done only until the bottom just gives the faintest faintest sign that it may color. They seem more moist that way. My mom likes them a little more done as you see in the above photo.

But any way you bake it these ARE good! No great! And with a cup of coffee in the morning? Well it is THE best breakfast EVER. My mom sisters and I could eat several in a sitting for breakfast. They are not too sweet.

PLEASE let me know if you make these. I am so curious as to what you think!

Well off to do the last minute stuff.
Au Revoir!
Until next week some time. Keep me in your thoughts!