Due to poor planning on my part, todays Sunday Sweets necessitated something fairly easy to pull together. Not that easy to pull together is ever a bad thing! Now I could have gone to my standby chocolate chip cookie recipe or one of the family recipes I have made a thousand times, but as usual I was itching for something a bit different. Enter The Great Scandinavian Baking Book. Like most of my cookbooks, this is one I’ve been intending to bake from but have only managed to make 2 recipes out of it so far. One of those recipes are these cinnamon cookies. They are a delightful pillow of crackled cinnamon that taste unique but still have that oddly familiar taste to them.

Despite needing to firm up in the fridge for 30 minutes, these guys come together pretty fast. They start out by following the familiar pattern of creaming sugar and butter together.

Beat in the egg and a little vanilla to get a nice creamy mixture. Then the flour mixture gets mixed in.

And there you have it. Your base dough. Now this is the point where you stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes. No biggie. Prep the walnut-cinnamon-sugar for rolling, pre-heat your oven, and clean the dishes you just dirtied.

Give them a roll and line them up.

10 minutes later you have a perfectly shaped, cinnamon crackled cookie.

Swedish Walnut Cinnamon Cookies

Recipe adapted from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book

• 1/3 cup butter, at room temp
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons sugar

In a medium size bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat till light and fluffy. You can do this by hand, no need for an electric mixer.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Then add the sifted mixture to the cream mixture and mix well.

Set the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes so it can firm up.

Meanwhile, pre-heat oven 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Then mix together the finely chopped walnuts, cinnamon, and sugar in a small bowl.

Form the dough into small balls, about 2 teaspoons worth of dough. Then roll the dough balls in the walnut/cinnamon/sugar mixture and place prepared baking pans. Bake for 10 minutes. Do not over bake, you want these to be soft and pillowy. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 2 dozen cookies