The Simple 150-Year-Old Family Cookie Recipe I Make Every Year

Swedish Almond Christmas Cookies

Chef Jon Ashton might be a professional cook, but his top holiday cookie recipe comes from his wife's family. "This Swedish almond cookie is my wife's grandfather's recipe that was passed down to me," he says. "It's been in their family for over 150 years and it's my most-requested holiday cookie recipe."

The heirloom recipe isn't difficult, but it does require that you pay attention to the details to make sure the cookies turn out right. To help you do just that, we quizzed Ashton about the recipe and he graciously agreed to share not just the recipe, but plenty of tips and tricks along the way.

Related: Jon Ashton's Granny-Approved British Christmas Cake

How to Make Swedish Almond Christmas Cookies

The simple, buttery cookies coated in crunchy pearl sugar only require a few ingredients and the dough comes together quickly and easily. Because the recipe is so simple, it's extra important to pay close attention to your ingredients. One of the ingredients Ashton suggests for these cookies is European butter. "I'm using European butter because it has a higher fat content than American butter," he says. The extra fat will translate to more buttery flavor, and who wouldn't want that in a cookie?

To make sure the butter blends into the dough easily, you want to make sure that it's room temperature (if yours just came out of the fridge, here's how to soften butter quickly). The room-temperature butter is mixed with sugar and a healthy amount of baking powder, which will help the cookies rise.

Once that mixture comes together, Ashton cracks in an egg, which will also help with the cookie's rise and will also add some richness to the treat (along with all of that butter). The dough at this stage can be quite sticky, so it's important to scrape down the mixer bowl as you go to make sure all of the ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

Next, you'll add in your extracts (both almond and vanilla) and a bit of salt. Add the flour next and mix the dough briefly with a silicone spatula. Add the paddle attachment back to the mixer and beat the dough until it just comes together.

When the dough is mixed, divide it in half and sandwich half of the dough between sheets of parchment paper. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to 1/4-inch thick. Repeat with the other dough half, then stick the rolled dough in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. (If you have a couple of hours to let it chill, that's even better.)

While you wait for your dough to chill, read on for more about decorating and baking these cookies, plus a few pro tips to help you along the way.

Related: Ina Garten's Chocolate-Dipped Shortbread Cookies

How to Decorate Swedish Almond Christmas Cookies

Once the cookie dough has chilled, remove it from the fridge and cut out circles with a 1 1/2- to 2-inch round cookie cutter. Make sure to make the cuts as close to each other as you can to avoid as much re-rolling (which can make cookies tough) as possible.

Now for the fun part: the decorating! For a classic look, top each cookie with pearl sugar, the large, white, crunchy sugar that's associated with Scandinavia, Belgium and the Netherlands, where it's used in cookies, pastries, cakes and waffles.

To decorate these cookies, brush a bit of water on the top of a cookie, then dip it in a bowl of pearl sugar. The water will help the sugar stick to the cookie. Transfer the cookie to a greased muffin tin, then repeat with the rest of the dough. Bake until light golden, then cool and devour!

Top Tips for Making Swedish Almond Christmas Cookies

• Use the sugar you have. Although pearl sugar makes these cookies look and taste extra special, if you don't have pearl sugar you can you can use another coarse sugar, like turbinado or demerara, or you can dip the top of the cookies in granulated sugar.
• Don't skip the muffin tin. Although it's unusual to bake cookies in a muffin tin, that method serves an important purpose here. Because the dough is so buttery, these cookies tend to spread a lot. Baking the dough in a muffin tin helps the cookies keep their adorable round shape and bake up evenly. 
• Don't overbake them. Many American cookies are baked until their a rich golden brown, but this cookie should only be baked until it's light golden. That blonde color will give you a light, tender, buttery cookie, which is what we're going for here.  
• Don't get stuck. Baking the cookies in a muffin tin helps them keep their shape, but it does make them a little tricky to get out of the tin. To make that process easier, use a small offset spatula (the one that's great for frosting cakes) or a paring knife to pop the cookies up so you can grab them.

Up next: The Famous $250 Cookie Recipe That's Worth Every Penny

Grandpa's Swedish Almond Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) European-style butter, such as like Kerrygold or Plugra

• 1 cup sugar

• 1 tbsp baking powder

• 1 large egg

• 1 bottle (1 fl oz) almond extract

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/2 tsp fine sea salt

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 cup Swedish pearl sugar

1. Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat the butter, sugar and baking powder on medium speed for about 3 minutes, scraping the bowl as needed. Add the egg and beat until fully combined, scraping the bowl as needed. Add the almond extract, vanilla extract, salt and then the flour to the bowl.

2. Give the dough a couple of turns with a sturdy flexible spatula, then turn the mixer back on low and mix just until the flour disappears into the dough. Turn the dough out onto the counter and divide it in half. Gather each piece into a ball and shape into a disk.

3. Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll the dough ¼-inch thick between pieces of parchment paper. Slide the parchment-sandwiched dough onto a baking sheet—you can stack the slabs—and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

4. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350°. Butter or spray a regular muffin tin. Remove one sheet of the dough from the fridge and peel away both pieces of paper and put the dough back on one piece of paper. Cut the dough using a 2-inch cookie cutter and dip the cookies into Swedish pearl sugar.

5. Lightly drop the cutout cookies into the muffin tin. Don’t worry if they don't fit in the muffin tins completely now. They will once they bake. Save the scraps from both pieces of dough, then gather them together, re-roll and chill.

6. Bake the cookies, rotating the tins after 10 minutes, until the cookies feel firm to the touch and are golden brown around the edges.

7. Transfer the muffin tin to a rack and let the cookies rest for about 10 minutes before carefully lifting them out onto the rack to cool to room temperature.

8. Repeat with remaining dough.