Kringla is a recipe that has been passed down through my family for years. Every Christmas season we bake them; in other words, they are a family tradition. But where did they come from?

Well, apparently they were brought over to Europe by the Roman Catholic monks. But their recipes branched out, and now there are many different variations. In America they are pastries filled with fruits and nuts (and called Kringle), in Germany and Denmark they are commonly known as pretzels, but the pastry that MY family is most acquainted with came from Sweden, which is a cookie form of a Christmas treat. Want to know how to make them? Read on!

What you’ll need:

1½ cup of sugar
½ cup of butter (or one stick)
1 egg
1c  butter milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 ½ cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

The method, part one:

Microwave your butter for 10 seconds or so, to get soft. Alternatively, leave it out on the counter for a few hours. Then you want to put them in your mixing bowl after taking them out of the wrapper (if you have any on the butter).  Crack the egg into a separate bowl. Then if no shells are present in the bowl, pour the egg into the same mixing bowl as the butter. Then add the sugar and the vanilla. Cream these together until there are no remaining chunks.

In a separate bowl combine the flour, powder, soda, and salt. After this, change your mixing tool to your dough hook, and then add the flour a little bit at a time, and alternately adding your buttermilk, to keep the dough from getting too thick.
Note: Dough will be thick after all this!

Make sure you scrape the bottom and sides occasionally. After this is done, the dough needs to chill. Cover it and put it in your freezer for two hours (depending on how cold your freezer is). Or if you don’t have a freezer, you can cover it and put it in your fridge till it’s chilled.

The method part two:

Preheat oven to 375 ̊f

After dough is chilled, take it out of your freezer and lightly dust the area that you will be working on with flour. Then after dusting your hands slightly with flour

Take a piece of dough out about so big (see photo, above). Then you roll it out as if you were making a play-dough snake:

Now after getting your cookie sheet ready, make a pretzel on it. Here is how in the pictures below.

Make many as your sheet will allow (be sure you dust the area lightly with flour after each pretzel).

Put them in the oven. Bake for about 5-8 minutes, or until tops are golden brown.

Note: They taste awesome with butter!

Katie Wellman is a member of the Youth Travel Blogging Mentorship Program

All photos courtesy and copyright Katie Wellman