Bessastaðakökur

Bessastaðir cookies

These cookies have been baked in the family of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (born 1930) for as long as Vigdís can remember. When she moved to the Icelandic presidential residence of Bessastaðir on the Álftanes peninsula as president (the first democratically elected female head of state in the world!), she brought the cookie recipe with her and during her term in office (1980 - 1996) these cookies were regularly served with coffee to all visitors offered, always served in a silver bowl.

The cookies have a very special relationship with the Bessastaðir farm:

The recipe for the cookies is said to go back to Jakobína Jónsdóttir . Jakobína was the wife of Grímur Þorgrímsson Thomsen and lived with her husband in the manor on Álftanes.

Grímur Thomsen was born on Bessastaðir in 1820. At that time, the Reykjavík secondary school was located in the buildings (until 1846) and Grímur's father was a school superintendent here. Grímur studied in Copenhagen and worked for several years in the Danish Foreign Service before he moved back to Iceland and in 1867 he acquired the now empty Bessastaðir farm from the Danish king in exchange for his land in Borgarfjörður.

Three years later, at the age of 50, Grímur married 35-year-old Jakobína and the couple lived together on Bessastaðir.

Grímur died in 1896 in the same room in which he was born in 1820. Grímur Thomsen is considered one of the most important poets of Icelandic Romanticism; one of his most famous poems is the equestrian song "Á Sprengisandi", which has achieved the status of a folk song in the setting of Sigvaldi Kaldalóns in Iceland.

Unfortunately, it is not known whether the cookies were still served on Bessastaðir under Vigdís' successors Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson and Guðni Th. Jóhannesson. In any case, when we were at Guðni's on the open day in August 2022, there were no cookies around.

Ingredients

250 g butter

250 g wheat flour

250 g powdered sugar

1 egg yolk

coarse sugar

coarsely chopped almonds

Preparation

Clarify the butter, i.e. first let the butter slowly melt in a pot, let the liquid butter solidify again in the refrigerator and pour off the white liquid whey that has formed at the bottom.

In a large bowl, mix the wheat flour with the powdered sugar.

Add the clarified butter and knead everything thoroughly into a smooth dough.

Divide the dough into several parts and roll each into “sausages”. Then let the dough sausages solidify in the refrigerator for 1 - 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) upper/lower heat.

Cut the dough rolls into thin slices and place them on two baking sheets lined with baking paper.

Whisk the egg yolks in a glass and brush the top of the cookies with a little bit of the egg yolk.

Place a few chopped almonds and some coarse sugar in the middle of each cookie...

... and then bake the cookies in a preheated oven at 350 °F (180 °C) upper and lower heat for approx. 8 - 10 minutes. Attention - the cookies should not take on too much color, but should remain as light as possible!

Then let the cookies cool thoroughly and carefully remove them from the baking paper.

Bon appetit!

[Translated from here.]