Yggenyk Cookies

When I was a child one of the stories I really enjoyed was the story about the yggenyks (which are three-legged birds) stealing the round tower in Copenhagen. The yggenyks then demanded a ransom of yggenyk cookies for returning the popular tower. The book even had the recipe for authentic yggenyk cookies - complete with a warning not to leave the window open when baking them since yggenyk might get attracted by the lovely scent. I, of course, loved these cookies as a child too.

Earlier this year, I felt like making yggenyk cookies myself and googled the subject. This is when things got complicated. Spellings varied 'yggenyk', 'yggenyg', 'ykkenyk' and I suddenly had three fairly different recipes all claiming to be the recipe for authentic yggenyk cookies. The three recipes were quite similar except for a few key issues: one didn't include eggs (seemed at the very least unusual), another didn't include any obvious leavening agent, while the last one called for both eggs and hartshorn.^[1]

It seemed the confusion stemmed at least partly from the fact that the author had in fact given two different recipes for authentic yggenyk cookies - one in the book I remembered, and another one in the book in which the yggenyks steal the queen's palace in Copenhagen demanding a cookie ransom (yes, a fairly similar plot).

After discussing the matter with my external consultant^[2] I opted for the recipe including both eggs and hartshorn... and was somewhat disappointed with the resulting cookies. They were not as hard as I remembered them, and in hindsight I guess I used too much hartshorn (the recipe calls for 'a pinch'^[3]). Some time went by and I tried again - the result was better, but still not quite to my satisfaction. On the third attempt I was finally learning to use sufficiently little hartshorn for the cookies not to rise too much.

Ingredients:
- 250 g (9 oz) granulated sugar
- 250 g (9 oz) margarine, chunks
- 100 g (3.5 oz) dark chocolate chopped
- 3 eggs
- pinch of salt
- pinch of hartshorn
- 500 g (18 oz) flour
optional coating:
- 130 g (4.5 oz) milk chocolate

The margarine was cut in chunks and worked into the sugar using a ladle.^[4] The eggs were stirred in one by one, and then the chopped dark chocolate. Salt and hartshorn were added and lastly the flour was stirred in in three portions.

The dough was rolled into 50 balls which were placed on two baking sheets and baked sequentially on the top rack at 200 C (400 F) for 16 minutes each. Once out of the oven the cookies were transferred to a rack to cool.

The cooled cookies were flipped upside down and the bottoms were coated with melted milk chocolate (melted with three 20 second pulses in the microwave oven). The milk chocolate was allowed to harden before storing in cookie tins.


The resulting cookies were much like I remembered them (if still less hard), although the grown-up me has to concede it's basically just a chocolate chip cookie. I'm not sure I'd bother with the milk chocolate bottom coating next time - it didn't add that much to the overall result.

^[1] Hartshorn = Ammonium bicarbonate (aka 'powdered baking ammonia').
^[2] i.e. my mom.
^[3] In Danish 'a pinch' is 'en knivspids' - i.e. "as much as lies on the tip of a knife".
^[4] This part is clearly easier if the margarine is allowed to warm to room temperature first.