Saturday, December 22, 2012

Virtual Advent: Uff da! Norwegian Fattigmands!




Kailana from The Written World and Marg from Adventures of an Intrepid Reader are very pleased to be hosting the Virtual Advent Tour for the 7th year, inviting book bloggers to participate by sharing a tradition or treat with their readers. 

Here's a long Christmas tradition in our family:  Fattigmands.

That's right. Fattigmands.

What, you might ask, are fattigmands?

Fattigmands (pronounced FAH-tee-mans) are Norwegian Christmas cookies. They are made by combining flour and cream and egg yolk with whiskey. Fattigmands are rolled out paper thin, cut into diamonds, rolled into a little curl, and flipped into oil and fried very quickly. Then they are rolled in confectioner's sugar. Yum!

For many years, my husband and his two cousins hosted an annual Fattigmand Festival at our homes. (Thank goodness, this was long before Facebook and Instagram or you would be able to zip right over to see some pretty silly photos of my husband and his relatives at the many festivals we held!) We thought we were quite clever, Photoshopping (before there was a Photoshop) faces of our friends and relatives on top of celebrity photos and sharing these in a slide show (back when we used real slides) each year at the festival. We held talent contests, one of which my husband served as lead singer for a girl group. And we had fattigmands. Quite the event in my little town.

So, now that you are suitably intrigued, here's Grandma Rooth's recipe for fattigmands:



Simple, really. Just four ingredients.



Well, four ingredients and 
one secret ingredient Grandma Rooth never wrote down.


Mix everything together.


Roll out the dough very thin.
Use the special fattigmand maker cutting tool.


The tool makes rows of diamond shaped fattigmands.


Pull one end of the diamond through the cut in the center.


Fry quickly in hot oil.


And...Voilà!  Uff da!  Fattigmands!


What Christmas traditions do you celebrate?

I hope you will stop by the others on the tour today:




16 comments:

  1. Your fattigmands sounds so good! Thanks for sharing them!

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  2. I remember having fattigmand when I was a kid! My grandma also made lefse (of course!), krumkaker, and rosettes. Someday I'm going to try making pepperkaker -- have you ever made that? Thanks for posting this -- brings back great memories! :)

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  3. Ooh, those look yummy! We always had rosettes and peppakarkar.

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  4. yummy! they sound so good, and the party sounds even better. What a fun tradition. Thanks for stopping by--and Merry Christmas.

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  5. I've never heard of these before! I think I'll give them a try.

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  6. Wow! Those are gorgeous. I've never heard of them before. Your festival sounds like such fun!

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  7. I've never heard of these either. But OMG they look good. I love that special tool.

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  8. those look awesome! we bake a big spread of cookies. right now as i type this my husband is rolling out dough for one of our favorite cookies, cranberry orange pinwheels, which is a delicious cookie that celebrates his family's love of the island of Nantucket with its wonderful fresh cranberries. :)

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  9. well, there is my Christmas cake...

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  10. Wow, whiskey in cookies, my family would like those!

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  11. Your Fattigmand Festival sounds like so much fun- Happy Holidays to you.

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  12. oh boy, do these cookies soun delicious. To me, they look a little like some chinese food appetizers! The Fattigmand Festival (thank you for providing the pronunciation, too!) sounds like great fun and a terrific way to celebrate the holidays.

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  13. Fried cookies sound so yummy & indulgent. My husband's grandmother always used to buy deep fried snowflakes from the local craft bazaars and bake sales. They are usually called rosettes, but she always had a different name for them that sounded like eye-zen-kig-lee. Sorry, I have no idea how to spell the word, just Googled what I thought was the spelling and wasn't even close. :)

    Happy Holidays to you and your family!

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  14. I've never read of these but they sound delicious. Happy Holidays!

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  15. What a fun tradition. This year all traditions were null and void. I have no idea if we made new ones this year or not... I think we are in limbo.

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  16. Vs. I. GREW. UP HAVING THEM AND MY. FAVORITE THE. RECIPE IN HAD HAD 3EGG. Yolks1 whole egg and 1c flour 1tsp. Vanilla 1and tblspn of rum. And they were. Good. Never lasted I.n our household

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