Milk & Cookies

My mom never smiles in pictures, except when flødebollers are involved.

My mom looooooves flødebollers. Her family lived in Denmark for 2 years when she was a kid, and apparently the Danes are crazy about flødebollers. Did you know that the average Dane eats 50 per year (according to Wikipedia)? Anyways, a couple years back my uncle Steve made homemade flødebollers from this recipe, making my mom crazy with sugary delight and setting high expectations for baked good at family gatherings for the next few decades.

So of course I wanted to try making them myself! Although, once I saw the recipe I started thinking maybe it would just be easier to fly to Denmark and buy flødebollers than to actually make them… Here’s a picture of my mom and my aunt doing just that.

Eat me.

The flødebollers consist of a cookie base with a mountain of meringue/marshmallow on top, covered in chocolate. Here’s the recipe. It makes 25 flødebollers.

For the base:

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 3 1/2 ounces butter
• 5 tablespoons sugar

Combine ingredients and roll out dough. Cut 2 1/2 ” circles from the dough and bake on parchment paper for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. I had a hard time getting them to roll out without sticking to everything… oh well.

My vintage avocado green mixer worked fabulously.

For the filling:

• 6 egg whites
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup sugar

Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form. I had never actually done this before but it turns out that these days anyone with an internet connection can be a good baker. I found very detailed instructions on how to most optimally whip egg whites here. I kept waiting for stiff peaks to form, but I never saw them. I was wondering what would cause stiff peaks to form randomly at the surface, seemingly defying the laws of physics… well it turns out you are supposed to take the beaters out of the egg whites and see if the egg whites “hanging” from the bottom of the beaters form stiff peaks even once they’re turned sideways. OOOOOOH, that makes so much more sense. Here are my beautiful egg whites in my vintage avocado green mixer (is there any other type of avocado green mixer?). They don’t actually look like stiff peaks exactly, but it seemed to work out well in the end.

Naked flødebollers

Chocolate coating:

• 12 oz. chocolate chips

Pipe the filling onto the bases, and bake for 5 minutes at 400 degrees. Meanwhile, start the chocolate melting on a double boiler. Once the chocolate is melted, remove it from the stove. Paint the baked flødebollers with a melted chocolate coating (dipping did not work very well for me). Here’s a helpful tip: even though it takes a little while to get the chocolate melted, once it’s melted it won’t solidify for a while, especially in a warm kitchen, so as soon as it’s melted you can take the chocolate off the heat. You’ll be getting melted chocolate all over your hands while you do this, so better to let it cool a little and not burn yourself.