Miney’s Danish Butter Almond Cookies

Prior to meeting my wife, Allison, the extent of my familiarity with Danish butter cookies was those hard-ish cookies that come in the round blue tin.

You know that tin. It’s the one at Grandma and Grandpa’s house that, to the disappointment of many grandchildren, often contains sewing supplies rather than the Royal Dansk cookies in five different shapes — ring, pretzel, etc. — pictured temptingly on the lid.

But to Allison’s family, hearing “butter cookies” doesn’t invoke thoughts of blue tins — or needles and thread. Instead, they think of Miney’s homemade butter cookies.

Miney is Ellen (neé Christophersen) Bourquin, Allison’s 93-year-old Danish-American grandmother, who, the story goes, got the moniker “Miney” from her first grandchild when he was learning to talk.

Miney’s butter cookies, which only come out of the oven during Christmastime, are the stuff of legend. My mother-in-law, Leslie, recalls that when she first started dating Allison’s father, Jay, his friends would tell her to “just wait” until the holidays. Naturally, the cookies lived up to the hype.

Among the reasons Miney’s butter cookies stand above the rest is that they contain ground almonds and almond extract, adding a subtle nutty flavor. And they have that fresh-baked taste that imported cookies just can’t compete with.

What makes Miney’s butter cookies hard to duplicate is that she uses a Scandinavian meat grinder to shape the dough. (More on this later.)

At the peak of her cookie-making operation, Miney would make hundreds of butter cookies each December at her home in Huntington Station to share with family and friends, and to serve after dinner, along with nutmeg logs, gingerbread cookies, pecan snowballs, fruitcake, peanut butter kisses, and Christmas bread with citron.

“Danish people used to put cakes and cookies out when people came to visit them during the holidays,” she says.

The recipe goes back in her family further than anyone can remember, passed down from mothers to daughters and grandchildren.

“I used to make them together with my mother, and then Beth came along and we all did them together,” Miney recalls.

Beth is Miney’s daughter, Jay’s sister, and current keeper of Miney’s meat grinder. Jay has many of Miney’s cookie tins — which are colors other than blue and with various designs.

The recipe starts with a cup of almonds, but the skins need to be removed before grinding them up. “I buy them whole, with the skins on, blanch them, and burn my fingers as I pop them out of the skins,” Beth says.

If you want to be lazy about it (and, let’s face it, you do), you can start with a bag of almond slivers found in the baking aisle rather than whole almonds. The skins are already removed, and the slivers are easier to grind. Use 5 ounces of slivers to equal 1 cup of whole almonds.

To grind the almonds, there are a few options. Miney used her meat grinder for this, and, later, a potato ricer. Beth uses a blender for this and says it goes a lot faster. A food processor also fits the bill for this task.

The consistency to aim for is tiny crumbs. If the almonds become as finely ground as flour, it’s time to try again with new almonds.

The cookies can be made with either three sticks of unsalted butter or a stick and a half each of butter and margarine. “We ended up doing half butter and half margarine, because they didn’t hold together as well all butter,” Miney says.

Beth still prefers all butter.

Rounding out the recipe are sugar, flour — measure 4 cups unsifted flour, but then sift the flour just before adding to the mixer — eggs, and almond extract. And once the dough is made, it must be refrigerated for a few hours or overnight before moving on to the next step.

Here’s where the meat grinder comes in again.

Miney got her Swedish-made meat grinder from an aunt, who picked it up during a trip to Denmark. A flat metal plate with different style holes is attached to the meat grinder to shape the dough as it comes out.

Beth says the star-shaped hole is used to make round “wreath” cookies, and a shape that is flat on the bottom and spiked on the top, like a crown, is used to make straight “log” cookies.

It’s important that the dough is still cold from the refrigerator when it goes into the grinder. “You don’t want it too soft and then they won’t roll out right,” Miney says.

Miney’s meat grinder was held to the counter with a C-clamp jerry-rigged by her late engineer husband, John. Today, a meat grinder is a common accessory for a KitchenAid. A cookie press could possibly stand in for the meat grinder, but because the dough is hard, it would have to be a very well-made metal press — not plastic.

Shaping the dough is a two-person job, one to cut off chunks of dough and add it to the grinder, and one to catch the dough as it comes out in strips, which are then cut into individual cookies.

To make sure all of the dough gets out of the grinder and none of it is wasted, Beth says to stuff bread down the grinder to push the last of the dough through. “It’s a very labor-intensive process,” she adds.

Once the cookies are shaped and before the dough has the chance to warm up, the cookies should go right in the oven. If they sit out before being baked they will lose their shape and burn in the oven. But watch the oven closely no matter what, because the cookies are thin with ridges that can burn easily.

Miney has tried the blue tin cookies, and her assessment is that her own cookies are more buttery.

“Everybody loves them when they eat them,” she says.

“They’re very ‘more-ish,’” Beth says. “You eat one, and you want to eat more.”

Ingredients:

1 cup blanched whole almonds or 5 ounces almond slivers

3 sticks unsalted butter, or 1½ sticks butter and 1½ sticks margarine

1¾ cups granulated sugar

4 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted

2 Tbsp. almond extract

2 eggs

Steps:

Grind almonds in a blender or food processor until they are tiny crumbs. Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer. Add eggs, one at a time. Add almond extract. Add ground almonds. Sift the flour and add to mixer 1 cup at a time. Mix dough slowly until combined. Put dough in wax paper sprinkled with flour, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Add chunks of dough to meat grinder gradually and press though with cookie attachment set to desired shape. Cut the dough into 3-inch pieces. Put shaped dough, either straight pieces or rounded into tight circles, onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes at 375 degrees.