Contributor post by Megha of byTheArtBug
Let’s make Saint Lucie Cats with Kristin Frøyland Jørgensen from Vamperstein
1. What is your recipe?
Saint Lucie Cats
150 grams butter (melted)
5 deciliters milk (luke warm)
50 grams fresh yeast (or one single pack of dry yeast)
½ teaspoon turmeric
150 grams sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 tea spoons ground cardamom
13 deciliter all purpose flour
1 beaten egg for brushing
Raisins for decorations (optional)
Mix the butter, yeast and the milk in a bowl. Add sugar, salt, cardamom, turmeric and flour until a bit firm. Let the dough rest until double size (somewhere between half an hour and an hour).
Set the oven temperature on 250 degrees Celcius.
Split the dough into about 30 small pieces and make them into finger thick sausages. Then you shape them into figures like shown here:
Let them rest for 15 minutes and brush the egg on top and decorate with raisins. They should be in the middle of the oven for about 5-8 minutes until golden.
2. What is it about this recipe that you love?
For me, these “cats” is basically Christmas. There is something about the scent and the taste of them.
3. How did you learn to make this cookie?
My grandmother has made them as long as I can remember and it is from her I learnt to make them.
4. Please share a story or memory to go along with the cookie.
It’s also often a tradition to make them around the day of Saint Lucie, December 13th. In some places, there is also a “Saint Lucie procession” with the person in front symbolizing St Lucie herself and the whole procession sing “St. Lucia”. I remember that when I was in kindergarten, we did those processions each year at the primary school next door and a lot of the girls wanted to be Lucia (as we call her in Norway). Just in case anyone is curious about the song and the St. Lucia tradition, here is a Youtube clip from Sweden.
5. What are your social media sites?
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Vampersteins-Shop/106327117163
Instagram: http://instagram.com/gothicvamperstein