Scandinavian Almond Bars Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sliced almonds
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup milk

Preparation

Step 1

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add egg and almond extract; mix until fluffy. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt; mix well.

3. Divide dough into 4 pieces, and roll each one into a log about 12 inches long. Place 2 logs per cookie sheet 4 to 5 inches apart. Flatten each roll by hand until it is about 3 inches wide. Brush flattened roll with milk and sprinkle with sliced almonds.

4. Bake in preheated oven 12 to 15 minutes or until edges are slightly browned. While the cookies are still warm, cut them crosswise at a diagonal, into slices about 1 inch wide. When cool, drizzle with almond icing.

ALMOND ICING:

In a small bowl, stir together powdered sugar, almond extract, and milk until smooth. Drizzle over the cookies.

..............................

REVIEWS:

Wonderful! These were not only amazing to eat, but they also smelled terrific. I doubled the almond extract (I LOVE the smell/taste of almonds...so if you're a big almond fan, I recommend this) and ended up adding an extra egg because my dough wasn't moist enough. This gave the cookies an even lighter consistancy and REALLY made them melt in your mouth. I will be making these again soon...thanks for the recipe!

This is a great recipe! I've been to two cookie parties in the past week and these cookies were a huge hit. I use the following ways to cut down on clean-up. I use parchment paper, a rolling pin, a pizza cutter and a 3x5 index card. Wrap a piece of parchment paper around the log. Roll flat with the rolling pin. A 3x5 index card makes a nice tool for measuring width. Sprinkle almonds onto dough, press down into dough with parchemnt paper. Bake on parchement paper and voila! no clean-up. TEN minutes after removing from oven, use pizza cutter to cut strips into diagonals. Use a good quality ziplock bag to ice cookies. Put icing in bag, press out air, close and cut a TEENY hole in one corner. Again, no clean-up!

These were so easy, and SO good. They were a hit at my brother's birthday party and disappeared pretty quickly. I used 3/4 cup of Trader Joe's Almond Meal in place of 3/4 cup the flour to give it more of an almond flavor. I also doubled the amount of almond extract in the cookies and in the icing. Mmmm almondy!

I found this recipe a while back in a cookbook and made it as part of my Christmas baking. Everybody always raved about it. This year I had moved and packed away my recipes so I couldn't make it. Fortunately, I found this recipe again and can make it for next year (if I still haven't unpacked my other recipes!). Thanks Marji for providing this great cookie recipe!

I make these cookies every year to give as part of my Christmas cookie tin gifts. Everyone loves them and asks for the recipe. They are one of my daugthers favorites as well and making them at Christmas has become a tradition for us. Thanks Marji for posting the recipe!

This is a great recipe. My only change was to up the almond extract by 1/4 tsp. in both the dough and the icing (because I really like a pronounced almond flavor), & since I didn't have slivered almonds, I used crushed toasted unblanched almonds.

You have brought a very happy memory to life and, if my Norwegian grandmother (who died 30 years ago today, not realizing her dream of making me a baker) were alive, she'd be doing handstands (at the ripe age of 115). I finally made some MARVELOUS cookies (so marvelous that I forgot to make the icing!)! The icing on the cake (no pun intended) is that they were a staple of our Norwegian family, and just the very first recipe that my grandmother tried to teach me. Thank you for the melt-in-your-mouth. almost marzipan, recipe. This will become a regular in our household (even without the nuts, which hubby can't eat -- I made half with and half without almonds). An added plus is that my Canadian-Irish hubby said that they were "sex in a cookie". I had to put them away so that there would be some left for tomorrow.

Delicious and simple. Perfect to go with tea or coffee.

Mmmm, these are SO good! Absurdly easy to make, and they are just delicious - chewy, light, not overly-sweet. I didn't even bother with the drizzle; they were fabulous without. I will definitely be adding this to (my very limited) Thanksgiving/Christmas cookie 'collection.' Thanks so much, Marji!

Excellent recipe. I added more almond extract as well (doubled). I also divided almonds, used half as written in recipe then made sugared almonds by mixing almonds and a tablespoon of sugar in pan on stove (medium high heat) until sugar melted, coating the almonds, then spread on wax paper to cool. after glazing cookies, I sprinkled the coated almolds on top of glaze.

What a great cookie! I didn't have any almond extract, so I used vanilla extract instead. I was worried that this would take away from the flavor and make it taste too much like a regular sugar cookie, but it really tasted great! Also, I didn't have slivered almonds, just whole ones, so I chopped up a good amount using my food chopper and sprinkled that on top instead. Worked like a charm! Even my hubby, who is a picky eater and doesn't particularly like almonds, kept asking for one after the other. Also, I didn't use nearly as much icing as the recipe called for. I drizzled a little on very lightly and had quite a bit left over. I didn't want the cookies to come out too sweet, so using just a bit of icing worked great. I probably used only half.