Mämmi Cookies | Recipe

Happy Easter Friends! Today I’m serving you delicious, soft mämmi cookies. Never heard of mämmi before? Let’s have a glimpse on this secret ingredient and rye flour-based product.

Mämmi (pronounced mæmmi ) is an age-old aromatic dessert in Finland and the first written recipe dates back to 16th century. The dessert itself is usually eaten cold with cream, milk, vanilla custard or ice-cream.

But what’s more, mämmi is a great baking ingredient to bring flavor to cookies, bread, and whatnot, thanks to its tahini-like texture.

The traditional mämmi is slow-cooked rye flour and rye malt on low heat. It takes about 36 hours to build the sweet flavor profile, the tar-like dark appearance, consistency, and texture. Commercial mämmi became popular in the 1960s and as a result, making mämmi at home is quite rare among younger generations.

Nowadays most people buy a box of mämmi from the store and the commercial brands are also sweetened with molasses. If you’re interested in the process of how to make mämmi, check the end of the post for resources.

Before we start baking mämmi cookies, it must be said that there’s a huge difference in the amount of sugar between the traditional and commercial mämmi. Hence, be aware that the recipe below is baked with commercial mämmi and if you use home-made mämmi, scale up the amount of sugar in the cookie recipe.

Mämmi Cookies | Recipe

The recipe below yields 20 soft cookies for which you need 125g of commercial mämmi. The cookies can also be frozen for later enjoyment so why not bake a double batch.

Mämmi Cookies

Print recipe

Makes/Serves: 20 cookies Prep Time: 2h Cooking time: 12 min 12 min

Nutrition facts: 200 calories 20 grams fat

INGREDIENTS

• 80g wheat flour / APF
• 1/4 tsp baking
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 62g butter (room temperature)
• 45g sugar
• 35g brown sugar
• 30g egg / half of a big egg
• 125g mämmi
• 1/2 tsp powdered vanilla sugar
• extra flour for shaping

METHOD

1. Weight and mix all dry ingredients, set aside.
2. Mix butter and sugars with an electric mixer until fluffy and smooth (2 minutes). Add the egg into the batter little by little at high speed, alternating with a spoonful of flour mix. Finally, add mämmi into the batter. Set the mixer aside.
3. Add rest of the flour mix into the dough by folding with a spatula. Cover the bowl and set the cookie dough to set in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
4. Pre-heat oven 34F /175C ja prepare 2 baking trays with parchment paper.
5. You can roll the 20 cookies into a ball shape (1,5 spoonfuls) with floured hands. Alternatively, you can shape the dough into a log on a well-floured desk,  divide it into 20 equal bits and then shape the cookies into a ball shape. Set the cookie balls on the tray. don't press or flatten.
6. Bake the cookies at middle rack for 12 minutes. The cookies are soft in the middle but the edges should crips a little.
7. Let the cookies cool completely on the baking tray before transferring into an airtight box. The cookies are good for a week.

NOTES

*You can also freeze the cookies on a small tray for 2 hours and then collect them into a proper storage box or a ziploc bag. **If using home-made mämmi, scale up the amount of sugar in the recipe.

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Where to find mämmi?

In Finland, mämmi is available all year. While Easter mämmi is obviously highly advertised in the supermarkets, you can also find a box of mämmi in the freezer section off season. If you have a Nordic grocery store in you city, why not check and ask if they too have Finnish mämmi in the frozen selection.

How to make mämmi?

Back in the day when honey and sugar were luxuries available for the few. But people have always like sweet flavors and a popular way to built sweet flavors was to slow-cook starchy foods on low heat and over a long period of time. The enzymes will work their magic and starches turn into sugar.

This is the process behind traditional rye flour based mämmi. The aroma of naturally sweetened mämmi is different in comparison to sugar or molasses sweetened commercial mämmi. They both are delicious, but the latter contains more calories.

So how to make mämmi? You will need water, wholegrain rye flour, rye malt, salt and Seville orange zest powder. And patience. Making mämmi is easy but requires a slow weekend at home. Please have a look at this hands-on making of mämmi video (2 minutes) and check the tools used. I recommend youhit the Google translate on this old school mämmi recipe here and scale it down by half.

Happy Easter!

Love, Saara