Hallongrottor

Red jam peeks out from the center of a pale golden, round cookie. Swedish hallongrottor are cookies made by pressing a hollow into butter dough, filling it with raspberry jam and baking the two together. In a single bite, you taste the crumbly rim of dough and the slightly sticky fruit. The name, “raspberry caves,” refers to the jam-filled hollow made in the center.

Filling a Hollow in the Dough With Jam Before Baking

The dough is rolled into balls, and the center of each is pressed with a thumb or similar to make a hollow. This creates a shape with a low wall around it. Some methods bake the cookies in paper cups. This way, room for the jam remains in the center even when the dough rises. The structure differs from that of sandwich cookies, in which jam is sandwiched in after baking.

In Arla’s method, the dough is shaped into a log about 2 centimeters in diameter and cut into pieces of equal thickness. These are placed in paper cups, and then the centers are pressed in. Whether the dough is rolled into balls one at a time or shaped into a log and cut into even pieces, the final step of making a hollow for the jam is the same.

The filling is not a runny sauce but a thick raspberry jam. During baking, its surface bubbles and turns glossy, and the rim of dough becomes pale golden. As the cookies cool, both the jam and the dough settle. Because the fruit is gathered in one spot rather than scattered throughout, the flavor and softness shift from the vanilla-scented rim to the sweet-tart core.

Hallongrottor baking in paper cups, with jam in the center. Photo: Maxelson, 2023-03-15, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Original size, no additional processing.

Two Ways to Bring Together an Eggless Dough

The basic ingredients are wheat flour, butter, sugar, vanilla sugar and a small amount of baking powder. No egg is used; instead, a mördeg is made by working the fat into the flour. Rather than kneading for a long time, the dough is gathered as soon as the ingredients are evenly combined, which gives a texture that breaks apart finely after baking.

In Arla’s recipe (ingredient proportions and method), room-temperature butter and sugar are creamed before the flour is added. ICA first mixes the flour and sugar, then adds finely cut fat and quickly brings the dough together. A recipe introduced by ICA that uses six ingredients and no eggs likewise produces not a sponge with large air bubbles but a soft cookie dough that holds its shape.

Pastry chef Mia Öhrn replaces part of the wheat flour with potato starch. Her method is to add butter straight from the refrigerator to the dry ingredients, shape the dough into a log, divide it, and then roll the pieces into balls. Even when the cookies look the same, the fineness of the texture and the mouthfeel change depending on the temperature of the fat, the order of mixing and the starch used.

An assortment that Dean & DeLuca in Japan makes with confectionery researcher Rika Fukuda includes a dough with almond flour added. Besides a plain dough paired with raspberry or apricot, there is also a combination in which blueberry jam is baked into a cocoa dough. Choosing the colors and aromas of the fruit and dough creates different flavors even within the same hollowed cookie.

The Meaning of the Name, and Differences From Thumbprints and Jam Drops

The singular is hallongrotta and the plural is hallongrottor. Hallon means raspberry, and grotta means cave. The English name “thumbprint” means the mark of a thumb, and “jam drops” is a name that suggests small drops; similar shapes are likened to different things, such as a hollow, a fingerprint or a drop of jam.

The cookies called jam drops in Australia also vary in their proportions. Cook Donna Hay’s version with peanuts uses egg, brown sugar, peanut butter and chopped peanuts; the cookies are set out on a baking tray without paper cups, and more jam is added after baking as well. Enjoyed for its rich aroma and pieces of nut, this cookie differs in formula from the eggless Swedish dough.

A Tradition That Traces Its Start to a Bakery in Söderhamn

In the origin story told by the Swedish baking supply shop Lyckas med mat, the setting is the 1960s, at Kalles Hembageri, which was located on Åsgatan in Söderhamn. The food company Bjäre held a competition for bakeries on the condition that its raspberry jam be used, and the cookie and its name are said to have come from that competition.

Enjoying Them at Fika and Kafferep

Their small size, which lets people take one at a time, suits fika around coffee and the tables of a kafferep to which guests are invited. Mia Öhrn also shares a recipe for them as a staple of such occasions, and they are loved as a sweet from which people can choose as many as they want without cutting a large cake.

In Sweden, the custom of setting out several kinds of small cookies for guests also gave rise to a home baking book titled “Seven Kinds of Cookies.” It has gone through many editions since its first edition in 1945. Hallongrottor also appear in recent editions edited by Öhrn.

Glossary