Four ingredients, one bowl, and about twenty minutes from a cold kitchen to a cooling rack. Swedish wafers are what gets baked when the Christmas tins need filling and there is no time left for anything that has to chill overnight — thin, crisp at the edge, and gone almost as fast.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
Method
- Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and grease the cookie sheets.
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Separate the egg, setting the white aside. Beat the yolk into the mixture.
- Mix in the flour.
- Beat the egg white until it stands in peaks, then cut it into the dough.
- Drop by teaspoonfuls, 3 inches apart, onto the sheets.
- Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until the edges are golden.
Why the egg gets separated
It would be quicker to beat the whole egg in and be done. The white goes in separately, whipped and folded, because that is what makes these wafers rather than biscuits — the air lifts them as they spread, and they come out thin and crisp instead of thick and soft. It is the one step worth not skipping.
Give them room
Three inches apart is not cautious advice. The dough spreads a long way, and teaspoonfuls placed any closer will run into each other and come off the sheet as one piece.