Klejner is a Danish traditional Christmas cookie that you deep fry in palm or coconut oil.
It is a fairly easy recipe with a twist, literally 🙂
You roll out the dough, cut the diamond shapes and a hole in the middle, then you twist it as we will show you in the video, and then deep fry it. It might take a few tries to get the right shape, but we are sure you’ll pick it up quickly.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients:
500 g (4 cups) flour
250 g (1 cup) butter, cold
3 eggs
75 g (1/3 cup) sugar
1 dl (1/2 cup) milk
50 g fresh yeast or 1 tablespoon dry yeast
1.5 kg (7 cups) coconut or palm oil for frying
Directions:
Shred the cold butter into the flour and mix together with your hands.
Heat up the milk till lukewarm temperature and add the yeast and a pinch of the sugar. Let it sit for 10 minutes to start bubbling (mostly necessary with the dry yeast).
Pour the milk and yeast into the flour and butter mixture and add eggs and the rest of the sugar.
Mix everything together till a uniform dough. If using a mixing machine this will only take a few minutes.
Knead the dough on the table with some flour and roll out till 1/2 cm thick.
If you have the special “klejne” tool to cut out the dough, use it. If not, use a regular sharp knife.
Cut out the dough in diamond shapes, roughly 10-15 cm long and 4-6 cm wide. Also cut a hole in the middle so you can twist it.
Once all the dough is cut, start twisting the klejner into their characteristic shape.
Any left over dough, you can knead again and re-roll until you have used it all up.
Leave the kljener to rise for about 30 minutes while you heat up the oil.
When the oil is about 160-180C (320-355F) start frying the klejner. Do 3-5 at a time and flip them so they cook on both sides. Cook for a few minutes each side till golden brown and then remove from pot onto a plate with kitchen roll to soak up the excess oil.
Continue till all the klejner are done and serve right away with powder sugar sprinkled on top.
You can also freeze them and once ready to eat, simply heat up in the oven and sprinkle powder sugar on top.
-Enjoy!
wow, this is so pretty. Where did you get the cookie cutter to get the zic-zac shape? this is so awesome. The recipe is almost similar to Mexican Churro, it’s funny how different countries have their own version of donut.
I’ll have to get some lemonade to wash this much butter and oil down, but love it. LOL:)
Cheers!
These will be quite dense if they are anything like my Danish grandfathers recipe! Which we all loved! Like a dense cake donut!