Rhubarb cookies were not on my list when I went to the rabarberfest in Vadstena last June. I went for pie. For crumble. For one of those Swedish kringle things with rhubarb pressed into the dough. The crowd was thick by mid-afternoon, kids with stained mouths, a brass band playing too close to the food stalls, an old man arguing about strawberry varieties with a woman in a red apron.
The cookies came after closing.
Eva ran a little restaurant called Annas Kök off the main square, two tables outside, six inside, one of those places you walk past three times before you notice the menu chalked on the door. She had been pouring small glasses of rabarbersaft to festival-goers all afternoon and had given up on me ordering anything. Then around six, when the bunting started coming down and somebody finally turned off the Ulf Lundell track that had been looping for two hours, she waved me inside and said, in the flattest American English I had heard all week, ‘Come on. I will show you the only thing I miss about Minneapolis.’
Eva’s Kitchen, After the Rabarberfest Closed
She had lived in Minnesota for twenty-three years. Married, divorced, moved back to Sweden in her forties to be near her mother. Her restaurant was Swedish from the menu out, gravlax and köttbullar and the obligatory sill platter, but the recipe box on top of her fridge was American. Cream of mushroom soup casseroles. Bars. Church-cookbook handwriting. And the soft, pale cookies she pulled out of her oven that night, frosted thick with cream cheese, were her old neighbour Marlys’s recipe out of St. Louis Park.
The first one I ate, I ate standing up by the prep counter. The second one I sat down for.
I had assumed rhubarb cookies were old. Like an Old World thing the Scandinavians brought over. Eva laughed at me. She told me rhubarb in Europe goes into pies and crumbles and compotes, full stop, and that the cookie version is something her great-grandmother’s generation invented after they emigrated, when they had too much rhubarb in the backyard and not enough patience for pastry. That checks out with the actual history. The cookie form does not appear in 19th century cookbooks. It is a 20th century North American home invention, born in Upper Midwest farm kitchens and Scandinavian-American church basements where rhubarb came up first thing in May and somebody had to do something with it before it bolted.
How a Swedish-Minneapolis Cookie Got to My California Kitchen
I came home with Eva’s recipe written on the back of a paper placemat. Cream cheese stain in the corner. Quantities in tablespoons and ‘a normal egg, not a big one.’
The first batch I made in my own kitchen was bad. I want to admit that. I used the rhubarb from the farmers’ market at Hollywood and Ivar, the pink stalks the man with the cap sets aside for me, and I did not flour them first. The cookies came out wet in the middle and the frosting slid off the warm tops in defeat. Eva had told me to flour the rhubarb. Eva had told me to let them cool completely. I had ignored both because I was hungry.
The second batch was better. Now I make them every May, right around the time the man at Hollywood and Ivar starts pulling the brightest stalks for me.
What I Used
- fresh rhubarb, 1.5 cups, diced very small, about a quarter inch
- all-purpose flour, with one tablespoon held back to coat the rhubarb
- light brown sugar, packed, the whole soul of these cookies
- unsalted butter, properly softened, not microwaved into a puddle
- one egg, room temperature
- vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, fine salt
- a half teaspoon of cinnamon, which Eva insisted on and I have not tried them without
- cream cheese and a little more butter for the frosting
- sifted powdered sugar
- a pinch of salt in the frosting too, because frosting without it tastes like a sweater
The Changes My Kitchen Asked For
Rhubarb in Sweden in June was thick and properly red, the kind you can almost slice raw and eat. The rhubarb I get in California is leaner, mostly pink with green shoulders, and it weeps more. So I dice it smaller than Eva did, closer to a quarter inch, and I toss it with a tablespoon of flour before it ever sees the dough. That single change saved my second batch.
I also pulled the cinnamon back. Eva had used closer to a teaspoon. I find it fights the rhubarb a little when the rhubarb isn’t quite as bold, so half a teaspoon now. You can leave it out completely if cinnamon makes you twitchy. I would not.
The bigger fight is the cream cheese. The block kind, not the whipped tub. Whipped tub frosting goes thin and sad in our heat and slides off the cookies inside a single afternoon, which I learned the hard way at a friend’s birthday picnic in Griffith Park. Once. Never again.
Notes on Baking the Rhubarb Cookies
These cookies are not crisp. They are not supposed to be. Authentic Upper Midwest rhubarb cookies are soft, cakey, almost a tiny snack cake under the frosting, and if yours come out snappy you have either overbaked them or skipped the brown sugar for white. Brown sugar is the butterscotch backbone here. Do not swap it.
Pull them out when the edges are just set and the centers still look a little soft. They keep cooking on the sheet. The first time I made them I waited for the centers to look done in the oven and they came out closer to scones. That was the bitter morning I learned to trust the timer over my eyes.
Also. Wait until they are completely cool before you frost. I know you do not want to. Do it anyway.
Eating Them in Spring
Eva served hers with strong black coffee, no sugar. That is the Scandinavian-American coffee-hour way, which I respect but rarely follow. I usually eat one over the sink with cold milk at around three in the afternoon, the sun coming in through my kitchen window at exactly the angle that says it is finally not winter anymore in California (which here means February through May, roughly).
The festival is not part of the version I make at home. There is no Ulf Lundell on a loop, no bunting, no Eva. But the cookies remember. Every time I make a batch I put one aside on a small plate, which is sentimental and a little dumb, and I eat it standing up by the counter the way I did the first time. The trip changed me a little. The cookies are how I keep it.
Rhubarb Cookies
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Heat the oven to 350 F and line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Trim the rhubarb stalks, discard the leaves, and dice the stalks into 1/4-inch pieces. Measure out 1.5 cups, place in a small bowl, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of the flour, and toss to coat. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining 2.25 cups flour minus that 1 tablespoon, the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon until evenly combined.
- In a large bowl, beat the 3/4 cup softened butter with the brown sugar on medium-high speed for 2 to 3 minutes, until pale and fluffy, scraping the bowl once.
- Add the egg and 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract and beat on medium until smooth and glossy, about 30 seconds.
- Reduce the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients in two additions, mixing just until no streaks of flour remain. Do not overmix.
- Switch to a rubber spatula and gently fold in the floured diced rhubarb until evenly distributed through the dough.
- Scoop heaping 1.5-tablespoon mounds of dough onto the prepared sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Do not flatten them.
- Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack for 11 to 14 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly golden but the centers still look soft. They will firm up as they cool.
- Let the cookies rest on the sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack and cool completely before frosting, at least 30 minutes.
- While the cookies cool, make the frosting. Beat the 4 oz cream cheese and 3 tablespoons softened butter on medium-high speed until completely smooth, about 2 minutes.
- Add the sifted powdered sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and pinch of salt. Beat on low until incorporated, then on medium-high for 1 minute, until thick, fluffy, and spreadable.
- Using a small offset spatula, swirl about 1 heaping teaspoon of frosting onto the top of each fully cooled cookie. Let the frosting set for 15 minutes before stacking or serving.