Due to poor planning on my part, todays Sunday Sweets necessitated something fairly easy to pull together. Not that easy to pull together is ever a bad thing! Now I could have gone to my standby chocolate chip cookie recipe or one of the family recipes I have made a thousand times, but as usual I was itching for something a bit different. Enter The Great Scandinavian Baking Book. Like most of my cookbooks, this is one I’ve been intending to bake from but have only managed to make 2 recipes out of it so far. One of those recipes are these cinnamon cookies. They are a delightful pillow of crackled cinnamon that taste unique but still have that oddly familiar taste to them.

Despite needing to firm up in the fridge for 30 minutes, these guys come together pretty fast. They start out by following the familiar pattern of creaming sugar and butter together.

Beat in the egg and a little vanilla to get a nice creamy mixture. Then the flour mixture gets mixed in.

And there you have it. Your base dough. Now this is the point where you stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes. No biggie. Prep the walnut-cinnamon-sugar for rolling, pre-heat your oven, and clean the dishes you just dirtied.

Give them a roll and line them up.

10 minutes later you have a perfectly shaped, cinnamon crackled cookie.

Swedish Walnut Cinnamon Cookies

Recipe adapted from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book

• 1/3 cup butter, at room temp
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup walnuts, finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons sugar

In a medium size bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the egg and vanilla and beat till light and fluffy. You can do this by hand, no need for an electric mixer.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Then add the sifted mixture to the cream mixture and mix well.

Set the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes so it can firm up.

Meanwhile, pre-heat oven 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Then mix together the finely chopped walnuts, cinnamon, and sugar in a small bowl.

Form the dough into small balls, about 2 teaspoons worth of dough. Then roll the dough balls in the walnut/cinnamon/sugar mixture and place prepared baking pans. Bake for 10 minutes. Do not over bake, you want these to be soft and pillowy. Cool on a wire rack.

Makes 2 dozen cookies

Do you know Joy? Joy the baker? I <3 Joy. She is one of the first food bloggers I started following back when I discovered food blogs in 2009. Over the years I’ve gotten to “know” Joy through her posts and her food. I made my first vegan pumpkin bread with Joys help. She introduced me to the company Minted that Will and I have used for our Christmas cards 3 years in a row now. There have been cupcakes (with this frosting) , pancakes, as well as quinoa cakes. And my personal favorite, OMGWTFBBQ!

I was excited when Joy’s cookbook released. Joy has an amazing skill for harmonizing butter and sugar so I knew it truly would be a celebration of butter and sugar. But sadly, her book has been sitting on the shelf. See I have this struggle… I love all things sugar, butter, and flour. But I also know that I can’t eat that stuff as my cravings would like. What is a girl to do?

Feed the church! See we have coffee and sweets at church before and after the Sunday morning service. It’s a volunteer thing and they have been needing volunteers. Now I’m not quite sure why I didn’t think about this before. If I volunteer to bring something each week, it is guaranteed way to let me bake/explore, have a taste, photograph, and then get it out of the house. All while being able to bless others with a sweet treat. Win win.

With today being Mother’s day I wanted to make something simple and traditional. Something that on it’s own perfectly pairs with a cup of tea or coffee. Not a recipe that has 4 odd ingredients all of which are in the 10 word title of the recipe. Cream cheese pound cake.

Cream cheese, butter and sugar get whipped together.

Vanilla for a little distinction. I <3 Penzys Spices.

The dry ingredients bring it all together.

Ready to bake. Even though I used the right size pan, I feel like I had just a little too much batter in the pan. I think next time I may pull a little out so it doesn’t go over the sides.

Perfectly golden.

The cream cheese totally steps up to the plate and creates an incredibly moist pound cake. I enjoyed mine plain with a cup of Earl Grey. Though I would love to pour some berries over top and maybe even dollop some whipped cream on top.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Recipe adapted from: Joy the Baker Cookbook

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 8oz package cream cheese, at room temp
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp
• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 4 eggs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and flour a 9 x 5 loaf pan.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium size bowl.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese with an electric mixer till soft and semi-fluffy. Add the butter and sugar and beat till light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Then stir in the vanilla.

Add 1 egg and beat till completely completely mixed in. A good minute or so. Repeat process with each additional egg. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Add half of the flour mixture and mix in by hand. Once thoroughly combined, add in the remaining flour mixture and mix well.

Pour in to prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. Once the time goes off, rotate the pan and cook for an additional 30 minutes. Cake is done when a wooden skewer/tooth pick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. If it doesn’t come out clean, return the cake to the oven and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Repeat to check for doneness.

Remove cake from oven and let cool in pan for 20 minutes. Then remove from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 1 hefty loaf