Mini Vinarterta

Growing up in Manitoba it pretty hard not to know about the Icelandic celebration cake, Vinarterta. My mom used to make it at Christmas time with her friend Carol Bowman. It seemed quite daunting to me as a child, making all the thin layers of cake, filling them and then wrapping the cakes to be eaten later. For Christmas of 2024 I thought... why not try making tiny Vinarterta cookies using a similar process to my Imperials? So, I used the same dough and icing as I use for the Imperial Cookies (see recipe on blog) but made two adjustments - I triple stacked them and made a prune filling rather than raspberry jam. And voila - the result was great.

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INGREDIENTS

Vinarterta Filling

  • 1 c water
  • 500 g pitted prunes
  • 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice (fresh)
  • 1/2 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 c white sugar
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Icing

SAUCE

toppings

dressing

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Bring the water and prunes to a boil and cook them over medium heat until the prunes are very soft (about 30 mins).
  2. Once soft you can mash them using a potato masher or pulse them a few times in the food processor. You want to have a fine paste.
  3. Stir in the remaining ingredients and allow to cool before using to stuff cookies.
  4. Bake the cookies and make the icing as per the Imperial Cookie recipe on the blog.
  5. Using three cookies place about 1 tsp of filling on two of the cookies and ice the third cookie then stack them.
  6. Take the bottom layer, place the middle layer on it and then turn the cookies to bring them together. do the same with the top iced layer.

TIPS & HINTS

When you build these, the sugar cookies will be crisp and easy to work with. The prune filling softens the cookies so you want to build them a day ahead of serving. YOu can also build them and freeze them. I freeze them whole and cut them in half just before serving. They thaw very quickly!

Serve these cookies cut in half so you see the "vinarterta".