When the summer hits Denmark with our yearly heatwave, people go nuts for koldskål. Not just as a snack, but for dinner. You cannot get any ready-made koldskål in the stores. It doesn’t matter because the homemade kind is just so much better. This is my recipe for buttermilk koldskål with kammerjunkere.
It may seem odd to be eating this dish for dinner; when it’s so hot that you can barely move, you want something cold. I tell you, it’s the craze in Denmark. So why not just eat a cold refreshing soup made with buttermilk.
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Koldskål is a cold soup or a drink made from buttermilk enriched with various ingredients, like, egg, sugar, cream or other dairy products, vanilla, and lemon.
The dish evolved when commercially-made buttermilk became available in Denmark at the beginning of the 1900s. Since 1979 Danes have been able to buy ready-made koldskål in the supermarkets, which made it blow up.
It’s most commonly eaten with tvebakker, a rusk, a hard unsweetened twice-baked biscuit, or kammerjunkere, a twice-baked cookie. When I was a kid, and we didn’t have much money, we’d mainly have tvebakker and then a couple of kammerjunkere, simply because tvebakker were much cheaper.
In my family, we’ve always eaten strawberries with our koldskål because the heat usually hits in the middle of strawberry season, sometimes in July.
The conclusion of this buttermilk koldskål recipe
So, what do I treasure in a classic Danish buttermilk koldskål with kammerjunkere?
Well, the soup itself should be both sweet and tangy. Not by a crazy amount, because otherwise, you’d be sacrificing the refreshing part. You should serve it as cold as possible.
The cookies must be extremely crunchy, so they can lay in the soup without becoming soggy. Nobody wants a soggy cookie. They should absolutely be smelling of butter and have a rich mouth feel.
Since you’ve read this far, you can probably imagine that that’s exactly how I designed the recipe to be. It’s so good.
Please shape this recipe for buttermilk koldskål on social media
This is my recipe for buttermilk koldskål with kammerjunkere. If you like the recipe, please consider sharing it with like-minded dairy and cookie lovers on social media.
If you make it and post it on Instagram, please tag me as @foodgeek.dk so I can see it. That would make me very happy.
Spil the vanilla pod in half and scrape the seeds onto a pinch of sugar.
Using your knife, massage the seeds into the sugar until it separates.
Zest and juice an entire lemon.
Make kammerjunkere
Heat your oven to 190°C/370°F.
Mix all-purpose flour, sugar, half of the vanilla sugar, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest in a medium bowl.
Crumble the butter into the flour mixture. Add egg and mix it in, then knead the dough until it's cohestive.
Divide the dough into 6-gram pieces and shape each piece of dough into a ball.
Add the balls to a parchment-lined baking sheet, put them in the oven, and bake for 12 minutes.
Take them out and turn the oven down to 150°C/300°F.
Cut them in half, and put them back on the baking sheet, with the cut-side up.
Bake for 18 minutes more and let them cool on a wire rack. Check for crispness and give them a bit more if needed.
Make koldskål
Whip egg yolks, half of the vanilla sugar, and sugar into a creamy white mixture.
Add buttermilk and yogurt and mix.
Season to taste with lemon juice and lemon zest.
Serve immediately, or put in the fridge until you need it. If all of your ingredients were fresh, it stays good for at least a day refrigerated but probably much longer.
