With its numerous delicate layers and twists, this rich and supple sour cream and yeast biscuit is delicious as well as gorgeous. It is a traditional recipe with a long history that has several variations. This revised version has fantastic flavor and is simple to make thanks to the use of 100% butter and a food processor. The sweet flavor and layering of the rich yeast dough come from generously sugaring the surface and rolling and folding the dough multiple times before cutting and shaping the cookies.
| Prep Time: | 1 hr |
| Cook Time: | 15 mins |
| Additional Time: | 2 hrs 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs 45 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 2 dozen cookies |
Ingredients
- 1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
- ¼ cup warm water
- 3 ½ cups bleached all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter, sliced
- ¾ cup sour cream
- 1 large egg
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 cup white sugar, or as needed
Instructions
- Sprinkle yeast over warm water in a bowl and let activate while you complete remaining steps.
- Place flour and salt into a food processor and pulse once or twice to combine. Scatter butter slices over flour and process until butter is thoroughly mixed into the flour, about 1 minute.
- Whisk yeast mixture, sour cream, egg, egg yolks, and vanilla extract together in a bowl; pour mixture into food processor. Pulse several times, just until the dough starts to hold together and clean the sides of the bowl (do not overmix). Remove dough from food processor and divide in half; form each half into a thick disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate at least 2 hours. For best texture, refrigerate overnight.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Sprinkle a work surface generously with sugar and roll out one of the dough disks into an 8×16-inch rectangle. Sprinkle dough with a generous amount of sugar. Fold the dough over in thirds, letter-style, and roll out again; fold as before and roll out and fold a third time, sprinkling dough with sugar each time. Finally, roll dough into a 4×14-inch rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Repeat process with second dough disk.
- Cut strips from the short side of the dough rectangles, making them 1/2 to 3/4 inch wide. Place strips onto the parchment-lined baking sheets, twisting and slightly stretching them. If preferred, form into horseshoe shapes.
- Bake in the preheated oven until lightly golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Cookies will puff up a bit to reveal delicate layers. Let cookies cool for about 5 minutes on sheets before transferring to wire cooling racks.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 191 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 23 g |
| Cholesterol | 48 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 3 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 159 mg |
| Sugars | 8 g |
| Fat | 10 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
My mother made these for years. I had her recipe but in a recent move lost the paper. I thought this looked like the replacement — no, a disaster. Previous times I’ve made it the batter was soft and a little sticky. This was a hard rock so i waited for the butter to soften after overnight, and then after forming put in fridge for 15 minutes to cool down the butter. Just a lump of sugary dough on the pan. I’ll keep on looking….
YUM! Other reviewers were correct. This is like cross between a croissant and a sugar cookie. I followed the recipe and they turned out beautifully! They came out of the oven just before my daughter left for work. She tried one and said “I’m going to take two more.” She grabbed 4!
It’s a fun twist (ha) on regular shortbread cookies, though I found that the dough was kind of hard to work with. Regardless they still ended up tasting good, and I’d definitely make them again.
I made these a couple different times over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. They turned out great! It is a family favorite so will make again and again. Fyi, I left some dough in refrigerator for a week before making the last batch. Turned out fine!
My mother made these but in a horse shoe shape when I was a kid (I’m 62 now). I love them and still make them to this day. I’m seeing some recipes putting icing/frosting on them. They truly don’t need anymore sugar it would kill that delicate slightly yeast flavor.
Aughh! Total fail i was so disappointed. The recioe is EXACTLY like my grandmother’s. Yes, it has been awhile since I made these, they were a flat, buttery sugar mess on the tray. What did i do wrong? I read and reread tne instruction, no distractions. Help!
Oh, my gosh! – Someone else has our “secret family recipe!” 😉 We’re in the third generation of making these also. They always disappear first at Christmas. I’ve never seen this recipe in print before. Interesting to see that several others are familiar with it also.
These turned out very tasty! They were light and flaky almost like a croissant. Next time, I will drizzle some melted Nutella and raspberry jam instead of sugar.
These were just like my grandmother made….Took me back. So delicious.
I received this recipe over 50 years ago from my lifelong friend’s mom who is now 85 years old. It came from her mom, who brought it with her from Sweden. It is spectacular and is part of Christmas for me. Her version split the butter into half butter/half shortening (I think because in the 1970s butter was very expensive). I will think of her everytime I make these at Christmas, as will my children. Update: I notice this version says to refigerate for 2 hours. My 50+ year old versions says at least 4 hours and up to 2 days. I think this may be why some had poor outcomes with the recipe. It really needs to solidify and 2 hours is not enough. I use overnight (dough one day, rollout/twisting/baking the next).
Recipe Group Selection for 11/15/2014 – These are phenomenal. My food processor was a little too small for this recipe, but I just finished it on my pastry board. I love that you can make them as sweet as you want by the amount of sugar you add to the layers. Thanks for sharing!
I made these for the Recipe Group’s selection for this week. I like these much more than my husband does–he doesn’t understand subtle yeast flavor. My family members also loved these. I put together the dough last night and baked them this morning, following the recipe until I got to the second clump of dough because I used cinnamon sugar for that half. My dough divided into two 1 lb 1 3/8 oz hunks. I do think that when the dough comes from the fridge that it needs to sit for a while before working with it; my first one was much harder to work with than the second one. I rolled it out on a Silpat with a sheet of parchment on top that had been lightly floured. I kept losing track of how many times I turned and folded, but that didn’t seem to matter much. I used a plastic knife to cut the slices which took about 13 minutes to bake. My family preferred the cinnamon sugar twists, but then we are crazy about cinnamon! Thanks for a beautiful new way to enjoy yeast bread!
This was a little challenging and time consuming, but magically delicious. Out of all the cookie recipes I did this year, this one was by far the most loved.
I thought this recipe was easy to use and yeilded delicious results.
Very good and buttery. Yum!!!!!
Very delicious and a special recipe. It is a bit time consuming but worth the trouble for an elegant and festive cookie. Chilling the dough in the 2 wrapped disks worked out just fine fine for me. The first roll-out does not have to be a perfect rectangle, as the first folding of the dough into thirds takes care of the shape.
We like this recipe. It was very easy to put together and I did refrigerate it overnight as the recipe called for. The twists were tender and delicious, not too sweet. It really didn’t puff up all that much for a yeast cookie, but maybe that was because this recipe called for no raising of the dough-just put it right in the oven. tip; we used a ruler and a pizza cutter to cut the strips into even 1 inch wide strips and it worked well to keep them a consistent size for even baking. Thank you for a great recipe-we plan to make it again for the holidays.
These have been a Christmas tradition in our family for three generations. We love to eat them while opening presents Christmas morning. We call them Angel Twists. We make vanilla sugar to use when rolling them out. Instead of my food processor, I use the dough hook on my mixer. I have also mixed these by hand. Works no matter which method I use.
Delicious! These goodies taste like a yummy yeast donut. . .except better. . .because the texture is delicious! My food processor was too small to mix everything in, so I just split the ingredients. But, it worked out fine. The cookies are time-intensive, but Roth every minute! Would be great for a special breakfast.