While winter means a barren landscape void of fruits and vegetables and wild herbs, life is teeming and thriving under the waters. In fact, winter in Norway is the best season to feast on fish and seafood along the coast despite the love affair we associate with consuming them during the warm, summer months.
Cod is one type of fish that happens to be in the best condition during the colder months. There is even an old saying in Norway stating that cod is at its best when eaten in all the months with the letter ‘r’ in them – meaning, all months except for May, June, July, and August.
Torsk har ypperlig kvalitet i alle måneder med “r”.
Winter came with a fierceness this year, unlike last year’s somewhat bleak and disappointing season where pockets of snow and slush lay strewn about fields of brown. This winter had other ideas. Grandeur ideas. A plush blanket of white snow, covered with another blanket, and another, and yet another. In some places, the snow towers so high that when I peer out my window I can only see the skyline. 
In the bright of the day, looking toward the bay, the water sparkles as the sun’s rays reflect off the waves with an intense luster creating an almost magical atmosphere. This reoccurring picture and likening to glitter is what gave inspiration for the name of a farm in Rollag three generations ago. It would, in recent times, be the inspiration behind the name of the baked good so loved and so often served at this farm, by the hands of Maj-Lis. 
One of the great things about holiday baking is that everyone has their own traditions and favorites. Recipes which span for generations, recipes that cross continents, recipes that adapt and evolve in one’s own kitchen. Each recipe with a history and a story.
Smultringer is considered one of the seven Norwegian Christmas cookies (syv slag), with very interesting origins. Before smultringer, Norwegians were making similar-looking fried cakes called hjortetakk out of horn salt (ammonium bicarbonate) or what was earlier referred to as hjortetakksalt. It’s suspected that hjortetakk came to Norway from Germany, as there are German recipes for them tracing back to the 1700s.