For my birthday, one month to the day before Christmas, my 89-year-old mother-in-law went shopping in her attic. She wrapped up a Scandinavian table runner and a yard of cloth with smiling blond children and elves in red pointy hats. I love them.

One other family heirloom called my name. When I tore open the Christmas wrap, three stacks of fluted tart tins came out rattling. They are used to make sandbakels or sand tarts. My husband Ace's mother -- Eleanore with an E -- seemed relieved to pass the tart molds to me.

"Sally used to make these cookies every year for Christmas," Eleanore said of her Swedish mother-in-law, an immigrant so tied to tradition that she kept a wood stove in an outbuilding for her holiday baking.

Sally, whom I met only once, was the meticulous kind of woman who came to her son and his wife's house -- always spotless -- and pulled out their refrigerator so she could scrub the floor. Talk about angst.

When a woman marries, she gets the guy and his family's holiday food traditions, for good or evil. Ace inherited my farm family's baked beans -- homegrown navy beans studded with side pork and sweet enough to make my husband's hair hurt. Absolutely delicious.

A few years ago, my mother, 90, added a modern twist to her recipe -- beau monde, a seasoning no longer sold in her rural supermarket. Not every mother gets beau monde under her Christmas tree.

As a Midwest farm girl, I naively believed that Swedes, Norwegians, Danes and Finns constituted one big happy family in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Not so.

My husband's mother is a full-blooded Norwegian; his father was pure Swede. In their circles, that was considered a mixed marriage.

Eleanore was born in this country. Sally left Sweden to follow her fiance to Canada, coming through Ellis Island in 1915. In her wedding portrait, she looks stern. She and Anselm, my husband's cheerful grandfather, had a son, John.

Their only child chose an accomplished woman, what in those days was known as a "good catch." Eleanore was one of nine children. Norwegians! Sally may have rolled up the rug so the lovebirds could dance the Schottische until dawn, but it was harder to open her heart.

Eleanor's mother and mother-in-law had one tradition in common. Both made lefse, which my husband calls the "Scandinavian tortilla." The flat bread is spread with sugar, cinnamon and butter, then rolled. Butter is the common ground between my husband's and my family's traditions.

Sally's sandbakels were always perfect. Not so Eleanore's. "I followed the recipe exactly," she recalled. "I let them cool. They wouldn't come out of the tin."

She tapped the tins on the kitchen counter, she pried, she slammed them over the sink, she threw them across the kitchen. Her sand tarts broke into a woodpile of pieces. She put the tins away. Forever.

Now they are mine.

Eleanore's problematic present wasn't my first batch of sand tart tins. The late Betsy Kline, my Pittsburgh Post-Gazette food copy editor and the ultimate office cookie baker, gave me a set in a tattered old box -- 15 tins for $1. Betsy knew I'd married Scandinavian. Those sandbakels-in-waiting have languished until now, along with the Italian pizzelle iron (used once) and the pasta maker (never).

But how could I refuse a gift wrapped in Christmas paper from my mother-in-law? Now I have 45 identical tins.

Although I am English/Dutch/German (who knows what else a DNA test might turn up?), I vowed to uphold the Martinson cookie tradition.

It is a sacrifice. Our family tradition is rolled butter cookies, cut into shapes redolent of our family farm -- a fat pony, a svelte quarter horse, beef cows and dairy cows (yes, farm girls can tell them apart by shape), chickens and a relative newcomer -- the whimsical "When Pigs Fly." I cling to my recipe from the late Lela Grundfossen, she of Gresham, Ore., smorgasbord fame. Her cut-out cookie dough doesn't stick to my rolling pin. I attribute it to dough with powdered rather than granulated sugar.

So when I spotted Shirley Botten's sandkakor recipe -- with powdered sugar -- in the cookbook by the Sons of Norway, Breidablik Lodge, I was intrigued. Invert to remove from tins, the directions said.

"Sally used to THROW them on the counter," Eleanore recalled. She tried the toss, too. "Mine never came out."

She resorted to digging out the tarts with a crochet hook. Not a pretty sight.

Ramping my resolve, I vowed no cranky cookie could hornswaggle me.

There are four sand tart recipes in the Scandinavian section of the Sons of Norway cookbook, with nearly as many spellings: sandkakor, sand bakels, sandbakels. The classic "Betty Crocker's Cooky Book" uses the classic name: sandbakelser, described as a "fragile almond-flavored shell of Swedish origin, made in metal molds of varied designs."

I would attempt two recipes. Although Ace's mother said her family used only vanilla, I opted for the traditional ground almonds in the Sons of Norway recipe. I also made Betty Crocker's sandbakelser. Tins vary in shape, and the one pictured in the cookbook was fan-shaped. The book is an exact reprint of the 1963 original, but an editor's note suggests "you may want to try these recipes using today's ingredients and methods."

In "Scandinavian Feasts," Beatrice Ojakangas' well-researched 1992 cookbook, the author defines sandbakkelse (yet another spelling) tart forms: "Little fancy tins which usually come in sets, used for making butter tart shells ... comes in a variety of sizes ranging from 1 inch to 2 1/2 inches."

Before my maiden attempt, dire scenarios at my kitchen counter leaped to mind. Blam! The presents aren't wrapped. Crack! The house is a mess. Crumble! Company is coming.

Fearlessness had turned to fright.

Toting everything a food editor has learned to bear, I gathered my modern arsenal. Where the sandbakelser recipe advised putting the almonds through the fine knife of a food grinder -- twice -- I pulled out the food processor. (A blender would work, too, but take care not to turn the almonds into paste.)

Many butter cookie batters are chilled before shaping. Sand tarts are no exception. Although not every sandbakel recipe suggested greasing the pan, that seemed like good insurance -- despite the generous amount of butter in the dough.

Someone suggested a Wilton product called Cake Release as helping even complicated bundt cakes drop right out. Squeezing out a drop of Cake Release about the size of a kidney bean, I spread it into every niche of the tin with a brush. (So much less mess than a vegetable spray.) In an unplanned experiment, I forgot to grease the tins for a half-dozen tarts -- sure enough, they stuck.

The recipes describe pressing the dough into the tin with our fingers, but a wooden tart tool dipped in flour made my job easier.

As I worked, I noticed several tins with the telltale marks of a crochet hook. I guess Eleanore wasn't kidding.

The tins sat on jelly roll pans to bake. Tip: if the pan is dark-colored, rather than gray, subtract a few minutes from the baking time.

I sent Eleanore a cross-your-fingers e-mail: "I'm making sandbakels."

The cookies were delicious and beautiful -- just like Nana Martinson used to make. "Butter and sugar, what's not to like?" said Ace. "Don't tell my mother how easy it was to get them out."

She'll see for herself. Eleanore's getting a box of sandbakels. Carrying on Martinson family traditions, that's what a daughter-in-law is for.

Sandkakor (Sand Tarts)

PG tested

• 2 sticks ( 1/2 cup) butter
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup blanched, ground almonds

Cream butter. Add sugar and beat until lemon-colored. Add egg and beat well. Stir in flour and ground almonds. (We chilled the dough.) Butter tartlet tins and press small amount of dough on the bottom and sides of each tin. Bake at 350 degrees for about 10 to 12 minutes or just until a very light golden brown. Cool slightly and invert them to remove from tins. Just before serving, you may fill them with whipped cream mixed with a little sugar and a little almond extract. Place 1/2 teaspoon raspberry jam on top. (We also tried marionberry preserves.)

-- Helen Botten, Sons of Norway cookbook

Sandbakelser (Sand Tarts)

PG tested

• 1/3 cup blanched almonds
• 4 unblanched almonds
• 3/4 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg white
• 1 3/4 cups flour

Put almonds through fine knife of food grinder twice (1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 teaspoon almond flavoring may be substituted for almonds; we used this variation). Mix in butter, sugar and egg white thoroughly. Measure flour by dipping method or by sifting. Stir in flour. Chill.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Press dough into sandbakelser molds (tiny fluted forms) to form thin coating. Place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes. Tap molds on table to loosen cookies; turn out.

Makes 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

-- "Betty Crocker's Cooky Book"

On the latest, holiday edition of "Cooking with Gretchen," Gretchen McKay and videographer Steve Mellon learn how to ice cookies with Ben Avon's Alice Leich, executive pastry chef for Parkhurst Dining. Check it out at post-gazette.com/food. There you'll also find recipes -- for Rolled Sugar Cookies and Royal Icing -- so you can bake, and decorate, along at home.

Rolled Sugar Cookies

These sugar cookies have a little less sugar in them than many, so work well with a topping of very sugary royal icing.

-- Alice Leich, Parkhurst Dining

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 egg yolks
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon salt

Beat butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium low speed until creamy but not fluffy. Add yolks and mix in thoroughly.

Whisk the flour and salt together. Add to the mixer, and mix on low speed just until combined.

Turn the dough out on a piece of plastic wrap and shape into a flat disk. Wrap and chill for 1 hour or more.

Roll on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4-inch thick. Cut desired shapes, and bake on parchment covered sheets at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, until pale gold. Cool thoroughly. Ice with Royal Icing (recipe below)

Note: Cookies may be flavored with a teaspoon of orange or lemon zest or with almond extract to taste.

-- Alice Leich

Royal Icing

Royal icing is a pure white icing that dries very hard, so is excellent for decorating cookies and gingerbread houses and for piping flowers and lace for cake decorations.

-- Alice Leich, Parkhurst Dining

• 1 pound confectioners' sugar, sifted if lumpy
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
• Varies, as follows:
• Pasteurized egg white (in the dairy section, next to the eggs)

I add the following approximate quantities to one pound of powdered sugar when I'm mixing icing for various uses:

• 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) egg white for stiff icing for writing or piping flowers or lace
• 4 ounces (8 tablespoons) egg white for medium icing for piping outlines on cookies
• 6 ounces (12 tablespoons) egg white for loose icing for dipping or flooding cookies

Place the ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix on low speed until blended, then increase speed to medium and beat about two minutes. Stiff icing should stand straight up when you lift up the beaters. Medium icing should have a soft peak, with the icing gently falling over but still holding a shape when you lift the beaters. Loose icing should be creamy looking, like lightly beaten whipped cream.

Check the consistency of your icing by piping or dipping a sample piece. If you aren't satisfied with the results, simply add a bit more egg white or a few drops of water to thin it or add powdered sugar a spoonful at a time to thicken the icing and test again.

Add food coloring as desired, using gel or paste colors available in small jars in the cake decorating section of craft stores. These colors are quite intense, and can turn your icing into brilliant colors, but should be added gradually. If you are coloring only a small quantity of icing or looking for a very pale color, it's best to mix the coloring into a small spoonful of the icing, then add some of the diluted color to your icing so that you don't overshoot the color you want. The icing may also be flavored with a few drops of clear extract.

The icing can be used immediately. It dries quickly, so keep the portion you aren't using in an airtight container or cover the bowl with a damp cloth.

Royal icing may be kept for several days in an airtight container at room temperature. Stir it thoroughly with a spoon to return it to a smooth, even consistency before using.

Allow decorated pieces to dry about 24 hours at room temperature.

-- Alice Leich

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