Oat Lace Cookies and Rasberry Twists

Ridiculous, but I'm giving The Nordic Bakery a couple of more chances to redeem itself and prevent me from depositing it bitterly at the local charity shop. That would probably be the kind thing to do, because I'm sure it would sell quickly, and when the unfortunate who buys it cracks it open at home they will, I know, be very happy with following one word reviews I have penciled in next to some choice recipes 'pointless', 'stupid' and 'bad'.
The boyfriend, incidentally, is very vocal about how unfair it is to judge a recipe after only one attempt, but since the things I have made from this book so far were all both time consuming and spectacular failures, I have no desire to try again. I was only following directions, after all, and if the recipes are designed to keep you away from the secrets of Nordic baking (which most seem to be) no technique of mine will fix the problem.
So much bitterness for such a small book, maybe I'm having problems at home? You'd think that I would know about it.
I made the Oat Lace Cookies and Raspberry Twists and then later a loaf of bread, which meant keeping the oven on for most of the day, which warmed up my house enough to turn the heating off, which made me feel very frugal and practical.

The oat cookies use an obscene amount of butter, most of which melts away during baking, leaving you with a very delicate and fragile (and in my case a little burnt) disk that crumbles and melts in your mouth and feels light and airy despite being loaded with nuts, chocolate, raising and oats.

The Raspberry Twists use an even more incredible, immense amount of butter, which doesn't melt away during baking, imagine shortbread with veins of jam that have burnt into a tasty, chewy caramel and you've got it.
The recipe instructs you to prepare the dough and chill in fridge for at least an hour, but since my kitchen was so warm by then, the dough began to melt and sag while I was rolling it. That's the reason my cookies have mysterious veins instead of neat spirals of jam. I will make these again, and next time will try the recipe's suggested variation of using marmalade instead of jam, which sounds a little bit more delicious and grown up to me.
My brother and stepmother arrived just as I was taking these out of the oven and I managed to persuade them to take half of them home with them, which is a good thing because I wouldn't feel safe in the house with so many sweets.

The final thing I made, since the oven was already warmed up, was this sour cream bread, which exceeded all my expectations and persuaded me to order the book it came from.
Nordic Bakery lives to fight another day.