Gerda J. Mattson knew how to bake. Born in 1900 in Kronoby, Finland, she later emigrated to the United States in 1906, catching sight of the Statue of Liberty rising out of the mists on Ellis Island. She lived in Astoria, Ore., for a few years before moving with her parents in 1915 to join the thriving community of Finns in Hockinson. She married George Mattson, raised a family and, in 1948, bought a small grocery with a coffee counter where she sold homemade pastries. She later opened a restaurant, Gerda’s Coffee Shop, on Northeast 159th Street across from the Hockinson school buildings.
By the time she retired in 1965, she was known as “Grandma Hockinson,” a beloved local figure and unofficial town historian. She was also an accomplished painter, dollmaker and a master of Finnish handicrafts — and she was famous around Hockinson for her Finnish coffee bread. Mattson’s grandson, 67-year-old Daniel Kivinen of Walnut Grove, recently contacted The Columbian to share his grandmother’s recipe for the sweet Finnish bread flavored with cardamom also known as pulla, nisu or nissua.
“The loaves were about 2 feet long and 5 or 6 inches wide,” Kivinen said. “She would sell the coffee bread anywhere from $1.75 to $2.75 or $3 per loaf. She would melt sugar cubes and then make her own white frosting to put on top. While the frosting was still warm, she would have crunched-up filberts and walnuts to sprinkle on top, whatever people wanted.”
Kivinen recalled how, when he was a boy of 10 or 11, he would help his grandmother bake 300 or 350 loaves at a time. Mattson would freeze them all and then pull out several loaves as needed to thaw and sell at her coffee shop, where the Finnish treat was always in high demand, Kivinen said. The sweet bread was only one of the many good things to be found in Mattson’s restaurant.
