In our home, December marks the start of Pepparkakor season. For non-Swedes, that’s ginger snaps or gingerbread cookies!

The smell of baking gingerbread, the pine from the tree … oh man, that’s the best!

Okay, let’s make these!

What you’ll need:

• 200 ml  brown sugar
• 200 ml  white sugar
• 200 ml  dark corn syrup
• 150 ml  water
• 300 g  butter
• 2 tbsp ground ginger
• 2 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 2 tbsp ground cloves
• 1 tbsp baking soda
• 900-1000 g flour

Swedish recipe, so it’s all metric. Sorry about that American readers …

 

Get the brown sugar, white sugar, corn syrup and water. Grab  a small pot and put it on the stove.

Add the sugar, water and corn syrup.

Mix these ingredients well.

Add the butter and turn on the heat, allowing the butter to melt.

 

Pour the mixture into a mixing bowl and allow it to cool slightly.

Add the spices and baking soda.

Mix it! Make sure it’s all well blended.

Now we’re going to add the flour.

You want to add in the flour just a few tablespoons at a time to make sure it’s well mixed.

This is also why you saw the variable number for the amount of flour. You want to keep adding it until the batter is a bit stiff, but not dry.

It should look pretty much like this!

Transfer the batter to a bowl, sprinkle with flour and cover it.

Now, let it sit overnight somewhere cool. (Montreal is pretty cool, but I mean let it sit somewhere to cool down and get solid!)

Through the magic of the internet, it’s now the next day and it’s time to roll out our dough.

You’ll want to take a small ball of dough, place it on a flat surface dusted with flour.

Dust the dough lightly and the rolling pin.

Roll the dough as thin as you can. Just a few millimetres if possible!

If you find the dough is too stiff and dry, you can sprinkle a little water on top and knead back into a ball. This little trick should give you a perfect dough for rolling.

 

Once the dough is rolled out, you want to use cookie cutter to make some shapes.

Here you can see we have some classic Swedish shapes (the pig, the ‘tomte’ or elf, star, heart) using cookie cutters that Claire’s grandmother got back in the 1940s.

The Moomin was something Claire picked up from a recent trip to Stockholm!

Place the cookies on a baking sheet and place in an oven heated to 175C (350F) for approximately 8-10 minutes.

When you see the cookies are starting to get a little brown on the edges, take them out.

Let the cookies fully cool (they’ll feel soft until they cool down).

If your cookies still feel a bit soft once they have cooled down, you can put them back in the oven for a few minutes. Let them cool, test them again. You can actually repeat this as many times as you need until you get hard, crisp cookies!

Enjoy them with a nice hot coffee or cold glass of milk!

So there you have it, wonderful Pepparkakor or Ginger Snaps!

Bon Apetit!