Sunday, January 09, 2011

Pepparkakor - *awesomely* spiced cookies

My sister found this recipe and baked up a batch before Christmas. I got my first taste in their car, as she and Ugur and Scott and I drove north to Duluth. They are really, really fantastic.

A note of caution - Google Translator does a pretty good job, but it converts deciliters to cups, when the actually conversion is more like 1 dl = 0.4 cups. The volumes below should be correct.

Ingredients:


1 cup sugar
7 oz butter
2/3 cup light syrup (I substituted maple syrup)

Zests from two lemons (I used 1 lemon and 1 orange)
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon orange peel (ground)
1 tablespoon cardamom

3 1/4 cups plain flour
1 tablespoon baking soda

Approximately 1/2 cup almonds (optional but recommended)

Instructions:

Melt the butter in a saucepan with the syrup and sugar.
Remove from heat and let it cool a bit, and stir in all the spices.

Combine the flour and baking soda, and stir into the batter. Stir in almonds.

Shape the dough into two logs and wrap each one in plastic wrap. (If the dough is too warm to shape, just put it in the fridge for a little while, and then try making logs.)

Put the logs in the fridge if you plan to use them within a week - otherwise they can go in the freezer.

Slice the log (half inch slices or less) and bake on a baking sheet at 375 degrees for 7-8 minutes. Cool on a rack.

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