Let's Make Pepparkakor!

Me, rolling out gingerbread dough.

      ...also known as Swedish gingerbread cookies!
​     As I was rolling out dough for pepparkakor last weekend, I realized I didn't know anything about the distinctly thin and crispy cookies I've been cutting out and eating every year. So, I decided to look into what I could find about the history of Swedish gingerbread and share my favorite recipe, which comes from an almost-antique 1986 Allt Om Mat.
     Enjoy and God Jul!

     The first record of Swedish gingerbread cookies comes from nuns in central Sweden in 1444, who ate cookies full of spices to help with digestion. In Swedish the name actually translates as 'pepper cookies,' because apparently peppar was used as a general term for spices. For a few hundred years, the cookies only had life as a medicine. 
     In the 1700s, young people started giving decorated hearts as presents, and then as Christmas presents specifically. The wooden cookie-cutters were used with a soft, spiced dough. 

Cookie cutters from the 1700-1800s in the collection of Nordiska Museet, Stockholm.

Selling sweets and gingerbread cookies. In Germany, you still see large, decorated gingerbread hearts at Christmas markets.

Even the kitties can make Christmas treats! Postcard from Kalmar Läns Museum.

Swedish Christmas postcard with gingerbread cookies from the Swedish Postal Museum

     The first gingerbread recipes in cookbooks are from the 1700s and in the 1800s, baking gingerbread cookies became a tradition for Christmas, a holiday still going by the more traditional pagan name Jul. 
     Gingerbread cookies are eaten during the whole holiday season, but are often associated with the St. Lucia holiday. The tomtar, little Santa-gnomes who play tricks during Christmas, are known to eat porridge, but will also settle for gingerbread cookies. 
    If you don't want to bake the cookies, you can always get some at IKEA that will make you never want pepparkakor again (don't do it). 

Tomtar looking at their midnight snacks, from Kalmar Läns Museum

Swedish Christmas cloth with gingerbread cookies, from Nordiska Museet.

     Cookie cutters have become part of the tradition, and favorites include barnyard and wild animals. You may need a Christmas goat, or Julbok, to make the experience really Swedish. Pigs are apparently popular because they are a symbol of wellbeing and fertility, but I don't know what's cool about a hedgehog (other than that they are cute).

Time to make cookies!

     My mom has been making the same pepparkaka recipe since 1986, and it hasn't failed her yet. Well, actually, that's not true at all. The recipe fails all the time because the amount of flour has to be just right, otherwise the cookies can't be rolled out super thin for maximum crispiness (they either get too sticky or too crumbly). So either because of tradition or because she insists the recipe is still the best, I continue make "Moster Ruth's Pepparkakor" and deal with a wonky dough. Unlike some (like the one in Swedish below), it doesn't use egg yolks, and I add more spice than the original recipe (so maybe I can start calling it Faster Kiki's Pepparkakor, a joke that about four people will get - let me know if you're one of them). 

Hemmets Kokbok, 1911. Available on archive.org, but current versions are still in print.

If you don't like recipes, this 1894 Maryland version is for you. Somehow, I don't trust it.

Moster Ruth's Pepparkakor

You'll need: 
- 1 cup & 2 tbsp butter
​- 1 cup of sugar
- 1/2 cup cream
- 1/2 corn, rice, or beet syrup 
- 2 tbsp cinnamon
- 2 tbsp ginger
- 2 tbsp ground cloves
- 2 tbsp ​cardamom 
- 3 tsp ground dried orange peel (optional) 
- 6 cups flour
​- 3 tsp baking soda
- Awesome cookie cutters, including pigs, goats, or other barnyard animals and baking sheets

This recipe makes about 200 cookies so you'll definitely need some cookie tins to keep them crisp! And some friends to eat all the cookies... 

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the sugar, cream, syrup, and all the spices. Let the mixture cook together
2. Cool completely
3. Mix the flour and baking soda together, and slowly add it to the wet mixture until a dough forms. The dough should still be pretty sticky and loose, but not too loose
4. Let the dough sit in the refrigerator overnight
5. Roll the dough out super thin (as thin as you can!) and cut out awesome shapes
6. Bake at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 4-5 minutes (although this changes based on your oven and how thin the cookies are, so watch the first batch carefully!)
7. Let them cool on the pan for a minute or two - otherwise they'll crack when you take them off - and then move to a cooling rack or plate. Store in a cookie tin! 
​

God Jul!