Welcome to the third episode of Linnea Lund’s Food Fridays. For those of you who are new, for the month of December we are introducing Food Fridays! Every Friday we will share one of our favorite Swedish dishes for you and your loved ones to try out at home. We believe the holidays are the best time for sharing and exchanging recipes and traditions with your family, friends and colleagues. This is why at Linnea Lund we want to share a little of our Swedish culture with you!

Today’s recipe is of the pepparkakor cookies. Pepparkakor are baked throughout the year, but they are considered Christmas essentials. During Christmas they are cut into different shapes, decorated with icing and even hung up as ornaments.This traditional Swedish pepparkakor recipe yields enough dough for 150 cookies. You may even make a pepparkakshus (Gingerbread House)!

Ingredients: 

Dough

▢ 450 g all-purpose flour

▢ 250 g  sugar (white, brown, mix)

▢ ½ tbsp baking soda

▢ ½  tbsp ground cloves

▢ 1 tbsp ground cinnamon

▢ 1 tbsp ground ginger

▢ 2 teaspoons ground cardamom

▢ 150 g butter or margarine

▢ 6 ½ tbsp water

▢ 2 ½ golden syrup (light corn syrup)

▢ 1 tbsp treacle (dark corn syrup)

Icing

▢ 1 egg white

▢ 225 g powder sugar

▢ 1 tsp lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Mix the butter, sugar, syrup and treacle in a large saucepan. Heat gently until the butter melts, stirring continuously.
2. Turn off the heat, add the spices and mix thoroughly.
3. Add the bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and stir again.
4. Add the water and stir once more.
5. Add the flour and stir thoroughly until it is completely mixed in.
6. Empty the mixture into a bowl. When cool, cover with cling film and then leave the dough to rest in the fridge overnight up to a week.
7. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
8. Take a small portion of the dough for a test bake and return the rest to the fridge. The dough will be very firm and hard to roll initially. Knead it to soften it a bit, but it is easier to work when it is cold and fairly stiff.
9. Roll it out thinly on a lightly floured surface or onto greaseproof paper. Cut into shapes using a cookie cutter.
10. Move cookies to cold baking trays, lightly greased if not using baking paper. Bake for 5-8 minutes until golden brown. Keep an eye on them as they burn very easily, but they should be crisp.
11. If the test batch spreads out and the biscuits lose their shape, add some more flour, and do another test bake.
12. If the test batch is good, remove enough dough for another batch and return the rest to the fridge. Bake in batches until all the dough has been used.
13. Once baked, leave to cool for a minute or two and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Icing:

1. Whisk the egg white in a large bowl until frothy. Using a large spoon or a mixer on slow speed, add the icing sugar a tablespoonful at a time. Stir in the lemon juice and beat the icing until it is very stiff and white and stands up in peaks. Cover the surface with a damp cloth if not using immediately.
2. Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a small nozzle and pipe away!

ENJOY!