Pepparkakor – Make A Swedish Winter Biscuit

Pepparkakor are everywhere throughout winter, at every celebration, end of swimming lessons, scouts’ Christmas party, or stockpiled in your cupboards.  Usually accompanied by a very welcome mug of glögg (mulled wine), these thin festively spicy biscuits are very moorish.  Try our recipe and let me know how you get on in the comments below.

These lovely little innocuous Swedish biscuits have a very unique taste with a small amount of fire, and something you can’t quite put your finger on.  It’ll be the presence of the cardamom, a spice that is put in a lot of baking in Scandinavia and gives things a very individual taste.  So, unless you want to head to your nearest Ikea (if you live in the UK), pop on your pinafore and get baking these delicious pepparkakor – I challenge you not to scoff the lot!!

Pepparkakor Ingredients:

1 tablespoon cardamom

150g butter

250g sugar

50g light syrup (for UK use normal syrup)

20g dark syrup (for UK use treacle)

1 tablespoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1/2 tablespoon baking soda

100ml water

450g plain flour

Pepparkakor Method:

1. Mix butter, sugar, and syrups in a pan, and heat gently until the butter melts.
2. Turn the mixture off and add in all the spices (cardamon, ginger, and cinnamon).
3. Add in the baking powder.
4. Add water
5. Add flour.
6. Put it all into a bowl once it is mixed well.  Leave it to rest at least overnight but up to a week if possible (we did a few days and all was well).  Cover it when it has cooled.
7. When you are ready, roll it quite thin 1-2mm and cut the shapes in with cutters that you fancy (we did Elk and hearts).
8. Cook at 200 degrees Celcius for 8-10 mins (you need to watch them!!)

Let them cool on a wire rack and then see how long the batch lasts!!  Don’t forget to let me know in the comments below how it went and if they were gobbled down 🙂