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Christmas gingerbread cookies – Piparkakku
Introduction
I know that there are similar cookies in many countries; I don’t really know how different are the recipes, I always make the Finnish ones. I bake these cookies once a year and make quite a lot of them to use later in other dishes and desserts.
- 250 g butter, softened
- 200 ml dark syrup or molasses
- 175 ml brown sugar
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp powdered ginger
- 1 tsp clove
- 1 tsp orange zest
- 100 ml cream
- 1 egg
- 100 ml red wine (orange juice)
- ~ 800 g flour
- 2-3 tsp baking soda
- Sieve together the flour and baking soda
- In a saucepan combine the syrup, wine and all other spices, bring to the boil and remove from the heat
- Add in the butter and beat with a mixer until the mixture cools down a bit
- In a separate bowl beat together the egg, sugar and cream
- Sieve a part of the flour into the syrup mixture, beat with the mixer, add in the egg mixture and mix well again
- Sieve in the rest of the flour and mix until a soft and smooth dough is formed
- Cover the dough with a cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for min 12 hours
- Take out from the fridge, leave for 1 hour to soften
- Roll out in a 5 mm thick layer, cut out the cookies
- Transfer the cookies onto the tray covered with the parchment paper and bake 6-7 min at 175C
Thoughts and Ideas
This dough is perfect to make the gingerbread house. If somebody does not eat egg, it could be left out, the taste will be the same, just the consistency more crumbly.
The amount of flour could be 50-100 g different, it depends on the flour, humidity, etc, in any case, the dough should be quite stiff, but elastic. The dough keeps in a freezer well. I used the beetroot molasses, next time I would like to try the maple syrup.
Now my know-how. I would always have problems rolling out the dough in a similar thickness layer, so, now I’m using a pasta machine.
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