Pepperkaker - Scandinavian Gingerbread

One of the seven varieties of cakes and biscuits which we used to bake when I was growing up was 'pepperkaker'. The Swedes call them 'pepparkakor' and the Danes 'peberkager'. The dough takes a bit of time to make, since it needs to rest for a good 12 hours before one can use it. Children love baking pepperkaker since they can choose from lots of different-shaped cutters and literally bake a story.

We're going to be baking pepperkaker on the 13th, so I've got plenty of time. But it's good to start planning the ingredients now so that we don't rush around looking for them at the last minute.

The recipe we're going to use is one we've tried before, by a Norwegian food writer and blogger called Trine Sandberg.When I was little we often used Henriette Schønberg Erken's classic recipes, but I'm afraid I don't have her cookbook here in England. In any case, Trine Sandberg's cake recipes tend to go down a storm, so we're in safe hands.

Ingredients:
250g caster sugar
1dl golden syrup
1dl dark treacle
1tbsp ground cinnamon
1/2tbsp ground ginger          (Schwartz - available from Asda and Tesco)           
1/4tbsp ground cloves          (Schwartz - available from Asda and Tesco)  
250g lightly salted butter
1tbsp natron                       (use baking soda if you do not have access to a Norwegian grocer..)
2 small eggs
650-800g wheat flour            (NB: Scandinavians do not use self-raising flour, only what I call 'natural' flour)
baking parchment  

NB: 1 dl = 100ml   

• Start by cubing the butter and putting it in a wide bowl. Set aside.
• Pour the sugar, syrup and treacle into a small saucepan and gently heat until the sugar dissolves. 
• Add the ground cinnamon, ginger and clove to the mix and stir well.
• Stir in the natron (or baking soda) with quick movements. The mixture will lighten and rise slightly.
• Without delay, pour the mixture over the butter in the bowl. Stir until the butter is completely melted and the mixture has cooled.
• Whisk the eggs and add them to the main mixture.
• Add the flour by sifting it over the mixture bit by bit and stirring carefully. Continue until you get a smooth and quite firm dough (you may not need to use all the flour - set the rest aside)
• Shape the dough into a smooth flat ball with your hands, return to the bowl and leave it somewhere cold for 12 hours (in England that will have to be the fridge)

  
Baking:
Sprinkle a bit of flour on the table or bench where you will be rolling out the dough. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (you don't have to do the whole dough in one go, I break it up into smaller lumps and roll those out individually). For small to medium sized cutters I would roll the dough out to ca 3mm thick. If you are making a 'pepperkakehus' (a gingerbread house) you will need to go slightly thicker, 5mm, otherwise the walls and panels of the house will be too fragile to work with.
In my experience it is quite difficult to lift the pepperkake shapes off the worksurface and on to the baking tray, so I suggest that you roll the dough out to around 1cm thick, then transfer it on to a sheet of baking parchment and finish rolling it out to 3mm or 5mm thickness. You can then place the cutters (or your house pattern) on the dough - we call it 'sticking out' the shapes - and lift off the residue from between the cut out shapes, leaving you with pristine cookies that can be put straight in the oven. Bake at 220-225C (no fan), in the middle of the oven, for 7-10 minutes. Keep a close eye on the tray towards the end as they will darken quickly and can burn if you are not careful. Remove from the oven and transfer the whole sheet of baking parchment with the cookies on it to a cooling grid (they will still be soft at this stage, so if you lift them off one by one they may bend).

Keep your pepperkaker in a closed tin until you are ready to serve them.

Decorating:
If you like decorating pepperkaker you can use white icing, by itself, or as glue to stick on little silver balls or coloured sweets. Here is a simple recipe:

• 4dl icing sugar
• 1 small egg white (if it's a medium or large egg increase the amount of icing sugar)
• 1ml lemon juice

Whisk the ingredients in a bowl until smooth, firm and not too gloopy. Scoop into a plastic freezer bag, tie a knot firmly to close the opening and snip a corner of the bag off with a pair of scissors. The snip should make a small hole, to give you a fine piping. (You can of course use a piping bag - but this is really not something I have invested in - I prefer throwing the bag away when I've finished) You can also add food colouring to the piping mix, but do bear in mind that it will make it more runny, so you would have to add a bit more icing sugar to compensate.

Pipe away. If you're decorating a pepperkake house you may find that the icing will run slightly down the walls - in which case set aside your piping bag and reserve it for decorating horizontal stuff. Add a bit more icing sugar to the recipe and you'll find it holds its shape better on vertical surfaces.
The icing will need to dry thoroughly before you can put the cookies away in a tin.

 Photo: Trine Sandberg

If you are making a house you can use the piping to glue the bits together, but the best option is to make caramel and use that - it dries much faster. Arla, the Scandinavian dairy brand, has a fairly simple model drawing which you can print out on A4 paper and then cut out the various elements. See here. With a bit of dedication you could make this:

Photo: Arla

And if you fancy stocking up on beautifully crafted utensils for the baking days ahead, try Iris Hantverk

 Photo: Iris Hantverk

Having not baked pepperkaker for a few years I re-learned a couple of lessons this time: 
- If your spices are a bit old (as our were) you can still use them, but do increase the dosage a bit to get the desired spiced flavour. Our pepperkaker turned out a bit on the bland side...
- I tend to buy large eggs these days, and traditional recipes are generally based on using medium to small eggs, unless large eggs are specifically stated. This makes a big difference when making sugar frosting, as a large egg yields a large egg-white. Opt for a small egg, or increase the amount of icing sugar. Otherwise you might end up with a gloopy glazing, which will look fine on cakes decorated while lying flat but it will droop and run when decorating a pepperkakehus...