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4.88 from 8 votes

Pepparkakor Swedish Ginger Thins

Makes 110-130 biscuits, depending on the thickness
Prep Time40 minutes
Cook Time36 minutes
Total Time1 hour 16 minutes
Course: Fika
Cuisine: Swedish
Servings: 100 cookies, approx
Author: Louise

Equipment

  • Rolling pin and cookie cutters

Ingredients

  • 250 g Butter, salted room temperature
  • 1 Tbsp Cinnamon
  • 1 Tsp Ground Cloves
  • ½ Tbsp Ground Ginger
  • ½ Tbsp Freshly Ground Cardamom
  • 180 g Caster Sugar
  • 40 g Golden Syrup
  • 60 g Molasses (Black treacle)
  • 75 mls Water
  • 500 g Plain Flour
  • 1 Tsp Bicarbonate of soda

To decorate

  • royal icing

Instructions

  • Blend the butter and all the spices in a large bowl.
  • Heat the sugar, molasses, golden syrup and water until the sugar has dissolved.  Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes and pour over the butter mixture. Cool to room temperature.
  • Blend the flour and bicarbonate and the stir into the butter and sugar mixture. The mixture is fairly loose but it's now going to be refrigerated for roughly 8 hours, divide into 4 and wrap in clingfilm. This dough can be kept in the fridge for a week or frozen for up to a 3 months.
  • Oven 190°C fan. Take only a small amount of the dough from the fridge and lightly flour your surface and roll out the dough 2mm thick. Stamp out your shapes with your chosen cookie cutters. With the help of a thin bladed knife, transfer them carefully to lined baking trays. Bake once you’ve filled a tray. Bake the biscuits for 5-6 minutes. They should start to feel hard around the edges as they cool and eventually become really crisp – they need to have a nice ‘snap’. Store in an airtight container for several weeks.

To decorate

  • If you would like to ice your biscuits, take 30g of royal icing and add a small water until you have smooth paste that you can pipe with. I make the icing in batches as it begins to harden fairly quickly.

Notes

*If you are making Christmas decorations remember to make a hole for the ribbon or string to go through.  Do this as soon as they come out of the oven, I use the tip of a very small piping nozzle.
 *Add chopped slivered almonds to the dough (75g) as an alternative.