Min Nyttiga Pepparkakor: Fragrant Swedish Ginger Cookies.

I love ginger especially in baking.

Ginger crunch, gingernuts, ginger biscuits, ginger kisses….

Of Course, GINGERBREAD!!!

Errr you get the drift:) Ginger, Ginger, Ginger….

I have reblogged this from Barbara’s gorgeous and very yummy blog ,http://www.myitaliansmorgasbord.com/.

She always has stunning photos , funny stories and gorgeous recipes and she often has the recipes in Italian as well so she is making me practice my Italian.

I know I should be anyway but you know how it is, sometimes you get lazy….Very lazy.

So unless I translate it, I can’t do the recipe, that is the RULE!!

One of the main reasons, I love this site, is that Barbara likes bread as well and she has the most fantastic original recipes.

I love that she combines Italian and Swedish food.

Check it out and let me know what you think but I know you are going to LOVE LOVE LOVE these cookies…

So perfect for Xmas and so nice…

Stunning….

Beautiful Barbara, Thanks again….

Min Nyttiga Pepparkakor:

Ok, Ok, I know. I should not go around making statements like the one I have just made. I promised to Santa to be lagom this year. Lagom means just right in Swedish, and underlies how Swedes strive to avoid excess and particularly to avoid overstatements. So I hope Santa won’t deny me a present this Christmas, when I say that these cookies are, truly, without no doubt, and undeniably, the best Swedish ginger cookies I have ever tasted. And even more so knowing that in the ingredients there wasn’t just the usual granny-tested white sugar+syrup+white flour+butter+spice. Nope. There was much more than that, including some seriously nourishing and big time tasty additions.

How did I ended up modifying the time tested recipe for pepparkakor? Let’s see… the first years I was in Sweden I learned to like these little brown hearts which go so well with herborinated cheeses (try to believe!). Then two years ago I dared buying the batter already made and just shaped and baked it. Last year, I finally gathered all of my strength and made them from scratch. And that was the end of it. I mean… the end of me wanting to eat more than two or three pepparkakor per holidays season. Why is that? Well, once I saw what was in the cookies, I just could not make myself appreciate them as much as before. I could just taste the sugar and ended up throwing away most of the cookies I baked last year.

So this time I decided to make not just any pepparkakor but my pepparkakor. Twisting the recipe in a way that the taste and consistency would have remained the same (or even improved) and making these cookies into something I can actually be ok eating often during the holidays season (scroll down for the recipe). 

MIN NYTTIGA PEPPARKAKOR – MY HEALTHIER SWEDISH GINGER COOKIES

You need:  

212 g organic all-purpose flour

100 g organic oat flour

30 g organic coconut flour

30 g organic almond flour

60 g organic unsalted hazelnut butter

90 unsalted butter

45 g organic coconut palm sugar

70 g organic unrefined sugar

1 tablespoon organic barley malt syrup

1 tablespoon organic acacia honey

1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoon ground clove

1 teaspoon cardamom

1 ½ teaspoon baking soda

100 g water

1 teaspoon instant coffee

How to:

-dissolve the coffee (you can use caffeine-free) in the water

-combine the spices together in a little bowl

-throw everything including all the other ingredients in a large bowl

-use a wooden spoon then your hands to make a smooth dough

-make a ball out of the dough, cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate

-the day after roll the dough as thin as you can without breaking it

-use cookies cutters to give the shape you prefer. the typical pepparkakor are shaped as hearts

-bake at 180 degrees (Celsius, 356 Fahrenheit) for 11-12 minutes

-they last 1 month in a airtight container

CONSIDERATIONS: These cookies are the proof that traditional recipes (which often belong to a time when refined sugar and flours were already available) can be made closer to our, even more recently acquired, taste for healthy food WITHOUT loosing their character in terms of appearance, taste, and fragrance. In this regard Santa will maybe agree with me and forgive my over-confident, self-celebrating, statements… I could have gone 100% sugar-free or 100% bla bla all the way and made these cookies into something that would not have resembled the original AT ALL. Nope. I have been lagom. Now where is my present?

http://www.myitaliansmorgasbord.com/2012/12/03/min-nyttiga-pepparkakor-simply-the-healthiest-and-most-fragrant-swedish-ginger-cookies-ever/