This pepperkaker recipe is my absolute favorite cookie for the holidays. I grew up with plenty of Christmas cookies in the house, but the one that we all reached for is my mother’s recipe for pepperkakers. It’s amazing how much flavor such a thin, crisp, and flaky cookie can have. Here are my tips for mastering these holiday cookies.
About Pepperkaker Cookies
Pepparkakor cookies are popular in Scandinavian countries. My family’s lineage can be traced back to the UK, so I’m not quite sure how the recipe for these Swedish ginger cookies made it into my mother’s recipe box. But I’m so glad that it did!
Pepparkakor is a scandinavian word and in Swedish it translates to pepper cookies. The original pepperkaker recipe had black pepper as one of the primary spaces, in addition to fresh ground ginger.
Pepper Kakers are also known as Swedish ginger snaps. If you’ve ever been to an IKEA store, you may have seen thin ginger cookies for sale. While they don’t always call them Pepperkaker cookies on the package, they do refer to them as ginger snaps. They are snappy cookies (aka a crisp cookie) known for their crispy bite and spicy flavor.
I have also seen pepperkakers called Norwegian gingerbread cookies. However, I believe that my mother’s recipe is more like the Swedish version vs the traditional Norwegian recipes for a Norwegian pepperkaker cookie. Like the Swedish tradition, this pepperkaker recipe gives you cookies that are dark in color, and is not meant to be decorated with royal icing.
Pepper Kakers are cutout cookies where the pepperkaker dough is rolled extra thin so that you get a crisp, thin cookie that is light, flaky, and packed with flavor. Full of molasses and ground ginger, this pepperkaker cookie is great any time of year. But for me the spices and flavor make these Christmas cookies. Maybe that’s because my mother only made this pepperkaker recipe during the holidays, so I naturally associate them with Christmas time.
And before I go on to the recipe and my tips for making pepper kaker cookies, let’s also discuss the various spelling for these cookies. My mother’s recipe card says Pepper Kakers. Maybe it’s my New England upbringing, but we always pronounced it more like Peppa Kakers (with a missing R of course). I’ve also seen it called a Pepparkakor Recipe, or peppakakor.
Tips for My Pepperkaker Recipe
The technique for this pepperkaker recipe may be a little different from what you’re used to with other cookie recipes. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar together, this recipe calls for using melted butter that you heat on the stove with the molasses and shortening.
In addition to melting unsalted butter, vegetable shortening, and molasses in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. This pepperkaker recipe also mixes half a cup of boiling water with one teaspoon baking soda. This produces a chemical reaction where the baking soda dissolves and when combined with the molasses mixture, it expands the pepperkaker dough.
There is no brown sugar in this recipe. It uses one cup sugar and this gets mixed with the wet ingredients before adding the egg. The granulated sugar helps make the cookies thin and crispy. Shortening also helps with the texture of the cookies, so I really recommend sticking with the mix of butter and shortening and not trying to use one cup butter instead.
If variety is the spice of life, then maybe that’s the magic to these spiced cookies. There is a variety of spices in this pepperkaker recipe, including tsp ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. If the smell of this combination doesn’t make you happy, then we can’t be friends, lol.
For this pepperkaker recipe, you should use a large bowl of a stand mixer to combine the ingredients. With over 5 cups of all-purpose flour in the recipe, you won’t want to rely on mixing the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients using a hand mixer. The electric mixer will do a better job.
Another thing to note about the cookie dough you get with this recipe. It is a very sticky dough. That’s because after the butter melts and mixes with the other wet ingredients, the pepperkaker dough is much looser than a typical cookie dough. You need to refrigerate the dough for at least an hour to help the flavors come together and the dough will be easier to roll out when it’s not room temperature.
Rather than simply putting plastic wrap on top of the mixing bowl, I like to transfer the cookie dough to an airtight container. This lets me bake cookies one batch at a time and save the rest of the dough for another time. This way I have fresh pepparkarkor cookies throughout the holiday season.
Pepper Kakers
Equipment
- Measuring Spoons
- Measuring Cups
- Saucepan
- Rolling Pin
- Cookie cutters
- Baking Sheet
- Parchment Paper
- Stand or hand mixer
Ingredients
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup shortening
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup boiling water
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1 cup molasses
- 1 egg
- 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. ground cloves
- 1 tsp. ground ginger
- 1 tsp. allspice
- colored sugar for decorating
Instructions
- In a saucepan add molasses, shortening and butter. Heat over medium low heat until melted. Remove from heat.
- Mix boiling water and baking soda together. Stir until combined then add to molasses mixture.
- Transfer molasses mixture to mixing bowl and add granulated sugar. Stir to combine and to help cool the mixture a bit.
- Add egg and spices and mix to combine.
- Gradually add flour and mix just until combined.
- Pour cookie dough in an airtight container and refrigerate until needed.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Roll out cookie dough until very thin.
- Cut out cookies and sprinkle with colored sugar. Transfer to parchment lined baking sheet.
- Bake for 6-8 minutes.
- Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.
How to Roll Out Cookies
Now that we’ve looked at the ingredients and technique for making the dough for this pepperkaker recipe, let’s talk about rolling out the cookies. The secret to these delicious pepperkaker cookies is how you roll them out. Use a lightly floured surface, and a lightly floured rolling pin, to roll out the dough as thin as possible. You’ll find that a little dough goes a long way, so start with a small amount of dough to start.
Use cookie sheets lined with parchment paper to help prevent the cookies from sticking. I prefer parchment paper, verses a greased baking sheet, because it lets me slide the cookies right off the sheet onto a wire rack to finish cooling. I also find it easier to brush off the parchment paper and reuse it for another batch.
Because I typically make this pepperkaker recipe at Christmas, I tend to use a Santa, star, angel, or Christmas tree cookie cutter for my cookies. However, you can use your favorite cookie cutters to make any shape you want.
This pepperkaker recipe makes A LOT of cookies, so I like to keep it simple and use one cookie cutter shape per cookie sheet. This ensures that the cookies will all bake at the same rate. And it helps maximize the number of cookies I can cut out of each batch of cookie dough that I roll out.
You can use large shapes like a gingerbread man, but I prefer to use cookie cutters that make cookies that are more like 2″-3″ in size. I find that this size produces good results, with a cookie that has the flavor, and crunch I expect from this pepperkaker recipe.
I use colored sugar to decorate the cookies before putting them in the oven. They won’t take long to bake, so start checking on them after about 6 minutes. My daughter prefers soft molasses cookies, so when I make these cookies for her I roll the dough a little thicker so that they remain soft when they come out of the oven. However, for a snappy cookie like you’ll find with the traditional Swedish recipe, roll them thin to get a crispy cookie.
Fun to Bake and Share
One of the reasons why I love this pepperkaker recipe is because it’s fun to make. I find both the mixing of the dough, and cutting out the cookies a lot of fun and my kids love to help as well. It’s one of my favorite Christmas cookie recipes and I can’t imagine the holiday season without it. Fill up cookie tins with these thin ginger cookies, and you have a Christmas gift people will love.
More molasses recipes you may enjoy:
Molasses Cookies with Shortening
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