Pepperkaker

Happy Monday! How was your weekend? We had a fantastic one filled with family and friends. Highlights included a highly successful dinner out with Espen (not always guaranteed), Christmas lights, Grandma and Grandpa babysitting, the wedding of some very good friends and a lovely Sunday evening spent with new friends. We've been so spoiled, I haven't cooked since Thursday!

Although our weekend was pretty busy, we still managed to sneak in some time to bake pepperkaker. They are a Norwegian type of cookie, a lot like thin gingerbread. You can buy the Swedish equivalent in the US as Anna's Ginger Thins, and they are basically the same thing.

We let Espen in on the fun, and he had a fantastic time getting coated in flour and cutting out the cookies. We were impressed that he could identify all of the shapes correctly too, including the angel. That boy, I tell you what! He kept attacking the dough with great gusto, and then proclaiming the mangled remains "perfect!" We didn't get a whole lot of cookies out of our little baking session, but we all had a lot of fun. 

Our yield from round one of baking. We tried a new recipe, and I have to say I wasn't super happy with it. The cookies ended up paler and thicker than I like them, and the flavor wasn't quite "right" somehow. They were still good, though, and it was fun to try something a little different. I think we'll probably do another round of "our" recipe later on in the week. 

A little tip if you'd like to try making your own pepperkaker: Ikea sells their own refrigerated dough that you can just roll out and bake, and it is delicious! I know several Norwegians in Norway that choose to go that route, for the simplicity of it as well as for the tastiness. If you want to make your own dough, this recipe looks pretty close to the one that we use. Just make sure that you refrigerate your dough overnight, and keep the rest of your dough cold while you roll it out in sections. It's useless once it warms up to room temperature! 

What kind of treats do you just have to have for it to be Christmas? Pepperkaker are at the top of my list, followed by krumkaker, which we'll also be making one of these days. Oh yum!