Swedish Gingersnaps aka Pepparkakor
Very thin cookies with a little heat from cayenne pepper. The yield will vary depending on how thin you actually roll the dough and how large the cutters are. Also, it's best to weigh the flour. The recipe is adapted from Cook's Illustrated and they used to count flour as 140 grams per cup, which is why this recipe has 350 grams of flour for 2 ½ cups.
Servings 60 cookies
Cost 5
Ingredients
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (350 grams)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ginger
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 small dash of cayenne pepper and a dash of black pepper
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks (170 grams)
- 1 ¼ cups packed dark brown soft sugar (260 grams)
- ¼ cup molasses (80 grams)
- 1 large egg (50 grams)
- 1 large yolk (18 grams)
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and spices together in a bowl and set aside.
- In a saucepan, brown the butter.
- Remove from heat and add the molasses and brown sugar. Stir until smooth, then scrape into a mixing bowl and let it cool slightly.
- When the mixture is warm rather than piping hot, whisk in the egg and yolk.
- Add the flour mixture and stir until you have a fully blended dough.
- Divide dough into 4 sections. Press or roll each section into a very thin (less than ⅛ of an inch) slab. Do this on large pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Carefully stack your slabs of thin dough on a baking sheet or tray and put them in the refrigerator and chill for several hours or until very firm.
- Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- Remove one of the chilled thin slabs of dough from the refrigerator and use a cookie cutter to cut 2 inch shapes . Arrange shapes on a parchment or foil lined baking sheet. Repeat with a second slab of dough, fitting as many cookies as you can on the baking sheet but keeping them spaced by about an inch.
- Bake for 15-18 minutes or until cookies appear set. Let them cool completely on a wire rack. They will crisp and become hard as they cool.
Notes
Instead of using 12 tablespoons of butter, you can substitute 6 tablespoons of butter and 6 tablespoons shortening.