Christmas cookie recipes - painted sugar cookies, brown sugar kisses, and Ronneby pepparkakor

[cimorene]

For Christmas desserts, I made giant batches of painted sugar cookies and gingerbread, plus a double batch of brown sugar nut kisses with the egg white left over from the painted cookies. I also made an impossible-to-eat tray of chocolate and peanut butter and a slightly-heavy-on-the-sherry trifle in a too-small bowl, but I'll know better next time (and also, more trifle for me that way, omnomnom). Recipes for those two coming later.

(tons of broken images removed)

All recipes are given in both American and metric measures.



No-fail Sugar Cookies

make in 2 batches, each of:
7,25 dL (3 cups) flour
1,5 tsp baking powder
227 g (2 sticks) butter
2,4 dL (1 cup) sugar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract or 1 T vanilla sugar
1 t salt

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add egg. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.

You can roll the dough out immediately by placing it between two sheets of parchment paper to roll it out and refrigerating the result on a cookie sheet for 15 min or so, but the rolling will still be difficult as the dough is incredibly crumbly. For best results, dough should be made the day before and refrigerated a good 12 hours, then left to thaw to room temperature. At this point it should hold together better although it is still both crumbly and very sticky. For best results, take a fist-sized chunk of the dough - which should still be firm at this point - and work briefly in clean bare hands, pressing it into a ball and squeezing the ball gently back and forth until it becomes slightly more pliable. Then flatten the ball slightly before rolling the dough out thin between two sheets of parchment paper. Cut out cookies immediately. If making painted cookies, they must be painted before baking.

Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350°F/175°C for 8 to 10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown around the edges.

For painted sugar cookies:

1 egg yolk should be enough for 1 batch if not intending to completely cover the surface of each cookie. It will dry out after a while, so cut out all the cookies before beginning the painting.

Add a quarter to ½ teaspoon of water to the egg yolk and remove any little white globby bits. Stir briskly until even - I like to use a single chopstick for this. Separate into small bowls, 2-3 teaspoons of yolk per bowl. (This presumes four colors and 1 yolk.) Add liquid food coloring to each bowl. You'll need a fair amount to get a vivid color on the cookies, perhaps 8 or so drops, and bear in mind that the blue especially will tend to look green if you don't use enough, while the yellow may be too pale to show up when the cookies turn golden. Then paint the cookies with a small brush before baking.




Brown Sugar Nut Kisses

1 egg white, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2,4 dL) brown sugar, firmly packed, or a little less (this will make a VERY sweet cookie)
1 cup (2,4 dL) chopped nuts or less to taste (my mom uses pecans, which are delicious. I used sliced almonds which was also delicious)

Preheat oven to 150° C/300°F. Beat egg whites and salt until soft peaks form. Gradually add brown sugar, beating constantly, until stiff peaks form. Fold in nuts. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of meringue onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake about 15 to 20 minutes or until delicately brown and firm. Cool three to five minutes before removing from cookie sheet.




Ronneby Pepparkakor

200 g (3/4 cup) butter
150 ml (10 Tbsp) dark sugar syrup
1 tsp ginger
2 eggs
400 g (2 cups) sugar
1 Tbsp cloves
1 tsp cinnamon
650 g (4 ½ cups) flour
1½ tsp baking soda/sodium bicarbonate

Melt butter, syrup, and spices over low heat on the stovetop. Mix eggs and sugar well, then add butter mixture and blend well. Mix the soda with a portion of the flour and blend into the batter. Then gradually add more flour until dough is very firm. Texture should be extremely thick and extremely sticky. Cover bowl and refrigerate at least 24 hours, typically a couple of days.

Roll out extremely thin with as much flour as needed to prevent sticking. Dough should be strong enough to roll out almost paper-thin. Cut out and lift cookies carefully onto baking sheets with plenty of space in between, as they expand during baking. Bake at 200°C/400°F about 4-6 minutes, until they just start to darken at the edges. Cool thoroughly.

This dough is not really strong enough to make a gingerbread house out of, by the way. It's spicy, but by no means the spiciest Swedish gingerbread out there and tastes quite good decorated with purchased or standard white sugar icing.

Comments

[laughingrat]

Pepparkakor! Pippi Longstocking makes those, I think! <3 Is dark sugar syrup what we call molasses, in the US?

[cimorene]

It is not molasses, though you could perhaps substitute with it or perhaps a mixture of molasses and a lighter, more liquid honey, because sugar syrup here isn't as solid as molasses, it's more the consistency of a typical pancake syrup. (Obviously that wouldn't work because of the flavor though.) A "golden syrup" if it can be found or light or dark corn syrup would probably work better though.

From what I have gathered, a better approximation can be reached by boiling down 60% sugar (a mixture of different types is apparently used in commercial production and the Swedish home chefs on the internet don't know which) and 40% water 5-10 minutes for the golden sort, or longer until the color turns a bit browner (the choice of light or dark syrup in the recipe above is left to the chef's preference, but Wax's family buys the dark kind. I suppose one would just have to watch it until it reached approximately the color of pancake syrup).

[laughingrat]

Mm, that sounds like a delicious and interesting project. It's probable that an Americanized version of the cookie exists, of course, but approximating original ingredients is fascinating.

EDIT: Ah, yup. A quick Google turned up an American version with molasses. (I do so love molasses.) And supposedly still crispy, too, which is good. Seems like texture would be important, otherwise it's just another dang ginger cookie. Not that those are anything to sneeze at.