Chef Maki's Christmas Recipes--Pepparkakor and Warm Cinnamon Milk!

Here's a couple of promised recipes from my Christmas traditions post. The first recipe has lots of fattening stuff in it, but the cookies themselves are very thin, so if you can keep yourself from eating lots of them, you should be in good shape. (Ha ha, that has a double meaning.) But, then again, it is Christmas and so we indulge a bit, huh?

Kungen’s Pepparkakor (The King's Pepparkakor)

2.5 lbs unbleached white flour, (use ¼ of this in whole wheat for best coloring)
2 cups sugar or 1 cup fructose
1 ¼ cups maple syrup (real)
1 egg
2+ Tablespoons ginger
½+ Tablespoons cloves
1-3+ Tablespoon cinnamon
1-2 Tablespoons cardamom (can make w/o)
1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 lb butter
1 cup whipping cream

Mix about 2 lbs flour with baking soda. Mix in the butter with your fingertips. Wip the cream to a hard meringue-type state. Mix together the sugar, syrup, spices (the + sign means we usually add more than it says) and egg, then add that to the whip cream. Add the flour and mix until it is a smooth dough. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rest in the fridge for a minimum of 24 hours. Two days is better.

Work the rest of the flour into the dough. Use a rolling pin, roll the dough extremely thin. Use cookie cutters, including hearts, little people, flowers, etc. Put onto cookie sheets. Bake at 425 degrees for about 5 minutes. Let the cookies cool a bit before removing them from the cookie sheet. This makes about 350 cookies—plenty to share with friends.

Every year, and I mean EVERY year, we make these. Here's an old picture from when my older kids were tiny and we baked in the downstairs kitchen at Mormor's (My mom) house. The rolling pins used by Bub and Nanner are the ones my sister and I used as kids, directly from Sweden with the cute red handles. I still have mine and we still use it every year.



We make lots more cookies now than we did when Patchy, Nanner and Bub were small. No, I don't increase the amount of dough. There are actually two reasons. 1) Not as much dough finds its way to little bellies and 2) The kids know how to roll the dough very thin on their own! Occasionally they have gotten it so thin it is almost see through--now that is too thin!

Warm Cinnamon Milk Mix

2 C. powdered milk
1 C. powdered creamer
1 C. sugar
1/2 Tbs. cinnamon

Fill a cup or mug 1/4 to 1/3 full with the mix. Add several drops of vanilla, to taste. While stirring, fill the cup with boiling water, keep stirring.


We first received this from someone as a Christmas gift. It was put into a mason jar and decorated wit the instructions attached. It is really super yummy for dipping pepparkakor!


If there are any other recipes you are really wanting from the Christmas traditions post, let me know. I'll probably share a few more closer to Christmas. Maybe I'll video them actually in the making.