Traditional Swedish Christmas Cookies or Pepparkakor Recipe

In any traditional Swedish home, the smell of these homemade cookies will be found wafting through the house at Christmas. Swedes love to cook for the Christmas season and the Christmas Eve celebration is the highlight of the year.

Don’t worry about the literal translation of Pepparkakor, which means pepper crackers, there might have been a bit of pepper in the recipe in ancient times, but now it’s just a tasty blend of spices.

Christmas Spice Cookies or Pepparkakor

Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

1. 8 ounces (2 sticks) butter
2. 1 1/2 cups of sugar
3. 1 egg
4. 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
5. 1/4 cup orange juice
6. 2 teaspoons orange zest
7. 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
8. 2 teaspoons of baking soda
9. 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
10. 2 teaspoons ground ginger
11. 2 teaspoons of ground cloves

1. Preheat oven to 400˚F.

2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the egg, corn syrup, orange juice, and orange zest.

3. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Stir the flour mixture into the creamed butter until just combined.

4. Roll out the dough to 1/8 inch and cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the oven. Cool cookies on wire racks.

These are a wonderful cookie recipe for kids to make and they taste even better when cut out with all sorts of cookie cutter shapes!

Enjoy preparing and eating this traditional Swedish cookie recipe.