Gingerbread Cookies (Pepparkakor)

Here it is, the kick-off to Christmas season! I decided to try my hand at making these delicious cookies. I got a recipe from an expert- Johan's mom! And I needed them for the weekend. The reipe says to let the dough sit in the fridge for 2 days (I think I'm seeing a trend) so I made the dough a couple days ago. I began by boiling some light syrup, sugar and water together. I added that to the butter, cinnamon, cloved and kardemum. One the butter melted and the mixture came close to room temp, I added the flour and baking soda. Then it looked like this:

I had so much fun rolling these out! Unfortunately, it was by myself, but I still have 1/2 the dough left, so Johan can help me next time. Does anyone have a good technique to keep the pastry cloth in one place while trying to roll stuff out?

Johan' mamma was so kind to lend me some cookie cutters! These are traditional shapes for the pepparkakor. I have no idea why they use a pig, but they taste the same whatever shape! The trees are the perfect size- bite size.

This is my stack of cookies after one cooking session. Okay, there were a few more. I can't expalin what happened to those.

And here they are ready to head off to the First Advent celebration! I know, I know. Way more pictures than necessary of cookies. But I just had fun making them and it really got it feeling like Christmas! And got my house smelling so good!