Peppakakor for Ana and a Merry, Merry Christmas for all!


Well, well, well, I can hardly believe Christmas is - literally - just around the corner! Tomorrow being Christmas Eve and all, I feel like I'm still behind on all I have to get done. But it also feels like I'm about to enter something as close to vacation as I can have. I finished my first draft for the second volume of my trilogy - first volume is published already and you can find it here, remember it makes a great last minute Christmas present for a friend or family member, being and eBook there's no waiting around for it to be delivered, it's immediate! So now I am letting it rest for a few months, before I start the re-reading and editing process. As for volume three, I'm still working it ut in my head, I mean, I know quite well how the story is going to unfold, I just don't know where to begin... nor how!


In the meantime, we have been on full cooking mode around here, and full Christmas mode as well. There's been a lot of prep involved, and wrapping and selecting and trying to figure out what to get that's especially good for each and every member of our family. As I look to my right, sitting here in this desk, my eyes fall on my Christmas tree, all decked and lovely, and the presents sitting under it, and I feel we have managed to pour our hearts and thoughts into those gifts. There's a lot of books going round, yes, and there's chocolates as well, and tea blends and good wines, and then there's the cookies. It's become something of a habit that my husband and son go into the kitchen and prepare a batch of homemade cookies for us to gift over Christmas. Normally, these cookies are vanilla, or lemon, my favourites, but this year the kid wanted to spread out some, and so there's vanilla and cinnamon with a dash of ginger.


See, I really wanted to join in on Ana's December Bake Off, the Pepparkakor edition, because I haven't yet taken part of one of her editions - she's a professional chef, so I always feel like I'm not up to the job ahah!! Feelings of being a fraud and all that. But since Ana is one of my favourite bloggers around, I really wanted in. The cookies were the perfect excuse, cookies are a must with us. But these aren't the usual gingerbread cookies, no way. They're completely untraditional, not up to the norm, different from the real cookies. Still, they're tender and sweet but not too much, they're pretty and they're easy to bake. We kind of like easy, especially around this time of the year, when there's still like a million last minute details to tackle. How come I never remember those tiny last minute details that always end up stressing me out so much? My brain has a life of it's own, really.


The problem must be that Mercury's retrograde, untill January ninth. Even if one does not believe in this kind of thing - astrology and what not - with me, the Mercury retrograde has one particular glitch that I tend to notice quite often. It sends me up in a burst of creativity. I always seem to end up either styling and photographing tons of new dishes for the blog - and plenty of times I have done some of what I consider to be my best works during a Mercury retrograde - or I am hit by the writing muses and pen down chapter after chapter. It's what happened all through this week, it started over the weekend and went on and on until last Wednesday when I wrote down "The End". I felt quite depleted after that, and that is why I haven't yet begun the third volume. I really need a break, but as I said, Mercury is sending me into a frenzy of creative thoughts, and I really need to write. But for now, it's all about the baking, and these cookies.


Seeing that I already shared the recipe for the vanilla cookies here, now I'll settle for this take on the Pepparkakor:
  • 350 gr flour
  • 100 gr butter
  • 175 gr icing sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 50 ml milk
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 scant tsp juice from fresh ginger (just grate the ginger and squeeze the gratings)
  • chocolate chips and melted white chocolate for the decorations
Turn on your oven at 170º. On a smooth surface, mix the flour with the baking powder and make a hole in the middle. Place the rest of your ingredients - minus the chocolates for decorating! - on that hole and start mixing everything together with the flour, gently. You can also throw it all into a food processor and whizz, but once it comes together, take the mix out onto a floured surface and knead until it's silky smooth. Wrap in cling film and place in your fridge for thirty minutes. After the elapsed time, roll out the dough on a cool marbled surface and cut into the shapes you like. We did stars and Christmas trees and also those adorable gingerbread men, but those are already set asside for gifts so I didn't even get to photographing them. Using the chocolate chips, decorate the cookies at will. Place the cookies on an oven trey covered with baking parchment and bake for about 13 minutes, keeping a close eye because they're quick to bake, these babies. Once they're done, take them out of the oven and let themm cool completely. Melt the white chocolate on your microwave - it's speedy! - and then drizzle over the cookies or decorate as you see fit. There, easy as pie, innit? Hope you get to bake them, and here's wishing you all have an extra specia very Merry Christmas along with your loved ones!!



Comments

  1. Desculpa só agora deixar aqui um agradecimento, não é por falta de cuidado..... Obrigada, obrigada, por no meio de tanto trabalho ainda conseguires participar :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment