Margarita's International Recipes

Iceland

Piparkökur Pepper Cookies Pepper cookies are commonly baked and eaten in Iceland at Christmastime. The smell of sweet spices fill homes and bakeries alike. While there are lots of spice cookies out there, these are particularly delicious. The secret may be in the pepper, while you cannot taste it, it does seem to do a great job of enhancing and bringing together the flavor of the other spices. The original recipe calls for these cookies to be rolled and cut, which pretty much all the reviewers said was impossible to do with such a sticky batter. But the drop method works just as well, without any of the mess. You can either bake the cookies immediately after making them, or let them rest in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, that makes the batter easier to manage. The cookies spread a lot while being baked, so make sure you set them far apart from each other. PRINT PDF Pepper Cookies Ingredients 9 oz unsalted butter, softened 1 1/4 cups white sugar 3/4 cup light corn syrup 2 eggs 3 cups flour 1 1/2 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 2 tsp ground cinnamon 2 tsp ground cloves 1 tsp ground ginger 1/4 tsp ground black pepper Directions Preheat oven to 350°F Cover two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the corn syrup and eggs and mix well. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. Add the flour mixture to the butter and mix until smooth. Drop spoonfulls of dough onto prepared baking sheets, 2" apart. Bake for 8 minutes. Let cool. Adapted from Gudny Bjorg Kjaerbo's recipe at All Recipes Icelandic Recipes | Marga's International Recipes | Marga's Best Recipes | Marga's Food Blog | E-mail