9 December 2015

Welcome, once again, to my Danish Christmas Advent Calendar! Every day I’ll be giving you a little peak into how our family celebrates Christmas here in Copenhagen. Do the Danes love Christmas? Um, yes – they even use the word Christmas as a verb… Vi juler! (We are ‘christmasing’!)

So get comfy, put your feet up, grab a cup of something warm, and prepare for an avalanche of hygge!

9 December 2015

Okay, it’s time to get your pinnies on – we’re baking!  Yep, a lot of Danish families get together at Christmas in order to bake.  Not cakes – there’s no Danish version of the British heavy-fruit-packed Christmas cake or French bûche de noël (yule log) – they bake lots of different biscuits and cookies. My BFFs and I recently spent an afternoon making paper decorations whilst our daughters played with cookie dough…

Today I’m sharing our recipe for pebernødder – ‘pepper nuts’.  Small, spicy, crunchy biscuits that are a) good to eat and b) an essential ingredient in a Danish Christmas game.  But more on that tomorrow!

You can, of course, just buy them at the supermarket or from your local baker.

But they’re pretty simple to make.  So on with the show!

First of all you’ll need:

• one egg
• 125g of sugar

Beat these together in a bowl until you get a pale yellow frothy mixture.

Then add this lot to the bowl:

• 250g plain flour
• 125g butter (I always use Kærgården)
• ½ teaspoon of baking soda (natron)
• ½ teaspoon of cardemom (stødt kardemomme)
• ½ teaspoon of ground ginger (ingefær)
• ½ teaspoon of cinammon (kanel)
• ½ teaspoon of ground black pepper

Be generous with the spices! Better to be round handed than thrifty…

Beat them again and then scrape the mixture out of the bowl…

…and into a plastic bag.  Throw it in the fridge for an hour or so until the dough hardens up. You can also freeze it to use another day.

Cut off chunks of dough, then roll them into long sausage/worm shapes.  Take a knife and cut the sausage into small pieces (about the size of a small cherry).  Roll them into little balls.

Place them on a baking tray (I always use baking paper for easy clean up) and pop them into a warm oven – 200c/400f.

Bake them in the oven for about 15-20 minutes until they look dry and are beginning to turn a pale golden brown.  Let them cool off and then you can a) eat them b) play with them (more on that tomorrow) or c) put them in little cellophone bag or boxes to give away as presents. (They also freeze well.)

We made this year’s first batch of pebernødder on 29 November, the first Sunday of advent. They were goooooooood!

 

Velbekomme!  See you tomorrow!

Diane