Grandma Lund’s Pepparkakor

Ingredients

1/2 pound butter

1 1/2 cups Sugar

1 teaspoon corn syrup

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 egg

3 1/2 cups Flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cloves

juice and zest of one orange

Preparation

Sift flour with soda and spices

Cream butter with sugar

Add syrup and egg and orange to creamed mixture

Add dry ingredients, mix until blended

Chill dough. Roll with flour between plastic wrap or wax paper until very thin. Cut into shapes.

Bake at 425 until barely brown (about 5 minutes)

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About

Note: This recipe was submitted by Lindsay Lund to the Four Seasons Hotel Seattle's Ultimate Holiday Cookie Contest. Lindsay was the Grand Prize Winner!

Sweet. Spicy. Crisp and thin, yet melt-in-your-mouth buttery. Swedish Pepparkakor are my grandmother’s most beloved holiday cookies. She makes hundreds of them each Christmas using itty bitty cookie cutters shaped like stars, reindeer and gingerbread folk. When I was in college, she showed me how to make the dough using real orange zest, then how to roll it between pieces of wax paper until it is almost as thin as paper itself. Every Christmas Eve, three generations of the Lund family crowd into my grandparents’ cozy home to eat and laugh. After dinner and gift giving, we devour the pepparkakor with candy cane ice cream. These cookies simply taste and smell like the holidays. They are delicately zesty, and they really do melt in your mouth. You can attempt to eat just one, but it won’t work! Welcome to one of my family’s most cherished holiday traditions.