The ginger cookies They're a Swedish Christmas tradition. They are usually cut into small figures of men, women, pigs or hearts, and many times they are decorated with frosting. It is not uncommon for children to help build cookie dough houses of ginger to celebrate Christmas.
The little houses they are mounted with cookie walls and ceilings and decorated with glazes, candies or nuts, like the ones I show you in the images that a group of Malaga families have sent me.
You should start making the dough. It must be prepared the day before and leave it covered in the fridge. You must rest at least one day. This Christmas recipe is simple, beautiful decoration and the result delicious. A great option to spend a family Christmas afternoon.
We will need the following ingredients: 500 grams of butter, ground spices: 2 tablespoons of cinnamon, 1 tablespoon of cloves, 1 tablespoon of ginger, 1 tablespoon of cardamom, 400 cubic centimeters of sugar, 200 dark syrup or cane honey, 150 cubic centimeters of water, 1 kilo of flour and a tablespoon of baking soda.
You have to leave the butter out of the fridge so that it is a little soft and mix it with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Heat the water, the syrup and the sugar in a casserole and when they are boiling they mix with the spiced butter. You have to let it cool.
The baking soda is added to the flour and that is kneaded with the cream we had obtained. This step should be taken with the cold dough. Then you have to mix the flour with the baking soda, and then with the rest.
The dough is soft and sticky. You have to cover it and put it in the fridge to rest.
The next day we proceed to make cookies. The dough is removed in portions of the refrigerator, so that it does not get sticky when it is at room temperature. To work it, you have to use a lot of flour and leave it in fine slices well kneaded.
To make cookies we must use molds Give them the desired shapes. We can buy them or make them with cardboard. Simple rectangles of the size we want should be cut for the walls and ceilings of the house.
Once prepared the cookies go to the oven, 5 minutes at 200 degrees, on a vegetable paper. They should not burn or harden. You have to take them out when they are still soft and put them to cool.
When we have them comes the most fun and difficult part: assemble the little houses
Sugar is heated in a pan and the resulting paste is used as glue to join walls and ceiling.
The decoration is made with a glaze (sugar with water) and then we hotly adhere what we want: nuts, candies, hazelnuts, pine nuts and raisins.
The dough is delicious and serves to create a lovely and nutritional decoration. Children love to help prepare and eat them.
