Christmas revisited

I baked these Swedish Christmas cookies last year and posted the recipe. Same cookies this year only instead of honey I used date syrup. It improved the taste immensely! I still believe that dark syrup would make them even better but as you know by now, I like to tamper with recipes to make them more healthy despite knowing the results can turn out disastrous.

Here is the recipe again:

French Pepparkakor 


(

recipe originally from cookbook Konditorns 

bästa by Signe Maria Bengtsson)



These ginger cookies or rather pepper cookies translated literally were inspired by the ones baked at Christmas by my Swedish family. I must admit I have to ask them what their secret is as mine just would not come out as thin or as spiced as theirs.
175 gr butter
1 dl sugar (I used brown)
3/4 light syrup (as I didn't have this I used honey, however I believe maple syrup would have been a much better choice)
1/2 peeled almonds (if you cant find peeled almonds you can easily peel them yourself after you have cooked them in water till their 'skin' gets loose, this shouldn't be more than a a minute or two in boiling water.
1 1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger 
1 egg
3/4 tbsp  baking powder
6-7dl flour (I used unbleached white flour, I would not recommend using whole wheat flour for this, we all know I would have as I prefer it but here it's going to ruin the cookies)
1 tbsp cardamon (this wasnt in the original recipe but I love this spice)
1 tsp salt (I always add salt to sweet recipes, its adds a slight depth to the flavors)

I used a mixed spice blend which had all these spices as well as nutmeg. I used about 1tbsp of the mixed spice, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1tsp cardamon.









Melt the butter, sugar, and syrup/honey in a thick bottom pan, alow to slowly melt and then bubble. Chop your almonds into slivers and add into the butter mix. Then add the flour, spices, egg and baking powder, mix. Once cool, put in fridge for 1 day.