Pebernødder

Having not found the time to bake a whole series of Christmas cookies this year, I opted for one cookie that really brings the holiday spirit for me: pebernødder (which would translate as 'pepper-nuts').

Realizing I had never made them myself, I requested my mother's recipe and once I had that I went looking for ingredients. The tricky part turned out to be the ground (dried) bitter orange peel that the recipe called for an ill-defined amount of. This I didn't manage to find before making the dough, so I substituted finely chopped candied orange peel - ironically, I did find it in the local store while the dough I had made was resting in the fridge at home. Which brings up another point: my mother's recipe strongly recommends leaving the dough in the fridge for a day or two before shaping and baking.

Ingredients:
- 250 g (~ ¹/₂ lb) flour
- 125 g (~ 4 oz) unsalted butter
- 125 g (~ 4 oz) granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- ¹/₂ tsp ground ginger
- ¹/₂ tsp ground cloves
- ³/₄ tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch of white pepper
- zest of ¹/₂ lemon
- very finely chopped candied orange peel (about the same volume as lemon zest)^[1]

The butter was worked into the flour by hand, then all the other ingredients were added and kneaded to an only slightly sticky dough. The dough shaped into a ball, wrapped in film and stored in the fridge for a day before continuing.

Coming right out of the fridge, the dough is fairly hard - but with a little patience you can pry off a chunk and roll it into a rod approximately 1 cm (²/₅ inch) thick. As the rod becomes thinner and your hands warm up the dough it becomes progressively easier to work. The rod was sliced into approximately 1 cm (²/₅ inch) thick pieces. Each little piece was rolled to a small ball and placed on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

They were baked at 212 C (415 F) for 10 minutes - and should be allowed to cool off completely before eating. I sampled one while they were still warm and was afraid I botched them, but by the time they were old I could taste I had done it right after all.

^[1] As mentioned above the original recipe called for "a little ground (dried) bitter orange peel" instead of candied orange peel.