Piparkakku, latest variation

It is the time of the year, again, and I couldn't help but start to bake piparkakku, of course.
Every evening my dearest family is munching loads of Finnish gingerbread, even though I tried hard to save some from being eaten and have a chance to decorate first.. I suppose I will just have to make larger batches.
It all starts by "which shape can we eat?", but then they'll take them all. *Sigh*..
Apologies for the image quality, I'll try to shoot a better with areal camera later, but at least I got the recipe up early, and there is plenty of time to bake them before December.

Ingredients
250 g butter
1.5 dl dark maple syrup (a bit more than a 1/2 cups)
2 dl sugar (a bit less than a cup)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger (I always add a bit less as it is a very strong taste, so play with it as you wish)
2 tsp cloves, ground
1 tsp cardamom (powder)
2 small eggs
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking soda (kinda humpy) 
500g all purpose flour

Melt the butter with the sugar, syrup and spices until just starts to bubble and is smooth, with both the sugar and butter melted. Remove from heat.
Start beating the two eggs, lightly until foamy, and add the butter-syrup-sugar mixture until well combined.
Fold in the flour, first about one third, mix until homogeneous, and slowly mix in the rest.
Put aside in the fridge for a night.

You can keep them in the fridge for up to 3 days, or freeze and bake at your own convenience.
If you freeze them, remember to remove it from the freezer about 3 hours before you want to use it, it takes minimum 2 hours to soften at room temperature.

Lightly flour the surface of the batter both beneath and on top, and roll it out thin, about 3-4 mm. As you roll add some more flour beneath, it is quite inconvenient to have the shapes stick to the bottom and come up in weird forms.
If you cut more than you can bake, put them in the fridge even for just minutes before they get baked, they will hold their shapes better.
Bake them at 400 F, 200 C, for 6-8 minutes in the middle rack.

I baked little Xmas trees from the cookies seen above on the right, and some Advent candle holders.
Not that we would be religious, but they just look so good as table decoration, don't they?
Place them in airtight containers, and they will be just as good even after 6 weeks. 
Happy baking!

Icing

The icing used for decoration will most likely pop up here and there, so I thought I will just dedicate a whole post to it..

Icing
1 egg white
200 g icing sugar
1 tsp vinegar - optional, makes the icing more shiny
food coloring
2 flat tbsp of food starch - needed only if you want more professional looking cookies, of course healthier without

Beat the egg whites with the sugar and vinegar, adding the sugar gradually. When you have a nice and pure white texture add the food coloring and food starch.
If you use it for decorating with thin lines, it is going to dry in a matter of hours. If you decide to coat a surface with the icing, let it dry overnight before adding further decorations on top or packing it.

Piparkakku - Finnish gingerbread houses

Our family's all time favorite is the Finnish gingerbread.
We usually make small gingerbread houses, (one per capita ends up to grow in a whole village), churches and small cookies for Xmas. The cookies taste best undecorated, IMHO.
The houses get eaten during the New Year Eve party when the house is full of curious children, and the kids had been sharing it with love and pride so far.. Something to plan for this year as well.
In Finland there is no need to look for gingerbread recipe, there are plenty of choices (and quantities) to buy.  Here we don't have that luxury, so I was in heavy search for recipes.
This is the best I've got, from a friend :). I replaced 1/4th of the maple syrup with molasses, for a stronger taste. You can try it both ways..

Ingredients:
250 g butter
1.5 dl dark maple syrup (a bit more than a 1/2 cups)
2 dl sugar (a bit less than a cup)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger (I always add a bit less as it is a very strong taste, so play with it as you wish)
2 tsp cloves, ground
2 tsp orange peel (I replaced it with about one small lemon's grated peel)
2 small eggs
pinch of salt
2 tsp baking soda (flat), next time I'm going to try them with baking powder
8 dl wheat flour,  450 - 500g depending on your flour (a bit more than 3 cups)

In a pot add the butter, syrup, sugar and spices. Heat it up, mixing all the time, let it just start to boil and remove from heat. Let it cool down a bit and mix in the eggs. Add the flour & baking soda + salt. Let it stand in the fridge over night. If the pastry is soft, no worries, just add a bit of flour next day to make it workable.
With some flour below and on top roll it into thin sheets (~3 mm) and with a cookie cutter cut out some nice cookies. Bake them in 200 C (400F) for about 10 minutes, so that they get a bit of color. Makes about 60-70 cookies.
You can decorate them with icing if you like. We decorated about 60 of them for classmates, I'm gonna post a pic tomorrow..

House:
If you decide to make houses and not cookies, design your house, cut it out from paper, cut the dough, bake the pieces. If it bakes in more irregular shapes than you like, and it looks like it is going to be hard to put together, adjust them with a knife until warm. Melt some sugar (~60 g, 1/2 cup)  until golden, dip the wall edges into the sugar and use it as glue. It dries VERY quickly, but be careful, this is not something to do with kids. It burns your skin really badly..
Quick instructions about size if you don't want anything special: cut four 6x12 cm rectangles for side walls and roof, two 6x6 cm squares for back and front, cut a 2x4 cm piece out of the front wall as door, and bake an irregular ~20x35 cm oval(ish) base. One portion of dough makes 3 houses with some additional pine trees and angels :).
Decorate as you like, (icing recipe) and sift some icing sugar on top.

Mézeskalács - Hungarian gingerbread

Today I was inspired by the Hungarian gingerbread making at the House of Hungary in Balboa park, so I decorated our home made gingerbread cookie after our arrival home with a different technique then I usually do...
It is easy to be made with kids for Xmas.
The recipe came from a Hungarian site as I didn't find my cook book yet.. Messy me :).
You can find the original at A büfé, for those who read Hungarian it might be more enjoyable.
For those who don't, here is the English version.

Ingredients 
300 g pastry flour
50 g whole wheat flour
150 g acacia honey, I actually used ginger honey, but use any type of not so thick honey
100 g icing (castor) sugar
1 tsp cocoa powder – optional, only for color, you can make different shades of gingerbread
1 tsp baking soda (flat)
60 g butter
1 egg + 1 egg yolk (save the white for the icing/decoration on top)
1/2 - 1 tsp cinnamon (depends how spicy you like the gingerbread)
1/2 - 1 tsp clove, minced (depends how spicy you like the gingerbread) 
pinch of minced ginger – optional

Icing
1 egg white
200 g icing sugar
1 small tsp vinegar - optional, makes the icing more shiny
food coloring
2 tbsp of food starch - needed only if you want more professional looking cookies, of course healthier without

Preheat the oven to 180 C, 355 F. Mix the dry ingredients like flour, icing sugar, spices, baking soda.
Add the room temperature butter and crumble it in the flour mix.
Heat the honey to a bit higher temperature then the body temperature (approx 50-60 C, 120-140 F) and add it to the mixture.
Last, but not least, add the egg and the egg yolk, mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
Wrap it with cling wrap and let it cool for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. I forgot it for about 4 hours and it was still good :), so I suppose you can leave it for overnight if time is tight.
Divide it into three 3 parts (roughly, it is only for convenience) and roll it out 2-3 mm thick. You can add a little flour at the bottom and top if the dough is too sticky.
Cut it with your favorite shapes and place them onto trays covered with baking paper. Put approximately same size cookies in the same tray as the smaller ones need less, the bigger ones more baking.
Bake it for 8-10 minutes (8 min softer texture, 10 min easier to handle), and let them cool on a flat surface.
You can store them in airtight containers for weeks, with the honey they will only get softer :).
Enjoy.

PS. My suggestion would be NOT to add any cocoa powder at the beginning but rather mix all the other ingredients, divide the dough into three parts, leave one part as it is, add one half a teaspoon of cocoa powder to the second, and one teaspoon of cocoa powder to the third part.
You will right away have a nice variety of shades, and they look great on the plate.

Tomorrow we will bake the Finnish style Xmas gingerbread called Piparkakku, which has a bit different spices, more butter, and maple sirup instead of honey. If interested come back a bit later for the recipe, I can't promise though that it will come right tomorrow :).