Pepparkakor

The story

Thin, crisp pepparkakor are baked in the shape of hearts, stars, and, more and more often, entire little houses — pepparkakshus, gingerbread houses that Swedish children assemble and glue together with sugar icing like tiny architectural projects in the weeks before Christmas. The dough is traditionally mixed ahead and left to rest in the refrigerator for days, even weeks, because the spices (ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom) grow more pronounced with time. There is an old Swedish custom: place a pepparkaka in your palm, rap it with your fist, and make a wish — if the cookie breaks into three pieces, the wish comes true. A similar cookie exists in almost every Scandinavian and German tradition, but the Swedish version is particularly insistent on thinness and crispness, nearly translucent at the edges. For the diaspora, making a pepparkakshus with children is one of the most direct ways of handing the tradition on — there is no need to speak Swedish to build a gingerbread house together on the holiday table.