While we don't really do Christmas at our house, we're increasingly falling in love with family traditions which happen to occur on or around Christmas Day.
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For me, Christmas is intrinsically linked with mangoes (I grew up in sunny Queensland) and playing cricket - for at least six hours with all the surrounding neighbours.
For my husband Anton, it's making a hell of lot of pepparkakor biscuits. His family is half Swedish and adopted this tradition from his dad's mob.
It's a simple biscuit which reminds me of ginger biscuits, but it is very much its own thing and the best part is that you always make them in the shape of love hearts. So naturally I think they're the best biscuit ever.
Anton's earliest memory of pepparkakor was that they were always there around Christmas. It marked that time of the year for him - summer, Christmas and pepparkakor all go together.
Every year Anton's mum Ros would make (and still does) a major batch of these tasty treats to snack on over the festive season.
There's something really wonderful about these traditions that are passed down between generations, across continents and cultures. It's a special way of keeping age-old skills and stories alive.
Anton even has a special cloth he uses when he makes pepparkakor, it was woven by his grandmother, Signe Wikstrom (pronounced Vikstrom) with her initials on it.
When I had my first Christmas with Anton's family there was constantly a full bowl of pepparkakor on the table. They don't just make a dozen or so, they make hundreds, it's quite impressive.
Here's the recipe straight from Ros to the world.
Pepparkakor Recipe:
Enough to make 300.
FYI there are two things you need to know about this Swedish recipe:
1) 1deciliter (dl) = around a third of cup
2) Ros says you should go easy on the flour at first as it's easy to add it later and a nuisance if you add too much.
Ingredients
- 100g butter
- 3dl thick cream
- 3dl golden syrup or treacle (maple syrup is too runny)
- 2 1/2dl brown sugar
- 2 1/2dl white sugar
- 2tbsp cinnamon
- 1tbsp ginger powder
- 1/2tbsp ground cloves
- cardemum to taste - a few pinches
- 2 to 2 1/2 kg of plain flour
- 2tbsp carb soda
Method
- Warm butter until melted
- Stir well and add whipped cream, white sugar, brown sugar, syrup and spices.
- Stir well for 15-20 minutes.
- Mix the bicarb with a bit of flour - add flour until right consistency and save rest of the flour for later.
- Cover and leave dough to rest overnight.
- Roll the dough out super thin and get your love heart on in a major way to cut out a few hundred.
- Lay out in trays and bake in "good oven temperature" around 210 to 220 degrees Celsius, as long as it's hot.
They only take about five minutes to bake, so you have to hang around and get a major production chain going - one person making them, one person popping them in and out of the oven.
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The kitchen is a source of so many traditions, useful skills and family stories. I love learning and integrating new traditions into my life that have such a long lineage, and which also happen to taste super fine.
Happy Festive Season to you all, may it be lined with traditions from long ago or which you're creating right now and may they be ones which please your head, heart, hands and belly.
- Hannah Moloney and Anton Vikstrom are the founders of Good Life Permaculture, a permaculture landscape design and education enterprise creating resilient, regenerative lives and landscapes.