Pepperkakehus

December 6, 2007

"Pepperkakehus" is Norwegian for Ginger Bread House. Ginger Bread cookies were originally made with pepper (I actually still use it), because it could happen that the butter they used had gone bad. The pepper was used to cover this up. In modern Ginger Bread recipes, the pepper is gone. That's today's gastronomical history lesson.

Just about every year I try to incorporate one more of the many Norwegian Christmas traditions that we used to have in my family growing up. This year, I decided to make a Ginger Bread House. Making cookies for Christmas has a long tradition in Norway. In the good old days (when my grandmother was alive and could still remember the recipes), it was almost a requirement that a stay-at-home wife, with any kind of self respect, had to make all the 7 traditional sorts of cookies. Since there are no more stay-at-home wives, this tradition has been greatly watered out with my parents' generation (those self centered baby boomers, I tell you). I have absolutely no aspirations of bringing this tradition back. I never liked half of the 7 sorts any way.

Well, back to my Ginger Bread House. I found a nice cardboard box, cut away the sides, and started drawing walls, roof and chimney pieces. I then cut them out to use as stensils. I had already made the dough (I can give you my recipe if you want me to) a few nights earlier (you'll eventually notice from this blog that I do a lot of things at night), and I had cut out the pieces and baked them on Wednesday night. So, last evening, with the Bears getting their butts kicked by the Redskins in the background on TV, I started the assembly process. I used melted sugar to "glue" the pieces together (including the ones that broke off :)). Here is a picture of the house, assembled.

I used melted sugar to glue all the pieces together (also the ones that broke off :)). It has not been decorated. That's something L and I plan on doing on Saturday evening, as we're putting up and decorating the Christmas tree.