Sunday, 12 December 2010

The Gingerbread cookies/ Piparkakku Taikina (also vegan friendly)

Ingredients
1 3/4 dl syrup
2 dl sugar
1 dl water 
200 grams of butter or margarine (vegetable based)
2.5 Tbsp - 3 Tbsp of ála Meira Gingerbread spice mix
2 tsp of baking soda  }Mix into flour to be sieved 
1 L of flour                } 


Method:


Heat the syrup, sugar and spice until sugar has dissolve and the spices start to smell your kitchen (I love this bit). Remove the syrup mixture away from heat and put in the butter to melt into the syrup mix and stir well. Pour this mixture into a mixing bowl. Add the water and mix well. Sieve the flour and baking soda mixture into the syrup to make a cookie dough. You can beat with hand but I use an electric mixer. Put the dough in a cling film and refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight. Once the dough is ready, split the amount you want to prepare and cut out shapes with your cookie cutter. Bake in the oven for 6-8 mins depending how thin you want your cookies at 180 -200 °C (I make them so thin that it's hard to lift them to the baking tray after cutting out the shapes because I just love the crunchie cookies)


Gingerbread cookies
Piparkakku




Ainekset
1 3/4 dl siirappia
2 dl sokeri
1 dl vettä
200 gram voi tai Keiju (tumma sininen, se pitäis olla vegaani)
2.5 rkl - 3 rkl á la Meira piparkakkumauste
2 tl ruokasooda
1 L vehnäjauho


Valmistus:


Kuumenna siirappi, sokeri ja mauste, kunnes sokeri on hajottaa. Poista siirappi seos pois liedelltä ja laita voita tai margariini sulautuvat siirappi sekoitetaan ja sekoita hyvin. Kaada seos kulhoon. Lisää vesi ja sekoita hyvin. Siivilöi jauhot ja leivinjauhe seos siirappi sekoita kunnes ainekset muuttu taikinan. Voit vatkaa käsi voimalla, mutta käytän sähkövatkain. Laita taikina kelmulla ja kylmässä vähintään 3 tuntia tai yön yli. Kun taikina on valmis, jaettu määrä haluat valmistaa ja leikata kuvioita suosikki pipari muoti. Paista uunissa 6-8 min, riippuen kuinka ohut haluat  180 -200 ° C noin 6 - 8 minutti.


Spice mix if you don't have á la meira brand spice mix:


1.5 tbs cinammon powder
1.5 tbs of ginger powder
1.5 tbs of clove powder
1-2 tsp of bitter orange powder (depends how orangey you like, becareful too much could make it bitter)

Note: You can make more and keep if you plan to make a bigger batch of cookies! =)

Mausteseos jos sinulla ei ole à la Meira merkki Piparkakkumauste:
1,5 rkl kaneli jauhe1,5 rkl inkivääriä jauhe1,5 rkl neilikka jauhe1-2 tl pomeranssi jauhe (riippuu kuinka 'appelsiinimainen' haluat, ole varovainen liikaa voisi olla kitkerä)
Huomautus: Voit tehdä enemmän ja säily, jos aiot tehdä suuremman erän taikina! =)

The Gingerbread experiment - what's cooking this Xmas?

A short story on my journey to find the best gingerbread recipe. I've looked high and low in the internet and also at some point gave in to getting the store bought frozen dough (yuck!). I have also tried the ones that had eggs and to my big disappointment the texture of the cookie was not what I expected. Let's put it this way. The ones that contain egg's texture got worse each passing day.

I've also looked high and low in stores for the best ready spice mixture for the gingerbread cookies. I've found that the Á la Meira ones are better than the Santa Maria. The reason being that I do like my gingerbread cookies to have a hint of citrus (this being the bitter orange or in Finnish pomeranssi).

Blue Bag - Santa Maria Gingerbread spice
and
Yellow-green Bag- á la meira Gingerbread spice
If you cannot find this in your local store (wherever you are) I've measured a good recipe spice mix to get close to the á la meira spice as possible.

I've done an experiment to put 1/5 parts of Santa Maria Gingerbread mix and 4/5 parts of the Á la Meira Gingerbread mix and the cookies are still splendid.

The difference between the two spices are:

Santa Maria:-
Ginger
Cinnamon,
Clove
Cardamom

Á la Meira:-
Ginger
Cinnamon
Clove
Bitter Orange

I don't mind having cardamom in my cookies but too much is too much. I'm not making pulla! I'll create the Gingerbread cookie recipe is both English and Finnish, since this is a more Finnish traditional recipe ;-).