Brune Kager

December at our sweet kitchen is generally filled with cinnamon, cloves, orange peels, raisins, apples... Christmas in one word. This is particularly true at work and pre-Christmas get-togethers. At my most recent ones, my colleagues and I were welcoming December in a very traditional Danish way. Lots of pickled herrings, fresh (rye)breads, meat balls, potatoes... aaaaand Brune Kager ("Brown Cakes"). These little tasty cookies are filled with Christmas spices like cinnamon, cloves or ginger. I ate tons of them and could not get enough. Luckily, I managed to snitch the baker´s recipe:

BRUNE KAGER, Skårne
(Brown Cookies)

prep time: 1 hour + overnight in the fridge
makes: 120 cookies

• 250 g butter
• 125 g light syrup
• 200 g brown sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbsp cold water
• 3 tsp cinnamon powder
• 1 tsp powdered cloves
• 1 tsp powdered ginger
• 1 tsp allspice
  
• 1 tsp powdered badyan
• 25 g orange peel
• 100 g chopped almonds
• 400 g flour

In a pan heat the butter, syrup and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Take off the heat and let cool down. Meantime, mix the flour with spices, chopped almonds and grated orange peel.
The most unusual part of the recipe for me was mixing the baking powder in the water. It started bubbling like a vitamin C tablet. That I thought was a bit strange since I didn't get the point of doing it. But anyway, I threw all the things together and knead a firm dough.
Make several balls, roll them into long rolls (at about 5 cm in diameter each), wrap them in foil and place into the fridge overnight.
The next day unwrap the dough, slice into thin disks, place into pre-heated oven (we are talking 200 degrees Celsius) and bake for only 5 - 6 minutes. Let cool down and enjoy.
As you could notice, I rolled the dough out and cut out some fancy Christmas shapes instead.

These cookies were truly the highlight of our pre-Christmas party and so I was hoping, that Susan of Food Blogga would not mind including them into her Eat Christmas Cookie round-up.