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Pepperkaker
Modern Viral Baking · New Wave

Pepperkaker

Wafer-thin, deeply spiced gingerbread snapped from festive shapes — the crispest scent of Christmas.

2 hrEasy
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Cultural Context & History

Rolled paper-thin and cut into hearts, stars and pigs, pepperkaker fill Norwegian homes with the scent of December. Building and decorating them is a cherished ritual of the season.

Ingredients

  • 150 g butter714 kcal · 0 g protein · 78.6 g fat · 0 g carbs per 100 g
  • 150 g sugar523 kcal · 10.3 g protein · 31 g fat · 50.5 g carbs per 100 g
  • 100 ml golden syrup
  • For the spice mix: 1/2 tsp ground ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 1 egg513 kcal · 6.4 g protein · 28.8 g fat · 57.7 g carbs per 100 g
  • 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
  • 400 g plain flour

Per-100 g values shown for ingredients verified against Nutrition data: USDA FoodData Central (snapshot 2026-09-11). Ingredients not yet verified show no nutrition line.

Recommended Tools

  • Heavy-based saucepanMelts the syrup and sugar without scorching.
  • Rolling pinTakes the dough thin enough for a clean snap.
  • Assorted cuttersStamps out the hearts, stars and figures.

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Step-by-Step Instructions

  1. 1

    Warm the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a pan until melted and smooth, then stir in the ginger, cinnamon, cloves and black pepper and leave to cool completely.

  2. 2

    Stir the egg, bicarbonate of soda and flour into the cooled mixture to form a firm dough, then chill overnight.

  3. 3

    Roll out very thinly on a floured surface and cut into hearts, stars and figures with cutters.

  4. 4

    Space the shapes on lined trays and bake at 200°C (400°F) for 8-10 minutes until deep golden, then cool on a wire rack.

Chef's Tip

Roll the dough as thin as you dare, barely a couple of millimetres — that thinness is what gives pepperkaker their brittle snap rather than a chew.

Chef's Tip

The dough keeps happily for a week in the fridge, so you can roll and bake a tray at a time through December.

How this page was made

Written by
The Norcook editorial archive. No individual author is named yet — see the editorial and food-safety policy for what that means and what has to happen before a byline appears.
Content last checked
— “checked” records an editorial check, not a qualified review. Where one exists, the recipe-specific review record appears in the food-safety callout.
Regional context
Modern Viral Baking — the hub carries the wider background, the ingredient glossary and its own sources.
Sources
No page-level sources are recorded for this recipe yet. The cultural background above is written as general context, not as a sourced historical claim.

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