These should be flat (1 to 1½ mm.) and round in shape, if you bake them with kids you can make them funny shapes if you like.
They should also be very spicy! These kind of cookies is from a time where it was high status if you could afford many expensive spices. Today’s commercial "Brune kager" in Denmark is worthless, because the commercial bakeries took away all the spices to make them neutral and bland
This recipe is the opposite. Full throttle on the wonderful spices!
Ingredients
500 grams of good Quality Butter
500 grams Brown Sugar
250 grams Dark Syrup
250 grams Almonds
100 grams Pickled Succade, Buy a whole piece
100 grams Pickled Bitter (seville) Orange, Buy a whole piece.
30 grams Dried Ground Ginger
7 grams Ground Gloves
15 grams Ground Cinnamon
30 grams Finely Chopped Pickled Ginger
15 grams Potash
Half a cup very strong coffee to dissolve the Potash in.
1 kilo all-purpose flour
Skin the Almonds and crush in a food processor. If you are a traditionalist, you will slice them very thinly by hand. Dice Succade, Bitter Orange and the pickled Ginger very finely. Dissolve the potash in the hot coffee.
Now melt the butter, brown sugar and syrup in a nonstick pot. Add all ingredients, except flour, to the butter/sugar mixture in the pot.
Lastly add the flour little by little while stirring continuously. The dough should now be warm but firm. Knead the dough on a table a bit to make sure it is well mixed. Remember to enjoy the great smell from the dough in your kitchen :-)
Cut the dough into 8 equal sized pieces and refrigerate covered with cellofane until the next day.
Next day roll the dough very thinly 1 to 1½ millimeter, cut them with a small glass or whatever shape you like, and bake them in oven for about 6 minutes, They should slightly turn darker, but just slightly. Take care they don’t get dark brown which completely ruins them.
Let them cool down, and taste a little bit of traditional Danish Christmas! Enjoy!
(NOTE: Don’t make these cookies without Succade. I know many people do not like succade. but Succade is an essential ingredient in these cookies. Chop it finely so people do not get big chunks of it that usually help)
